The Columbia Disaster Reexamined

The crew of the Columbia. At the Columbia Accident Investigation Board offices, a large photo of the crew hung in the main meeting room, reminding the board members and investigators of the people who lost their lives, and why finding the causes of the accident was so important. (credit: NASA)

Columbia retold, and untold

by Dwayne A. Day
Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Last month, CNN aired a four-part documentary about the Columbia accident that is the most comprehensive retelling of the events two decades ago that shocked the American public and changed the course of the American space program. Space Shuttle Columbia, the Final Flight was co-produced by BBC and Mindhouse Productions, and aired in Britain several months earlier. But despite its extensive interviews and over three-hour running time, the documentary was also incomplete, and distorted the history of what happened after the tragic accident that took seven lives.

The stories of the families were emotional and often heart-wrenching. Husbands lost wives, wives lost husbands, and young children lost their parents.

There are many ways to tell a story in a documentary. Should it have a narrator? Should it just let the interview subjects talk? Should it focus on dates and details, or emotions? Who should be interviewed and how should they be presented? Space Shuttle Columbia, the Final Flight was not hyperbolic or overly dramatic. The producers treated their subject with respect. But they chose to lean more heavily on the emotional and human elements and less on technical details, policy decisions, and NASA’s flawed culture. By doing so, they created a false impression of what happened after the accident occurred, and why that was important.

The documentary’s first episode covered the months leading up to the January 16th launch and the second episode primarily covered the mission itself. The third and fourth episodes dealt with the accident and the investigation. All featured interviews with people involved in the mission as well as some families of the seven astronauts who died on February 1, 2003, due to damage suffered during launch two weeks earlier. The stories of the families were emotional and often heart-wrenching. Husbands lost wives, wives lost husbands, and young children lost their parents. Having to re-live that time was undoubtedly difficult for them, but it brought a poignancy to the documentary that was valuable.

The show devoted limited attention to NASA’s senior leadership at the time, failing to ask the question of how much they knew about the contributing factors to the accident. The producers interviewed NASA personnel who were involved in the mission, some of whom had raised alarms about the early indications that foam had come off the shuttle’s external tank and struck the orbiter, only to be told to stop their inquiries and let the issue go. Several episodes devoted substantial time to these topics and how the cause of the accident was uncovered in the months after it occurred, but they left out important details.

An incomplete story

What was most missing from the documentary was a discussion of the actual accident investigation and the people who performed it. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) was established within hours of the accident, and grew rapidly, adding board members and investigators with necessary expertise. (I was hired as an investigator by April, at a point when the number of investigators, which peaked at over 100, was beginning to decrease as data collection was transitioning to data analysis.)

The CAIB also evolved. Initially it was technically under NASA. But the board chair, retired Admiral Hal Gehman, realized that for the CAIB (pronounced “kaabe”) to be credible, it had to both be independent and perceived to be independent by Congress, the White House, the media, and the public. Gehman and his board members took actions to make that happen, initially by removing some NASA personnel from the investigation, and then by constantly communicating that the investigation was independent of NASA. There were some bumps along the road as NASA officials realized the CAIB was truly independent, but as far as we could tell, those officials did not seek to impede the investigation. There was a parallel NASA effort that supported the CAIB in the form of collecting shuttle debris and reassembling it, and gathering data that was made available to the CAIB.

Surprisingly, the CAIB is barely mentioned at all in Space Shuttle Columbia, the Final Flight, and only one board member was interviewed. According to another board member I spoke to, the documentary had planned to interview other board members and perhaps devote an entire episode to the investigation but lacked the funds to do so. Thus, the documentary discusses the accident investigation without identifying the organization and people who undertook it, how they did their jobs, and the impact they had on subsequent policy decisions.

A bigger problem of not devoting significant attention to the CAIB is that the documentary missed a lot of the context and the culture of the investigation.

The omission of the CAIB story from the documentary has several effects. For starters, the documentary includes interviews with several NASA engineers involved in assessing the launch footage and then attempting to estimate possible damage to the orbiter. This happened within NASA during the mission, but information about it was only uncovered and investigated—and made public—by the CAIB after the accident. Without explicitly stating this, the documentary created the impression that NASA was responsible for investigating itself and somehow this information came to light on its own. One of my colleagues on the CAIB was an aircraft accident investigator who was charged with reviewing tens of thousands of internal NASA emails, which helped expose how the effort to obtain better imagery of the damaged orbiter was suppressed within the program. Understanding this is important because of the contrast between the CAIB and the 1986 Challenger accident investigation. That earlier investigation was less independent of NASA, a fact that undercut its credibility. Admiral Gehman had deliberately sought to avoid the mistakes of the Challenger investigation.

Perhaps a bigger problem of not devoting significant attention to the CAIB is that the documentary missed a lot of the context and the culture of the investigation. As former CAIB board member Scott Hubbard has noted, human spaceflight at that time was a very hierarchical operation, with deep roots in military culture, with orders coming from on high. It was also very procedures-based. Things outside of normal procedures, like seeking new data on the debris strike, could be shut down by orders from senior personnel in the shuttle program. The documentary notes this but fails to explain that it then took the CAIB to force the story of the suppression of data-gathering, and answers about why it happened, out of the shuttle program. The CAIB was also necessary to force people within the program to realize the problems. Without the investigation, those details may never have become publicly known, and a major change in NASA’s safety culture would have been less likely.

The investigation was methodical and comprehensive, going beyond the technical explanation for the accident to explore the policy, budgetary, social, and cultural factors that may have made it possible. Sometimes it explored dead ends. Sometimes the CAIB investigators pursued leads simply to rule them out as causes of the accident (I personally read thousands of pages of investigation interviews looking for items of interest for one part of the investigation but never found any.) Inside the CAIB there were discussions of fault trees and NASA engineering culture and even the dangers of jargon. NASA engineers commonly referred to data being “in family” or “out of family,” which essentially meant that the data was expected or unexpected. We in the CAIB noticed that these terms were used sloppily and inconsistently, but it was not our job to tell NASA what language to use in their program.

We looked at other subjects outside of NASA like naval nuclear reactors, large chemical manufacturing facilities, and even aircraft carrier operations, for what they indicated about organizations that could not tolerate mistakes because the consequences could be catastrophic. The CAIB also explored NASA’s policy changes and budgets over the previous decade to determine if they contributed to the accident. We dug into NASA administrators’ files and budget documents. We delved into subjects like the 1990s-era Space Flight Operations Contract, which reorganized how the shuttle program was managed, looking for clues to later program and budget decisions. We could find no obvious direct link but ran down many leads. It was a massive, multi-faceted, detective project. We kept a big photograph of the STS-107 crew on the wall of our main meeting room to remind us to work hard to honor them.

The RCC test, which was publicly reported at the time, changed the attitude of the NASA shuttle engineers. At least several were shocked, but from that point on nobody could deny that foam could cause major damage to the orbiter.

The CAIB members and investigators also began to notice disturbing attitudes within the shuttle program. What had initially started as a safety edict in the shuttle program—foam shall not hit the orbiter during launch—had evolved into a maintenance issue: how long will it take to repair foam damage to the orbiter? There was a lack of curiosity within the program when the shuttle did not perform the way it was supposed to. NASA engineers tended to look at unusual events in terms of their effect on operations and schedules rather than asking why they were happening. And once an anomaly was dismissed as a risk, people might even become defensive about it. I distinctly remember one NASA shuttle tile expert, one of the people who had developed them in the early 1970s, who was full of blustery confidence about how shuttle tiles were tough and not easily damaged. He was not merely being defensive: he was clearly not interested in how they could be damaged. That attitude was a warning sign, an indication of how much some NASA personnel were stuck in their thinking.

A piece of from from the shuttle’s external tank approximately the size and mass of the piece that came off the tank and struck the orbiter. The foam essentially came off the tank and stopped, and the orbiter ran into it at high velocity. The physics of such an impact is relatively simple, and devastating for the orbiter. The psychology of that impact was far more complicated, and even very smart engineers had a hard time accepting that foam could cause damage. (credit: NASA)

Shooting foam

The documentary’s fourth episode includes a brief clip about the test on the ground in the summer of 2003 where a piece of foam was shot at an actual piece of flight hardware, a leading edge of the orbiter’s wing. That test blew a hole through the reinforced carbon carbon (RCC) wing segment, making clear that foam could cause tremendous damage to the wing. Left out of the episode was the background story of that test.

The dramatic test shown in the documentary, which was conducted at a facility in San Antonio, Texas, was only the last in a series. There were about a half dozen earlier tests, which are only briefly mentioned in the final report. I witnessed one of them. The air cannon used to launch the foam was the same one used to launch dead chickens at airplane cockpits to test their survivability against bird strikes. (During my visit we asked about the myth of using frozen chickens and were shown the bucket used to euthanize live chickens by exposing them to—I think—carbon dioxide gas.) The foam strike tests evolved over time. Early in the investigation one theory was that the foam struck the underside of the orbiter at a shallow angle. The CAIB ordered that one of the landing gear doors from the unflown space shuttle Enterprise be removed from that vehicle, covered with actual tiles, and then hit with foam. Later, when that door was re-installed on Enterprise, it still bore the scars from the test.

As more accident data was acquired, the investigation shifted focus to a strike on the RCC panels on the leading edge of the wing. This presented a dilemma that was more about psychology than engineering. When accelerated to hundreds of kilometers an hour, a kilogram of foam has the same energy as a kilogram of steel. The physics equation should have been readily understandable to the engineers of the shuttle program. RCC is tough material, heavy and dense. I handled a piece and it felt like a combination of steel and ceramic, and I figured I could drop it on a concrete floor and it would be undamaged, or drop it on my foot and break a toe. The CAIB was telling NASA’s shuttle engineers that foam had damaged the RCC, and showing them the physics equation, but the engineers did not believe that low density foam could harm high density RCC.

Before the CAIB ordered a test of foam against actual RCC, they did a “clocking test,” firing foam at some plastic mockup RCC panels also removed from Enterprise. This test was intended to determine the right angle to mount the RCC for an actual test, not simulate the actual impact. But when the foam only scuffed the plastic RCC panels, we heard some people suggest that it was “proof” that foam could not damage the RCC.

The CAIB wanted a test against an actual RCC panel, but NASA officials resisted. NASA did not have many spare RCC panels, they were very expensive (I seem to remember that a single panel cost $750,000), and they took most of a year to manufacture. Was the test really necessary, some NASA shuttle officials asked? The CAIB decided it was necessary.

I was working in the CAIB’s offices outside of Washington when we heard about the results of the test in San Antonio, that it had blown a hole through the RCC approximately 41 centimeters in diameter. Such a hole was easily large enough to allow plasma during reentry to enter the wing, and the high temperatures compromised its structural integrity until it broke off and the orbiter rapidly came apart at hypersonic speed. The hole in the leading edge was consistent with all the sensor data collected as the wing failed.

Perhaps the most important role of the CAIB was in ending the shuttle program, and ultimately changing the way that the United States sent people into space.

The RCC test, which was publicly reported at the time, changed the attitude of the NASA shuttle engineers. At least several were shocked, but from that point on nobody could deny that foam could cause major damage to the orbiter. Space Shuttle Columbia, the Final Flight showed the dramatic last foam test, but missed the detective story of the investigation. The documentary also missed the cultural and psychological shifts within the shuttle program forced upon the engineers by the RCC test. Certainly the accident itself caused some people to change their attitudes, but it was the investigation that pushed others past the denial phase to start accepting responsibility.

The hole blown in a piece of reinforced carbon carbon (RCC) the covered the leading edge of a space shuttle wing. NASA officials resisted this test, but the Columbia Accident Investigation Board ordered that it be conducted, in large part because people within NASA still did not believe that low density foam could damage high density RCC. (credit: NASA)

Changing the safety culture, ending the shuttle

During the investigation, we began to realize that NASA’s shuttle program was an insular and incurious organization that did not study or learn from accidents in other high-technology fields, and not even its own. One of the things that we at the CAIB discovered was that before Columbia, NASA neither studied nor taught the lessons of the 1986 Challenger accident. Other than an annual day of remembrance, they treated it as if it was simply a dark time in the distant past that they wanted to forget, not a warning for the present. I was one of the people who urged Diane Vaughn, author of a detailed study of the Challenger accident, to publicly state that she had never been invited to NASA after the 1996 publication of her book. The day after we got her to say that during a press conference, she was invited to visit the NASA administrator, a small example of forcing the organization to change its attitudes.

But perhaps the most important role of the CAIB was in ending the shuttle program, and ultimately changing the way that the United States sent people into space. Inside the CAIB we developed a timeline of major shuttle program decisions, including all the times after Challenger that NASA planned to retire the shuttle only to reverse course after the replacement costs grew too high. It was clear that NASA was likely to continue flying the shuttle for many years unless it was forced to stop, possibly by the next accident. The CAIB did not recommend an immediate end to the program but did recommend actions that would make it difficult to continue flying the shuttle beyond a few more years.

It was the CAIB that forced important and embarrassing information out of NASA, the CAIB that ordered the test that removed any remaining doubt or denial about the technical cause of the accident, and the CAIB that started the clock ticking to end the shuttle program. Those facts are important in any account of the Columbia accident and its aftermath.

The documentary’s final episode devoted a few minutes to claiming that NASA has learned, and now teaches, the lessons of the Columbia accident, but did not explore how the agency does so, particularly in an era where it has contracted out astronaut launches to private industry. That subject alone could probably be the focus of an entire documentary, because lessons must constantly be learned and relearned, and taught to the new employees who may not have been born when the last accident occurred. Space Shuttle Columbia, the Final Flight is not the final story. There is more to be told. There always will be.

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Dwayne Day was an investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board where he focused on policy and budget issues in the space shuttle program. He can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

Starlink’s Disruption Of The Space Industry

A Falcon 9 lifts off May 28 as SpaceX continues a high cadence of missions to deploy Starlink satellites. (credit: SpaceX)

by Jeff Foust
Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Like many five-year-olds, Starlink celebrated its birthday with a big candle. In its case, it was a Falcon 9 that lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on May 23, placing 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. That launch took place five years—almost to the minute—after another Falcon 9 lifted off from nearby Space Launch Complex 40 and put 60 Starlink satellites into orbit, the first dedicated launch for the broadband megaconstellation.

“That would be a big step, to have more than zero in the ‘not bankrupt’ category,” Musk said of Starlink in 2020.

Starlink was an ambitious bet for SpaceX. The company believed it could leverage its experience in launch in telecommunications, using vertical integration and mass production to create a satellite constellation that would offer broadband services for a competitive price. If successful, it would allow SpaceX to enter a far larger market than launch, generating significantly more revenue to satisfy investors and fuel founder Elon Musk’s visions of sending humans to Mars.

It was also a dangerous bet based on the experience of past ventures that tried to develop similar systems, which either went through bankruptcy reorganization or never got off the ground. A quarter-century ago, for example, Teledesic proposed a constellation of as many as 900 satellites—a mind-boggling number at the time—and had the backing of Bill Gates and Craig McCaw, but went out of business before launching a single operational satellite.

Musk was keenly aware of that when he spoke at the Satellite 2020 conference in March 2020, after the company had launched about 300 satellites. “That would be a big step, to have more than zero in the ‘not bankrupt’ category,” he said then. (A few weeks after he spoke, OneWeb, in the process of deploying its own constellation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.)

So far, that bet has paid off. SpaceX has launched more than 6,500 Starlink satellites to date, according to statistics maintained by Jonathan McDowell. Of those, more than 6,050 are still in orbit (the 60 satellites launched in May 2019, called v0.9 Starlink satellites, are among the 450 that have deorbited.) Starlink is not only far and away the largest satellite constellation in service, it also constitutes the majority of all operational satellites in orbit today.

Starlink is arguably one of the biggest and most disruptive developments in the space industry in the last five years. That is an honor often reserved for SpaceX’s launch achievements, including reuse of boosters and payload fairings. That reuse is essential to Starlink’s business model: the satellite constellation would be far more expensive if the company had to build a completely new Falcon 9 for each batch of Starlink satellites.

But the reverse is also true: SpaceX’s reusability quest depends on Starlink. The company’s ability demonstrate rapid reuse of boosters requires a demand for launches of them that has come primarily from Starlink. Last year, when SpaceX performed 96 Falcon launches, 63 of them were devoted to Starlink.

Without Starlink, SpaceX would be a very different launch company than it is today, lacking the forcing function provided by the constellation.

That high demand from Starlink has allowed the launch side of SpaceX to refine its processes, reducing the time between launches and increasing the number of reflights of boosters (the current record is 21 flights.) That gives SpaceX the ability to accommodate not just more Starlink missions but also missions from other customers, an essential capability in a launch market where supply has been constrained by development delays, launch failures, and geopolitics.

In short, without Starlink, SpaceX would be a very different launch company than it is today, lacking the forcing function provided by the constellation. That will likely also hold true as SpaceX seeks to scale up launches of Starship vehicles, which will be, on many of its early missions, carrying larger Starlink satellites.

Competing against Starlink

Starlink has affected much of the rest of the satellite industry even more. Traditional geostationary orbit (GEO) satellite operators were seeing declining demand for their services before Starlink, as demand dropped for television services faster than it rose for data services. The rise of Starlink, though, disrupted plans by those operators to rely more on broadband services as SpaceX attracted customers with high-bandwidth offerings at latencies far lower than what GEO systems could achieve.

A few years ago, GEO operators started adopting a new buzzword: “multi-orbit.” They said they would combine their GEO satellite fleets with satellites in LEO and medium Earth orbit (MEO) in an effort to combine the best of both worlds. Those operators took different approaches: Eutelsat bought OneWeb, SES continued to build out its O3b constellation in MEO, and Telesat proposed its own LEO constellation, Lightspeed.

Intelsat, the other major GEO operator, was slower to develop its own multi-orbit strategy as it went through a Chapter 11 reorganization, but as recently as last fall said it was looking into developing its own MEO constellation.

On April 30, though, SES announced it reached an agreement to acquire Intelsat for $3.1 billion after more than a year of on-again, off-again discussions about a potential merger. The combined company would have $4.1 billion in revenues, based on projections for this year, though the deal is not expected to close until the second half of 2025.

One factor in that deal, executives said, was reducing costs for their multi-orbit strategy. “It’s about optimizing the future of multi-orbit satellite investments and fleets,” SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh said in a call with analysts. “We just don’t need to spend as much money as we were spending separately. The combination will give us the opportunity to reduce that.”

Costs have been an issue for other satellite operators seeking their own constellations to respond to Starlink. Telesat shifted manufacturers for its Lightspeed satellites last year from Thales Alenia Space to MDA, seeking smaller and cheaper satellites after both delays by Thales Alenia and struggles by Telesat to raise the several billion dollars needed to build and launch it.

Eutelsat has a completed constellation with the OneWeb system it acquired, but is already planning a second-generation system. It has disclosed few details about that system and how it plans to finance it, though, other than it will select a manufacturer for it this summer. Company executives added in an earnings call in May that the company doesn’t plan to launch another GEO satellite until 2026.

An illustration of a set of Starlink satellites prior to their deployment. (credit: SpaceX)

Starlink and the military

Starlink’s influence goes beyond business competitors to geopolitical ones. The system has become a key element of Ukraine’s defense against Russia, providing communications services when terrestrial or other satellite systems were unavailable. But the unusual approach of SpaceX working directly with Ukraine’s military has led to debates and disputes about the use of Starlink.

When SpaceX started deploying a constellation of thousands of satellites, many raised concerns about space safety. With that many satellites in narrow orbital bands, collisions with debris or active satellites seemed inevitable.

“We know the military is using them for comms and that’s OK. But our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes,” Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, said last February, adding that the company had taken steps to limit offensive usage. Water Isaacson’s biography of Musk, published last fall, claimed that SpaceX had not enabled Starlink coverage off the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea, disabling Ukrainian drones sent to attack Russian ships docked there, although Isaacson later attempt to “clarify” that claim with mixed success.

It shows, though, that power of Starlink, and of companies like SpaceX, to affect military operations. SpaceX has offered a military version of Starlink satellites, dubbed Starshield, that could offer imaging and other capabilities in addition to communications. A Falcon 9 launched May 22 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying the first set of satellites for what the National Reconnaissance Office called “proliferated systems featuring responsive collection and rapid data delivery.” The NRO did not release other details about the launch, although it is rumored to be part of the Starshield program with contributions from Northrop Grumman.

NRO did not disclose how many satellites were on the launch, but later tracking data showed at least 21 satellites were placed into orbit, similar for a typical Starlink mission.

Avoiding apocalypse

Perhaps just as important as what Starlink has done is what it has not. When SpaceX started deploying a constellation of thousands of satellites, many raised concerns about space safety. With that many satellites in narrow orbital bands, collisions with debris or active satellites seemed inevitable. Astronomers also warned of the impact the constellation would have on their observations when that initial batch of 60 satellites launched five years ago created a brilliant “string of pearls” display in night skies in the weeks after launch.

Five years later, though, the worst-case scenarios for space sustainability have been avoided, at least for now. Starlink satellites routinely and autonomously maneuver to avoid conjunctions, and SpaceX has worked with other satellite operators to better manage operations. One example is an agreement between NASA and SpaceX to coordinate maneuvers, with SpaceX agreeing to move its satellites should any make close approaches to NASA spacecraft.

The company has also worked with astronomers on ways to reduce the brightness of its satellites, developing technologies ranging from visors to mirrors to keep sunlight from reflecting off parts of the spacecraft. Those efforts have not completely resolved the problem—Starlink satellites are still brighter than what many astronomers prefer—but they have helped at least mitigate the problem.

“To be clear, industry doesn’t have to play nice with us,” said Kelsey Johnson, an astronomer at the University of Virginia and president of the American Astronomical Society, during a session on satellite constellation interference with astronomy at the organization’s conference in New Orleans in January. “They have invested real time and real money and effort to working with us that they don’t have to do.”

SpaceX has emphasized the ability of Starlink to connect people around the world, but analysts note that it remains primarily a “rich-world service”. (credit: SpaceX)

Generating cash and growing fast

Starlink has had a clear impact on companies, governments, and others. But can SpaceX do all that without going bankrupt?

SpaceX, as a privately held company, does not release financial details about Starlink. The company recently noted more than three million people worldwide are using Starlink (which is not necessarily the same as three million paying subscribers) with the service now available in nearly 100 markets. Executives has suggested that the system is profitable, but have disclosed no specifics.

That’s left it up to outside analysts to make their best guesses on the economics of Starlink. The latest assessment came from Quilty Space, which rolled out its analysis of system earlier this month using a bottoms-up financial model it developed.

“We started out this whole exercise wanting to know whether it’s profitable. We think we’ve come to that answer pretty clearly, which it this business does generate cash and it is growing fast,” said Chris Quilty, president of Quilty Space, during a May 9 webinar to discuss the study.

“It looks like Starlink will be the first megaconstellation to get to a cash flow positive place on its own accord,” Cadman said.

The analysis estimated that Starlink will bring in $6.6 billion in revenue in 2024, with EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of $3.8 billion. When subtracting capital expenditures, like manufacturing and launching satellites, Starlink will produce free cash of about $600 million this year.

“With this, the business is now self-sustaining. That’s the first major test of whether Starlink will be around here for the long haul,” said Justin Cadman, chief financial officer of Quilty Space.

The analysis credited that to a couple factors. “You’ve got to put up some crazy subscriber growth,” Quilty said. The company achieved that, seeing growth far greater than other satellite Internet companies like Hughes and Viasat, whose subscriber numbers have gone down somewhat since Starlink’s introduction.

“They’ve hit a spot in the market where there is, in fact, a willingness to pay,” Cadman said, calling Starlink a “rich-world service” for customers in wealthier countries that have limited connectivity options. “This is not connecting the unconnected. That’s a gap that Starlink probably will not be serving in a substantial sort of way any time in the near future.”

Another factor is keeping costs low. “We estimate that Starlink has been able to do an incredible job at keeping their spacecraft costs lower than basically any industry precedent,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space. The initial “V1” satellites cost about $200,000 each, he estimates, with the larger “V2 mini” satellites now being launched coming in at around $800,000.

“It looks like Starlink will be the first megaconstellation to get to a cash flow positive place on its own accord,” Cadman concluded.

Competitive pressures

Will others follow Starlink into profitability? Other constellations are in development like Telesat’s Lightspeed and a future OneWeb constellation, as well as Rivada Space Networks and its planned 600-satellite constellation. (Both Rivada and Telesat have contracts with SpaceX to launch their satellites.)

Perhaps the biggest competitive threat comes from Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which plans to launch more than 3,000 satellites to provide broadband services. It launched two prototype satellites in October and, last week, the company announced it completed testing and would deorbit them ahead of launching its first operational satellites later this year.

Amazon, like SpaceX, is building its satellites and terminals in-house, leveraging vertical integration to lower costs. Amazon can also bring its major marketing and distribution capabilities to bear to promote Kuiper. However, it is reliant on outside launch providers, including vehicles that either have just made their first launches—ULA’s Vulcan Centaur—or have yet to fly at all: Arianespace’s Ariane 6 and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. (Amazon does have some of the last Atlas 5 rockets from ULA to launch some initial satellites, and even bought a few Falcon 9 rockets from SpaceX as well.)

“If you want to be competitive in there, then you have to own your own rocket and build your own satellites,” Beck said of Rocket Lab’s constellation ambitions. “We’re just marching very methodically towards that, step after step.”

Starlink faces other threats. Its use in Ukraine led to threats from Russia of attacking those satellites. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Russia had, after two years, found ways to interfere with Starlink services in Ukraine, with Ukrainian forces reporting severely degraded services.

The long-term economics of Starlink remain uncertain, the Quilty Space analysis noted, given questions about whether the company’s pricing is sustainable. “Starlink is on a path to delivering attractive returns on invested capital,” Cadman said, “but it’s not there yet.”

The Starlink approach itself, though, seems attractive to other companies. During an earnings call in February, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck started musing about operating a constellation, rather than just building and launching satellites for others, citing the much larger market for providing space services like communications.

Analysts on the call quizzed Beck about this proposed constellation, which the company had not discussed in detail before, although he offered few details about what it would do or when it would be developed.

However, he made clear that, if and when his company pursued a constellation, it would take a page from SpaceX’s Starlink playbook. “If you want to be competitive in there, then you have to own your own rocket and build your own satellites,” he said. “We’re just marching very methodically towards that, step after step.”

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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.

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Ed Dwight: The First Black Astronaut?

Ed Dwight emerges from the New Shepard capsule May 19 after his suborbital spaceflight, more than 60 days after he was identified as a potential astronaut. (credit: Blue Origin)

by John M. Logsdon
Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Ninety-year-old Ed Dwight was one of six people aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle when it made its suborbital trip into space on May 19, 2024. In reporting on this flight, The New York Times identified Dwight as “the first Black astronaut.” Many other news accounts described him, more correctly, as “the first Black astronaut candidate.”

Dwight’s story is more complex than reported. The term “astronaut candidate” is used by NASA to describe individuals selected by the space agency for training to become a member of the astronaut corps. By that definition Dwight was not an astronaut candidate. When in 1963 Dwight applied to NASA to become a member of the third group of astronaut candidates, he was not selected. However, if the term “astronaut candidate” is defined more broadly as someone starting down a path to become an astronaut, then the term can properly applied to Ed Dwight.

By NASA’s definition Dwight was not an astronaut candidate. However, if the term is defined more broadly as someone starting down a path to become an astronaut, then it can properly applied to him.

It was John F. Kennedy’s White House that decided in 1962 that the United States should include an African-American in NASA’s astronaut corps, and Dwight was identified as the only Black member of the armed forces who came close to meeting the criteria that had been used to select the first two groups of astronaut candidates. What happened then is a bit controversial. Dwight spent two years being identified by the White House and the media as the likely first Black astronaut, and he started Air Force training to be selected by NASA while he was also used by Washington for extensive publicity about broadening the ethnic composition of the astronaut corps.

There are two broad interpretations of why Dwight was not selected to join that elite group. One is that he did not demonstrate the technical qualifications required for selection during his training at the just-established Aerospace Research Pilot School. The other is that he was a victim of racism among those involved in the selection process.

I became aware of Dwight’s story as I researched what became my 2010 book John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. I did not include any discussion of his situation in that book, but I did include it in an article titled “John F. Kennedy and the ‘Right Stuff’” published 2013 in the space history periodical Quest (Vol. 20, No. 2.) What follows is the excerpt from that article dealing with Ed Dwight. It is included here with permission of Quest’s publisher. It offers a somewhat different version of Dwight’s story than is currently being reported.

A Black astronaut?

As the US program of human spaceflight got underway, the issue of broadening the ethnic basis of the astronaut corps became an issue of presidential concern. In an anecdote of questionable authenticity, one of Lyndon Johnson’s biographers reports that President Kennedy “liked to tell the story of how he and Lyndon had watched [John] Glenn’s takeoff together from his office [in March 1962], and how, as the countdown began and they were both watching very tensely, Johnson suddenly turned to Kennedy and said, ‘If John Glenn were only a Negro.’”[1] All seven of the Mercury astronauts were Caucasian; this was an unavoidable outcome of President Eisenhower’s 1958 decision to limit astronaut candidates to military test pilots. There were no non-Caucasian test pilots in the military services as the initial astronaut selection took place in 1959, and that was still the case as the Kennedy Administration took office in 1961.

On September 21, 1961, Edward R. Murrow, the prestigious radio and television correspondent who had become the director of the US Information Agency, wrote to James Webb, asking, “Why don’t we put the first non-white man in space?” He added “If your boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle is available, we could retell our whole space effort to the whole non-white world, which is most of it.” Webb responded to Murrow on October 18, telling him that NASA had many suggestions for adding to the seven Mercury astronauts, “including considerable interest… in the selection and flight of a woman.” Webb’s reply “did not give any encouragement” to Murrow’s suggestion because it was “inconsistent with our agency’s policies.”[2]

His goal at this point, Dwight recounts, was to become a career Air Force officer, not a test pilot and potential astronaut candidate.

It is very likely that Murrow at this time or earlier had also communicated his proposal directly to John Kennedy. As a presidential candidate, Kennedy had already been sensitized to the symbolic benefits of having at least one Black US astronaut. According to one account, when Kennedy met with various African-American leaders during his campaign to ask them what was needed to make sure he was the choice of most Black voters, Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, suggested that Kennedy pledge that he would make sure that NASA would recruit a Black astronaut. Although Kennedy did owe his election, among other factors, to his strong support from African-American voters, addressing civil rights issues was not one of his top policy priorities, and neither during the campaign nor in his first year in office did he make such a public pledge.

Kennedy did take several civil rights steps in 1961, however. Among them was putting pressure on the Department of Defense to enforce existing equal opportunity legislation and regulations, and promoting racial integration in the military services. As part of this initiative, the White House apparently quietly urged the Air Force to include at least one Black officer in an incoming class at its new Aerospace Research Pilot School, which had been established in October 1961 as the first formal US astronaut training course. The criteria for applying to the school included being under 35 years of age, having at least 1,500 hours of experience flying jet airplanes, possessing at least a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, and having three consecutive “outstanding” ratings from his military superiors.

Of the then current Black Air Force pilots, only one, Captain Edward Dwight Jr., met all the criteria for acceptance to the school.[3] According to Dwight, on November 4, 1961, without prior warning, he received a letter inviting him to apply to the Edwards school. His goal at this point, he recounts, was to become a career Air Force officer, not a test pilot and potential astronaut candidate. Dwight did apply and was accepted for the first phase of the year-long program, aimed at teaching basic test pilot capabilities.

The commander of the Aerospace Research Pilot School was legendary test pilot Colonel Chuck Yeager, the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. Yeager remembers that “from the moment we picked our first class, I was caught in a buzz saw of controversy involving a black student. The White House, Congress, and civil rights groups came at me with meat cleavers, and the only way I could save my head was to prove I wasn’t a damned bigot.” He adds that he “was informed that the White House wanted a black pilot in the space course.”[4]

The program began in August 1962. According to Yeager, Dwight completed the first portion of the course only with special attention and tutoring. Dwight, in contrast, suggests not only that he was not given special help, but that barriers to success were placed in his path. Dwight then began the second, more rigorous, phase, which would focus on space skills and thus qualify its graduates to be astronaut candidates for either the Air Force or NASA. After the Air Force reviewed all the applications for the second phase, Dwight, according to Yeager, was rated 26th and last among finalists for acceptance; plans called for accepting only 11 candidates.

As those who would be selected for the second, space-oriented portion of the course were about to be announced in the spring of 1963, Yeager was called by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay and told that “Bobby Kennedy wants a colored in space. Get one in your course.” Yeager first tried to defer Dwight’s acceptance to a subsequent space class, but when he was told that this was not acceptable to the White House, he agreed to increase the number of students accepted to 15 instead of the planned 11, with three additional white applicants who had been rated ahead of Dwight, but not originally selected, also admitted. According to Dwight, on the night before the formal announcement that he had been accepted into the advanced course, President Kennedy called Dwight’s parents to congratulate them on their son’s accomplishments, and the fact that he was to be admitted was leaked to the media by the White House.

It was Attorney General Robert Kennedy, rather than his brother the president, who was most active at this time in promoting Dwight’s astronaut candidacy. While Dwight was completing the first phase of his training and even after he was admitted to the space portion of the program, Yeager remembers, “every week, it seemed like, a detachment of Civil Rights Division lawyers would turn up from Washington”; they “squinted in the desert sunlight and asked a great many questions about the progress and treatment of Ed Dwight.” As the Dwight situation unfolded, Edward R. Murrow continued to push the White House regarding the benefits of having a Black astronaut. Murrow again contacted President Kennedy, stressing “the favorable international impact which would stem from our having a negro in training as an astronaut.”[5]

The White House National Aeronautics and Space Council also got involved at this point. Kennedy told Vice President Johnson, chair of the Council, that he hoped that “something might be done” in order to place an African-American in training as an astronaut. Space Council Executive Secretary Edward Welsh at a July 12, 1962, meeting of the council reported that NASA had already looked into the matter, and that “there are not available any but Caucasian males who could meet the rigorous competence and experience qualifications required.” Welsh had contacted the secretaries of the Air Force and Navy, who “agreed to examine the possibilities of working “negroes” and “orientals” into their test pilot training programs, as an initial step toward qualification for astronaut eligibility.”[6]

Yeager’s deputy Thomas McElmurry later commented that “Dwight was perfectly capable of being a good astronaut… He would not have been number one, but if it was important enough to this country to have a minority early in space then the logical guy was Dwight.”

As he progressed through his advanced training, Dwight applied to be a NASA astronaut in 1963. He was one of 26 people, many from venues other than the Aerospace Research Pilot School, recommended to NASA by the Air Force as potential astronauts; a total of 136 individuals applied for selection. Of these, NASA in October 1963 selected 14 as astronaut candidates. Dwight was not among them, although two of his school colleagues, Dave Scott and Theodore Freeman, both Caucasian, were selected. Several members of Congress and the Black-oriented magazine Ebony suggested at the time and later that Dwight had suffered from racial discrimination during his time at Edwards; according to Dwight that allegation was never investigated. Chuck Yeager suggests that “the only prejudice against Dwight was a conviction shared by all the instructors that he was not qualified to be in the school.” Dwight in his autobiography paints a very different picture of systematic harassment and prejudicial behavior by Yeager and other members of the school’s staff.

Yeager’s deputy Thomas McElmurry later commented that “Dwight was perfectly capable of being a good astronaut… He would not have been number one, but if it was important enough to this country to have a minority early in space then the logical guy was Dwight. But it wasn’t important enough to somebody in this country at this stage of the game to do it, so they just chose not to do it.”

Dwight’s classmate Dave Scott, who in 1963 was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate and later walked on the Moon, says that Dwight was not selected as an astronaut candidate because he was less qualified than other applicants, rather than as a result of racial prejudice. This perspective was confirmed by the individual in charge of NASA’s selection process, Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton, who had been named head of the astronaut office after being taken off active flight status. Slayton notes that NASA was well aware of White House interest in Dwight’s candidacy, but although “Dwight got through the school and did okay… Okay wasn’t really enough. Had he been white, he wouldn’t even have been a serious candidate… Just based on the flying and technical matters, Dwight finished out of the running.”[7]

After supporting Dwight’s participation in the space course at Edwards, the White House did not interfere with NASA as it selected the 1963 class of astronauts, and Dwight did not contest NASA’s decision. That being the case, the immediate issue of naming a Black astronaut disappeared. Indeed, NASA would not select African-Americans for astronaut training until 1978; the Air Force in 1967 did select a Black man, Robert Lawrence, as an astronaut in the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory.

Endnotes

1. See Joseph D. Atkinson and Jay M. Shafritz, The Real Stuff: A History of NASA’s Astronaut Recruitment Program (Praeger, 1985); Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager: An Autobiography. (Bantam Books, 1985); Ed Dwight, Soaring on the Wings of a Dream (Third World Press, 2009) for a discussion of the attempts to diversify the astronaut corps.
2. Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff, 98-99.
3. Dwight’s self-published 2009 autobiography is a rambling account of his prejudicial treatment during his time as an astronaut candidate and is of questionable historical reliability. For example, Dwight recounts an eight-hour interrogation in the West Wing of the White House as he was beginning his training and several unlikely sexual incidents. Nevertheless, this brief account of White House involvement in support of Dwight’s training as a potential astronaut candidate would not be complete without reflecting Dwight’s views of the experience. In addition, there are inconsistencies in these four accounts; what is written here is the author’s best effort to provide an accurate rendering of events. Later in life, Dwight reinvented himself as a successful sculptor, particularly of African-American subjects.
4. Yeager and Janos, Chuck Yeager, 269.
5. Yeager and Janos, Chuck Yeager, 270.
6. Edward C. Welsh, “Astronaut Training Report,” Record of National Aeronautics and Space Council Meeting, 12 July 1962, National Aeronautics and Space Council Files, Box 2, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
7. Yeager and Janos, Chuck Yeager, 270; Dwight, Soaring on the Wings of a Dream, chapter 1, 2, 15; Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff, 101; Donald “Deke” Slayton with Michael Cassutt, Deke: U.S. Manned Space from Mercury to the Shuttle (Tom Doherty Associates, 1994), 133.

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John M. Logsdon is Professor Emeritus at George Washington University and Founder of its Space Policy Institute.

Why Planetary Protection Matters

Sample tubes cached by the Perseverance Mars rover for later return to Earth, an effort that requires following planetary protection protocols for both forward and backward contamination. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Why planetary protection matters to the future of space exploration

by Dylan Taylor
Tuesday, May 28, 2024

The hiker’s motto you often hear cited when it comes to dealing with forays into the wilderness is, “leave only footprints, take only memories.” As humanity spreads outward into space we need to try and adopt something similar —perhaps adding, “take only memories, readings, and bring back a few samples.” We are moving outward to study worlds beyond our own. As such, it behooves us to do our best to not alter the very thing that we have gone out to study—if studying these places is why we go there in the first place, which it is.

When humanity heads to Mars and beyond in this and future centuries, we can’t just leave biohazards in a crater, however well contained. Forever is a long time.

Inevitably our space droids will break down and human astronauts will need to come home. Inevitably things will be left behind. Ideally, we leave behind things to further our studies. If weight and mission requirements call for leaving things behind, we should do so in the most responsible fashion possible. One thing in particular that we want to avoid doing is leaving terrestrial life behind.

Our record thus far has been rather good. Mars has lots of robots; some operating, others silent. With the possible exception of a few early Soviet probes, all others were sterilized before leaving Earth. The Moon is a somewhat different story. Half a century ago no one really thought there would be life there, and so far that is the prevailing assumption. The Apollo missions were barebones and a lot of things needed for human surface activities were left behind. Some things were crashed to create lunar quakes, which we then measured. Little if any sterilization of this hardware was done since the thinking at the time was that it was not necessary.

The catalog of human debris on the Moon ranges from the obvious (transport vehicles and tools) to the curious (golf balls, a feather, and a hammer) to the potentially hazardous. Strewn among the 400,000 pounds of lunar detritus are 96 bags of human waste. Some suggest we should check on them when we return. Why check? One obvious reason is to see what half a century of ±200-degree temperature swings and brutal ultraviolet radiation from the Sun does to them. Second while it is only theoretical, some thought has been given to what these extreme conditions might do to the microorganisms that were in the waste bags when they were left behind. Given the absurd extremes that some life forms on Earth thrive in, who knows what happened inside those bags. The astrobiology folks want to know.

Curiosity and 1960s mindsets aside, when humanity heads to Mars and beyond in this and future centuries, we can’t just leave biohazards in a crater, however well contained. Forever is a long time. And if the contents of waste bags—alive or inert—can affect the visited world after the container breaks down, well, that’s not why we went there. We’ll need a better way. The concept is called “planetary protection”. If you are a Star Trek fan this is the one of the precursors for the “Prime Directive”.

As is the case in our crowded, polluted, and rapidly warming world, we have stopped to ponder the wisdom of many of our prior decisions. As is the case with how we try to deal with our home planet, many people now ask how we could go to space responsibly. Planetary protection arose in the 1960s to protect the places we visit from earthly or “forward” contamination. It also embodied an approach for how to handle samples that we return to Earth to prevent “back contamination”.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty requires nations to bear responsibility for their space activities and to avoid “harmful contamination” of celestial bodies. Since then, every space mission presumably has included measures to prevent such incidents. Yet today, some space stakeholders view the planetary protection model as an antique. Some feel that planetary protection, as currently applied, needs comprehensive international guidelines. Some people claim that current requirements could constrain the private sector. Taking concerns further, some people claim that the status quo of how we deal with preventing forward contamination could might even prevent humans from walking on Mars. Whether or not to debate these concerns and fears is a moot point. It’s a debate already underway in earnest.

The point in observing planetary protection today is that we are specifically looking for things on Mars that could possibly have existing life or evidence of past life. These signals and chemical structures are likely to be very fragile and can easily be contaminated by a single breath from a human researcher.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is collecting samples in part to see if life has existed there. NASA plans to return those samples back to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return program as soon as the early 2030s. The full array of planetary protection protocols is being observed, including how they are handled on Earth. Already, missions have brought back samples from comets and asteroids, so we have had practice in operating under these restrictions. So far they have all worked perfectly.

Some skeptics would counter that If at least 175 meteorites from Mars have struck Earth (that we know of), why should we worry now about bringing home rocks from Mars? Given the transit times between worlds—millions of years of intense solar exposure and high heat during atmospheric entry, among other factors—the probability that anything alive would survive is low, but not zero. The point in observing planetary protection today is that we are specifically looking for things on Mars that could possibly have existing life or evidence of past life. These signals and chemical structures are likely to be very fragile and can easily be contaminated by a single breath from a human researcher. Planetary protection also serves science as well as our ecosystem.

The need for planetary protection policy

Andy Spry, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute, framed planetary protection like dental hygiene: “It’s there, it’s inconvenient, but it’s really good to do.” Of course, planetary protection policies require constant updates. We developed them in the 1960s largely to address robotic exploration of other worlds. Landing humans on Mars wasn’t part of conversational reality then as it is now. Indeed, a recent SpaceNews op-ed made this point: “Under existing policies, no human mission would be allowed to venture to the surface of Mars.”

Aware of knowledge gaps, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommended in 2018 that NASA update its planetary protection policies. NASA responded with a series of interim directives to support crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. NASA acknowledged the broad scope of these documents but determined they were necessary to release as framework guidelines. NASA also sought to confirm that planetary protection and human exploration of other worlds are compatible.

“Planetary protection does not say that humans cannot go to Mars,” Elaine Seasly, NASA’s Deputy Planetary Protection Officer, said in a presentation to Penn State’s Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. “We’re saying, ‘Yes, humans can go if we can monitor and manage contamination correctly.’ We’re shifting what we did with robotics in controlling contamination to managing and monitoring for crewed missions.”

Planetary protection issues to resolve

As more nations and commercial enterprises launch space programs, updated planetary protection policies are required. Three areas of interest involve international commitment, commercial space exploration, and new technologies.

An international commitment to transparency

More than 110 countries have signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty. The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) provides the most comprehensive international guidelines for planetary protection. Though most countries do, no country is legally required by these international treaties to adhere to the treaty or follow COSPAR’s recommendations. That leaves room for potential bad actors. “My concerns relate to China and Russia, who participate in a robust fashion at COSPAR but their actual follow through of regulations are wanting,” Mike Gold, chief growth officer at Redwire, said at the 2023 Humans to Mars Summit. NASA’s Artemis Accords seek transparency in the peaceful exploration of space. We must apply that transparency to planetary protection, a pursuit COSPAR can lead.

Cooperation with the private sector

Several companies have preliminary plans for commercial launches to Mars. The first human on the planet could be a private citizen. NASA and other international space agencies must work with private enterprise to develop agile policies that leverage innovation while protecting other worlds. The new space economy we now see unfolding has accelerated advances in many technologies. NASA, COSPAR, and other agencies can modernize international standards by flowing innovation through all parties and sharing best practices. The ability to detect contamination and characterize samples has vastly improved since the 1960s. Planetary protection policies need to take these advances into account.

Leveraging technology to keep pace

Space agencies test spacecraft surfaces for potential contamination before launching them. NASA is exploring how metagenomics might help conduct more specific risk-based assessments. The Jet Propulsion Lab conducts research in, among many disciplines, microbial reduction techniques and sample sterilization procedures.

Planetary protection can coexist with landing humans on Mars and bringing back rocks. It might be inconvenient, but it’s worth it.

As Seasly said in her presentation at Penn State, NASA is undergoing a “huge culture shift” regarding planetary protection. That’s vital. A new wave of collaborators—governmental and private—is leading space exploration in dynamic directions. They require a planetary protection framework that provides room for growth and innovation.

Concurrently, these new space-goers bear responsibility to protect Earth and the places they visit. We can do both with the right policies. Planetary protection can coexist with landing humans on Mars and bringing back rocks. As Spry said, planetary protection might be inconvenient, but it’s worth it.

Off we go

We face the issue of the “observer effect” whenever we reach out to a new environment, be it on Earth or on another world. As mentioned earlier, it is somewhat pointless to spend a lot of time and effort to go to a distant world to study it only to find out that we altered or contaminated the very thing we went to study.

Moreover, while science fiction is replete with constant alien invasions of Earth, the threat is not zero. And we will need to study many worlds and their life forms—or lack of them—before we can think of loosening these planetary protection protocols. Indeed, as we increase the number and diversity of worlds we visit these concerns may only become magnified.

As for sending people, and all of their biological companions, to other worlds, we have found ways to visit remote places on Earth without forward and back contamination. As we go, we’ll need to keep this in mind. But we will also need to understand what we find when we get there and how best to deal with this armed with data, not wild guesses.

But go there we will. Safely.

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Dylan Taylor is the founder and CEO of Voyager Space. Dylan is a commercial astronaut, flying a member of the NS-19 crew for Blue Origin. As an active NewSpace investor, he is dedicated to developing the space economy and accessibility to the final frontier.

Are You Ready To Take A Ride In Space?

Let’s have some fun today. Let’s send each of you to space for the ride of your life! Elliana Sheriff began life in Southern California. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She is attractive, bright, eloquent, and adventurous. She was a natural for the television news business. She went into the television news business. She did well. Her career took her to Austin, Texas. (By the way, she is one of that special group of people who is a Tesla owner.)

      Like many other bright and special people, she decided to reinvent herself. She started the podcast Ellie in Space. She staked out a market niche. She wanted to humanize spaceflight. She tried to make it understandable to the regular watcher like me. She has prospered. She is now close to 100,000 subscribers. Ellie talked about normal people like us hitching a ride into space last night. She drew an analogy between the early days of commercial aviation in the 1930s. Long ago, you would fly around in an unpressurized, unheated aircraft like a DC-3. If you wanted to fly roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles, the round-trip ticket was $275. In those days this was almost half the price of a new Ford or Chevrolet. Here is a link to her podcast, I urge you to watch it:

     As of today, you have four options if you want to take a ride into space as follows:

Virgin Galactic: 15-minute suborbital flight is a space plane:   $450,000 per seat.

Blue Origin: 15-minute suborbital flight in a space capsule: Up to $30 million per seat.

Space-X: Orbital flight that could take you to the I.S.S.:                $55 million per seat.

Russia Soyuz capsule orbital flight to I.S.S.:                                       $90 million per seat.

    If you are more adventurous and want to take a manned flight around the moon, Space-X has such a flight on offer for a reported $150 million per seat on a Space-X Dragon capsule that I presume will be launched by a Falcon Heavy. Some people have already signed up for this flight and paid a huge deposit. Elon Musk declines to disclose the names of these civilian astronauts with “deep pockets.” One Japanese billionaire is rumored to be on this flight.

    As soon as the Starship is operational, a special version of the second stage will be configured to carry 100 colonists on a one-way trip to Mars. I have seen some plans for this spacecraft. Each colonist will have their own state room and a lot of creature comforts that most prior astronauts could only dream of. Elon has said that a ticket on this ship will cost you $500,000. Elon says that one can sell their house and buy a seat on this spacecraft. If I was 40 years younger, I would “Go for it!”

Russian Research On Space Nukes And Alternate Counterspace Weapons

Russian research on space nukes and alternative counterspace weapons (part 1)

by Bart Hendrickx
Monday, May 13, 2024

In February, White House officials asserted that Russia is developing a space-based anti-satellite system that would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit. They later confirmed media speculation that the system in question is a nuclear weapon. Part 1 of this article summarizes what has been revealed about the alleged weapon so far and attempts to chart academic and laboratory research on nuclear explosions in space done in Russia in recent years. It also examines a Russian satellite launch that the US believes is related to the development of the weapon. Part 2 will explore Russian work on alternative directed-energy weapon systems that would mimic some of the effects of nuclear explosions in space without having the same devastating consequences.

Reports on a Russian space-based nuclear weapon

The commotion over the weapon began on February 14 with a post on social media by House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Turner, who said his panel had information concerning ”a serious national security threat” and called on President Joe Biden to declassify all information relating to the threat. Turner did not elaborate on the nature of the threat, but press reports the same day claimed it was a Russian space-based nuclear weapon. Responding to the reports on February 15, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed that it involved a Russian anti-satellite capability, but that it was ”not an active capability that’s been deployed” and did not pose an immediate threat to anyone’s safety. In Kirby’s words, it was not a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction on Earth.

President Biden told reporters that US intelligence had found that Russia had a capacity to launch a system into space ”that could theoretically do something that was damaging.”

Kirby did not address questions about whether the system was a nuclear weapon or was simply powered by nuclear energy, but did say that it was space-based and would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which specifically forbids the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, including nuclear arms. He also said that the intelligence community’s general knowledge of Russian pursuit of this kind of capability went back ”many, many months, if not a few years”, but that only in recent weeks it had been possible to assess with a higher sense of confidence exactly how Russia continues to pursue it. Kirby stated that the intelligence community had serious concerns about a broad declassification of this intelligence and assessed that ”private engagement” rather than immediately publicizing the intelligence could be a more effective approach.[1] According to the Washington Post, the intelligence was obtained under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.[2] This allows the US government to collect foreign intelligence by targeting non-US persons located abroad who use US electronic communication services such as email and phone calls.

John Kirby addressing reporters on February 15.

The following day, President Biden told reporters that US intelligence had found that Russia had a capacity to launch a system into space ”that could theoretically do something that was damaging.” He stressed that there was no nuclear threat to the people of America or anywhere else in the world, saying the system was designed only to damage satellites in space. He added that there was no evidence that Russia had made a decision to go forward ”with anything in space.”

This is all that the White House publicly revealed at the time about the Russian space weapon. All the additional information on it came from anonymous sources quoted by leading US media outlets. On February 16, NBC quoted ”a US official and a congressional official familiar with the intelligence” as saying that the threat was a Russian nuclear-powered space asset that could be weaponized, rather than a nuclear bomb.[3] This led to speculation that the weapon in question might be Ekipazh, a nuclear-powered satellite under development at the KB Arsenal design bureau that was first revealed in The Space Review in 2019. There were strong indications at the time that the satellite would be used for space-based electronic warfare and this is backed up by additional evidence that has appeared more recently.[4]

While the White House did not categorically state that the weapon was a nuclear warhead, its claim that it violates the Outer Space Treaty strongly pointed in that direction. The treaty does not forbid the deployment in orbit of satellites powered by nuclear energy. Moreover, even a constellation of nuclear-powered electronic warfare satellites like Ekipazh would hardly constitute a weapon of mass destruction.

The fact that the weapon is nuclear-armed was also confirmed by sources consulted by ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. CNN provided the most specific information, reporting that the weapon would produce a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and a flood of highly charged particles that could potentially cripple a vast swath of commercial and government satellites orbiting the Earth. According to one defense official quoted by CNN, there had been a stream of intelligence reporting in recent months on Russian efforts to develop nuclear-powered anti-satellite capabilities (a possible reference to Ekipazh), but Russia had recently also made progress in efforts to build a nuclear EMP weapon. It might render large portions of particular orbits unusable by creating a minefield of disabled satellites that would then prove dangerous to any new satellites that the US might try to launch to replace or repair the existing ones. [5]

On February 17, the New York Times reported that American intelligence officials had become aware of the new Russian capability after analyzing ”a series of secret military satellite launches” carried out by Russia around the time of its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Another New York Times story on February 21 seemed to refer to a single test conducted in early 2022. It had reportedly taken US intelligence agencies some time to figure out that the test was a practice run for putting a nuclear weapon into orbit. Also, US intelligence agencies had told their closest European partners that if Russia was going to launch a nuclear weapon into orbit, it would probably do so this year, although they were divided on whether it would be a harmless dummy warhead or a real one.[6]

An official reaction from the Kremlin came during a televised meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on February 20. Putin strongly denied the existence of the weapon, saying Russia had always been categorically against the deployment of nuclear weapons in space and was still against it. Shoigu accused the White House of having made the allegations to force Congress to support aid for Ukraine and also encourage Moscow to re-enter nuclear arms control talks that had been suspended amid the tensions with the US over Ukraine.

Plumb said that a sufficiently powerful nuclear detonation in the right location could render low Earth orbit unusable for up to a year.

In an apparent response to these developments, the US and Japan drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution calling on all nations to reaffirm their commitment not to deploy nuclear weapons in space and also to pledge not to develop them either, something not specifically stipulated in the Outer Space Treaty. When the resolution was submitted to a vote on April 24, it was supported by 13 of the 15 council members, with China abstaining and Russia casting a veto.

Dismissing the resolution as a ”dirty spectacle,” Russia’s UN ambassador Vasiliy Nebenzia said it didn’t go far enough in banning space-based weapons. Russia and China subsequently proposed an amendment to the US-Japan draft that would ban the placement of any type of weapon in orbit, but the US was one of seven countries that voted against. In a reaction to the Russian veto of the Security Council resolution, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reiterated the US assessment that Russia is developing ”a new satellite carrying a nuclear device,” adding that if Russia had no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space, as claimed by Vladimir Putin, it would not have vetoed the resolution.[7]

Final confirmation that the suspected device is indeed a nuclear weapon came from Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on May 1. He said that a sufficiently powerful nuclear detonation in the right location could render low Earth orbit unusable for up to a year. Plumb declined to elaborate in an open session on the development status of the weapon, repeating only that it was not considered an imminent threat.[8]

Nuclear weapons in space

In the absence of any concrete evidence for the existence the weapon, the reports have drawn the necessary skepticism from analysts. While a nuclear explosion in space is the only effective way of knocking out entire constellations of satellites (like SpaceX’s Starlink), it would also disable a significant portion of Russia’s own satellite fleet. The only logic seen behind the deployment of such a weapon is its use as a deterrent or as a last-ditch weapon in case all other options are exhausted. Questions were also raised about the wisdom of actually orbiting a nuclear weapon, which makes it more vulnerable to detection and even attack. A nuclear weapon can just as well be delivered to space by intermediate or intercontinental ballistic missiles flying on a suborbital trajectory. That is the way both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted a number of high-altitude nuclear explosions between 1958 and 1962.

The largest of these was the US Starfish Prime test on July 9, 1962, in which a 1.44-megaton nuclear bomb was detonated 400 kilometers above the mid-Pacific Ocean. The artificial radiation belt produced by the explosion led to the failure of several of the relatively few satellites orbiting the Earth at the time and its electromagnetic pulse blew out hundreds of streetlights in Hawaii and caused widespread telephone outages.

Images of the 1962 Starfish Prime test.

The worst effects of a Soviet high-altitude test were from the electromagnetic pulse of a 300-kiloton weapon detonated at an altitude of 290 kilometers above Kazakhstan on October 22, 1962. Although far less powerful than Starfish Prime, the weapon was tested over a large, populated landmass and at a location where the Earth’s magnetic field was greater. Among other things, it induced a current surge in an underground power line that caused a fire in a power plant in the city of Karaganda.

The tests clearly demonstrated that the impact of nuclear detonations in space is not restricted to satellites. In fact, the higher the altitude of the detonation, the bigger the EMP field on the ground. While the EMP is not dangerous to humans, it can have a major impact on critical ground-based infrastructure (such as the electric grid) and therefore directly affect people’s lives. If Russia is indeed developing such a weapon, the White House’s claim that it is solely aimed against satellites should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.

While the EMP is not dangerous to humans, it can have a major impact on critical ground-based infrastructure (such as the electric grid) and therefore directly affect people’s lives.

The high-altitude nuclear tests of the late 1950s and early 1960s contributed to the signing of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water, allowing countries to proceed only with underground nuclear tests. Despite the ratification of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967 (which prohibited stationing nuclear weapons in orbit), the Soviet Union did continue work on a project to launch a nuclear weapon that would be de-orbited before completing a single revolution around the Earth and approach the United States from the south, thereby evading most of the country’s missile early warning systems, which were predominantly pointed towards the North Pole. It became known in the West as the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS). Tests flights with dummy warheads were carried out between 1965 and 1971.[9]

Since then, there have been no clear signs that the orbiting of nuclear weapons has been part of the Soviet Union’s or Russia’s military doctrine. At least some insight into current Russian thinking on counterspace weapons was provided by a lengthy two-part article that appeared last year in ”Voyennaya Mysl” (”Military Thinking”), the flagship theoretical journal of Russia’s Ministry of Defense. The article gives a general outline of counterspace systems that could potentially be fielded in the future and, quite unusually, also mentions two currently existing Russian anti-satellite systems by name, namely the Nudol direct-ascent ASAT missile (which destroyed a defunct Soviet-era satellite in November 2021) and the ground-based Peresvet laser system, designed to dazzle or blind optical reconnaissance satellites trying to follow the movements of Russian mobile ICBM forces.

When discussing nuclear explosions in space, the authors refer to the 1962 Starfish Prime test to illustrate their far-reaching consequences. Describing them as ”effective”, they also call them a ”double-edged sword” because they destroy not only the enemy’s satellites, but also those of the country that detonates the weapon. A similar test carried out today would disable an estimated 90% of satellites in low Earth orbit and would make piloted space missions impossible ”for some time,” the authors write. They don’t specifically mention the possibility of placing nuclear weapons into orbit. Still, that should not necessarily be seen as evidence that such an option is not being considered. Although the affiliation of the authors is not given, they can be linked through other sources to the KB Arsenal design bureau and the Mozhaiskiy Military Space Academy and are therefore unlikely to be in a position to be privy to all the details of Russia’s counterspace efforts.[10]

New Russian research on high-altitude nuclear explosions

Notwithstanding the fact that the high-altitude nuclear explosions of the 1950s and 1960s provided a considerable amount of data on their effects on satellites and ground-based infrastructure, any new efforts in this field would undoubtedly require fundamental research into such things as the formation of artificial radiation belts, the propagation of electromagnetic pulses through the ionosphere (which stretches from about 50 to 1,000 kilometers above Earth) and their impact on orbiting hardware. The results of such research may well appear in the academic literature without being tied to any concrete projects or even to nuclear weapons as such. This would provide at least some clues about any renewed interest in the use of nuclear weapons in space, irrespective of whether they are deployed in orbit or delivered by a suborbital missile.

One organization that would almost certainly play a key role in such work is the Russian Federal Nuclear Center – All-Russian Scientific Research Institute for Experimental Physics (RFYaTs-VNIIEF), which operates under the wings of the Rosatom State Corporation. Situated in Sarov in the Nizhniy Novgorod region some 400 kilometers east of Moscow, this is Russia’s leading research center in the field of nuclear weapons, although it also specializes in other areas such as laser technology. RFYaTs-VNIIEF also has ties to the space program. It has a so-called Center for Space Instrument Building that is involved in several scientific projects (such as the Spektr-UV ultraviolet observatory and the Gamma-400 gamma observatory) and also works on space-based laser communications systems. The institute also has infrastructure to test the effects of space radiation on satellite components. Besides that, RFYaTs-VNIIEF is known to have some kind of involvement in KB Arsenal’s Ekipazh project, acting as a subcontractor to Krasnaya Zvezda, the producer of the satellite’s thermionic nuclear reactor. Moreover, it is also the prime contractor for the Peresvet anti-satellite laser dazzling system.

There is no direct evidence that RFYaTs-VNIIEF is doing any specific research into the effects of nuclear blasts on satellites, but it does have the infrastructure needed to do this.

A search of the RFYaTs-VNIIEF literature does indeed turn up recent papers discussing the effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions. One name appearing in most of them is Vadim A. Zhmailo, who works for VNIIEF’s Institute of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics (ITMF), which performs theoretical studies in support of Russia’s nuclear weapons programs. Using data from the 1962 US Starfish Prime test as a starting point, Zhmailo’s team has employed new computer simulation techniques to better understand the consequences of such events. Their main interest seems to lie in the artificial radiation belts spawned by nuclear explosions in space. These result from highly energetic electrons (so-called beta particles) that become trapped in the Earth’s geomagnetic field. These belts, which can last for several years, can seriously affect satellites, degrading their electronics and solar panels.[11]

The research is not purely theoretical. Zhmailo has collaborated with other researchers to simulate the effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions in the laboratory. Since nuclear tests in space have been banned since 1963, this obviously is the best way to learn more about them. One RFYaTs-VNIIEF department engaged in this work is the Institute of Laser Physics (ILFI). This has three testbeds (Luch, Iskra-5/MKV-4 and MIK) that are at least partially intended to simulate the formation of artificial radiation belts resulting from high-altitude nuclear explosions. In the experiments, laser beams are aimed at small metal targets inside a vacuum chamber to generate highly energetic electrons that are subsequently trapped in a small magnetic field. The properties of the electrons are then measured using magnetic spectrometers and dosimetric sensors. The experiments, which in some articles are unambiguously linked to high-altitude nuclear explosions, go back to at least 2012 and the latest results were reported in 2023, indicating the work is still ongoing.[12]

The MKV-4 vacuum chamber, a testbed connected to the Iskra-5 laser facility. (credit: RFYaTs-VNIIEF)

Other experiments are being carried out at RFYaTs-VNIIEF’s Scientific Production Center of Physics (NPTsF) in a testbed called NPM-01, which became operational in 2013. It is a 7.5-by-1-meter plasma chamber surrounded by selenoids that create a magnetic field to trap high-speed particles. NPM-01 was designed specifically to study ”physical processes accompanying large-scale phenomena in near-Earth space.” Articles on the experiments (many of which are co-authored by Zhmailo) link them to studies of the Earth’s radiation belts. They can help calculate changes in radiation belts spanning from several seconds to several years. More specifically, NPM-01 can be used to study a ”wide range of electromagnetic waves” affecting the distribution of electrons in radiation belts. The most recently reported experiments have focused on the simulation of so-called magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves, which according to one of the papers can have ”a natural or technogenic origin.” The latter may refer to the so-called magnetohydrodynamic electromagnetic pulse, one of three types of electromagnetic pulses generated by a nuclear explosion. Also known as E3, it is caused by the detonation’s temporary distortion of the Earth’s magnetic field and has similarities to solar-induced geomagnetic storms.[13]

The NPM-01 testbed. (Source)

There is no direct evidence that RFYaTs-VNIIEF is doing any specific research into the effects of nuclear blasts on satellites, but it does have the infrastructure needed to do this. Operating within its Institute of Nuclear and Radiation Physics (IYaRF) is a Center for Radiation Studies and Tests which specializes in studying the effects of natural space radiation on satellite components to certify them for use in space. Equipped with a wide array of test installations, it carries out orders for several companies belonging to Roscosmos. It is worth noting that one of the specialists taking part in the tests has also been involved in the research on high-altitude nuclear explosions. [14]

In 2021, plans were announced to significantly expand these capabilities with the construction of a synchrotron complex. A synchrotron is a cyclic particle accelerator that can accelerate charged particles to phenomenal speeds through sequences of magnets. Two linear accelerators (one for protons and one for both light and heavy ions) as well as a so-called booster synchrotron will successively accelerate particles before they are injected into the main synchrotron or ”storage ring.” Particles from both the booster and main synchrotron can be diverted via ”beamlines” to laboratories, where their interaction with various materials can be studied.

A similar synchrotron complex is used by NASA’s Space Radiation Laboratory at the Brookhaven National Laboratory near New York, but here only particles extracted from the booster synchrotron are used for research related to spaceflight. At the complex under construction at RFYaTs-VNIIEF, studying the interaction of radiation with satellite components will be the main goal of both the booster and main synchrotron. In 2021, the facility was expected to enter operation in 2027.[15] In addition to that, a sister organization of RFYaTs-VNIIEF, called RFYaTs-VNIITF and based in Snezhinsk near Chelyabinsk in the Ural mountains, reported in August last year that it had broken ground for a building housing a cyclotron that is also specifically designed for such experiments. It is supposed to become operational by 2026.[16] At least part of the reason for the expansion of these capabilities may be the need to certify a growing number of Russian-built electronic components now that access to Western space-rated components has become difficult due to economic sanctions imposed on Russia.

Drawing of the building that will house RFYaTs-VNIIEF’s synchrotron complex. The main synchrotron is the big yellow circle. (Source)

Research on high-altitude nuclear explosions is also being done at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Computer-Aided Design (IAP) in Moscow, which specializes in computer simulations in support of a wide field of areas such as astronomy, physics and medicine. The person leading the research is Yevgeniy L. Stupitskiy, who has written papers on the subject for several decades. Stupitskiy also holds a teaching position at a university called the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI). One of his co-researchers was Aleksandr S. Kholodov, another MFTI professor, who headed IAP until his death in 2017.

Stupitskiy’s research has focused mainly on the behavior of plasma waves generated by nuclear explosions, more specifically on their propagation through the ionosphere and their effects on orbiting satellites. An important part of the work in recent years has been to study the interaction between plasma waves created by two high-altitude nuclear explosions carried out with an interval of just seconds (as seen in the computer-simulated view heading this article). The altitudes studied have ranged from 100 to 1,000 kilometers, with the explosions taking place either at different altitudes or at the same altitude.[17]

Before moving to IAP, Stupitskiy was affiliated with 12 TsNII, the Ministry of Defense’s leading research institute on nuclear explosions and their effects. The institute is based in Sergiyev Posad, some 100 kilometers north of Moscow. Some of its research has focused on protecting satellites against nuclear blasts. One paper published by 12 TsNII discussed how ground-based ionospheric heating facilities could inject very low-frequency radio waves into the ionosphere to mitigate some of the damaging effects that artificial radiation belts have on satellites. Russia operates such a facility (named ”Sura”) about 100 kilometers east of Nizhniy Novgorod.[18]

It should be cautioned that the research described above is not necessarily a sign that Russia is actively working on a space-based nuclear weapon. It merely demonstrates that there is continuing interest in studying the effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions. Similar theoretical work is taking place in the United States and China, although it is hard to assess on what scale. For instance, scientists at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have in recent years used declassified data from the Starfish Prime test to develop a code (named Topanga) that enables them to make 3D simulations of the E3 portion of the electromagnetic pulse.[19] In late 2022, a team of Chinese researchers published the results of computer simulations they had done of a nuclear explosion at an altitude of 80 kilometers and its effects on orbiting satellites [20]. What does seem to be unique to the Russian research is that it has moved to the stage of laboratory experiments, although the significance of that is difficult to assess.

Kosmos-2553

As mentioned earlier, two New York Times stories in February quoted sources as saying that one or more tests related to the suspected nuclear weapon had taken place around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. More specific information was provided early this month by Mallory Stewart, State Department Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability. Speaking about the Russian nuclear space weapon at an event in Washington on May 3, she talked about a suspect Russian satellite that had enabled the US to make ”a more precise assessment” of Russia’s progress on the weapon.

While the satellite is indeed exposed to higher doses of radiation in its 2,000-kilometer orbit, there are compelling reasons to believe that it is a military radar reconnaissance satellite.

Stewart said the satellite had been launched into ”a region not used by any other spacecraft” and that Russia had claimed it was going to be used for scientific goals, namely the testing of electronics in a high radiation environment. She pointed out that while the orbit was indeed in a region of higher radiation than normal lower Earth orbits, the radiation levels were not high enough to allow ”accelerated testing of electronics”. Stewart thereby implicitly seemed to suggest that the satellite has something to do with the nuclear weapon, although she did not specify exactly what and why that orbit would be suited for it. She did repeat the earlier White House assessment that the weapon was not an immediate threat, which implies the satellite is not believed to actually carry a live nuclear weapon.[21]

All this makes it possible to identify the satellite as Kosmos-2553, launched on February 5, 2022, into a circular 2,000-kilometer orbit inclined 67.1 degrees to the Equator. An insider on a Russian space forum identified it as 14F01, which is the military index for a satellite that is referred to in several publicly available documents as Neitron (”neutron”) and occasionally also as Tekhnolog (”technologist”). The project began in December 2011 with a contract awarded by the Ministry of Defense to NPO Mashinostroyeniya in Moscow, a company that traces its roots to the Soviet-era design bureau founded by Vladimir Chelomei.

The launch of Kosmos-2553 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in February 2022. (credit: Russian Ministry of Defense)

After the satellite’s launch, which seems to have taken place years behind schedule, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it would study the effects of radiation and charged particles on newly developed onboard systems. Most likely, this was just a cover story for its true mission. While the satellite is indeed exposed to higher doses of radiation in its 2,000-kilometer orbit, there are compelling reasons to believe that it is a military radar reconnaissance satellite. First, the only satellites that NPO Mashinostroyeniya has built after the turn of the century are radar imaging satellites of the Kondor type and it can be determined from a variety of sources that Neitron shares several design features with the Kondor bus. The three Kondor type satellites launched so far (one of which was built for South Africa) have been used for a mix of civilian and military purposes. Neitron could well be a modified version of those satellites that is on a dedicated military mission.

The civilian Kondor-FKA satellite, launched in May 2023. (Credit: NPO Mashinostroyeniya)

Second, Kosmos-2553 repeats its ground track with an accuracy of about one kilometer every four days, which is strongly indicative of an Earth remote sensing mission. It would be ideal for interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) imaging, a technique that requires a satellite to pass over exactly the same region at different times and obtain images from slightly different viewing angles to generate 3D maps of features on Earth. The high orbit shortens the ground track repeat cycle and also offers a wider field of view. For comparison, America’s Topaz military radar reconnaissance satellites are in 1,100-kilometer orbits (also a region rarely used by satellites) and have a two-day ground track repeat pattern, most likely for the same reason. There were indications that Neitron was going to be joined in orbit by a sister satellite, possibly to expand the radar interferometry capabilities, but that launch has so far not taken place.[22]

Still, it is not impossible that the satellite is performing radiation studies as a secondary mission. Possible evidence for that comes from a study most likely related to Neitron that was conducted by Moscow State University’s Skobeltsyn Scientific Research Institute of Nuclear Physics (NIIYaF) in early 2012. It focused on the effects of ”ionizing space radiation” (both solar energetic particles and particles trapped in the Earth’s natural radiation belts) on satellites operating in challenging radiation environments. The researchers calculated the radiation dose that the satellites would receive behind ”flat and spherical protective screens” to determine the location of radiation detectors aboard the satellites.[23] It should also be noted that in August 2013 NPO Mashinostroyeniya signed a contract for Neitron with RFYaTs-VNIIEF. This is known from a court document published in 2021.[24] All that is known about its role in the project is that it was to carry out certification tests of a device known as NTSZ ATS35012, the purpose of which is unclear. Possibly, it involved the use of RFYaTs-VNIIEF’s infrastructure to certify radiation-hardened components for installation aboard the satellite.

In short, there are no obvious signs from publicly available source material that the mission of Kosmos-2553 has any direct connection with the suspected nuclear weapon. Based on the available information, all that it could potentially be testing with relation to such a weapon would be shielding to protect satellites from the effects of its detonation. It could also demonstrate the ability to operate satellites in what is sometimes called a ”nuclear-safe orbit,” one that is high and stable enough for a nuclear device (whether that be a bomb or a reactor) to be stored safely for an unlimited period of time.

Delivery systems

If Russia does intend to place nuclear weapons into orbit, it may elect to do so with modified ICBMs rather than with conventional launch vehicles. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, several ICBMs were converted into space launch vehicles, mainly to serve the needs of the commercial launch industry. None of these programs are currently active, but two are expected to be resurrected in the near future.

One is Rokot, a liquid-fuel rocket based on the UR-100UTTKh ICBM, which used to be marketed by a joint Russian-European venture named Eurockot. During a visit to the Plesetsk cosmodrome in late April, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that a modified version of the rocket will start flights from the cosmodrome next December.

If Russia does intend to place nuclear weapons into orbit, it may elect to do so with modified ICBMs rather than with conventional launch vehicles.

Another converted ICBM scheduled to make its comeback is Start, a launch vehicle derived from the Topol-M solid-fuel ICBMs of the MIT Corporation that is launched from a transporter erector launcher. A new four-stage version of the rocket known as Start-1M is expected to be launched from both Plesetsk and the Vostochnyy cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East beginning in 2026.

Recently, plans have also emerged for a mysterious missile named Bureya that seems to be very similar in concept to Start-1M. It is based on the MIT Corporation’s Topol-M or Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles and is designed to be launched from the same type of transporter erector launcher. It can be outfitted with two types of ”kick stages” that may very well give it an orbital capability. According to environmental impact reports published in 2023, test flights of the missile will be staged from both Plesetsk and the Kapustin Yar test range near Volgograd. The payloads for these test flights (identified only as ”Product G”) will be either mock-ups or ”telemetry measurement systems”. [25]

No satellite payloads have been announced for any of these rockets so far. If they ultimately fly, they will undoubtedly be used mainly to place Russian military payloads into orbit and could potentially also orbit a nuclear weapon, the very type of payload they were originally designed to carry. In that case, it would have to be delivered to a relatively low orbit given the limited payload capacity of these rockets.

References

1. John Kirby’s full press conference is here.
2. S. Harrios, E. Nakashima, J. Hudson, Officials sound alarm about new Russian ‘space threat’, The Washington Post, February 14, 2024.
3. R. Shabad, Biden says ‘no nuclear threat’ to U.S. as Russia considers potential space weapon, NBC, February 16, 2024.
4. B. Hendrickx, Ekipazh: Russia’s top-secret nuclear-powered satellite, The Space Review, October 7, 2019 ; updates in the Ekipazh thread on the NASA Spaceflight Forum.
5. K. Lillis, J. Sciutto, K. Fisher, N. Bertrand, Russia attempting to develop nuclear space weapon to destroy satellites with massive energy wave, sources familiar with intel say, CNN, February 17, 2024.
6. U.S. Fears Russia might put a nuclear weapon in space, New York Times, February 17, 2024 ; U.S. warns allies Russia could put a nuclear weapon into orbit this year, New York Тimes, February 21, 2024.
7. Statement from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, April 24, 2024.
8. Video of the House Armed Services Committee hearing, May 1, 2024 (54:00–1:19:10); Written testimony by John Plumb, May 1, 2014, p. 4.
9. A. Siddiqi, The Soviet Fractional Orbiting Bombardment System (FOBS): a short technical history, Quest, 2000.
10. Two-part article published in 2023 (part 1 (p. 35–52), part 2 (p. 45–63))
11. Articles published in 2012 (p.91), 2015 and 2019.
12. Articles published in 2012 (p. 142–143) (with English translation), 2018 (p. 3–4) (plus three others no longer online), 2019 and 2023 (no longer online).
13. Articles published in 2018 (no longer online), 2019 (p. 253), 2020 (p. 308), 2022 (p. 276), and 2024 (p. 342).
14. Article published in 2018.
15. Press release by RFYaTs-VNIIEF, September 17, 2021 ; Articles published in 2021 (1 (p. 22), 2 (p. 113–116))
16. Press release by RFYaTs-VNIITF, August 30, 2023.
17. Articles published in 2012, 2016, and 2020; Monograph published in 2020; PhD dissertation published in 2023.
18. Article published in 2016 (p. 79–82).
19. L. Boatman, Sixty years after, physicists model electromagnetic pulse of a once-secret nuclear test, APS News, November 10, 2022; Paper on the Topanga simulations published in 2024.
20. Article published in the South China Morning Post, October 20, 2022 (paywalled). A summary is here.
21. Video of Mallory Stewart appearing at an event organized by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, May 3, 2024.
22. For more details on the project, see the Neitron program thread and the Kosmos-2553 mission thread on the NASA Spaceflight Forum.
23. Summary of a study carried out under the name ”Tekhnolog”, an alternative name used for Neitron.
24. Court document published in December 2021.
25. Environmental protection reports for test flights of Bureya from Plesetsk and Kapustin Yar. For analysis of these reports, see the latest post in this thread on the NASA Spaceflight Forum. There could be a link with the Aerostat project.

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Bart Hendrickx is a longtime observer of the Russian space program.

Space Planes: Why We Still Need Them

Despite the failures of dozens of past efforts, companies like Radian Aerospace continue to pursue spaceplanes. (credit: Radian Aerospace)

Spaceplanes: why we need them, why they have failed, and how they can succeed

by John Hollaway
Monday, May 13, 2024

“Rockets are terribly inefficient and expensive.” This admission can be found here in NASA’s own educational piece on the equation that governs rocket performance, also known as Tsiolkovsky’s equation. But what is the alternative?

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the space age is our inability to create the obvious one: a successful spaceplane. This is a launch vehicle that takes off like an airplane, flies up to orbit, and returns to settle back on the runway. This feat is known as single stage to orbit (SSTO) and if you look this up in Wikipedia, here is what you find:

It is considered to be marginally possible to launch a single-stage-to-orbit chemically fueled spacecraft from Earth. The principal complicating factors for SSTO from Earth are: high orbital velocity of over 7,400 meters per second (27,000 km/h; 17,000 mph); the need to overcome Earth’s gravity, especially in the early stages of flight; and flight within Earth’s atmosphere, which limits speed in the early stages of flight due to drag, and influences engine performance.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the space age is our inability to create the obvious one: a successful spaceplane.

“Marginally possible.” This gloomy observation has not inhibited attempts to overcome the challenge of creating a spaceship that can fly up and down like an aircraft. Indeed, if you go to Wikipedia you will find a list of some 60 spaceplane projects since 1945 that had this objective. None can have been said to have succeeded. A more recent review was given by Joe Scott.

Unsurprisingly to aerospace engineers, the villain sabotaging this dream is Tsiolokovsky’s Equation. Konstantin Tsiolokovsky was a Russian mathematician who, in 1896 demonstrated that Newton’s laws, when applied to rockets propelled with oxygen plus a reductant, results in a formula that limits all the non-propellant mass—the unfueled rocket and the payload—to a small fraction of the total weight. Specifically, when launching to low earth orbit at the minimum speed required of 7,400 meters per second, and not allowing for losses from atmospheric drag and from gravitational pull, the equation gives this table:

Propellant	Specific Impulse (Isp)	Maximum Non-Propellant Mass
Liquid Hydrogen plus LOX	450	18.7%
Kerosene plus LOX	330	10.1%
Solid Rocket Motor (SRM)	270	6.1%

In practical terms the ultimate problem is that, because space has no oxygen, rockets have to carry up about 2.4 tons of it for every ton of fuel they carry. Not surprisingly, given this constraint, rockets which reduce their mass to orbit by dropping off empty sections on the way up—staging—is the system that has been universally adopted to maximise the non-propellant mass (another Tsiolokovsky insight). A further drawback of SSTO’s is that they must haul along a pair of wings that are useful only for a very small part of the flight path, which further limits the thin weight margin available for the payload.

In the last decade spaceplanes have become even less competitive. The development of reusable rockets by SpaceX has brought payload costs to low Earth orbit (LEO) down from over $10,000 a kilogram to around $3,000. Under these circumstances, SSTO concepts might be expected to have a vanishingly small chance of being economically viable.

Yet still they come. Radian Aerospace, based in Renton, Washington, is planning to develop a delta-winged spaceplane about the size of a small commercial jet air transport. This will launch horizontally using a rocket-powered sled to allow the craft to conserve as much fuel as possible. Once aloft, three rocket engines put the spacecraft into orbit under a low-g ascent, followed by reentry and landing on a runway three kilometers long.

But Radian is right: spaceplanes are going to be essential if we are to continue to use satellite-based services. We are painting ourselves into a corner here, with ever-larger rockets carrying ever-larger numbers of satellites up, but with no means of servicing them in orbit.

Radian have raised $27.5 million of what they call “seed capital,” so presumably the final cost will be of the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. Given the price squeeze originating from SpaceX it is difficult to see a justification for this. With a two-ton payload and assuming a net revenue of $1,000 per kilogram, cash recovery will be $2 million a launch, so at least 50 launches will be needed just to break even.

But Radian is right: spaceplanes are going to be essential if we are to continue to use satellite-based services. We are painting ourselves into a corner here, with ever-larger rockets carrying ever-larger numbers of satellites up, but with no means of servicing them in orbit. They cannot be easily repaired or their positions adjusted, and they cannot be readily deorbited when they become obsolete.

The problem can be seen most clearly in the space debris challenge. In November 2022, the US Space Surveillance Network reported tracking 25,857 artificial objects in orbit above the Earth, of which 5,465 were operational satellites. However, those 20,000-odd other objects represent the tip of an iceberg; they are the space debris items that are big enough to be trackable. There are now, according to NASA, perhaps a hundred million orbiting objects with a diameter between 1 and 10 centimeters, and over 36,500 pieces with diameters greater than 10 centimeters.

NASA also has a good survey of the scores of debris capture proposals and the regulatory situation here. What is lacking is a vehicle that can go about deorbiting space junk by whatever means, come back to Earth for re-equipping and return back up to continue its work. A space plane.

Checkmate, or so it may seem.

The way forward lies again in Tsiolokovsky’s equation. The form that is of use here is:

ln (Initial Mass/Final Mass) = Delta V/(g0 * Isp)

So there are just two variables involved, the increase in velocity and the specific impulse. There is nothing to be done about the Isp once the choice of propellant and oxidizer has been made, but what about the effect of gravity and drag losses on the delta V?

Conceptually, if we are able to use air-breathing ramjets to take the spaceplane to the edge of space before handing over propulsion to a rocket motor, then not only will the ensuing rocket drag loss be small enough to be almost negligible, the initial velocity of this second stage could be more than Mach 5, countering the gravitational drag. The evidence for this speed comes from several sources, such as:

1. The Boeing ramjet-powered ASALM missile demonstrated its hypersonic ability in 1980 when it reached Mach 5.5 (about 1,900 meters per second) at 12,000 meters after a fuel valve stuck open.
2. In 1951 NACA (the NASA predecessor) launched a ramjet powered missile which reached an apogee of 159,000 feet (48.5 kilometers). This missile was launched at a 75-degree angle and ran out of fuel at 67,200 feet (20.5 kilometers) when it was passing Mach 2.92 (about 1,000 meters per second).

It is possible to gain a measure of gravitational drag from the trajectory of the air-launched Pegasus rocket, which was developed by Orbital ATK in 1990 and later built and launched by Northrop Grumman. Its Users Guide, issued in October 2015, gave operating data that showed that the zoom effect between the first and second stage gave an altitude gain of nearly 16 kilometers in return for a delta V loss of about 58 meters per second, a penalty of 3.6 meters per second per kilometer. This is happening at an altitude of over 70 kilometers, so this loss is almost solely from gravitational drag.

From these figures it appears that the gravitational penalty for a SRM being used in our spaceplane to lift it from about 50 kilometers up at about 1,000 meters per second to 200 kilometers at the minimum orbital speed of 7,400 meters per second would be, very roughly, 150 x 3.6 meters per second, or about 540 meters per second. So gravitational drag will require us to add this value to the required orbital speed, giving a total of 7,940 meters per second. Because of the uncertainties surrounding this value, we can round it up to 8,000 meters per second.

However, if there is a first-stage ramjet propulsion stage for our spaceplane, and it achieves Mach 5.5 at 70 kilometers, this would remove about 1,700 meters per second from this orbital speed target, reducing the delta V-to-orbit requirement of the spaceplane’s rocket stage to about 6,300 meters per second. If this work is undertaken using a simple SRM with an Isp of 270, then the available non-propellant mass of 6.1% shown in the table above increases to 10.8%, or rather better than a kerosene plus lox liquid-fueled rocket on the same basis.

What does this mean in terms of a spaceplane? It will be necessary to make a number of informed guesses on the non-propellant mass items at this stage; here they are:

Item	Mass
Payload	0.5t
Spaceplane structure	1.5t*
Cold gas thruster fuel	1.0t**
Control Systems	0.5t
Total Non-Propellant Mass	3.5t

*This may seem light, but there is no undercarriage on this vehicle. It is launched and captured on a separate carriage on a track controlled by a linear induction motor. Additionally, the ramjets are expected to need to run for no more than about three minutes after launch, and so can be made of thin heat-resistant steel.
** For the extensive in-orbit movements required of an orbital service vehicle, perhaps nitrogen or possibly propane from left-over ramjet fuel.

If this non-propellant mass of 3.5 tons now represents 10.8% of the total at the point where the SRM takes over from the ramjets, then the SRM propellant mass would be 32.4 tons approximately, giving a launch total of about 35.9 tons. In addition, at launch there would be an extra two to two-and-a-half tons of propane as fuel for the ramjets and perhaps for in-orbit thruster use as well.

So, finally, a practical spaceplane. A bonus is that by being able to reach orbit with ramjets and a simple SRM it will have almost no moving parts. The concept is expanded upon in www.swalarlv.com.

Book Review-“Alien Earths”

Review: Alien Earths

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 13, 2024

Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
by Lisa Kaltenegger
St. Martin’s Press, 2024
hardcover, 288 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-250-28363-4
US$30

In a paper published last week, astronomers reported the detection of an atmosphere around a rocky “Earth-like” exoplanet, a first. The problem with the announcement, though, was that the exoplanet in question, 55 Cancri e, didn’t seem much like Earth: a diameter twice the size of Earth and a temperature of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius. (“To describe 55 Cancri e as ‘rocky,’ however, could leave the wrong impression,” a press release stated, noting its surface is likely molten.) Combine that with an atmosphere made of carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide, and 55 Cancri e doesn’t appear to be particularly hospitable to life.

Astronomers, though, hardly consider the discovery a setback, pointing instead to how it shows the James Webb Space Telescope, which conducted the observations, can help find other potentially habitable worlds. “It is truly enabling a new type of science,” said the lead author of the study, Renyu Hu, in a statement.

“Asking the right questions is crucial in science because you have only one lifetime to figure things out,” she writes. But, she adds, “some of the answers are written in the night sky.”

Since astronomers found the first exoplanets around a sunlike star nearly three decades ago, scientists have studied which ones could be habitable. That has coincided with much of the academic and professional career of Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University. In her new book Alien Earths, she describes the efforts to search for worlds beyond our solar system, including those that could support life.

The book is, in large part, a broad introduction to exoplanet science and astrobiology. Kaltenegger examines many of the key topics in those fields, from what it takes for a world to be habitable, or even inhabited, to the diversity of exoplanets discovered to date, many of which scientists once thought were impossible. For those who have been following the search for exoplanets and habitable worlds, much of this material will be familiar, but is presented well here. Interleaved in the book are anecdotes from her own career as well as other aspects of her life.

Kaltenegger has been studying the formation of exoplanets and ways to determine their habitability. This is an effort that transcends astronomy, as she makes clear in the book, as exoplanet science evolves into an interdisciplinary field that incorporates geology and biology. She describes that in passages in the book about doing lab research at Cornell to determine what the spectra of those worlds would be depending on their composition and presence of life. That includes, she noted, dealing with clashes in terminology, with words as simple as “metal” and “glass” meaning different things for astronomers versus geologists.

That interdisciplinary work, language difficulties aside, is critical to the future of the search for worlds beyond Earth that might host life. She now occupies the same office at Cornell as Carl Sagan, leading the institute named after him that brings together researchers from many fields on the key questions in astrobiology. “Asking the right questions is crucial in science because you have only one lifetime to figure things out,” she writes. But, she adds, “some of the answers are written in the night sky.”

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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.

Europe Looks To End Its Launcher Crisis

The first Ariane 6 is taking shape at the spaceport in French Guiana for a launch as soon as this summer. (credit: ESA/ArianeGroup/Arianespace/CNES)

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.”

HyImpulse launched its SR75 sounding rocket May 3, testing technology for a future orbital launch vehicle. (credit: HyImpulse)

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.”

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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

Starliner is set to launch as soon as Monday night on its first crewed flight. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

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.

The Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, after the spacecraft and its Atlas 5 rocket rolled out to the pad May 4. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

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.

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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.