SpaceX Raptor Test Stand Back In Action | This Week In Spaceflight

spacex's famous McGregor tripod stand Roars back to life China and Russia partner up to build a lunar base and Voyager 1 resumes its science operations in interstellar space I'm Alicia seagull for NSF it's Friday the 21st of June and there's much more to come this week in space flight [Music] NASA's Voyager 1 probe has returned to normal science operations with all four of its active instruments now sending data back to Earth the spacecraft had been offline for almost half a year following a technical issue last November the problems were caused by a broken memory chip in the spacecraft's flight data subsystem or fds which is responsible for collecting all science and engineering data and packaging it so it can be sent to Earth in fact you may recall we covered this back in April when the engineers found a way around the issue by reprogramming the computer to avoid using the broken chip now that may sound like it was a simple fix but coming to this solution was rather complicated due to the spacecraft's distance at about 24 billion km from Earth it's all the way out there in interstellar space in fact that's the furthest that any spacecraft has reached it takes 22 and 1/2 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and it takes just as long to get a response back too so when the engineer sent the updated code to Voyager one they had to wait for almost 2 days to even see whether their fix actually worked on top of all of that the old technology and code on board the spacecraft made the job even harder the two voyagers launched back in 1977 meaning they've been in space for almost half a century so just getting the spacecraft back online is a true accomplishment while the first software patch sent in April restarted the process of sending normal data instead of gibberish further updates had to be sent to the spacecraft to patch the rest of the software and return data from each of the science instruments one by one this process finally ended this past week and teams have confirmed that all functional instruments are finally sending data as expected but the team is not yet finished as more work will be needed to recover from this issue among other things the engineers need to resynchronize the timekeeping software on the three onboard computers and perform maintenance on a digital tape recorder that records data for the plasma wave instrument even though there's still plenty of work remaining Voyager 1 is back to its normal science operations While most of the spacecraft scientific instruments have been disabled or are now defective four are still actively studying Interstellar space outside of the sun's protective heliosphere eventually Voyager 1 won't have enough power for its instruments to communicate with the deep space network but for now this old spacecraft is back in business doing science from Interstellar space Russia and China are planning to build a lunar base together while the plans have been in the works for a few years now the project has now received the green light from the Russian government making it a formal program for the country the China National Space Administration and Ross Cosmos first started planning the moon base known as International lunar research station or ilrs in 2021 the station's main purpose is to become a science outpost on the lunar surface the countries hope to use the station to research various aspects of the moon and the lunar environment but also to perform biological and medical experiments and study Institue resource utilization additionally the lunar base can be used for astronomical observations without the atmospheric distortions that effect earth-based observations cnsa and Ross Cosmos have drafted a three-phase plan to build the station the first phase focuses on reconnaissance this process has already started and is set to last until 2025 during this phase the agencies will Scout the lunar surface for a suitable location to build the ilrs to accomplish this the companies will use lunar missions that were already in development before the program started including some of the Chinese chonga missions and the Russian Luna missions during this phase the agencies will also design the station and verify Landing technology the ilrs will be constructed during the program's second phase which is planned to end in 2035 this phase will not only build the station on the moon surface but also establish all facilities and infrastructure needed to operate it these include spacecraft to transport humans and cargo between Earth and the Moon vehicles for exploration of the lunar surface and the ground support facilities needed for launch and long-term operation the Project's third and final phase is the operational phase this includes crude missions to the completed space station since cnsa and Ross Cosmos announced the ilrs multiple countries have joined the program in recent years including Pakistan bellarus Egypt and aeran among others with the approval of the Russian government the project can really take off but whether Russia can actually afford this program remains to be seen the country space program has been in Decline for the last decade or so with development programs stalling and suffering repeated delays and overruns with no Hardware to show for it China on the other hand seems to be much better prepared to carry out this program which likely means it'll be the main provider for launches and transportation of cargo and people to this space Russia and China aren't the only space superpowers working together in space though details of a collaboration between the US and India were also announced this week and there's quite a bit going on the White House published a fact sheet after the second meeting of the US India initiative on critical and emerging technology in New Delhi among other things the fact sheet detailed how the countries will collaborate in space this fact sheet revealed that astronauts from NASA and the Indian space research organization or isra are set to work together in the International Space Station the countries have secured a carrier for this Mission but details about the carrier or when the mission will take place have not yet been announced it's likely that the ISRO astronaut will fly to the ISS on a private Mission such as those conducted by axium space or perhaps directly via SpaceX or Boeing but separately from their missions already under the commercial crew program these private missions to the ISS have previously flown astronauts for the Saudi space agency the Turkish space agency and the European Space Agency some of them even featuring the first person to go to space from their respective countries so it wouldn't be the first time for this to occur however before these astronauts visit the space station they need proper training to do this the countries have agreed on a plan to train ISRO astronauts at NASA's Johnson Space Center this will also Aid ISRO in training their astronauts for their own human space flight missions on their gagan spacecraft coming up hopefully next year in addition to collaborating on human space flight NASA and Isel will also jointly develop and launch a synthetic aperture radar satellite conduct joint space defense exercises and explore opportunities for India to join the lunar Gateway program all of this comes just one year after India signed NASA's emis Accords and started talks to increase the level of partnership between the two space agencies with all of these new Partnerships popping up we can start now to see how the balance of power in space is shaping up for the next decade now let's take a quick Glimpse at some other stories across space this week China performed a hotti test of the propulsion system for the first stage of its upcoming Chong Jong 10 rocket this rocket is currently in development to launch the two spacecraft that will be used on China's crude lunar program mjo the deep space crew spacecraft and the L lunar lander the lunar version of of the Chong Jong 10 has a center core with two side boosters just like spacex's Falcon heavy or Delta 4 heavy these will all have seven kerosene powered yf1 100K engines however only three engines were installed on the test article that was fired this past week so for now we'll need some imagination to see what a launch might look like but we're obviously expecting this to ramp up to a full S engine test fire in the near future this rocket will also come in single booster configuration and will be used mostly for launches to low earth or bit this variant of the Chong Jang 10 will sport a reusable first stage that upon Landing will be caught by a system of moving cables instead of using Landing legs well it looks pretty intense it was announced that the design has been verified with smallscale tests Slovenia has signed an agreement to become the European space agency's 23rd member State the country has been collaborating with Isa since 2008 and joined as an associate member in 2016 but is now about to become a full member of Issa in the meantime Isa has already established a research facility in Slovenia which currently operates one of the agency's three human centrifuges the country also has experienced developing and operating Satellites with three Slovenian satellites currently in space with this agreement Slovenia will become an Isa member in January 2025 bringing even more opportunities to the country's emerging space industry this picture is a dead upper stage from a Japanese h2a rocket launched many years ago it was taken by Astros scales debris inspection demon rtion satellite called active debris removal by astroscale Japan or address J this week the company released these images of the discarded upper stage taken from a distance of just 50 m now if you remember address J was launched on an electron rocket in February for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration agency's commercial removal of debris demonstration program this current Mission will demonstrate spacecraft operations in close proximity to space debris and this is quite a challenge considering that this is an object that does doesn't have any hardware for rendevu nor does it have its own propulsion or attitude control after this Mission the next phase of the program will be to launch a different satellite that will actually capture and remove a piece of space debris you might say that at that point it'll be time to take out the trash spacex's Raptor finally breathed fire once again at McGregor's tripod stand which is now back in Action if you remember the stand was badly damaged after a raptor engine shut down a bit too enthusiastically at the end of a test last month the shutdown caused a secondary explosion and a lot of damage but fortunately this happened on the test stand and not during flight SpaceX has since repaired the stand and installed another Raptor on it this week our McGregor live camera spotted the blue flames and mock diamonds again as the Raptor roared to life for the tripod's first test in 28 days this was the longest time it's had to stand down after an anomaly with earlier recoveries normally taking about 5 days or so now let's go over all of the traffic in space during the past week and then we'll see what's coming up next week in space flight starting off the week we saw the launch of a falcon 9 from vandenbberg taking up the first mission for starlink group 9 liftoff took place on June 19th at 340 UTC taking 20 starlink satellites into low earth orbit this was the first Falcon 9 launch in 10 days as all of the other launches scheduled during this time were all scrubbed or delayed with this year's busy schedule those 10 days felt like a long time to wait for a launch and in fact it was the longest gap between SpaceX launches since December of last year this also resulted in another coincidental first for this launch as it was the first time that two SpaceX launches were conducted from Vandenburg in a row the booster for this Mission b1082 flew its fifth flight and successfully landed on of course I still love you of the 20 starlink satellites on board 13 of them were direct to sell satellites and seven were likely V2 mini satellites now a new starlink group means something new is going on that differentiates these missions from any of the other ones from the other groups however these satellites went to the same orbital inclination as groups 7 8 and 10 so we'll have to wait for more official information on what actually makes this group any different from the others with this launch SpaceX has launched a total of 6,633 satellites of which 462 have re-entered and 5,235 have moved into their operational Orbit later in the week we had the 50th launch of Rocket Labs electron rocket carrying out the no time to loose Mission liftoff took place on June 20th at 1813 UTC from rocket lab's own Spaceport in New Zealand the rocket was carrying five Internet of Things satellites for can into low earth orbit this was the first of five missions for the French company canes which is building a constellation of 25 Internet of Things satellites the constellation will allow compatible iot devices to connect and transmit data from anywhere in the world it will also serve a secondary purpose of tracking ships using the automatic identification system as it was the 50th launch of an electron rocket rocket lab invited rocket photographers from around the world and our own Jack and Max were able to travel to New Zealand to capture this launch in detail with this launch electron becomes the fastest commercially developed rocket to reach 50 launches a few hours after the electron launch another falcon9 launched from Florida this time carrying the Astro 1p communication satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit liftoff took place on June 20th at 2135 UTC from space launch complex 40 after a nearly 13-day Lain launches from the cape due to the aforementioned delays this satellite also known as SCS 24 will provide TV coverage for all of Europe specifically supporting public and private broadcasters from Germany France and Spain b1080 the booster for this mission was flying for a ninth time and it successfully landed on spacex's drone ship just read the instructions going into next week a Chong Jong 2C is scheduled to launch from the XI Chong satellite launch Center in China carrying the space variable objects monitor telescope the launch is currently planned to take place on June 22nd at 7:00 UTC following this we'll have a falcon 9 launch from Florida with the second group 10 Mission carrying another 22 starlink satellites this might sound familiar because this mission was originally scheduled for last week but was scrubbed due to bad weather it was then set to fly a day later shortly after last week's episode came out and even though the weather was okay that time around Falcon wasn't ready to fly and we saw a rare abort at engine startup the rocket was then rolled back back to the hanger for engine inspections and then the Astro one piece satellite Mission took priority so that's why we have to wait until next week to see it the mission is now scheduled to take place on June 23rd within a 4-Hour window that opens at 1703 UTC let's keep our fingers crossed that it gets to fly this time later that day another falcon9 is set to launch this time from Vandenburg carrying another batch of direct to sell satellites the nearly 4-Hour launch window is set to open on June 24th at 3:45 UTC just a few hours later NASA astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Michael Barrett are set to perform a space walk at the International Space Station Barrett replaces Matthew Dominic who was originally scheduled to perform the extra vehicular activity with calwell Dyson last week the spacewalk was called off last minute when Dominic experienced spacit discomfort issues The Space Walk is set to begin around 12:00 UTC and is planned to last for about 6 and 1/2 hours China's chonga 6 mission is set to return samples from The Far Side of of the moon on June 25th as you may remember from a few episodes ago the mission landed on the moon earlier this month it then collected some samples and launched as Ascent module back into lunar orbit the samples are now safely stowed in chonga 6's re-entry capsule which should be on its way back to Earth the capsule is expected to land in China's inner Mongolia region on June 25th at around 6:00 UTC after that the samples will be recovered cataloged and made available to the scientific Community this week we'll also have the first Falcon heavy launch of the Year lifting off from historic launch complex 39a in Florida this Mission will launch the goou weather satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into a geostationary transfer orbit the 2-hour launch window for this mission is set to open on June 25th at 2116 UTC the center Corp for this Mission will be expended but we'll get to see the amazing dual Landing of the side boosters at Landing zones 1 and two after a longer than intended stay on the ISS Starliner Calypso is currently set to return to Earth next week with undocking from the station planned for June 26th at 210 UTC this departure will Mark the end of a 20-day visit to test the capsule's operations at the space station 6 hours and 41 minutes later Calypso scheduled to land at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico bringing NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth if weather and Hardware cooperate we may have another Falcon 9 launch from Florida carrying another batch of starlink direct to sell satellites the nearly 4-Hour launch window is set to open on June 26th at 8:44 UTC but that'll depend on the other missions from Florida taking place at their scheduled times and that's your weekly update of spaceflight news we'll see you all again next week to recap this week in spaceflight

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Keywords: SpaceX, Voyager 1, Lunar Base, Space Exploration, NASA, Space News, Russia, China, ISRO, Space Collaboration, elon musk, space missions, space technology, space updates, aerospace news, international space station, science news, satellite launch, space travel, space events, planetary science, european space agency, aerospace engineering, rocket lab, aerospace technology, space probes, spaceflight news, rocket launches, this week in spaceflight

Id: FPhhP_tfwHM

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024