The Polaris Dawn crew safely returned to Earth early Sunday morning, bringing the historic privately funded mission to a close. The Dragon capsule carrying the mission’s four astronauts — Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon — splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico around 3:30AM ET.
On Thursday, Isaacman and Gillis completed the first commercial spacewalk, each taking a turn to exit the craft and perform a series of spacesuit mobility tests. And with this mission, Gillis and Menon have now traveled farther from Earth than any women before. Polaris reached a peak altitude of about 870 miles, which is also the farthest any humans have ventured since the Apollo program.
The crew also performed a number of science experiments, and was able to complete a 40-minute video call to Earth and send files in a major test for Starlink’s space communications capabilities. That included a video recorded during the mission of Gillis, an engineer and violinist, playing the violin in space. “A new era of commercial spaceflight dawns, with much more to come,” Polaris posted on X Sunday morning.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-polaris-dawn-crew-is-back-on-earth-after-a-historic-mission-142028997.html?src=rss
NASA confirmed on Friday that it’s developing a new lunar time system for the Moon. The White House published a policy memo in April, directing NASA to create the new standard by 2026. Over five months later (government time, y’all), the space agency’s confirmation states it will work with “U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations” to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC).
To understand why the Moon needs its own time zone, look no further than Einstein. His theories of relativity say that because time changes relative to speed and gravity, time moves slightly faster on our celestial neighbor (because of its weaker gravity). So, an Earth clock on the Moon would gain about 56 microseconds a day — enough to throw off calculations that could put future missions requiring precision in danger.
“For something traveling at the speed of light, 56 microseconds is enough time to travel the distance of approximately 168 football fields,” said Cheryl Gramling, NASA timing and standards leader, in a press release. “If someone is orbiting the Moon, an observer on Earth who isn’t compensating for the effects of relativity over a day would think that the orbiting astronaut is approximately 168 football fields away from where the astronaut really is.”
NASA
April’s White House memo directed NASA to work with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation to plot the course for LTC’s introduction by the end of 2026. Global stakeholders, particularly Artemis Accords signees, will play a role. Established in 2020, the agreements include a growing collection of 43 countries committed to norms expected to be honored in space. Notably, China and Russia have refused to join.
NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program will lead the initiative. One of LTC’s goals is to be scalable to other celestial bodies in the future, including Mars. The time standard will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks on the Moon, although their locations are still up for debate. Such a weighted average is similar to how scientists calculate Earth’s Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
NASA plans to send crewed missions back to the Moon through its Artemis program. Artemis 2, scheduled for September 2025, plans to send four people on a pass around the Moon. A year later, Artemis 3 aims to land astronauts near the Moon’s South Pole.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-confirms-its-developing-the-moons-new-time-zone-165345568.html?src=rss
A concerning report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) expresses some serious concerns about the future of America’s space exploration agency.
The NASEM report was written by a panel of aerospace experts and lays out what it sees as a possible "hollow future” for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It addresses issues of underfunding due to “declining long-term national emphasis on aeronautics and civil space,” an assertion that NASA itself is aware of and agrees with. The report also notes that NASA’s problems extend far beyond having enough funding to carry out its missions and operations.
Some of the report’s “core findings” suggest areas of concern that could affect the space agency’s future. These include a focus on “short-term measures without adequate consideration for longer-term needs and implications,” reliance on “milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts” and inefficiency due to “slow and cumbersome business operations.” The report also raised concerns about the current generation of talent being siphoned off by private aerospace companies, and the next generation of engineers not receiving an adequate foundation of knowledge due to our underfunded public school systems. Finally the report states bluntly that NASA’s infrastructure “is already well beyond its design life.”
These and other issues could lead to even more serious problems. Norman Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin chief executive and the report’s lead author, told The Washington Post that reliance on the private sector could further erode NASA's workforce, reducing its role to one of oversight instead of problem-solving.
Congress could allocate more funds to NASA to address these concerns but that’s not likely since it’s constantly struggling to prevent government shutdowns. Instead, Augustine says NASA could focus on prioritizing its efforts on more strategic goals and initiatives.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/a-new-report-raises-concerns-about-the-future-of-nasa-184643260.html?src=rss
A SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four private astronauts of the Polaris Dawn mission has launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early hours of September 10 after a few weeks of delays. The mission was scheduled to lift off at the end of August but was postponed first due to technical issues, then because of poor weather conditions forecasted for the crew’s return. On board are Jared Isaacman — the billionaire who funded the mission — retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. They’ll attempt several firsts during the five-day flight, including the first-ever commercial spacewalk.
That attempt will also mark the first spacewalk from a Dragon capsule. Among Polaris Dawn's other goals is to send its crew farther than anyone has traveled since the Apollo program, targeting an altitude of about 870 miles from Earth. The journey will take the capsule and its crew briefly into the Van Allen radiation belt.
The @PolarisProgram’s Polaris Dawn mission will be the first crew to perform a spacewalk from Dragon, fly higher in Earth’s orbit than anyone since the Apollo program, test laser-based @Starlink communications, and conduct research to help provide insight on human health during… pic.twitter.com/RW387QWShY
Polaris Dawn is meant to be the first of three human spaceflight missions under Isaacman’s Polaris Program. Its crew will put SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity space suit to its most important test yet, as they’ll all wear it for protection against the vacuum of space when the Dragon’s doors open for the spacewalk. The spacewalk will take place at an elliptical orbit roughly 435 miles above Earth’s surface, and two crew members will leave the capsule.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/polaris-dawn-is-finally-headed-to-space-for-its-groundbreaking-civilian-mission-093346616.html?src=rss
Boeing's Starliner capsule has undocked from the ISS at 6:04PM Eastern time on September 6 and has safely and gently landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:01AM on September 7. Calypso, as the capsule is called, didn't have a crew onboard despite flying to the ISS with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. NASA decided in late August that the astronauts will come home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February for safety reasons. Wilmore and Williams merely provided support for the capsule's trip back home and watched the coverage of its re-entry and landing. "You have got this. We have your backs, and you've got this. Bring her back to Earth," Williams told ground control.
The astronauts flew on the Starliner as part of its first crewed flight meant to prove that the spacecraft is ready to regularly ferry humans to the ISS alongside the SpaceX Crew Dragon. They were only supposed to stay on the orbiting laboratory for eight days, but the spacecraft's service module started leaking helium on their way there. Some of the module's thrusters had malfunctioned, as well. The Starliner uses helium to pressurize its fuel tanks and to push propellant to its thrusters that maneuver the spacecraft. Over the past three months, engineers on the ground conducted tests on Starliner with help from the astronauts, but NASA ultimately decided to have the Starliner fly back home uncrewed because it didn't have confidence with the certainty of the thrusters' performance.
During the Starliner's post-landing press conference, Boeing was noticeably absent, and three NASA officials talked about the landing instead. When asked why Boeing wasn't there and if the relationship between the agency and the company was affected by Starliner's issues, the representatives said that Boeing deferred to NASA to represent the mission. They said that all three of them talked to Boeing's managers and that the company is committed to working with the agency. Steve Stich, the manager for Commercial Crew Program at NASA Kennedy, also added that while all of them were happy with the landing, a part of them still wishes it would've gone the way they'd planned, with the astronauts coming home aboard the Calypso.
Stitch, Joel Montalbano (NASA's deputy associate administrator for Space Operations Mission Directorate) and Dana Weigel (NASA's manager for the International Space Station) all praised the Starliner for its successful docking and "bullseye landing." They said they learned a lot from the mission, which apparently achieved 85 to 90 percent of its objectives, and stressed that it's important to remember that things don't always go as planned when it comes to test flights.
It'll take around two weeks to get the Calypso back to NASA grounds and around a week after that to get all the data from the capsule. NASA and Boeing are planning to analyze the data the spacecraft gathered across its systems from its time in orbit until its undocking, reentry and landing. They will then use that information to design improvements for the spacecraft.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to inspect the thrusters that malfunctioned on the flight to the ISS, as well as the "doghouses" that contained the spacecraft's propellant system where the helium had leaked. They had always planned to discard the service module that contained those elements upon re-entry, and it's now at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. NASA previously said that the issues cropped up because the propulsion equipment got hotter that expected while flying, causing container seals to loosen and to leak helium. In case of the thrusters, the heat apparently caused seals to bulge and restrict propellant flow, leading to outages.
Stitch said he wouldn't call those problems insurmountable — they just need some time to address them. They also can't tell at the moment if Starliner's next flight would have a crew onboard. For now, the agency is preparing for other missions. By the end of September, the SpaceX Crew-8 mission vehicle is scheduled to undock and come back to Earth, while the SpaceX Crew-9 mission is expected to launch. Crew-9 will fly with two astronauts instead of four to make room for Wilmore and Williams for its return flight in February.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-back-without-the-astronauts-it-flew-to-the-iss-110013469.html?src=rss
Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and make its return trip to Earth uncrewed in just a matter of days, but it apparently still has a few new mysteries left in it to throw at the team before it departs. On Saturday, astronaut Butch Wilmore alerted NASA’s Mission Control about an unexplained “strange noise” coming from a speaker in the spacecraft, which you can hear in an audio clip of the conversation shared on a NASASpaceflight forum by meteorologist Rob Dale (spotted by Ars Technica). It starts at around the 45-second mark, ringing out on a steady beat. “I don’t know what’s making it,” Wilmore said.
NASA has since said that the sound has stopped in a statement to SpaceNews’ Jeff Foust on Monday, and attributed it to an audio configuration between the ISS and Starliner. It was just speaker feedback, according to the space agency.
The noise was a bit of a head-scratcher over the weekend. After confirming with Mission Control on Saturday that they could hear the sound too, once Wilmore brought his mic over to the speaker, the flight controller in Houston said, “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.” Wilmore then let it play for about 20 seconds more before wrapping up the call. “Just to make sure I’m on the same page, this is emanating from the speaker in Starliner,” Mission Control asked, “you don’t notice anything else, any other noises, any weird configs in there?” The astronaut noted at the time that everything else seemed normal.
“The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback,” NASA said in its explanation to Foust on Monday. “The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system.” The incident had no impact to the crew or Starliner’s departure schedule, it added.
The Boeing spacecraft has been docked with the ISS since early June, and engineers have since had their hands full trying to get to the bottom of the issues that arose during its first crewed flight. When Starliner finally heads back to Earth on September 6, it’ll be leaving its crew — Wilmore and NASA astronaut Suni Williams — behind on the ISS, where they’ll continue to work for the next few months while they wait for a ride home from SpaceX in February 2025.
Update, September 2 2024, 2:30PM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement and explanation from NASA.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/now-theres-a-creepy-sonar-like-sound-coming-through-one-of-starliners-speakers-184751210.html?src=rss
The Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and to make its way back to Earth at 6:04PM Eastern time today, September 6. If the weather cooperates and the spacecraft leaves the ISS as planned, it will be landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico with the help of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated airbags at around 12:03AM ET on September 7. While the ground teams at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida can control the spacecraft remotely if needed, it will be an uncrewed, fully autonomous flight for the Starliner.
NASA recently announced that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that headed to the ISS aboard the Starliner for its first crewed flight, will be coming home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon instead. Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June and were only supposed to spend a little more than a week on the orbiting laboratory. On the way there, however, five of the spacecraft's maneuvering thrusters had failed, and its helium leak problem that previously caused its launch to be pushed back had worsened. Engineers on the ground conducted tests with help from the astronauts on the ISS to determine whether the Starliner was safe for the crew to ride back to Earth. In the end, NASA decided that it's safer for Wilmore and Williams to come home on a SpaceX vehicle, because "there was too much uncertainty" around the Starliner's thrusters.
The space agency will cover Starliner's return live on NASA+, the NASA app, its website, and you can also watch it below. Coverage of the undocking procedure will start at 5:45PM ET, while coverage for the spacecraft's deorbit burn, entry and landing will start at 10:50PM. NASA will also livestream Starliner's landing on September 7, starting at 12AM ET.
As for the SpaceX Crew-9 mission that's replacing the Boeing's vehicle on the ISS, it's scheduled to launch no earlier than September 24. Instead of flying with four astronauts as planned, it will fly with two — NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — to leave two seats empty for its return flight with Wilmore and Williams in February 2025.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-coming-back-without-a-crew-on-september-6-140023545.html?src=rss
Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company said on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying two probes built by Rocket Lab to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars’ atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies after years of delays in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per Ars Technica.
The mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The twin spacecraft of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission (Escapade) arrived in Florida on August 19 to begin preparations and integration with the launch vehicle.
Now, the pressure is really on for Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin to get New Glenn ready in time. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the company recently suffered two failures at its factory that resulted in damage to hardware for its second and third New Glenn flights. But, a spokesperson told the publication that it’s still on track for this year’s inaugural launch.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origin-targets-mid-october-for-new-glenns-inaugural-flight-and-launch-of-nasas-escapade-mars-mission-224611923.html?src=rss
After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said “there was too much uncertainty” around the predictions for Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight.
The plan now is that Starliner’s first crew will return with SpaceX’s Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the ISS at the end of September. Crew-9 was initially supposed to carry four crew members, but will instead have to go ahead with two, so as to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the way back. That spacecraft is being reconfigured with seats for the two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its cargo for them to wear home. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the duo will have been on the space station for about eight months. The Starliner flight test was only supposed to last a little over a week.
The next step is to get Starliner ready for undocking and wrap up as an uncrewed flight test. The agency plans to conduct the second part of its readiness review for the process this coming week, and expects undocking to take place around early next month. “We are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the readiness review,” Stich said. “We’re going to go with a simplified separation technique to get away from the station a little more quickly.”
The issue with Starliner’s thrusters has been “very complex,” Stich said, and their performance has been “challenging to predict.” Without being able to accurately predict how the thrusters would perform from undocking through the deorbit burn, the potential risks for the astronauts were just too high, he explained.
“We have had mistakes in the past,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We have lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information can come forward.” With that context looming over the discussions, he said, “We have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection, you come forward. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and and its most routine, and a test flight by its nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss
On August 24, NASA will finally announce how Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that flew to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner, will be coming home. Earlier this month, the agency said it was already in talks with SpaceX about the possibility of giving the astronauts two seats aboard an upcoming Crew Dragon mission. While NASA was making sure that the option was available, it continued asking Boeing for data to prove that the Starliner is safe to ride back to Earth. The Starliner's batteries won't last forever, though, and the agency needs to make a decision soon.
In its announcement, NASA said that on August 24, its leadership will make a final examination of the data Boeing gathered through various ground tests and simulations by engineers with help from Williams and Wilmore. An hour later, at around 1PM Eastern time, it will hold a news conference to broadcast its official decision. You can watch the event on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube and the agency’s website, but we'll also keep you updated.
The Starliner's first crewed mission blasted off the space in June on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket after several delays. It was only supposed to stay docked to the ISS for eight days before making its way back home with both astronauts. During its flight to the orbiting lab, however, five of its maneuvering thrusters had failed. The helium leak that caused Boeing and NASA to scrub its launch also came back and had even worsened. Over the past few months, engineers conducted tests and simulations on the ground to provide NASA with the data it wanted. "We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, back in June.
If NASA does decide to go with its backup plan of making Wilmore and Williams hitch a ride on the Crew Dragon, then the Starliner will be coming back to Earth without a crew onboard. It's still unclear when the Starliner is making its way back to the planet, but it likely couldn't come soon enough for the company. Aside from the fact that the Starliner's batteries are running out, Boeing reported earlier this month that it took another $125 million in losses due to the spacecraft's delayed return. Wilmore and Williams will then be coming home as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, the same mission that had to be delayed because Starliner was still taking up one of the two slots on the ISS that can accommodate astronaut capsules. The Crew-9 capsule won't be flying back to Earth until February 2025, though, so the astronauts' supposed eight-day trip will turn into an eight-month stint.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-will-soon-announce-whether-starliners-astronauts-are-coming-back-on-a-spacex-vehicle-120049271.html?src=rss