NASA's $11 Billion Mars Dilemma | This Week In Spaceflight

NASA uncovers Mars troubles Starliner gets stacked for launch and SpaceX reaches 20 flights with a falcon 9 booster I'm Elicia seagull for NSF it's Friday the 19th of April our oneye anniversary and there's much more to come this week in space [Music] [Applause] flight by now you've probably seen the story about the piece of space junk that hit a house last month now don't worry that's not normal or you don't need to buy a big umbrella to cover your house or anything but as rare of an event that it was it was quite a hit and this week NASA confirmed that it was indeed a piece of its own space junk the piece was part of a cargo pallet carrying a set of old ISS batteries that were removed and changed out for newer ones this was part of a major overhaul of the station's Power Systems from nickel hydride batteries to newer and more efficient lithium ion batteries during this overhaul new batteries are launched on a pallet within jaxon's HTV spacecraft these are then installed then the pallet is filled with the older batteries returned to the HTV spacecraft that brought it up and it safely disposes of the batteries and the pallet without any harm so what went wrong well this cargo pallet in particular was the one brought up to the station on the htv9 mission the last HTV mission to the ISS until the upcoming HTV X spacecraft launches next year the pal pet had been stored on the exterior of the station until March 11th 2021 at which point it was released at the time of release the pallet with the old batteries on board had a mass of approximately 2,630 kg atmospheric drag eventually made its orbit Decay and re-enter bringing it in for re-entry on March 8th 2024 While most of it was expected to burn up one piece survived and made it down to the ground hitting a house in Naples Florida NASA retrieved the piece and concluded that it was a stanion from the Flight Support equipment used to mount the batteries to the pallet the stanson was a 725 G in canel cylinder about 10 cm tall and 4 cm in diameter and this unexpected hit will now give NASA more data to reexamine and study in depth as to what happens to certain space Hardware when it re-enters the atmosphere from orbit now there is a much longer story to all of this though I mentioned that the plan to change the batteries on the ISS had the cargo pallets coming back to Earth on the same HTV spacecraft that had launch them disposing of them safely so why was the htv9 cargo pallette still on the ISS well it's kind of a long story in September of 2018 the htv7 spacecraft launched with its own pallet loaded with batteries Nick heg part of the crew of the soyu's ms10 mission was scheduled to perform the very intricate spacewalk needed to replace these batteries unfortunately his flight was cut short due to an abort 2 minutes into the launch this meant that when the htv7 spacecraft had to leave the station it couldn't carry back the cargo pallet that it had brought up with any old batteries because they hadn't been changed yet NASA made the decision to instead dispose of that pallet on the HTV 8 mission and dispose of HTV 8's pallet on htv9 so this is why the htv9 pallet was still on the station it had carried back the pallet from the previous Mission and it left its own up there so as you can see sometimes what seems like a pretty simple story actually has a lot more tucked away under its roof like a chunk of metal from space in the last few weeks there have been a number of interesting developments coming from the Chinese space flight industry space Pioneer recently showed off progress towards the maiden Flight of the company's tenan long 3 rocket this included completion of acceptance firing for all nine engines to be used on the first stage of the rocket then they showed a picture of these engines installed on the engine section of the rocket and huh as you can see it's kind of a familiar view yep the TN long 3 rocket will look pretty much like a Falcon 9 rocket it even has similar performance and is being designed to have a reusable booster these engines now integrated with the first stage will be test fired again all at once later this month in preparation for flight space Pioneer emphasizes that the debut flight of Tian long 3 is still on track for this summer so we'll have to wait and see what happens now on the other hand there's landspace which is pushing through with development of its zuk a 3 rocket another partially reusable rocket but this one uses methane for for fuel the company is now officially starting to manufacture the stainless steel rings and Barrel sections of the Rockets tanks landspace has also moved up the date for the debut flight of its rocket from late 2025 to Mid 2025 which is interesting as it's something that doesn't happen very often in space flight development of the rocket must be going much faster than originally estimated if this is being accelerated by 6 months and speaking of development the company is putting final touches on its next vertical takeoff vertical Landing vehicle demonstrator for zuk 3 this test vehicle is a subscale version of what the Rockets booster will look like and it's fitted with just one engine landspace already completed a hop test a few months ago but it was only up to a few hundred m in altitude this one will instead be going to 10 km which is why this next vehicle will carry grid fins for aerodynamic control during the re-entry this second hop is currently planned for July so we'll be keeping an eye on whatever updates we get from it landspace also continues preparations for the next flight of ituk 2 rocket which should be the fourth overall and the second operational flight this flight will be carrying an upgraded second stage engine derived from the first stage engine but optimized for the vacuum of space this engine and its niobium nozzle expansion have been tested on the ground ahead of flight meanwhile on the moon China's chiow 2 spacecraft has arrived at its lunar orbit around the moon and is functioning as expected Paving the way for the chonga 6 Mission set to take place on May 3rd of this year every week there's some drama in space and this week it's NASA's Mars sample return Mission the mission has been in a pause for almost a year mainly due to the problems encountered ever since serious work started on it back in early 2021 these problems were primarily budget and schedule related which led NASA to set up an independent Review Board in order to identify the weaknesses of the program and estimate a more realistic budget and schedule the result was devastating for the program with costs expected to be in the range of 8 to 11 billion and a most likely date for the samples to return to Earth in 2035 NASA then had to take in all of these findings and come up with Solutions and well it kind of looks like the agency has run out of ideas this week NASA released its findings and after much deliberation its best plan was to stretch the program in order to be able to afford spending those 8 to 11 billion on the mission which means the likely date of Return of samples would move even further back to 2040 this is a huge blow to the mission and puts it at serious risk of cancellation but the agency does not want to give up on it and it has very compelling reasons to keep up the effort from science to improving our knowledge about Mars ahead of future human flights even including geopolitical strategy NASA really wants to do this but despite all that changes are needed the bottom line is that $ 11 billion is too expensive and not returning samples until until 2040 is unacceptably too long that was the statement from NASA's administrator during a press conference this week about the mission also during it NASA announced that it's opening a request for information to companies and other organizations to propose ideas to make the Mars sample return Mission faster and cheaper proposals are due by May 17th with 90day study set to go out shortly thereafter NASA expects to choose a final proposal by Fall that could find finally put things back into gear by speeding up their timeline at a reduced cost for this the agency has accepted some sacrifices for example only retrieving 10 of perseverance 30 sample canisters with samples from only the most interesting and promising locations as could be expected NASA was also asked about innovative solutions for landing on Mars such as spacex's Starship NASA's official position is that it's preferable if these proposals use as much proven technology as possible to shorten Development and Construction timelines and lower potential budgets but despite that the official request for information that the agency sent out does not forbid wild architectures introducing new elements into the mission in fact the document states that the agency would be interested in potentially having a smaller Mars Ascent vehical or a complete alternative to it spacex's CEO Elon Musk quickly went on to social media to claim that Starship could do this mission in 5 years but well elon's timelines aren't always the most realistic and to be fair timelines in and spaceflight do tend to slip a lot this mission is probably going to generate a lot more debate and discussion in the coming weeks and months as proposals pop up left and right and also as we learn which proposals are chosen to proceed through to the end it'll be interesting to see what solution though if any comes up but whatever happens it's going to be tough there is one really good question to be asked here though which is why did it take so long for NASA to realize that its architecture wasn't suited to this and also why didn't it open up proposals for it a lot sooner this request had gone out years ago we might be a lot closer to having a Mars sample return Mission taking place not only has it been delayed heavily but it's also endangered other science missions like dragonfly Veritas and more it's no wonder that it's become a tough choice for NASA to make the wait May soon be over Starliner is officially on top of an atlas 5 and it's preparing to take astronauts to the International Space Station the Starliner spacecraft for Boeing's crew flight test nicknamed Calypso was rolled out from the commercial crew and cargo processing facility in the early hours of Tuesday April 16th it then made a 16 km Excursion past the Vehicle Assembly Building and was taken to United launch alliance's vertical integration facility at space launch complex 41 here it was officially integrated on top of the mighty Atlas 5 for what will likely be the final time before flight the mission set for May 7th will be Starliner first ever crew mission after two previous uncrewed flight tests astronauts Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore will be test flying the vehicle and watching over the systems as Starliner plans to fly and dock to the ISS autonomously both astronauts have a rich history of space flight with missions on the space shuttle and soyu and long-term stays on the ISS they're set to arrive at the Kennedy Space Center next Thursday to undergo pre-launch work this will include a dry dress rehearsal with the crew being transported to the pad following the same countdown in timing as the day of launch this flight will feature an atlas 5 in the n22 configuration with the N standing for no fairing the first two representing two solid rocket boosters and the final two representing the two centar engines that will take the crew to space Boeing has stated that a successful Mission will create an easy path for Starliner to officially be certified by NASA for regular flights to and from the ISS such regular flights wouldn't happen until early next year though when the station's crew schedule would allow such a flight to take place there will likely be many updates on this upcoming mission to come and you can be sure that we keep you informed on everything that happens from now until the launch now let's take a quick Glimpse at some other stories across space Aran 6 has officially passed all of its qualification tests for its inaugural flight back on April 12th the final hot firing test of Arion 6's upper stage was completed at the German Aerospace Center this comes after the successful long duration firing of the core stage in November of 2023 as well as a full countdown sequence of the launch site and many other demonstration tests the these tests have paved the way for the maen Flight of the Aran 6 rocket later this summer this last upper stage test involved firing the upper stage under non-nominal conditions to gather further data on how the vehicle responds to potential abnormalities during flight this test was supposed to be completed late last year but it was aborted early into firing now that it's complete it finally puts a nice bow on what has been a long development Road for Aran 6 this week perseverance waved a final goodbye to its buddy ingenuity the Rover is now exiting the area of direct line of communications with the Mars helicopter which means no more data will come from it for a long time maybe even forever however that doesn't mean that Ingenuity won't be doing anything anymore just last month we had Dr Travis Brown chief engineer for the Mars helicopter live here on NSF during our Intrepid Museum show talking about the plans for Ingenuity once this happened eventually the the the Rover will trundle its way out of Telecom range and then you'll be that'll be we we are going to store the data so we we recently did a flight software update so that the the data doesn't get wiped um and so we've got something like 20 years of storage space so we'll just keep taking data every day for the next 20 years and nice if the Rover comes back and we'll just pull that data down we'll have like five years of five 10 years of solar trending depending on when the Rover comes through yeah yeah still living on that's amazing though still it's still alive still doing science somebody just needs to come visit it so we can get the results so here's hope hoping we have the chance to reconnect with this little guy sometime in the future NASA has officially confirmed dragonfly the rotorcraft for the one of aind Mission to Saturn's moon Titan with this confirmation the mission selected as part of NASA's New Frontiers program in 2019 can now continue on through the design finalization construction and testing ahead of launch that launch though has seen delays in recent years due to funding constraints and the pandemic for that reason NASA has rescheduled it for launch in 2020 28 with its new landing on Titan now planned for 2034 this launch will now use a heavy lift launcher rather than a medium lift launcher as originally planned in order to accelerate the arrival time just like the schedule the budget has also inflated to $ 3.35 billion about twice the original budget estimate for this Mission still not as wildly problematic as the Mars sample return Mission discussed earlier but it definitely reflects the complexity of sending a massive rotorcraft to such a distant location launch complex 16 at the cape canaval space force station is actively being renovated to support relativity spaces Teran R rocket after the launch of relativity's Teran 1 rocket on March 23rd 2023 ended in Failure relativity decided to go Allin building Teran R this rocket is much larger so it'll need a larger pad for its operations well this week relativity gave an update on the progress to modify lc1 164 Teran R the launch area has been completely flattened for the larger Launchpad to begin constru construction just about everything but the original Teran 1 horizontal integration facility the concrete from the original pad and the water Farm has been cleared for upgrades relativity is already making way for the much larger horizontal integration facility needed for Teran R just a few meters to the east of the existing one relativity's update also mentioned that waterline installation is now underway so that seems to be the start of actual hardware for this pad now being put into place we look forward to even more updates from relativity on pad up upgrades and continued work on the Teran R program now let's take a look at this week in launches starting off this week we had a falcon 9 launching on April 13th at 140 UTC from space launch complex 40 in Florida the mission was carrying a batch of starlink V2 mini satellites into low earth orbit the booster used was b162 which was flying on its 20th flight yes 20th flight this makes it the first Falcon 9 booster to reach this Milestone and it did so just 28 days after its 19th flight a very quick turnaround relative to other Milestone flights performed before b162 successfully returned landing on spacex's drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas this launch also marked the fastest turnaround time for any SpaceX Launchpad at just 68 hours between starlink 648 the previous flight from this location and this Mission from the other side of the world we had the launch of a CH Jang 2D on April 15th at 4:12 taking place from the Joan satellite launch Center in China the rocket was carrying the superview Neo 301 into a sun synchronous orbit the satellite is planned to be part of a constellation of 28 superview satellites and was built by China seway survey and mapping technology company it has .5 M of Imaging resolution over nine wavelength bands and a 130 km Imaging swath after that we had the second starlink launch of the week taking place on April 17th at 2126 UTC from launch complex 39a just like the recent starlink launches it was carrying 23 starlink V2 mini satellites into low earth orbit the booster for this mission b1077 was flying for a 12th time and it successfully landed on spacex's drone ship just read the instructions for those keeping track this was the 50th starlink group 6 Mission despite it being starlink 651 SpaceX just hasn't launched 650 yet and just yesterday night we got another starlink mission starlink group 652 taking place on April 18th at 2240 UTC from space launch complex 40 in Florida the first stage for this mission b1080 was flying for a seventh time and it successfully landed on a short fall of Gravitas with the starlink missions of this week SpaceX has now launched a total of 6,258 starlink satellites of which 406 have re-entered and 5,26 have moved into their operational orbit and now let's see what's coming up next week in space flight next week we'll have the launch of a Chong Jong 2D rocket with a yet unknown pay Lo liftoff from XI Chong is set to take place on April 20th at 2345 UTC after that there will be another Falcon 9 launch from Florida the 4-Hour launch window opens on April 22nd at 2240 UTC from the other side of the world we'll have rocket Labs electron rocket launching from New Zealand the mission called beginning of the Swarm will be carrying a pair of satellites into low earth orbit including NASA's next solar sale Mission the 75-minute launch window opens on April 23rd at 2130 UTC China's next crude mission to the tiangong space station is set for next week carrying another Trio of Chinese astronauts into orbit the sheno 18 mission is set to lift off on board a Chong Jong 2f rocket on April 25th at around 1259 UTC docking about 3 hours later to the nater port of the station's tiha module right around that time and from the other space station the ISS we'll have a Russian spacewalk cosmonauts Oleg Conan Yenko and Nikolai CH are set to exit the orbiting post on April 25th at 1455 UTC to conduct work on the Russian side of the station for about 7 hours and for the 52nd time that's your weekly update of space flight news this show turns one year old today so a big thank you to everyone who's been watching and supporting from the beginning and as always we'll see you all next week to recap this week in space flight

Channel: NASASpaceflight

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Keywords: NASA, SpaceX, Starliner, Mars Sample Return, Falcon 9, space debris, rocket launch, space exploration, international space station, ISS, Naples Florida, space junk impact, HTV-9, JAXA, space technology, aerospace engineering, orbital debris, commercial spaceflight, rocket science, Atlas V, Boeing, Starship, space mission, outer space, planetary science, space updates, aerospace industry, space news, space achievements, upcoming launches, ariane 6, rocket lab, spaceflight news

Id: 0bB7rLGecC0

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024