Europe Looks To End Its Launcher Crisis

Posted on May 9, 2024 by jacksmars

Europe looks to end its launcher crisis

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 6, 2024

In the early morning hours of April 28, the European Space Agency and European Commission celebrated the launch of the latest two Galileo navigation satellites. But in the announcements of the launch and confirmation that the two satellites were working well in orbit, there was something missing: just how the satellites got into orbit.

“Statistically, there’s a 47% chance the first flight may not succeed or happen exactly as planned,” Aschbacher said, citing the track record of first launches of new large launch vehicles.

For example, the release by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), the EU office that manages Galileo, highlighted not their launch so much as their “their successful injection into orbit.” You might not even know that this injection was done by a rocket at all beyond a passing reference to “a launcher” used to deploy them. The name of that launcher was never mentioned.

It’s understandable, though, why the EU in particular was giving the rocket the Lord Voldemort treatment. Unlike previous Galileo satellites launched on Ariane 5 and Soyuz rockets from French Guiana, these two were launched on a Falcon 9 from Florida. The EU reluctantly agreed to turn to Falcon 9 because of the retirement of the Ariane 5 and loss of the Soyuz had created a “launcher crisis” for Europe, temporarily depriving it of the means of launching Galileo or other large satellites on its own.

There are signs, though, of an end to that crisis. If all goes well, by the end of the year Europe will have several options to launch satellites on European rockets, from the long-delayed successor to the Ariane 5 to a new lineup of small launch vehicles making their way to launch pads.

The key vehicle to those efforts is the Ariane 6, the successor to the Ariane 5 once planned to begin launches in 2020 to overlap with Ariane 5 but which will instead fly at least a year after the final flight of the Ariane 5. Late last year, ESA and its partners on the vehicle set a target launch period for the Ariane 6’s debut: between the middle of June and the end of July of 2024.

For now, the Ariane 6 team is sticking to that schedule. On April 26, ESA formally announced the start of the launch campaign for that inaugural flight. At the spaceport in French Guiana, the two solid rocket boosters for the vehicle were moved into place on either side of the Ariane 6 core stage.

“Having the rocket stages together on the launch pad marks the start of a launch campaign and shows we are almost there: soon we will see this beauty soar to the skies,” Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, said in a statement.

Neither ESA nor the others involved with the launch, like vehicle prime contractor ArianeGroup, have provided an update on the launch date. In an April 26 joint update, the partners said they were wrapping up a qualification review for the launch that officials earlier said would allow them to refine the projected launch date. The results of the review were to be announced at the “beginning of May,” the update stated. As of May 6, the Ariane 6 team had not provided another update.

The stakes of the first Ariane 6 launch are high, and Aschbacher, speaking at the 39th Space Symposium last month, worked to set expectations. “Statistically, there’s a 47% chance the first flight may not succeed or happen exactly as planned,” he said, citing the track record of first launches of new large launch vehicles. “We’ll do everything we can to make it a successful flight but I think it’s something that we have to keep in mind.”

“We’re getting very, very close to launch,” said Isar’s Guillen. “Our first launch is scheduled for the summer.”

There is also the Vega C, a smaller vehicle that failed on its second flight in December 2022. ESA has said it is working to return that vehicle to flight by the end of this year, as prime contractor Avio works to fix the problems with the vehicle’s solid-fuel second stage motor. Aschbacher confirmed that schedule for Vega C’s return to flight in his Space Symposium presentation.

Meanwhile, other European companies are racing to get their smaller rockets to the pad, seeing who can be first to get to orbit. Last month, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) announced it had shipped the first stage for its first RFA ONE rocket from its German factory to SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. There, the stage will undergo a hotfire test ahead of a first launch later this year.

RFA is racing with Isar Aerospace, another German company whose Spectrum rocket is being prepared for launch from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. The company has not provided recent updates on the status of launch preparations but a company executive said in March they were aiming for a launch this summer.

“We’re getting very, very close to launch,” Stella Guillen, chief commercial office of Isar Aerospace, said during a panel at the Satellite 2024 conference March 20. “Our first launch is scheduled for the summer.”

A third German company, though, recently beat the other two in terms of getting a rocket launched—just not to orbit. Last Friday, HyImpulse launched its SR75 sounding rocket from a facility in South Australia run by spaceport company Southern Launch. The SR75 rocket “operated as planned,” HyImpulse said in a statement, but did not disclose the vehicle’s peak altitude.

SR75 is designed to carry up to 250 kilograms of payload to an altitude of 250 kilometers using a hybrid propulsion system: solid paraffin fuel and liquid oxygen. It is also a technology precursor for SL1, a small launch vehicle the company is developing to place up to 600 kilograms into low Earth orbit.

“We’re signaling Germany’s prowess as a spacefaring nation and expanding Europe’s access to space,” Mario Kobald, cofounder and co-CEO of HyImpulse, said in a statement, adding that the company planned to conduct its first orbital launch attempt as soon as the end of 2025.

Other launch companies in Europe are making progress with another key aspect of launch vehicle development: raising money. Spanish launch vehicle developer PLD Space said last month it had now raised 120 million euros ($129 million) from both investors and the Spanish government. The company, which successfully launched its Miura 1 suborbital rocket last October, is now working on the Miura 5 small launch vehicle. That 120 million euros is over the life of the company, and it did not disclose the size of any new round.

“The funding for our work has been one of the most difficult tasks in developing our Miura family of rockets. Despite this, the successful launch of Miura 1 has bolstered our position as leaders in the industry, an achievement acknowledged by investors and clients,” Raúl Verdú, co-founder and chief business development officer of PLD Space, said in a statement.

PLD Space said its funding will go towards an expansion of its production facilities and work on a launch site in French Guiana. It plans an initial demonstration launch of Miura 5 next year with commercial launches beginning in 2026.

Orbex, a launch vehicle developer based in Scotland, also announced last month it has raised an additional $21 million as an extension to an earlier Series C round. Orbex is developing Prime, a small launch vehicle it plans to launch from a site called Sutherland Spaceport it is developing in northern Scotland.

“Our technology is pivotal in making the U.K. a hub for European orbital launch, and we are entering a critical phase of development,” Orbex CEO Phillip Chambers said in a statement about the new funding. “This additional funding will support our goal to push on into an operational launch phase, and scale our business when the time comes.”

“If they were not there,” PLD Space’s Gallego said of SpaceX, “maybe we would not be here.”

It’s not clear, though, when that time will come, as Prime has suffered extensive delays and Orbex changes in leadership: when Chambers was named CEO early this year, he was the fourth person to hold the post in a permanent or acting manner in less than a year. The company declined to offer an estimate for when Prime will launch.

This all suggests that, soon, Europe will have an array of options for launching smallsats and restored capability for larger ones when Ariane 6 is introduced and Vega C flights resume. However, they will continue to face challenges from the same company Europe is now relying on for launching critical missions: SpaceX.

At the Satellite 2024 panel, for example, executives from European and other launch companies were worried that SpaceX’s current dominant position could be further entrenched by Starship, with greater mass to orbit and lower per-kilogram costs. “Starship for sure will disrupt further the launch business and the space business in general,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. “One scenario is that Musk could really monopolize everything.”

That included one scenario where Starship, outfitted with orbital transfer vehicles, could provide tailored launches of smallsats on rideshare missions—similar to what SpaceX offers now with Transporter and Bandwagon smallsat rideshare missions on Falcon 9—delivering payloads to their desired orbit for far less than small launch vehicles. In that scenario, he concluded, “it will be difficult for small launch vehicles.”

Others on the panel, though, said they were focusing on their own vehicles, or even thanking SpaceX for stimulating smallsat demand through low-cost rideshare launches. “If they were not there,” Pablo Gallego, vice president of customers and sales at PLD Space, said of SpaceX, “maybe we would not be here.”

The Galileo launch last month was the first European government mission to launch on Falcon 9 this year but not the last. In the coming weeks, ESA will launch its EarthCARE spacecraft on a Falcon 9, followed by its Hera asteroid mission this fall on another Falcon 9. Two more Galileo satellites are also scheduled to launch later this year on a Falcon 9—or, rather, “a launcher.”

Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Boeing Starliner, An Important Milestone For Commercial Space Flight

Posted on May 9, 2024 by jacksmars

Boeing’s Starliner, an important milestone for commercial spaceflight

by Wendy N. Whitman Cobb
Monday, May 6, 2024

If all goes well late on May 6, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will blast off into space on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Launching from the Kennedy Space Center, this last crucial test for Starliner will test out the new spacecraft and take the pair to the International Space Station for about a week.

The mission’s troubled history also shows just how difficult the path to space can be, even for an experienced company like Boeing.

Part of NASA’s commercial crew program, this long-delayed mission will represent the vehicle’s first crewed launch. If successful, it will give NASA—and in the future, space tourists—more options for getting to low Earth orbit.

From my perspective as a space policy expert, Starliner’s launch represents another significant milestone in the development of the commercial space industry. But the mission’s troubled history also shows just how difficult the path to space can be, even for an experienced company like Boeing.

Origins and development

Following the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle in 2011, NASA invited commercial space companies to help the agency transport cargo and crew to the International Space Station. In 2014, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to build their respective crew vehicles: Starliner and Dragon.

Boeing’s vehicle, Starliner, was built to carry up to seven crew members to and from low Earth orbit. For NASA missions to the International Space Station, it will carry up to four at a time, and it’s designed to remain docked to the station for up to seven months. The capsule where the crew will sit is slightly bigger than an Apollo command module or a SpaceX Dragon.

Boeing designed Starliner to be partially reusable to reduce the cost of getting to space. Though the Atlas 5 rocket it will take to space and the service module that supports the craft are both expendable, Starliner’s crew capsule can be reused up to 10 times, with a six-month turnaround. Boeing has built two flightworthy Starliners to date.

Starliner’s development has come with setbacks. Though Boeing received $4.2 billion from NASA, compared with $2.6 billion for SpaceX, Boeing spent more than $1.5 billion extra in developing the spacecraft.

On Starliner’s first uncrewed test flight in 2019, a series of software and hardware failures prevented it from getting to its planned orbit as well as docking with the International Space Station. After testing out some of its systems, it landed successfully at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

In 2022, after identifying and making more than 80 fixes, Starliner conducted a second uncrewed test flight. This time, the vehicle did successfully dock with the International Space Station and landed six days later in New Mexico.

Still, Boeing delayed the first crewed launch for Starliner from 2023 to 2024 because of additional problems. One involved Starliner’s parachutes, which help to slow the vehicle as it returns to Earth. Tests found that some links in those parachute lines were weaker than expected, which could have caused them to break. A second problem was the use of flammable tape that could pose a fire hazard.

A major question stemming from these delays concerns why Starliner has been so difficult to develop. For one, NASA officials admitted that it did not provide as much oversight for Starliner as it did for SpaceX’s Dragon because of the agency’s familiarity with Boeing.

And Boeing has experienced several other problems recently, most visibly with the safety of its airplanes. Astronaut Butch Wilmore has denied that Starliner’s problems reflect these troubles.

Starliner is important not just for NASA and Boeing, but also to demonstrate that more than one company can find success in the commercial space industry.

But several of Boeing’s other space activities beyond Starliner have also experienced mechanical failures and budget pressure, including the Space Launch System. This system is planned to be the main rocket for NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era.

Significance for NASA and commercial spaceflight

Given these difficulties, Starliner’s success will be important for Boeing’s future space efforts. Even if SpaceX’s Dragon can successfully transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, the agency needs a backup. And that’s where Starliner comes in.

Following the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia shuttle accident in 2003, NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011. The agency was left with few options to get astronauts to and from space. Having a second commercial crew vehicle provider means that NASA will not have to depend on one company or vehicle for space launches as it previously had to.

Perhaps more importantly, if Starliner is successful, it could compete with SpaceX. Though there’s no crushing demand for space tourism right now, and Boeing has no plans to market Starliner for tourism anytime soon, competition is important in any market to drive down costs and increase innovation.

More such competition is likely coming. Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is planning to launch later this year to transport cargo for NASA to the International Space Station. A crewed version of the spaceplane is also being developed by the company. Blue Origin has also shown interest in its own commercial crew orbital vehicle.

Though SpaceX has made commercial spaceflight look relatively easy, Boeing’s rocky experience with Starliner shows just how hard spaceflight continues to be, even for an experienced company.

Starliner is important not just for NASA and Boeing, but also to demonstrate that more than one company can find success in the commercial space industry. A successful launch would also give NASA more confidence in the industry’s ability to support operations in Earth’s orbit while the agency focuses on future missions to the Moon and beyond.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dr. Wendy N. Whitman Cobb is Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS). Dr. Whitman Cobb received a BA and MA from the University of Central Florida, both in political science, and a PhD in political science from the University of Florida. Her research focuses on the political and institutional dynamics of space policy, public opinion of space exploration, and the influence of commerce on potential space conflict.

The Rising Flood Of Space Junk Is A Risk To Us On Earth

Posted on May 9, 2024 by jacksmars

The rising flood of space junk is a risk to us on Earth

by Thomas Cheney
Monday, May 6, 2024

A piece of space junk recently crashed through the roof and floor of a man’s home in Florida. NASA later confirmed that the object had come from unwanted hardware released from the International Space Station.

The Florida incident is illustrative of the legal hazards of the proliferation of space objects without adequate end-of-life planning.

The hardware, 10 centimeters long and weighing 700 grams, was expected to burn up, NASA said. But even a relatively small piece of junk can cause considerable damage when falling from space.

This raises several important questions. Who is liable for damages caused by human-made objects that fall from the sky? Can anything be done to prevent this happening? Luckily, international treaties provide some answers to the first question, while recent developments help with the second.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that the country that authorized the launch (known as the “launching state”) is responsible for damage caused to people or things on Earth. The UN’s liability convention, which came into force in 1972, also makes this liability absolute for damage on Earth or to aircraft in flight.

The concept of absolute liability means that responsibility applies regardless of whose fault it was. Countries are also liable for spacecraft and rocket sections launched by private companies. This is because Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty makes nations responsible for the activities of their citizens in outer space.

So if a piece of space junk launched by one country lands in another, the launching state is responsible for any financial compensation that may result from the costs of damage or clean up. It is important to note that these principles relate to international law. A US object damaging US property is a matter for US law.

All objects in Earth orbit are falling towards Earth. Active satellites engage in “station keeping” to remain in their intended orbit. Inactive satellites—those that no longer work or are disabled in some way—will not be able to perform this task.

Their orbits will steadily drop until they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Of around 11,000 satellites in orbit today, about 3,300 are estimated to be inactive.

There are two main options for best practice when the lifetime of an active satellite comes to an end. One is to either move the satellite into a higher orbit—known as a graveyard orbit—to delay the date of re-entry by hundreds, or even thousands, of years.

Another is to re-orient the satellite to ensure that it either re-enters in a manner that ensures it burns up in the atmosphere or that it can cause only minimal damage on the ground.

However, due to malfunctions or damage, some space objects still undergo an unplanned re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere and can thus land anywhere. Earth is big, however, so the risk of a given space object causing harm to people or property is low, particularly as a space object also needs to survive the searing heat of re-entry that causes many pieces of space junk to burn up.

However, space junk can sometimes reach the ground. Some, such as debris from Skylab, the first US space station, came down in western Australia in 1979 but caused no damage. Other space debris, like Cosmos 954, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite, spread dangerous radioactive debris across northern Canada when it re-entered in January 1978.

While that cleanup cost the Canadian government $14 million Canadian, the Soviet Union reimbursed the Canadian government for $3 million. This remains the most significant test of the space treaties and shows the limitations on the protections provided by international law because the compensation was a fraction of the clean-up cost.

The object that recently damaged the home in Florida was American, so that incident will not test the space treaties, as the incident occurred on US soil and will therefore be a matter for US law.

A piece of space junk should re-enter on a trajectory that guarantees that it burns up or crashes somewhere it is unlikely to do damage.

However, it is illustrative of the legal hazards of the proliferation of space objects without adequate end-of-life planning. The more objects launched into outer space, the more of them will return to Earth. Indeed, they will all eventually enter the atmosphere and not all of them will burn up in the process.

Mitigating space junk

Two sets of UN guidelines present an encouraging picture for what happens to space debris. Recent work to incorporate more long-term planning into these non-binding agreements encourages the development of end-of-life plans for space objects such as satellites.

The guidelines are primarily aimed at dealing with the growing problem of space debris rather than preventing objects from causing damage on Earth. However, planning for the end of a space object’s life will also reduce the risk of an impact on the ground.

A piece of space junk should re-enter on a trajectory that guarantees that it burns up or crashes somewhere it is unlikely to do damage. While the guidelines are non-binding, the liability provisions of the space treaties are not, thus motivating compliance by launching states.

The risk of a piece of space junk crashing through the roof of your house remains very low. As more spacecraft are launched though, the risk from falling space junk will edge up marginally. However, space law is on your side, and efforts to tackle the problem will reduce the risk to people and property.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Thomas Cheney is a Vice Chancellors Research Fellow in Law at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle upon Tyne. He is active in researching space law, policy and governance. His research focuses on planetary protection and environmental aspects of space governance, as well as space resources and property rights.

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Book Review-The Asteroid Hunter

Posted on May 9, 2024 by jacksmars

Review: The Asteroid Hunter

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 6, 2024

The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist’s Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System
by Dante S. Lauretta
Grand Central Publishing, 2024
hardcover, 336 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-5387-2294-7
US$30

Many people can identify a particular point where they found their purpose in life. It can be an event of some kind, either celebratory or traumatic; a chance encounter with someone; or maybe a book. For Dante Lauretta, it was an ad in a student newspaper.

“WORK FOR NASA” declared the full-page ad that he stumbled across while perusing the Arizona Daily Wildcat after a shift as a short-order cook in a Tucson restaurant. Lauretta was at the time a student at the University of Arizona, about to graduate but unsure of what he would so next. The prospect of working with NASA—in this case on the agency’s short-lived support for SETI research—provided that purpose: “It was as if the dirty window I had been looking through my whole life was wiped clean. I had found my path,” he recalls in his memoir, The Asteroid Hunter.

The bulk of the book follows Lauretta after returned to the university about decade later, this time on the faculty at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), with an interest in cosmochemistry and astrobiology. The director of LPL, Mike Drake, offered him an opportunity to take a leadership role in a mission being developed by the lab and Lockheed Martin: returning samples from an asteroid. Drake would be the principal investigator (PI), handling the “up and out” management of the mission, while Lauretta took care of the “down and in” of overseeing the science.

LPL and Lockheed twice pitched the mission, dubbed OSIRIS, for NASA’s Discovery program of relatively low-cost science missions, but was not selected. An opportunity then emerged to offer a scaled-up version of the mission for the larger New Frontiers program. That version of the mission, now known as OSIRIS-REx (for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer), was selected in 2011 for development.

That selection was both the culmination of years of development but also just the beginning. OSIRIS-REx would face many of the familiar technical and programmatic challenges of any mission, exacerbated by tragedy: Drake, in ill health for several years, died just a few months after NASA selected the mission, making Lauretta the PI. Now he would have to deal with the up and out aspects of managing a mission.

The book offers a detailed insider’s perspective of developing and then operating OSIRIS-REx as it made its way to the asteroid Bennu to collect samples that it returned to Earth last September. For those that have followed the mission, there are not too many new details the book discloses that had not been mentioned throughout the course of the mission, but it was interesting to read how he and the mission team dealt with various obstacles. (One interesting item: at one point Lauretta and the OSIRIS-REx team caught wind that JPL was lobbying NASA Headquarters to cancel the mission, yet to be formally confirmed for development, and devote its resources to the Asteroid Redirect Mission, arguing that ARM was a presidential priority and that it could return tons, not grams of material. NASA decided to proceed with OSIRIS-REx, and ARM soon died.)

The story of OSIRIS-REx is one of science and engineering, but also of people: “the magnificent ensemble of scientists, engineers, and cosmic aficionados who had rallied together to manifest this vision,” he writes in the book’s epilogue. The journey that started with seeing a newspaper ad continues with samples from an asteroid now being studied in labs by scientists like Lauretta, hoping to better understand our solar system and ourselves—and perhaps be that thing that provides inspiration for another generation.

Lazy Cat On A Mountain Top

Posted on April 30, 2024 by jacksmars

Lazy Cat on a mountaintop

by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, April 29, 2024

In the last days of the rule of the Shah of Iran, the CIA installed a new dome atop a mountain next to a field of equipment used to gather information from inside the Soviet Union. But before the intelligence service could put it into operation in 1978, the Shah fell and the CIA hastily abandoned the site.

Starting in the mid-1970s, the US intelligence community became more concerned about the threat of Soviet lasers to American satellites.

The mountaintop facility was known as TACKSMAN. TACKSMAN was used by the CIA to monitor Soviet missile launches from their Baikonur missile and rocket launch facility in Kazakhstan, the same location where Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin launched into space. It was an important Cold War missile telemetry interception site. CIA officials sometimes had a knack for applying winking codenames to their projects, and this facility was a classic case, because “tacksman” is a Scottish term for somebody who paid rent to his landlord, usually a clan chief. The United States certainly paid the Shah of Iran for the use of land at his hunting palace, in return for the opportunity to hunt Soviet missiles and rockets. According to a declassified official history, TACKSMAN was primarily focused on gathering Soviet rocket signals using antennas, but it also apparently collected Soviet communications as well. But inside the dome was a telescope named Lazy Cat, also intended to look inside Soviet territory, at least when the skies were clear. Lazy Cat was designed to detect lasers directed at satellites in orbit, something that US intelligence analysts were increasingly concerned about during the 1970s.

From EGGSHELL to TACKSMAN

When it was first established in the late 1950s, the CIA’s site in Iran was code-named EGGSHELL. It was set up as a “clandestine” facility at the Shah’s hunting palace outside the city of Behshahr. It was unlike many other American signals gathering sites that were usually operated by the National Security Agency and located at American military bases on foreign soil. The first site was intended to collect communications intelligence and possibly telemetry from the Kapustin Yar missile and space launch site inside the Soviet Union. Although EGGSHELL was initially considered a “temporary” site, it soon expanded to a second location and began collecting telemetry from what the CIA referred to as the Tyuratam Missile Test Range but is today known as Baikonur. (See “Stealing secrets from the ether: missile and satellite telemetry interception during the Cold War,” The Space Review, January 17, 2022.)

Initially CIA personnel were assigned to EGGSHELL on a temporary detailee basis, but as it expanded to become a permanent site, the CIA added family accommodations and amenities. It is unclear when the name was changed from EGGSHELL to TACKSMAN, but it may have been when the second location was developed. The site, eventually referred to as TACKSMAN II and established in 1964, was much closer to the Baikonur launch complex than other US intelligence collection stations, notably a site in Turkey. Some workers stayed at the mountaintop locations overnight, whereas others commuted there daily.

Starting in the mid-1970s, the US intelligence community became more concerned about the threat of Soviet lasers to American satellites. It is unclear what initial intelligence data prompted this concern, although US intelligence agencies were aware of an active Soviet high-power laser program. According to an intelligence estimate made in early 1978, by that time the Soviet Union was believed to have a ground-based laser capability to jam sensors in geosynchronous orbit and “kill” sensors on spacecraft in low Earth orbit, up to 800 kilometers.

The Soviet Union had a large anti-ballistic missile testing facility located in Kazakhstan at Sary Shagan, on the shore of Lake Balkhash. This had been a major focus of American intelligence gathering during the 1960s. The Soviet Omega laser was installed at Sary Shagan in the 1970s but was designed for shooting down aircraft. The United States first publicly referred to Soviet laser systems at Sary Shagan during the Reagan Administration and there were rumors that in 1984 it was used to illuminate an American space shuttle. But American concern about lasers at Sary Shagan started more than a decade earlier and had prompted the development of systems to detect and measure the lasers.

Although being sent to Florida for the summer seemed to some of the engineers to be a plum duty assignment (one even took his boat), they soon learned otherwise.

According to the late Phil Pressel, an engineer who worked for the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, the CIA contracted the company in the mid-1970s to produce a ground-based telescope capable of detecting and analyzing lasers fired from the ground at Sary Shagan. The telescope, with a 1.2-meter (48-inch) aperture, was equipped with a sophisticated sensor that could not only detect the laser, but also determine its characteristics. It was to look for signals in the visible and infrared wavelengths: 3.7 microns, 4.3 microns, 1.06 microns, and a visible channel. Perkin-Elmer collaborated with Itek on the design and construction of the telescope, with Itek fabricating the mirror.

From Danbury to Florida

In the summer of 1977, workers at Perkin-Elmer in Danbury, Connecticut, where Lazy Cat was assembled, packed up the telescope and shipped it to Patrick Air Force Base in Florida via an Air Force C-5A Galaxy transport. Several Perkin-Elmer technicians and engineers then traveled to Florida to work on setting up and testing the telescope. Although being sent to Florida for the summer seemed to some of the engineers to be a plum duty assignment (one even took his boat), they soon learned otherwise. The company was not ready to pay them in a timely manner and left a lot of their living arrangements to the workers, forcing them to scramble when they would have preferred to simply focus on their work. They also were so busy that they didn’t have time to engage in much recreation. Lazy Cat required a lot of preparation. The goal was to test it successfully for the sponsor so that it could be shipped to Iran. Although Pressel never confirmed that the CIA was the customer, the connections were obvious because Perkin-Elmer had close ties to the agency from its work on the HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite, and because the TACKSMAN site was operated by the agency.

The telescope was set up at the Malabar Test Facility, located on Patrick and surrounded by fences and patrolled by armed guards. Lazy Cat was installed in an existing telescope dome. At one point while the telescope was being moved a small airplane flew overhead in what was supposed to be controlled airspace. The group was alarmed but could not quickly identify the plane or determine why it was overhead. They never got an answer as to whether it was an inadvertent overflight or an attempt to spot what they were doing. During setup, a thunderstorm suddenly rolled in and in the rush to secure the telescope it was dropped a small distance, damaging an electronics box. But the box was quickly fixed and the telescope was unharmed.

Setup was mostly uneventful, although the unstable local power grid proved to be a problem. During a nighttime test, the Lazy Cat telescope was pointed at an American HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite that was illuminated by a laser from the ground. Lazy Cat accurately detected the laser illumination and measured the laser’s characteristics, proving that it was ready for operation.

From Florida to Iran

Details of the telescope’s transportation from Florida to Iran in September 1977 are unknown, although it would have required a C-5 to get it there. The United States had close ties with the Shah’s government and the existing CIA facilities in the country undoubtedly had their own logistics chain.

Upon arriving in Iran, Lazy Cat was trucked to the mountaintop TACKSMAN II site. Getting it up the mountain was difficult. At one point, a crane was used to swing the trailer carrying the telescope around a sharp bend in the road. The telescope was then installed in a dome that had been built on the site next to two other domes that housed dishes probably used to track Soviet rockets and missiles. Sary Shagan was more than 1,000 kilometers to the northeast.

Several Perkin-Elmer personnel were sent to Iran to help with the installation and early operation of the telescope. They were warned by their local handlers about political instability in Iran, including a briefing about the murder of three American contractors in the country over a year earlier, and they stayed in safe houses before going to the operating location. They found the mountaintop facility to be well-equipped, with excellent food and accommodations for people working at a secret location.

It is unknown what, if any, project may have followed Lazy Cat to try and obtain data on Soviet laser anti-satellite tests, although concern about them grew during the early 1980s.

The Lazy Cat telescope was installed in a dome to protect it from the elements. The telescope and its systems checked out fine, working as well as they had in Florida. But there were two problems. An automated tracking system antenna dish was to provide azimuth and elevation positioning for the telescope, but it was not completed by December because of some structural issues and redesign requirements. In addition, the telescope mount also had problems moving, which burned out the controllers for the DC drive motor. Before the problems could be fixed, the key Perkin-Elmer worker sent to the site returned home, their two-month detail over. Very soon thereafter, in January 1978, the Iranian revolution took over the country. Americans at the TACKSMAN site quickly evacuated, although it is unclear if they destroyed any of the equipment that they left behind, like Lazy Cat. Phil Pressel heard a rumor that the telescope mirror was smashed with a hammer. The company’s substantial effort to build the telescope was for naught, and it never stared at the sky looking for Soviet laser beams.

In January 1978, possibly after learning about the loss of Lazy Cat, President Jimmy Carter asked for an intelligence briefing on the status of Soviet anti-satellite laser capabilities. The Secretary of Defense provided a report in February indicating that the Soviets already had a ground-based laser ASAT capability, and were developing an air- and possibly space-based laser ASAT capability. A March 1980 National Intelligence Estimate provided further estimates on Soviet laser ASAT developments. The Reagan Administration would become more alarmed about Soviet laser programs, although the end of the Cold War revealed that some Soviet laser capabilities had been exaggerated.

The closure of the TACKSMAN sites prompted a major review within the US intelligence community on how the loss of the information they gathered would affect the United States’ ability to monitor the SALT arms control treaty. U-2R and WB-57F aircraft operations were considered as an alternative means to obtain the intelligence. It is unknown what, if any, project may have followed Lazy Cat to try and obtain data on Soviet laser anti-satellite tests, although concern about them grew during the early 1980s. In 1989, a delegation of American officials visited the Terra 3 laser site at Sary Shagan—the one alleged to have illuminated the space shuttle—and found that it was a relatively low power system, nothing like the earlier intelligence reports. Ironically, the United States had a more advanced laser program.

Today the two CIA TACKSMAN sites can be viewed with public software such as Google Earth: TACKSMAN I located at 36.6841 N, 53.5278 E, and TACKSMAN II, at 37.2963 N, 58.9131 E. Since the 1979 revolution, the Iranians have been using both locations for unknown purposes. The Iranians have never displayed the captured American facility or equipment, not even for propaganda purposes.

Author’s note: A declassified official history, The Foreign Missile and Space TELEMETRY Collection Story – The First 50 Years, written by Richard L. Bernard in 2004, included the first publicly released information on TACKSMAN. The declassified history on the National Archives website is in two parts. Part 1 covers the 1950s and 1960s, and Part 2 covers the 1970s, 1980s, and the 1990s. The TELINT history can be downloaded from the National Archives website here, here, here, here, and here.

Dwayne Day is interested in hearing from anybody with further information on Lazy Cat or TACKSMAN. He can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

NASA Looks For M.S.R. Lifeline

Posted on April 30, 2024April 30, 2024 by jacksmars

NASA looks for an MSR lifeline

by Jeff Foust
Monday, April 29, 2024

For more than half a year, dark clouds have hovered over NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) program. Last September, an independent panel concluded that the current approach to returning samples being collected by the Perseverance rover was behind schedule and far over budget, with cost estimates as high as $11 billion. That prompted an internal NASA reassessment of the MSR program that, coupled with uncertainty about spending levels for the program in 2024, led to slowing work on much of MSR and, in February, laying off 8% of the staff at JPL, the lead center for MSR (see “MSR at serious risk”, The Space Review, February 12, 2024).

“The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long,” Nelson said.

That uncertainty persisted last month even with the long-overdue completion of a fiscal year 2024 spending bill and, days later, the release of the administration’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. The 2024 spending bill directed NASA to spend at least $300 million—the amount in the earlier Senate version—on MSR in 2024, and up to $949.3 million, the agency’s request. However, the bill cut planetary science spending by more than $660 million, giving the agency little room to spend more than the minimum on MSR without cutting other programs.

The 2025 request, meanwhile, punted on MSR: it listed only “TBD” for the program in the proposal, with NASA stating it would amend the budget request once its review of the program was over. “That’s astonishing. I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, in a webinar on the budget proposal by the Aerospace Industries Association a couple weeks after the proposal was released.

The Mars science community hoped for some clarity when the agency announced it would discuss its plan forward for Mars Sample Return April 15. That announcement, though, did little to disperse the clouds hanging over the program for months.

That review, by the MSR Independent Review Board Response Team, or MIRT, examined more than 20 architectures but ended up recommending an approach much like the previous design that included a Sample Retrieval Lander, developed by NASA, and an Earth Return Orbiter, built by ESA. The main technical difference was the inclusion of a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) on the lander, which previously was solar powered, to make lander operations more robust. (Including the RTG, the report noted, made little change to its price but it meant there would be no room for helicopters based on Ingenuity; those were intended to fetch samples from a cache on the surface as a backup to getting them directly from Perseverance.)

The MIRT study agreed with the assessment by the earlier independent review that the cost of this approach was between $8 billion and $11 billion. To minimize peak annual costs—the 2022 decadal survey had recommended that MSR cost no more than 35% of the overall NASA planetary science budget in any given year—NASA stretched out the program, launching the orbiter in 2030 and the lander in 2035, which would allow samples to be returned in 2040.

NASA, though, is looking for alternatives. “The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a call with reporters to discuss the MIRT report.

He announced that NASA would seek proposals for mission studies that could carry our MSR faster and/or cheaper than the plan the MIRT developed. The day after the announcement, NASA issued a call for proposals for “Rapid Mission Design Studies for Mars Sample Return”. NASA would seek proposals, due to NASA by May 17, for 90-day studies to be conducted by industry from July to October. NASA said it the announcement it would make “multiple” awards of up to $1.5 million each for the studies.

Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said at the briefing that NASA was looking for new approaches, but not necessarily new technologies, for MSR through the new studies. “What we’re looking for is heritage,” she said. “What we’re hoping is that we’ll be able to get back to some more traditional, tried-and-true architectures, things that do not require huge technological leaps.”

The role of the MIRT “was not to go out and find this creative, new approach to MSR. It was to respond to those specific recommendations,” Connelly said.

A particular area of interest is the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), the rocket carried on the Sample Retrieval Lander that would launch into Mars orbit the canister that, as currently designed, would carry 30 tubes of samples. “As the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) design and mass drives mission complexity and cost, NASA is particularly interested in studies that include or describe a smaller MAV or an alternative to a MAV,” the solicitation states.

That could include, the request stated, returning a smaller number of samples. While NASA’s current approach calls for returning 30 tubes, the agency is willing to consider concepts that could return as few as ten. It added, though, that returning “as many scientifically valuable samples as possible returned is desired” will be one metric NASA will use to judge mission designs, alongside cost and schedule.

“We want real solutions”

The announcement and subsequent solicitation left as many questions as answers about the future of MSR. Many of those came up during a meeting April 24 of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), a group of scientists that provide input to NASA on its Mars exploration efforts.

One issue was why, after nearly half a year of work, the MIRT adopted an architecture for MSR that was little different from the earlier plan. “Our role was to respond to all of the recommendations of IRB-2,” said Sandra Connelly, deputy associate administrator for science and leader of the MIRT, referring to last year’s independent review, which was the second for the program. “Our role was not to go out and find this creative, new approach to MSR. It was to respond to those specific recommendations.”

That was done outside of any consideration of any budgetary limitations on the effort, including whether up to $11 billion would be acceptable. “This is what the MIRT recommended in terms of an architecture that fit within the recommendations of the IRB,” she said. “Because of the constraints that we are in, the environment we’re in, we’re not moving forward with this architecture right now.”

The hope is that the industry studies, as well as separate internal studies at NASA and JPL, will come up with less expensive and faster approaches for MSR. But the agency has not publicly set a goal for cost and schedule for MSR.

“We don’t want to put cost bogeys out there because we know that, if you put a cost bogey out there, there will be solutions that come in that fit within that cost bogey,” Connelly said. “We want real analysis, we want real solutions and we want to know what they’re really going to cost so we can make informed trades.”

“There has been industry interest that’s been commented on and shared, and we’re hopeful it will be viable,” she said, without commenting on whether NASA had enough evidence to suggest that industry concepts could sharply reduce costs and pull in schedules. There has been speculation, for example, that SpaceX has offered approaches using its Starship vehicle, but with few, if any, details (including how Starship would pull off the round trip to Mars.)

Scientists also questioned NASA’s willingness to accept as few as ten sample tubes. That is linked to a cache of ten tubes that Perseverance left behind in a region called Three Forks as a contingency in case something prevented Perseverance from returning to the sample retrieval lander.

At MEPAG, though, scientists argued that those samples aren’t the best ones to be returned, with better ones on Perseverance as it continues to climb out of Jezero Crater. “When it comes to the decision about exactly which samples will be loaded onto whatever spacecraft leaves the surface of Mars, that will be something where there will be scientific community conversations,” Lindsay Hays, acting lead scientist for MSR at NASA headquarters, reassured the audience.

Connelly, though, said returning only the samples at Three Forks was an option. “If that’s the easier solution, we don’t want to prohibit that,” she said. “Having science that is good enough is better than having no science.”

“I worry that, when we make certain decisions, that we’re cutting to the bone and, in this case, potentially amputating JPL,” Garcia said.

So, what if the studies don’t reveal any alternatives with significant cost and schedule reductions? “There is a possibility that we won’t come up with something,” Connelly said, “in which case, we’ll have to evaluate at that point in time how we’re going to move forward as an agency.”

She reiterated at the MEPAG meeting, though, that Nelson “strongly believes that 2040 and $11 billion is not acceptable.”

Is MSR worth it?

For now, MSR will not be spending much. NASA said at the announcement of the MIRT study that it would allocate $310 million for the program in the current fiscal year, just above the minimum allowed in the bill. NASA officials said at the MEPAG meeting that the $10 million increase above that floor was intended to go towards the industry studies.

The announcement also did away with the “TBD” in the 2025 budget proposal. NASA would now seek $200 million for MSR in 2025, using funding that had originally been allocated for “Planetary Decadal Future” studies of future missions recommended by the planetary science decadal survey.

Some in Congress, particularly in California, are not happy with those plans. “These funding levels are woefully short for a mission that NASA itself identified as its highest priority in planetary science and that has been decades in the making,” said the state’s two senators, Alex Padilla (D) and Laphonza Butler (D), in a statement the day of the announcement.

Two days after the announcement, Nelson appeared before a House appropriations subcommittee to discuss the agency’s 2025 budget proposal. Among the participants was Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA), who had similar concerns about the effects of the proposed MSR budget on JPL, concerns that transcend party lines. “It’s probably one of the only times I’ve agreed with [Rep. Adam] Schiff and been on a letter with Representative Schiff,” he said, referring to a prominent House Democrat whose district is adjacent to JPL.

Garcia was critical of the funding decisions that led to JPL’s layoffs in February and feared the budget could lead to more. “I worry that, when we make certain decisions, that we’re cutting to the bone and, in this case, potentially amputating JPL.”

Nelson reiterated that MSR was “extremely important” for the agency. “I am quite sanguine about the future,” he said, citing the upcoming studies by industry as well as within NASA and JPL, along with expectations that budget caps for NASA and other non-defense discretionary agencies will be lifted after 2025. “Let’s see what we come back with in the answers this fall.”

“The whole value of our US-European partnership for Mars Sample Return is to bring back a scientifically selected, diverse set of samples,” Glaze said, contrasting MSR with China’s plans. “That’s significantly different from a ‘grab-and-go’ sample.”

There are other factors that come into play. NASA officials said they expect to make decisions about the future of MSR in early 2025 after evaluating the various studies. That could come, though, in the midst of a presidential transition, which may at a minimum delay those plans or prompt another review of them.

The current baseline of 2040 would also mean that the samples would likely come back years after China conducts its own Mars sample return mission, expected in the early 2030s. “That is why the administrator is wanting us to find a solution that returns the samples before 2004,” Connolly said at the MEPAG meeting.

She and Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, argued MSR would be more scientifically valuable than Chinese plans, which appear to be focused on grabbing whatever material is available at the landing site rather than more carefully curated samples being collected by Perseverance.

“The whole value of our US-European partnership for Mars Sample Return is to bring back a scientifically selected, diverse set of samples,” Glaze said, that can address key scientific questions. “That’s significantly different from a ‘grab-and-go’ sample.” She added NASA briefly considered that approach as an alternative to the current MSR architecture, and “that was not acceptable.”

Agency leadership, all the way up to Nelson, emphasized that scientific importance of MSR, pointing to recommendations in the last two decadal surveys backing the effort. “I’m very optimistic, as I talk to our scientists, that it can be done,” Nelson told House appropriators.

Some scientists at the MEPAG meeting, though, started to question the value of MSR, particularly if the program is limited to returning a small number of samples, like the Three Forks cache, that may not be as scientifically valuable as once expected. They argued, for example, that the Three Forks cache is no longer the best set of samples that could be returned based on what Perseverance has collected despite earlier declarations that it was “return worthy.”

That extended to MSR itself: at what point, one participant said, should the scientific community reconsider its support for the mission despite the endorsements in the decadal surveys given the potential changes to the mission.

“I think that’s a legitimate question, a legitimate conversation to have. I think it’s premature to have it now,” said Vicky Hamilton, chair of MEPAG. “We don’t know what these industry studies will come up with. We don’t know what NASA’s response to those studies will be.”

She added, though, that the decadal survey recommended MSR continue with no major increase or decrease in scope. Should NASA recommend sharply reducing the scope of the mission, like the number of samples returned, “we have an opening there to say that the scope has been decreased so much that the community no longer believes this is what we should be doing.”

That time was not now, she concluded. “This is the top decadal priority. We have supported that and should continue to do so emphatically until it is 110% clear that we cannot do that in good conscience. And we cannot make that decision until we know what NASA’s proposed path forward is.”

China’s Interest In The Far Side Of The Moon-Scientific, Military, or Economic?

Posted on April 30, 2024 by jacksmars

China’s interest in the far side of the Moon: scientific, military, or economic?

by Carlos Alatorre
Monday, April 29, 2024

On January 3, 2019, China achieved the first successful landing on the far side of the Moon with the Chang’e-4 probe. Twelve hours after touching down in the Von Karman Crater near the Moon’s south pole, the accompanying Yutu-2 rover began an exploration of the crater, a region that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had explored before. This achievement was announced, gaining much fanfare within China as the first nation to deliver a probe to the far side.

As announced in a China National Space Administration (CNSA) press release, the Chang’e-4 mission offered three main benefits: scientific discovery through crater exploration, international cooperation through cooperative missions, and a platform for future missions beyond cislunar space. But what is China’s true interest in the far side of the Moon? With the CNSA overseen indirectly by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is an operation of this nature merely a demonstration of military capability or a global announcement of great power status? China’s focus on the far side of the Moon may have elements of diplomatic and military positioning, but evidence suggests its aims are more focused on strategic resource extraction, and the Chang’e missions are the starting gun in a lunar energy race.

China’s focus on the far side of the Moon may have elements of diplomatic and military positioning, but evidence suggests its aims are more focused on strategic resource extraction.

After the success of the Chang’e 4 mission, China launched the Chang’e-5 on November 23, 2020, as part of a sample return mission based on the data received by the Yutu-2 rover. Chang’e-5 returned to Earth, landing in Inner Mongolia on December 16 with two kilograms of lunar material. Upon return, the CNSA and the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) jointly announced the discovery of a new mineral, Changesite-(Y). The mineral is a single-crystalline particle that was extracted from the lunar soil thanks to drilling from the Chang’e-5. Li Ziying, chief scientist of lunar sample research at the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology, claims that the mineral will “help scientists understand the physical traits and history of the Moon.” However, Changesite-(Y) is also attractive for its energy usage. Traces of helium-3, a potential fuel source for nuclear fusion power plants and in limited supply on Earth, were identified in the lunar mineral leading to the CAEA’s interest.

According to the University of Wisconsin’s Fusion Technology Institute, the potential energy output from 40 grams of helium-3 is equivalent to 5,000 tons of coal. There are estimates by Seattle-based company Interlune, a helium-3 harvesting startup, that more than one million tons of helium-3 is the Moon just under the surface. Despite the recent attention that lunar resource exploration has been receiving, Ouyang Ziyuan, director of the CNSA’s Moon exploration program, stated as far back as 2002 that the Moon “could serve as a new and tremendous supplier of energy and resources for human beings…this is crucial to sustainable development of human beings on Earth…whoever first conquers the Moon will benefit first.”

Although China may have been a latecomer to the Apollo-style missions of the 20th century, it has attempted to gain a head start in the lunar energy race with the advent of the Chang’e missions. From a diplomatic and strategic standpoint, it would benefit China to own the narrative that it alone can lead the scientific discovery of new forms of clean energy using sophisticated lunar operations like the Chang’e lander missions or the placement of the Queqiao relay satellite in Lagrange point 2, an admittedly impressive feat used for rover communication that had never been done before.

From a diplomatic and strategic standpoint, it would benefit China to own the narrative that it alone can lead the scientific discovery of new forms of clean energy using sophisticated lunar operations like the Chang’e lander missions.

China isn’t alone in this search for resources. The US, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea, and various private firms are all interested in and planning lunar missions for potential resource extraction. According to Namrata Goswami, “China is the only country to articulate a long-term vision of space settlement and utilization. It is the only country to have invested serious money in future space technologies like space-based solar power that will help power such a lunar base.” The lunar base referred to is the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), which will be jointly constructed and operated by China and Russia and placed near the unexplored south pole. The ILRS is being touted as a rival to the US-led Artemis program, which is a new series of manned lunar missions after a 50-year hiatus.

Helium-3 isn’t the only potential power source on the Moon that could fuel a lunar energy race. Frozen water hiding in the craters of the south pole and rare earth elements like scandium and yttrium, used in electronics, could be a gold mine for the nation or company that finds those resources first. Critical minerals and rare earth elements have become necessary for military components and battery construction for the clean-energy transition. After cornering the market in rare earth elements from the purchase of lithium, cobalt, and nickel mines, China has a vested interest in prospecting lunar sites and laying claim to resources discovered. It is unclear how lunar mining rights and territorial claims will work when the UN’s Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids any nation from claiming sovereignty of a celestial body. However, without an agreed-upon enforcement mechanism, and China’s recent history of claiming territoriality through first navigation in the South China Sea, the international community may one day see an all-out 49er-style gold rush to the Moon.

Carlos Alatorre is an MA graduate in Statecraft and National Security Affairs from The Institute of World Politics. His research focuses on China’s operational capabilities in orbit and strategic deterrence in cislunar space.

Book Review: “Who Owns The Moon?”

Posted on April 30, 2024 by jacksmars

Review: Who Owns the Moon?

by Jeff Foust
Monday, April 29, 2024

Who Owns the Moon?: In Defence of Humanity’s Common Interests in Space
by A. C. Grayling
Oneworld Publications, 2024
hardcover, 224 pp.
ISBN 978-0-86154-725-8
US$26.95

The current unfortunate state of space diplomacy was on display last week during a session of the United Nations Security Council. Japan and the United States, with more than 60 nations as co-sponsors, put forward a resolution they billed as the first devoted to space security to be considered by the council. It reaffirmed provisions in the Outer Space Treaty not to place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in space and called on nations not to develop such weapons. It was squarely aimed at Russia after reports in February that US intelligence had found evidence the country was working on a nuclear ASAT device.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 has frequently been described as the foundation of international space law, but some wonder if that foundation needs to be shored up or replaced.

Russia and China countered with an amendment that would expand the scope to all weapons, similar to treaties they have proposed for decades that the United States and many other Western nations have opposed on grounds that it is unverifiable and excludes terrestrial ASATs. That amendment failed, and in the final vote on the resolution, 13 nations voted yes and China abstained. Russia, though, voted no, exercising its veto to kill the resolution. “Regrettably, one permanent member decided to silence the critical message we wanted to send to the present and future people of the world: outer space must remain a domain of peace, free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” Kazuyuki Yamazaki, Japan’s ambassador to the UN, said after the vote.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 has frequently been described as the foundation of international space law, but in recent years, given the growth in the number of types of space actors, some have wondered if that foundation needs to be shored up or replaced. One of the latest treatises on the topic is Who Owns the Moon? by A. C. Grayling, a professor of philosophy at Northeastern University – London, where he argues that the treaty is outdated but fails to offer a solution.

Grayling is concerned about the twin forces of commercialization and militarization as space activity grows. The former could lead, he fears, to a “gold rush” for resources on the Moon or elsewhere in what he argues is a largely unregulated “Wild West” environment. (That may be a surprise for companies who complain today about the level of paperwork and bureaucracy they have to deal with just to launch satellites.) That land grab for resources brings with it the threat of conflict enhanced by growing militarization of space, he states. He likens that in one chapter to the “Scramble for Africa” by European colonial powers in the late 19th century, where they swiftly divided up the content and its resources.

The Outer Space Treaty is too vague to be useful today, he concludes, thus “revisiting the Outer Space Treaty well in advance of problems arising from its terminology is desirable. That means now.” (Emphasis in original.) He compares it to two other treaties dealing with global commons, the Antarctic Treaty and the High Seas Treaty that emerged from the decades-long Law of the Sea efforts.

Grayling is particularly enamored with the Antarctic Treaty, seeing it as an example of an “enduring and successful” international agreement that protected the continent. It has kept the continent free of conflict and environmental damage, he argues, and none of its signatories have sought to use a provision available since 1991 to reopen the treaty for modification.

“We don’t live in treaty times any more,” Aarti Holla-Maini, director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, said. “It is not realistic and it is also not what we need.”

It’s not clear, though, that the Antarctic Treaty offers much in the ways of lessons for space. It has never been seriously tested because Antarctica never carried major strategic value to the Cold War superpowers and because of the lack of economically viable natural resources. How well would the treaty work if someone found tomorrow a vast, accessible deposit of petroleum or rare earth elements? China, he acknowledges, is already pushing the bounds of the treaty by seeking control of 20,000 square kilometers of territory around its Kunlun base there.

He states early in this slender book—the main text is only a little more than 100 pages, excluding appendices—that given those issues “the case for revising the Outer Space Treaty sooner rather than later makes itself.” He clearly believes that to be true, because he makes little effort to make that case, in particular how the treaty should be revised: what sections and in what manner. His arguments become as vague as he claims the language of the treaty is.

Notably, he says little about ongoing effort to build upon the Outer Space Treaty through non-binding approaches, like the development of norms and other documents, which lack the legal standing of a treaty but can be developed among like-minded nations far more quickly. An example is the Artemis Accords, now signed by nearly 40 nations, that its advocates say is intended to “operationalize” the Outer Space Treaty by adding detail to key provisions while also addressing additional topics, like use of space resources. Grayling mentions the Artemis Accords in passing but seems oddly incurious about them, spending no time evaluating the document’s contents or effectiveness.

Revising or replacing the Outer Space Treaty seems like a bridge too far in the current climate. “We don’t live in treaty times any more,” Aarti Holla-Maini, director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, said during a session of the 39th Space Symposium earlier this month. “It is not realistic and it is also not what we need.” A better book, then, might be to find ways to improve the current international space law through norms and similar agreements rather than dreaming of a new treaty.

NASA Strategy For Space Sutainability

Posted on April 23, 2024 by jacksmars

NASA’s strategy for space sustainability

by Jeff Foust
Monday, April 22, 2024

At about 1:30 am EST on February 28, NASA’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics Mission (TIMED) spacecraft passed close to a defunct Russian satellite, Cosmos 2221. The close approach was alarming enough that NASA sent an email in the middle of the night to reporters, alerting them to the conjunction and a blog post about it. “Although the spacecraft are expected to miss each other, a collision could result in significant debris generation,” NASA warned.

“This time was very different. It was shocking personally, and for all of us at NASA,” Melroy said of the TIMED near-collision.

Because TIMED could not maneuver and Cosmos 2221 was defunct, there was nothing to do but watch and wait. Fortunately, in the morning NASA gave the all-clear: TIMED was still in contact with ground controllers, indicating that it did not collide with Cosmos 2221.

While satellites pass close to each other in low Earth orbit frequently, this was a particular cause for concern for NASA. “This time was very different. It was shocking personally, and for all of us at NASA,” deputy administrator Pam Melroy said in a speech at the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. The close approach, later analysis found, had the two spacecraft passing less than ten meters from each other.

She didn’t elaborate on that analysis, but LeoLabs, a company that operates a network of radars to track objects in LEO, had noted the day of the conjunction that it estimated the spacecraft passed within 20 meters of each other, with a probability of collision as high as 8%. A collision, the company estimated, would have created between 2,500 and 7,500 fragments, depending on whether the collision was head-on or glancing. LeoLabs added that it currently tracks nearly 12,000 fragments in LEO.

“Had the two satellites collided, we would have seen significant debris generation,” Melroy said.

The risks posed by orbital debris and collisions in Earth orbit are not new: after all, the idea of the Kessler Syndrome, a runaway cascade of collisions that would render orbits unusable, is decades old. There have been many solutions posed over the years to deal with that debris, from lasers that would be at home in science fiction to concepts like nets and harpoons that instead seem like something from Moby Dick. Surely the right technology is out there somewhere.

But Melroy, in a speech unveiling NASA’s first Space Sustainability Strategy, argued the focus on technology is premature. “That’s the part everyone jumps to first. We think it comes third,” she said.

What she and the agency offered was a more deliberative approach to the issue of space sustainability, one that argues that the problem needs to be better defined and understood before attempting to create any solutions for it. “I’m really picky about strategy,” she said in a later briefing. “I really wanted them to diagnose the problem in a way that got to why it’s so hard to do this.”

One issue is understanding what “space sustainability” means, a term that has gained use in recent years but not necessarily unanimity on what it includes. “NASA defines space sustainability as the ability to maintain the conduct of space activities indefinitely into the future in a manner that is safe, peaceful, and responsible to meet the needs of the present generations while preserving the outer space environment for future activities and limiting harm to terrestrial life,” the strategy states.

However, the document adds, there is no agreement on a “framework” for space sustainability, a model “that describes all quantities of interest and their interdependencies and that can be operationalized through measurements, modeling, and assessments using defined figures of merit.” That creates confusion, the agency concludes, when trying to define space sustainability solutions.

The first goal of the strategy is to develop such a framework. “Then we can use that framework to understand the effect of turning not just one knob but turning multiple knobs at once,” Melroy said in her speech.

“That’s the part everyone jumps to first. We think it comes third,” Melroy said of debris removal technology.

That directly ties to the strategy’s second goal, which is identifying “critical uncertainties” in that framework. “We aim to minimize those uncertainties and focus specifically on the ones that have the largest impacts,” she said. “We want to seek breakthrough improvements to sense and predict the space environment, explore new operational approaches, and identify cost-effective methods to limit debris creation.”

Only then does the strategy address technologies for addressing debris in the strategy’s third goal. “It’s going to leverage insights from goals one and two to create an investment portfolio focused on advancing the technologies and capabilities that are crucial,” she said.

The strategy includes three other goals that don’t fall in the same linear progression as the first three. One involves developing or updating policies related to space sustainability, such as increased support for orbital debris removal technology development, while another seeks to improve coordination and collaboration with other stakeholders on the issue. A final goal is an internal one for NASA that includes creating a new position of director of space sustainability within the agency.

Melroy and others made clear that the agency’s focus is, for now, on that first goal, a space sustainability framework. “The framework is a fundamental thing for us to see success with the strategy,” said Charity Weeden, NASA associate administrator for its office of technology, policy, and strategy, at the briefing. “This is going to look complicated because this is a complicated problem.”

She said the agency was studying that framework and would have more details “on the order of months,” although NASA did not provide any specific timelines. The agency also did not discuss funding for this strategy and efforts like technology development.

“I don’t think we’re ready to talk about the money allocation yet because I think it’s going to be critically important that we have a really tight story about the impact that we hope to have,” Melroy said, returning to the need for a framework. “I often say at the agency that we’ve got to slow down to speed up, which means, let’s figure out what we’re doing first and what kind of impact it’s going to have.”

NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget request, released last month, noted that the agency is requesting $41.2 million “for space sustainability to better understand and mitigate the hazard of orbital debris,” but doesn’t offer details on how that money would be spent.

Melroy added that the work on the strategy may not be ready in time to inform the fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, which is already in early stages of development at NASA. “We hope to have answers and thoughts that we can then propose in the ’27 budget that are aligned with the things that we’ve learned,” she said. “Everything is driven by the budget schedule.”

She also said that while NASA will work with other government agencies on the issue of space sustainability, like the Office of Space Commerce, which is setting up a civil space traffic coordination system called TraCSS, NASA has no desire to get involved as a regulatory agency or operational player.

“There are people who I think would love to see us as the Space Coast Guard,” she said, with NASA preferring to stay in a role as a science and technology development agency. “We’re not a regulatory agency and we’re happy that it is that way.”

In her speech about the new strategy, she returned to the issue of the TIMED close approach to the defunct Russian satellite. “The TIMED spacecraft really scared us all,” she said. That incident could be excused by the fact that TIMED was an old spacecraft, launched in 2001, launched in an era where there was less concern, if any, about space sustainability. The defunct Cosmos 2221 was even older, launched in the early 1990s. Surely we are doing better today?

“The framework is a fundamental thing for us to see success with the strategy,” said Weeden. “This is going to look complicated because this is a complicated problem.”

Another incident that took place a little more than a week after the TIMED conjunction suggests otherwise. On March 8, a battery pallet from the International Space Station reentered. That pallet, weighing more than two and a half metric tons was discarded from the station three years earlier to make an uncontrolled reentry. It was to have been disposed on a Japanese cargo spacecraft, but a cascading series of delays dating back several years meant that there was no cargo spacecraft available to allow the pallet to make a controlled reentry.

The pallet reentered, according to US Space Force tracking data, over the Gulf of Mexico between Mexico and Florida. That appeared to be the end of the story, until a homeowner in Naples, Florida, told local media that an object fell from the sky that day and through the roof of his house, causing minor damage. Naples, in southwest Florida, was on the trajectory of that pallet if it remained in orbit just a few more minutes that predicted.

NASA announced last week than an analysis of the object, a slug of metal weighing about three-quarters of a kilogram, confirmed it was Inconel from equipment used to mount the batteries on the pallet. The ISS program, NASA said in a statement, “will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed.”

“NASA remains committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit, and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released,” the agency added in that statement. There’s clearly more work for NASA to do as it refines its approach for space sustainability.

The Ongoing Triumph Of Ingenuity

Posted on April 23, 2024 by jacksmars

The ongoing triumph of Ingenuity

by William Pomerantz
Monday, April 22, 2024

This is my love letter to Ingenuity.

I remember when I first heard about the concept of a small helicopter designed to catch a ride with a rover bound for the Martian surface. At the time, my wife worked as part of the “Mars Mafia” at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: a wonderful job that meant she got to bring intriguing ideas and fascinating discoveries home from work regularly. My first reaction to the idea of a Martian drone was a quick sequence: No way! Could that even work? There’s barely any atmosphere there. But could you imagine if it did work? No one has ever seen anything like that before. That would be incredible!

As the landing date for Perseverance and Ingenuity approached, I asked my JPL friends for their guesses as to how many times the helicopter would fly. By far the most common answer was that it would never make it off the ground in one piece.

As I learned more about the idea, I marveled at the balance between the simplicity of the overall concept and the complexity of some of the engineering specifics required to make a helicopter fly on a planet where the atmospheric pressure at the surface is only 1% of what it is here on Earth (where it’s already extremely challenging to make helicopters fly!).

While many people, myself included, were wondering what was possible, small teams at JPL and AeroVironment were creating what was possible. A quick, hardware-rich sprint by a team of incredible engineers, technicians, and project managers allowed the Ingenuity Mars helicopter project to be completed on schedule—words we too rarely get to say in the world of space exploration.

After the nerve-wracking deployment of the helicopter from under the belly of Perseverance, followed by a few weeks of wiggling rotors and commissioning the vehicle, the world was treated to what you see in this GIF: the first aircraft to perform powered, controlled flight on a planet other than Earth.

This was a “Wright Brothers moment,” happening in our lifetimes, on another world. The impossible becoming possible. A new mode of peaceful exploration, coming online right before our eyes, in glorious full-color video.

Over the next three Earth years, Ingenuity would go on to surpass every expectation. From an initial target of five flights and 30 Martian days (sols), Ingenuity achieved 72 flights and about 1,000 sols. Ingenuity flew higher, faster, and further over more hazardous terrain than ever imagined. It returned first-of-its-kind images of the Perseverance rover, its backshell, and more. It gave us up-close images of Martian vistas that we’re currently unable to explore by rover or with orbiters. The little helicopter that could survived a Martian winter with barely any damage. Every day, every flight, every image brought us precious new knowledge and expanded the horizons of humanity’s understanding of our closest planetary neighbor.

Along the way, some of the rover-centric teammates who had first seen Ingenuity as a distraction came to view the helicopter as an incredible new tool. The operations team is constantly faced with deciding between sending the rover to explore the most interesting territory and avoiding those same areas if the landscape might damage and strand the rover. It’s a tension that the JPL team is extraordinarily good at managing, but a tension nonetheless.

If the choice ever became stand down or keep pushing, the team wanted to keep pushing.

About 60 flights into Ingenuity’s planned five-flight mission, I had the great honor of joining AeroVironment to run the team responsible for our contributions to Ingenuity and the next generation of Mars helicopters. Ingenuity was still in excellent condition and was responding to every new challenge we gave it, making aerial exploration of Mars seem almost easy. But still, as we started what was effectively our 12th victory lap after a race well run, we knew that every day Ingenuity phoned home was a gift.

As I got to know the team at AeroVironment and as I became reacquainted with the JPLers on the mission, one of the questions I asked was how people would like to see the mission end. We all wanted to see Ingenuity complete as many flights as possible; but I wanted to hear what the people who quite literally built Ingenuity thought. Should Ingenuity earn a quiet retirement in some picturesque location? Or should we push the edges of the envelope until at last we ask Ingenuity to do something it can’t manage, and see it fail in flight?

I received a range of strongly held responses to my question, but the overwhelming majority of the Ingenuity team was aligned. They reinforced that this mission was designed as a technology demonstration, and the best way to honor the spirit of Ingenuity was to ensure that the vehicle kept teaching us new things about flight on Mars, right up to the end. If the choice ever became stand down or keep pushing, the team wanted to keep pushing.

And that’s exactly what happened. After more than 70 flights, we encountered a technical challenge that was simply beyond Ingenuity’s capabilities. The helicopter’s visual navigation system couldn’t distinguish the features of a very monotonous landscape well enough to consistently track them. Lacking that information, the vehicle essentially became confused about where it was and where it was going. As it descended, it may have begun to chase its own shadow.

At some point during the flight and landing, Ingenuity sustained significant damage to its rotor blades and yet, somewhat miraculously, it survived that landing and came to rest upright on the Martian surface. Ingenuity is still alive and sending home data from its onboard systems—something it may continue to do for years to come. Perhaps if the Perseverance rover drives back by Valinor Hills Station (Ingenuity’s final airfield, named for Tolkien’s Undying Lands), Ingenuity will be able to phone home again and relay years’ worth of weather data to scientists on Earth. But unfortunately, it will never fly again.

Seventy-two flights. More than two hours of flying time. Over 1,000 sols after arriving on Mars. Eleven miles (17.7 kilometers) covered. All this from a helicopter that weathered rocket launch loads, Martian dust storms, and more without a single opportunity for in-person inspection or servicing—something you’d never expect of a helicopter here on Earth. Ingenuity gave us everything we asked for and more.

True to its spirit and its mission, even Ingenuity’s final flights have made us smarter. There’s more yet to learn, but from what I’ve seen, I believe the challenge that grounded Ingenuity will be relatively easy to overcome with future Mars helicopters, thanks to what we’ve now learned. Yes, Ingenuity reached a limit; but that limit can and will be conquered. Flight 72 marked an end, but not the end.

The true conclusion of the Ingenuity mission will come when its hard-earned lessons are next put into practice by another Mars helicopter, one that will be even more ingenuous than its predecessor, thanks to how much wiser we are after 72 flights.

AeroVironment has continued to invest funds and time into dreaming up new capabilities for future Mars helicopters. Engineers at AeroVironment, JPL, and NASA Ames are now thinking about helicopters and other aerial vehicles that could someday carry scientific instruments, fetch sample tubes, or explore difficult to access locations such as valleys and lava tubes.

Additionally, elsewhere in the world, others are following Ingenuity’s lead. In 2021, China announced its plans to fly a helicopter on Mars, and more recently, India has revealed more about its plan to fly a Martian helicopter with a variety of weather and atmospheric sensors within the next eight years. With a growing community of international space agencies interested in the exploration of the Red Planet, helicopters may become an affordable and attractive option for space discovery and diplomacy.

I believe the impactful legacy of Ingenuity will do for aerial mobility on Mars what Sojourner did for ground mobility.

When the Ingenuity mission began, NASA’s leaders often compared it to the Wright Brothers 1903 Flyer—and indeed, Ingenuity carried a small piece of fabric from that historic aircraft to Mars. Now that the Martian equivalent of the Kitty Hawk flight has occurred, the successors to Orville and Wilbur at NASA JPL and AeroVironment are itching to embark on the next great endeavor that will forever change the future of planetary exploration. Planetary exploration helicopters have made their impact and are here to stay, and those in government, academia, and industry who embrace and support the inclusion of these systems in future missions will surely reap the benefits.

Another novel forebearer of Ingenuity is Sojourner, the first successful Mars rover. Like Ingenuity, Sojourner was the lighter, smaller vehicle that hitched a ride with another mission to the Red Planet. Both programs had small budgets but delivered huge results.

I believe the impactful legacy of Ingenuity will do for aerial mobility on Mars what Sojourner did for ground mobility: leave such an impactful legacy that at every future Martian launch window, and with every future call for proposals, this new form of exploration demonstrated by Ingenuity is considered a critical enabling technology for future discovery.

As Ingenuity’s flying campaign comes to an end, and as the era of aerial Mars exploration begins in earnest, my hat is off to the people who made this possible, including brilliant NASA and JPL colleagues like Bob Balaram, Charles Elachi, Mimi Aung, Robert Hogg, Bobby Braun, Theodore (Teddy) Tzanetos, Håvard Grip, and more, and AeroVironment colleagues Matt Keennon, Benjamin Pipenberg, Sara Langberg, Jeremy Tyler, Joey Beckman, and more. Humanity’s best machines reflect the care, cleverness, and curiosity of their makers—and with Ingenuity, each of you has proven to be truly world-class.

Will Pomerantz is an aerospace executive with two decades of experience in the entrepreneurial and non-profit sectors. He currently serves as the Head of Space Ventures at AeroVironment. He is also the co-founder of the Brooke Owens Fellowship and the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, two award-winning mentorship and work experience programs focused on enabling more undergraduates to pursue successful aerospace careers.

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