Author: NASA Official

WASHINGTON — NASA says SpaceX is on track to demonstrate in-space refueling of Starship next year, a critical technology for returning humans to the lunar surface using that vehicle.

Speaking to the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee April 26, Amit Kshatriya, NASA deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, said SpaceX achieved one step towards refueling of Starship with a demonstration on the latest Starship test flight March 14.

During that flight, SpaceX performed an in-flight propellant transfer demonstration under a NASA Tipping Point contract awarded in 2020. SpaceX planned to transfer at least 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from a header tank to the main tank within the Starship upper stage while in space.

While SpaceX said the day of the flight that it performed the demonstration, neither the company nor NASA provided any updates since then. At the advisory committee meeting, though, Kshatriya said the test appeared to go well.

“On Flight 3, they did an intertank transfer of cryogens, which was successful by all accounts,” he said, adding that analysis of the test is ongoing.

The next major milestone is a demonstration planned for 2025 where two Starships will dock in orbit, with one transferring propellants to the other. Plans for that have passed a flight system review, according to a slide he presented at the meeting, examining the overall mission architecture and key subsystems, among other topics.

In that mission, a “target” Starship will launch first and go into orbit, followed three to four weeks later by a “chaser” Starship. The two vehicles will dock with the chaser transferring propellants to the target. After the demonstration, the two Starships will undock and deorbit.

Kshatriya said SpaceX has some work ahead of that test, including understanding the slosh of propellants in the tanks as Starship maneuvers as well as the amount of “settling thrust” needed once the vehicles are docked to ensure propellant flows between them.

“The point of their flight test program before we do this is to make sure they fully understand the slosh dynamics, fully understand how the ullage is being maintained, what the settling thrust needs to be,” he said. “We’ve gone through it with them in terms of their plan for this. It’s a good plan.”

Propellant transfer technology is essential to SpaceX’s plans for Starship missions beyond low Earth orbit, including the Human Landing System (HLS) version of Starship that will be used to land astronauts on the moon starting with the Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than September 2026. Multiple Starship launches will transfer propellant into a depot in low Earth orbit that will then be used to fuel the HLS Starship, sending it to the moon.

The exact number of refueling launches has been the subject of controversy, with estimates going as high as nearly 20. Kshatriya did not give a number of launches in his presentation, suggesting more work needs to be done to better understand the refueling process.

He said the company is working to understand factors like boiloff of propellants and leakage, as well as how much propellant can be effectively transferred from a Starship. “All of that is stuff that they know is in front of them, but all of that is stuff that’s in the plan to go characterize,” he said. “That will then derive the answer.”

The in-space propellant transfer test will be followed by an uncrewed demonstration mission of the HLS Starship, including fueling the vehicle and sending it to the moon for a landing. That mission will also feature an “ascent demo” not originally included in the plan, he said, to prove Starship can lift off the lunar surface.

“Full & rapid reusability of booster & ship and orbital refilling of ship are the 2 fundamental technologies we aim to solve by the end of next year,” Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, posted on social media April 26, responding to another post about Kshatriya’s presentation. “Those are the critical pieces necessary to make life multiplanetary.”

Related

SAN FRANCISCO — Satellite operator SES has begun providing broadband communications with its first six O3b mPower satellites.

The Boeing-built satellites, which have experienced electrical problems, feature an integrated payload array to offer gigabits per second of throughput.

Two additional SES mPower satellites are scheduled to launch later this year.

SES has worked closely with Boeing and its other space and ground-segment partners to bring the mPower satellites online, SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh said in a statement. “We are very excited that O3b mPower is now ready to serve our customers around the world,” he added.

Flat Panels

The satellites, built on Boeing’s 702X platform, are smaller than traditional geostationary communications satellites. Boeing took its heritage communications payload elements and fit them into the satellite equivalent of a flat-panel TV, Michelle Parker, Boeing Space Mission Systems vice president, said in an interview at the 39^th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

While the underlying technology including the software-defined aspects of the payload are working well in orbit, the mPower satellites experienced an “electrical power supply glitch,” Parker said.

Boeing has worked closely with SES to determine the cause, find remedies for the satellites on orbit and fix the problem for the additional mPower satellites being built, Parker said.

The original O3b mPower constellation included 11 satellites. Boeing is building two additional mPower satellites to provide the performance SES anticipated for the constellation.

“We’re excited to deliver even more power with the next set of satellites that will be delivered later this year,” Parker said in a statement.

Related

WASHINGTON — An advisory committee for the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office has recommended that the office be moved out of the FAA.

At an April 23 meeting, the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) unanimously approved a recommendation that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, be moved out of the FAA and turned into a standalone organization directly under the Secretary of Transportation.

The proposal, COMSTAC members argued, would address the perception that AST currently does not receive the resources it needs to regulate a growing space launch industry in its current form within the FAA.

“I think it’s fair to say that, in the opinion of many people, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation has not always been receiving the time and attention from senior leadership, the resources it needs to carry out its mission, and advocacy and support in resolving key issues in a timely fashion,” said George Nield, a COMSTAC member and former FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, at the meeting.

In appropriations for fiscal year 2024, AST received $42 million, about 0.35% of the overall operating budget of the FAA. The AST workforce is a similar share of the overall agency as well. Because of that, he argued, space has a low priority within the FAA.

Placing space within an agency devoted to aviation also poses problems, he said, because growth in spaceflight is outpacing that in aviation. “Space has changed. The whole environment has changed, and we need to figure out how to deal with that more quickly. So that means we need to have somebody at the table, flagging important issues, asking for decisions, getting feedback and raising other concerns.”

Making the office independent of the FAA would give it more influence, Nield said, putting it at the same level as other modes of transportation. “You’d have access to the cabinet secretary. You’d have a seat at the table. You’d have the ability to more clearly make your case for needed resources and ask for help when there’s important issues to be decided,” he said.

COMSTAC members accepted the recommendation with little debate. One issue they raised was whether moving the office outside of the FAA would adversely affect airspace coordination issues for launches, but Nield noted that work is today done primarily by the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, not AST. Kelvin Coleman, the current head of AST, agreed.

If the recommendation is accepted, it would undo a change made nearly three decades ago. The Office of Commercial Space Transportation was established in 1984 as a standalone office under the Secretary of Transportation. It was moved within the FAA in 1995 as part of a “reinventing government” initiative by the Clinton administration.

Reversing that move has come up periodically in the years since then as a means of giving more visibility and resources for the office. “This is a topic that comes up from time to time,” Karina Drees, chair of COMSTAC and president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said at the meeting. “The thought of commercial space transportation getting more attention within the Department of Transportation is definitely not a new topic.”

Nield noted in his presentation a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office that found strong support in industry for moving the office out of the FAA. “A lot has changed since that 2017 study, and it just makes the case even stronger in my opinion,” he said.

The FAA initially was a good host for the office in the years after it was moved there in 1995, Jim Muncy of PoliSpace told SpaceNews. However, by the last decade, he said “big FAA wasn’t able to respond with enough attention, resources and flexibility to meet industry’s needs.” He cited challenges adapting existing FAA regulations for new reusable launch vehicles, which led to the creation of “streamlined” launch licensing regulations called Part 450 that many in industry believe were rushed.

The value of the recommendation, he said, is that it comes from the official advisory body for the Secretary of Transportation on commercial space transportation issues. “This is the first time that any government body – and not just a few individual Congressmen – have endorsed creating a separate agency for space transportation licensing and promotion.”

Moving the office out of the FAA could be done directly by the Secretary of Transportation. “But, given the importance of this, I think the right approach would be to have Congress weigh in on it, as well as the White House,” Nield said. Muncy said there appeared to be “real interest” among some in Congress in doing something along those lines in a future commercial space bill.

Related

Story updated April 19

WASHINGTON — A surge in demand for small satellites to support national security space programs is exposing weaknesses in the U.S. space industrial base, leading to supply chain issues as the military prioritizes rapid deployment of constellations.

In the latest sign of the strain, defense contractor L3Harris Technologies has sued one of its suppliers, the aerospace firm Moog Inc., in federal court, alleging Moog failed to timely deliver critical satellite components and that parts it did provide were defective. 

The lawsuit, filed in late March in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, is the latest flashpoint in the space industry’s struggle to adapt to the military’s shift toward smaller, more affordable satellites, led by the Space Development Agency.

Established in 2019, the Space Development Agency (SDA), now part of the U.S. Space Force, is upending the longtime model of the military purchasing large, expensive satellites at long intervals. Instead, the SDA plans to spend about $4 billion a year on a proliferated constellation of hundreds of smaller, less costly satellites to be deployed on a more frequent cadence. 

This model is placing new demands on suppliers.

According to the March 28 complaint, L3Harris subcontracted with Moog to provide satellite buses — the core hardware used to build spacecraft — and software worth a total of $77.9 million to fulfill two prime contracts — one with the SDA and another with a classified government customer. 

L3Harris alleges Moog repeatedly missed delivery deadlines, with satellite buses arriving 11 to 13 months late. “Moog’s failure has also damaged L3Harris’ credibility with its customer and placed future L3Harris business at significant risk,” said the complaint. 

Moog eventually delivered the buses and SDA was able to launch L3Harris’ satellites in February. In the lawsuit, L3Harris says it discovered defects in the Moog hardware that “created the potential for catastrophic loss to the satellites” and SDA’s mission. 

In response to questions from SpaceNews, a spokesperson for L3Harris said the company could not comment on ongoing litigation.

Aaron Astrachan, Moog’s director of investor relations, said in a statement, “We are aware of the suit filed by L3Harris and are not intending to publicly comment on the allegations at this time. However, we intend to vigorously defend against the allegations, and in due time, will respond to the complaint in court.”

Industry struggling to ramp up

The lawsuit underscores the challenges facing the space supply chain as it tries to ramp up production to meet soaring demand from the military and intelligence community. 

Much like the companies that emerged to support surging iPhone component orders, space companies are scrambling to prove themselves as reliable, high-volume suppliers of buses, hardware and software.

Experts say companies in the defense industry, long accustomed to building a few large, complex satellites, are adapting to the new reality of producing larger quantities of smaller, cheaper spacecraft. And a surge in demand fueled by SDA is exposing weaknesses in segments of the space industrial base.

SDA’s director Derek Tournear has often said the agency’s vision is to foster a robust and diverse marketplace. Fixed price contracts are awarded to incentivize speed and technical maturity in bids. And Tournear has pointed out that SDA’s business model focuses primarily on schedule. 

In an effort to provide incentives for companies to invest in production capability, SDA competitively selects prime contractors that every two years bid for each tranche of SDA’s space network in low Earth orbit, known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. 

During a meeting with reporters April 10 at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Tournear noted that some suppliers have had difficulties ensuring access to components and subcomponents, some of which are produced by only one or two vendors. 

A case in point is a critical satellite component made by Innoflight, the sole provider of the type 1 encryption required for SDA’s satellites. Type 1 encryption is necessary for transmitting sensitive national security data, and it can take years to obtain National Security Agency approval for the specialized hardware.

Tournear said Innoflight is in an extraordinary position in the market, being the only provider today that has the right size and form factor type 1 encryption that meets SDA requirements. 

“Everyone is extremely dependent on Innoflight,” he said. “We have a few alternatives for encryption in the future, but they probably won’t be ready until the Tranche 3 timeframe.” Tranche 3 is the next SDA procurement of satellites planned for 2025 and 2026.

“The good news is that vendors are able to pivot,” Tournear said. “We saw that with Astra.” Some SDA prime contractors selected Astra Space as a supplier of spacecraft propulsion. But after Astra experienced financial troubles several vendors had to find alternative sources for satellite thrusters, he noted.    

L3Harris’ legal battle with Moog, meanwhile, speaks to the challenges that prime contractors have faced finding bus providers that can meet the reliability and schedule requirements. 

For the next tranche of satellites L3Harris is building for SDA, projected to launch in 2025, the company switched to bus supplier Maxar Space Systems. Other SDA prime contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are using buses from Terran Orbital and Airbus, respectively. Other prime contractors, including York Space Systems, manufacture their own buses. Rocket Lab said it plans to develop a new bus for SDA.

A new entrant in the SDA market, Sierra Space, is designing its own buses but using components from Raytheon’s subsidiary Blue Canyon Technologies. Sierra Space won a Tranche 2 contract from SDA to produce 18 satellites. 

Raytheon last year won a contract as a prime contractor to produce seven Tranche 1 satellites for SDA but later decided it could not meet the price targets, Tournear said. “A lot of the work is being de-scoped off of that contract,” he said. “Raytheon, through executing that contract, realized that the scope that they had chosen in the price point wasn’t going to close.” 

Tournear said some of the components that Raytheon had planned to use for its satellites “are flowing into some of the Tranche 2 vendors.”

Sierra Space said in a statement that it has partnered with Blue Canyon for “several key spacecraft components on our buses.”

Criticism from top official

Supply chain problems across the space industry have drawn criticism from the top U.S. Space Force acquisition official, who called on defense contractors to do a better job of addressing the issues.

In recent comments, Frank Calvelli, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition, chastised major primes for “whining” about supply chain challenges rather than taking more proactive steps to solve them.

“Our bigger primes whine about supply chain, and I think they are the ones that have the resources and the assets to actually do something about it,” Calvelli said in February.

Calvelli said companies are still blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for their supply chain woes, but he does not believe that is a legitimate excuse anymore.

There are, however, real problems in the space supply chain, Steve Kiser, partner at Veteran Ventures Capital, said April 9 during a panel discussion at the Space Symposium.

“I don’t think we’re paying close enough attention to supply chain problems,” said Kiser. “If you’re an investor and you’re looking at a company, pay extra, extra attention to the security of the supply chain. We’re already seeing cracks in the supply chain with today’s space industry. Imagine what it’s gonna be like in three years.”

Several executives who spoke with SpaceNews on condition of anonymity noted that SDA has created an entirely new market, exposing growing pains in the U.S. space industrial base. 

It’s the responsibility of the industry to sort out supply chain problems and adapt to the new paradigm of small satellite constellations, these sources said. But they argue that the issues seen with SDA’s suppliers point to deeper, systemic challenges that can’t be rapidly fixed. They cautioned that some of the companies capable of building the satellites that SDA seeks are structured to produce single-digit numbers of spacecraft at a time, and will need time and effort to ramp up production to meet SDA demands.

According to these sources, the new growth in demand for military satellites has created real bottlenecks, not just with cutting-edge subsystems like type 1 encryption, but also with routine components like batteries, thrusters and solar arrays. Prime contractors have been working to qualify multiple suppliers for key components, but that process can be time-consuming given the exacting specifications.

With the SDA’s ambitious plans to field hundreds of small satellites in the coming years, experts pointed out, resolving the supply chain challenges will be critical to the agency’s success.

Related

TAMPA, Fla. — Satellite industry veteran Mark Rigolle is taking the helm of ABS after Amit Somani’s sudden departure early this year in the latest shake-up for the Dubai-based regional satellite operator, the company announced April 16.

Rigolle, most recently chief operating officer for the proposed Rivada Space Networks low Earth orbit constellation (LEO), will join ABS as CEO April 29.

Somani left in January after less than two years with ABS for personal reasons, the company said, which recently changed its name from Asia Broadcast Satellite to Agility Beyond Space after moving headquarters from Hong Kong.

Somani had joined from Yahsat, a regional satellite operator also based in the United Arab Emirates.

ABS announced its rebranding in October 2023, saying it reflected a push toward building strategic, long-term relationships in the industry after recently coming under new ownership.

The geostationary satellite operator has not announced its new ownership structure and did not respond to requests for comment. 

British private equity firm Permira, which bought a majority stake in ABS in 2010 and first tried to sell the company about six years later, lists the operator as sold on its website but did not provide details about the deal.

In its latest earnings results Jan. 10, when ABS announced Somani’s departure, the company said it recorded increasing revenue from sales to other operators with satellites reaching the end of their design life. 

The company did not detail these arrangements. Total sales came in flat at $69 million for the year to Sept. 30.

ABS chair Parm Sandhu said in the earnings release that the company is in active partnership talks regarding its spectrum rights covering Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific “to unlock the hidden value in our holdings,” including two orbital slots with permission to beam military Ka-band radio waves.

ABS provides connectivity and broadband services over these regions with five satellites: ABS-2, ABS-2A, ABS-3A, ABS-4/Mobisat-1 and ABS-6.

Founded in 2006, the operator also moved company accounts from Bermuda to the UAE as part of its strategy refresh. 

Going through changes

Somani joined ABS as CEO in October 2022 to replace James Frownfelter, who took over from Jim Simpson in 2018 when he left after just a year in the role.

Rigolle’s career has also seen its fair share of changes. Before Rivada, he served as the chief financial officer for SES and was CEO of its medium Earth constellation O3b Networks. 

He also co-founded regional geostationary satellite operator Kacific and was CEO of LEO startup LeoSat until its collapse following a lack of investment.

“The exceptional breadth of his experience in our industry will enable him to hit the ground running,” Sandhu said in a statement.

“We look forward to benefiting from his leadership and from his insights into multi-orbit constellations during this time of rapid market evolution.” 

Rigolle noted he was joining ABS “at this pivotal time for the company and indeed the whole [fixed satellite services] industry,” as geostationary players face mounting competition from SpaceX’s sprawling LEO network.

Related

TAMPA, Fla. — Viasat is considering investing in spacecraft with other Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) operators as the promise of direct-to-smartphone technology drives unprecedented cooperation among historically isolated networks.

“What you’ve seen in MSS in the past is every operator has to have its own satellite, its own ground segment, its own type of terminals [and] they only use their own spectrum,” Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg said.

“But what we’re envisioning is creating an environment where you can roam from MSS operator to MSS operator seamlessly, and you can do that in different geographies or within the same geography.”

Pooling radiowaves in the same area could deliver more capacity for direct-to-smartphone services, enabling higher bandwidth text, voice, and data capabilities for phones outside cellular coverage.

Dankberg is chair of the Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA), a non-profit group of MSS operators founded in February to push the fledgling direct-to-smartphone market to adopt their radio waves, rather than spectrum sourced from terrestrial mobile network operators.

Other founding MSSA members include Terrestar Solutions, Ligado Networks, Omnispace, and Yahsat. Iridium Communications has also said it is considering joining MSSA after pivoting from a proprietary direct-to-smartphone strategy to an open network approach.

MSS operator Globalstar, which thanks to its close relationship with Apple has been enabling space-based SOS services on the latest iPhones since late 2022, is not part of MSSA.

“A satellite is just a cell tower in space,” Dankberg said in an interview. “The payload is what does the work. So just like in terrestrial, where you can put a payload — or a network — from multiple carriers on the same tower, why can’t we make the same satellites for all of our needs?”

Similar to how cell tower companies operate on the ground, he said sharing infrastructure in space could save costs and attract capital.

“We can have tower companies in space that can serve all of us [and are] far more capital efficient,” he added, “we can do similar things with ground infrastructure in particular markets.”

Coordination agreements among MSS operators currently separate them from each other to avoid radio wave interference. Through MSSA, the operators hope to create a standards-based framework that could pave the way for contractual agreements to share and empower their orbital resources. 

Partnerships mobile network operators have with cell tower companies on the ground include leasing and revenue-sharing business models. 

Dankberg pointed to Indian cellular operator Reliance Jio, which has helped lower barriers to entry through partnerships with power companies, network providers, and handset makers.

“What we’re looking to do is to figure out which of those we can replicate in what sequence,” he said.

“Maybe the MSS operators themselves cooperate, maybe third parties come in to invest in the space segment.”

The aim is to help build scale globally and drive out costs as direct-to-smartphone operators SpaceX, Lynk Global, and AST SpaceMobile seek more mobile network operator partners for their terrestrial spectrum approach.

“Coopertition is kind of the buzzword for that,” Dankberg added, “whereby cooperating we make the market bigger and we compete on that larger market, but that’s a way better way to compete than on the small market scales that at the MSS operators have now.”

According to Dankberg, existing regulations already support MSS spectrum pooling, and it is up to MSSA members to coordinate among themselves.

Regulatory clarity is one of the strengths of the MSS direct-to-smartphone approach because these radio waves are already cleared for use from space, although services to standard smartphones must wait for standardized chips to be released.

Satellites using cellular radio waves can reach smartphones already in circulation because these devices use these frequencies with land-based cell towers. 

However, these terrestrial partnerships must first navigate new rules that must be put in place to guard against the possibility of interference in each country they wish to operate in.

The United States is taking the lead on this, and the Federal Communications Commission recently issued nationwide ground rules for what it calls Supplemental Coverage from Space that is expected to inspire other countries.

Meanwhile, Lynk Global is currently enabling intermittent texting services with five satellites in parts of a handful of island nations. Like fellow early-stage venture AST SpaceMobile, which does not expect to launch initial commercial satellites until at least July, Lynk is seeking more capital to expand its constellation.

Leveraging significantly greater financial resources, SpaceX aims to enable direct-to-smartphone texting services in the United States this year, with voice and data services slated to come soon after.

Omnispace, however, has warned that SpaceX’s plans to use T-Mobile’s cellular radio waves from space could cause interference that would derail its proposed MSS constellation.

Related

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is home base for building pioneering spacecraft that have probed every planet in our solar system, including the Sun.

Federally funded by NASA and managed by Caltech, JPL and its cadre of engineers and scientists are led by Laurie Leshin, the first woman to serve as JPL director, who took on the role in May 2022 following a career as a geochemist in academia and NASA.

Leshin points to space technology achievements, but has also been plagued by program setbacks and space budget woes, especially regarding the JPL-led Mars Sample Return project.

Leshin spoke with SpaceNews about JPL’s path forward and steps to retain and bolster the revered laboratory’s capabilities.

How do you characterize your concerns about NASA’s overall budget and its impact on JPL?

There is good news for sure, such as the VERITAS Venus orbiter coming back and that we’re now re-planning and ramping back up. Most of the [NASA] science budget is fairly flat which, while not great, is not terrible. Planetary science, however, finds itself in a very, very difficult position. It is a fairly unprecedented threat to the nation’s deep space capability which is resident at JPL, so I have major concerns.

How impactful were February’s budget-related layoffs on the lab’s future?

We hire only great people. So we will miss all those who were laid off. We’re supporting them in every way we can think of through their transition. While it cut to depth, it did not eliminate any core capability. We worked very hard in spite of having to make the deep cuts and to make sure those capabilities were intact.

What is an example of a core capability at JPL?

Our nation’s Mars exploration capability is resident at the lab. No other organization has landed on Mars in the United States except us — with partners always, but we have led every one of those missions. But if the budget challenges continue or decisions continue to be deferred, those capabilities will be at risk. I don’t know how to say it other than that.

Our job as a nation is to have some hard conversations about what being spacefaring for the future really means. How do we make sure that there’s Mars in our moon-to-Mars program? There’s no moon-to-Mars without Mars and there’s no Mars without JPL.

Any other NASA budget concerns?

A science versus human spaceflight moment is not good for our community. We all need to pull together to support the diverse portfolio that NASA has. In tight budget times, we tend to fight with each other and that is always a bad idea.

JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission. All on track for liftoff this October?

Europa Clipper just came out of JPL’s thermal vacuum chamber. You shake it. You bake it. You look for magnetic cleanliness. End-to-end missions tests to simulate launch, solar array deployment, deep space cruise, orbit insertion at Jupiter, flybys of Europa. We’ve done all of that. We’re in really good shape. We’re on track to ship it to Florida in the May timeframe and get it ready to fly on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

There’s another look looming at the costly and complex Mars Sample Return program. What’s coming?

I can’t talk about it at this time. That review is coming relatively soon… to be released in the spring. NASA has funding challenges. It’s a really important set of decisions they are making. Mars Sample Return was the next big thing at JPL. So we need to make sure that gets back on track as quickly as possible.

So you see a way forward for Mars Sample Return?

It’s a difficult moment. There’s a way to move forward with this mission that will cost less on an annual basis than the prior plan and it’s very much in line with what we’ve spent on other large missions. NASA has a chance to go down that path. I hope they will… and then I’ll breathe.

Related

COLORADO SPRINGS — Astrobotic is partnering with Canadian space software company Mission Control on a small rover that will go to the Moon on Astrobotic’s next lander mission.

The two companies announced April 8 that they will use Mission Control’s Spacefarer software to operate Astrobotic’s first CubeRover, which will go to the moon on Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander scheduled for no earlier than late this year. The CubeRover will be one of several secondary payloads on that lander, which will also deliver NASA’s VIPER rover.

The shoebox-sized rover will test its maneuverability and communications on this first mission. It will also demonstrate the Spacefarer software’s ability to control the rover, including semi-autonomous navigation across the surface and analysis of images taken by the rover’s cameras.

“We chose to work with Mission Control because of the extensive capabilities that they have in Spacefarer and also the very simple interface they built,” said Mike Provenzano, vice president of advanced development programs at Astrobotic, during a briefing at the 39th Space Symposium.

Spacefarer is a cloud-based mission operations tool, said Ewan Reid, founder and chief executive of Mission Control, providing easy access to telemetry and other data as well as the ability to command a spacecraft through a point-and-click interface. It provides, he said, “all sorts of different tools that users need to try to make the best smartest decisions in the shortest amount of time.”

The software will enable distributed control for CubeRover, with mission operations handled both at Astrobotic’s Pittsburgh headquarters and Mission Control’s Ottawa headquarters. “It’s truly going to be a joint mission with operators at both locations,” said Provenzano. “That’s really exciting and something that Spacefarer enabled.”

Mission Control flew a version of Spacefarer on another lunar lander mission, ispace’s HAKUTO-R M1 lander, but that spacecraft crashed attempting to land on the moon in April 2023. Reid said that the software would have been able to receive and analyze data from that lander but not command it.

Flying Spacefarer on CubeRover, he said, will help Mission Control open up new opportunities for his company, demonstrating that Spacefarer can handle operations of spacecraft. Those customers, he argued, can focus on their specific technologies, “and they don’t have to reinvent the wheel for an operations platform.”

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) stimulated the development of Spacefarer through its Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), intended to help Canadian companies demonstrate technologies for lunar missions. “The CSA recognizes that without that step in our development timeline, without having validated something that has flown and operated on a real mission, it’s very hard for us to sell it around the world,” Reid said.

“Commercial companies are at the very beginning of creating a new market and economy at the moon,” said CSA President Lisa Campbell. “LEAP was created to provide thias wide range of opportunities for Canadian science and technology activities in lunar orbit, on the moon’s surface and beyond.”

She said the agreement between Astrobotic and Mission Control is “validating something that we believe in at the agency, which is we need to try things, we need to be bold. The world wants more of what Canada has to offer.”

Related

WASHINGTON — The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has slipped from late April to early May because of International Space Station schedule conflicts and not due to any issues with the spacecraft itself.

In a media advisory released by NASA late March 8, the agency said the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously scheduled to launch no earlier than April 22, was now scheduled for early March. The agency said the slip was “due to space station scheduling” but did not elaborate.

At recent briefings, NASA managers said the key factor in the schedule for CFT was other missions to the station. “What we’ve been doing is watching how we progress with the Crew-8 launch and the CRS-30 mission,” said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, in a briefing after the March 3 launch of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission to the ISS.

SpaceX’s CRS-30 cargo mission is scheduled for launch in mid-March and will stay at the station for about a month. After it departs, the Crew-8 spacecraft will move from its current forward docking port on the Harmony module to the zenith port to allow Starliner to use the forward port. Those ports are the only two available on the station for both Starliner and Dragon spacecraft.

“The thing that’s pacing when we go fly is really this complicated traffic management,” Stich said.

At that briefing and earlier ones, Stich said that preparations for Starliner itself were going well. “The spacecraft is in really good shape. There’s not much work left to go,” he said at a Feb. 25 briefing.

He said then that NASA and Boeing had addressed technical issues that delayed CFT from last summer, including performing a final parachute test in January to confirm the performance of redesigned links in those parachute lines to increase their strength as well as the removal of wiring tape inside the spacecraft found to be flammable. They also resolved issues with valves in a thermal control system.

“Those three big issues that we had last summer have been resolved and we’re in the middle of some final certification work on the parachutes and a few other things,” Stich said.

The CFT mission, launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5, will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS. They will remain on the station for up to two weeks before returning to Earth. A successful flight would clear the way for NASA certification of the spacecraft for crew rotation missions, starting with Starliner-1 in early 2025.

NASA separately announced March 8 plans for the return of Crew-7, which has been on the ISS since late August 2023. The agency said that the four members of Crew-7 — NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA’s Andreas Mogensen, JAXA’s Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos’ Konstantin Borisov — will depart in their Crew Dragon spacecraft at 11:05 a.m. Eastern March 10. The spacecraft would splash down off the Florida coast March 12 at 5:35 a.m. Eastern.

Related