There have been many people saying "Wait, what?" and "Why is SpaceX taking it down?". Luckily, @ryancaton.co.uk in this video now answers all of those questions → youtu.be/IV2H7eZ5-Mc
NASA made an unprecedented call today: they're bringing
SpaceX's Crew-11 home early in response to a crew medical incident.
NSF's Ryan Caton with quick summary of the timeline of this event, all the information we know about what happened, & what comes next → youtu.be/V4gf140g-cU
Going where nobody has been before: After their extraordinary journey through space and over Earth’s polar regions, the crew of Fram2 sat down with NSF’s @ryancaton.co.uk to reflect on their mission.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPjC...
This Week In Spaceflight: NASA has another scheduling nightmare on its hands with regards to the ISS and Cygnus.
Join us for our special 100th episode, premiering on YouTube tonight at 7:30pm EST / 00:30 UTC.
Hosted by Elysia Segal.
youtu.be/_RZVmLnaDRU
Maximum Eclipse.
Parts of the Northern Hemisphere saw a Partial Solar Eclipse today, with a maximum eclipse of ~40% visible from Norfolk, GB 🇬🇧
This image shows 30, 20, & 10 minutes prior, Maximum, and 10, 20, & 30 minutes after.
📷 @ryancaton.co.uk
SpaceX isn’t slowing down. Even after the dramatic failure of Starship Flight 8, testing continues, upgrades are in progress, and Starbase is evolving at breakneck speed. S35 has already begun testing, while B16’s status raises some questions—could SpaceX be planning a booster reuse for Flight 9?
This Week In Spaceflight: NASA and SpaceX realign Crew Dragon’s upcoming manifest; Blue Origin lays off 10% of their workforce; Stoke Space announced a redesign of their reusable upper stage engine; and Rocket Lab released more information on their Neutron rocket.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAe...
The Flight 8 vehicles (B15 and S34) are well into their respective testing campaigns, the Pad B chopstick carriage reeving process is nearly complete, and we’ve spotted hardware being prepared for Starship’s first Starlink mission!
To watch the full Starbase Update:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxIa...
Track Blue Ghost Mission 1 on @nasaspaceflight.com's Next Spaceflight → nextspaceflight.com/launches/det...
All of the science data will be made publicly available to everyone. Any commercial company could go get that data and use it for their purposes anywhere, not only American companies, but the international community as well.
NASA as a public agency largely shares data. “That’s one difference to a commercial mission” said Maria Banks, CLPS project scientist at NASA Johnson.
I asked how the data collected on this mission will be shared, considering the real data on regolith could be useful to companies such as Axiom Space, which is developing the AxEMU suit for the Artemis program.
As part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander will carry 10 NASA science and technology instruments to the Moon’s near side. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
We're less than 2 days from Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1, which is carrying several NASA payloads onboard, a number of which will be studying the lunar regolith and how it interacts with various materials.
📷 Firefly Aerospace
The investigation into the leaks from the Russian Segment (as discussed in @NASASpaceflight.com's recent ISS video) continues. NASA is working very closely with Roscosmos.
Those spacewalks will be conducted by:
1st Spacewalk
EV1 (Red Stripes) - Nick Hague
EV2 (No Stripes) - Suni Williams
2nd Spacewalk
EV1 (Red Stripes) - Suni Williams
EV2 (No Stripes) - Butch Wilmore
Moving forwards, he also confirms that there is some applicability of using the exploration suits (such as Axiom Space’s AxEMU) with the ISS.
During the preview conference of 2 upcoming EVAs, NASA's Bill Spetch confirms to me that they're confident in the current EMUs (EVA Spacesuits) on the station, despite the issues they've faced over the last few years (notably water/coolant going places it shouldn't).
In the event NG-1 pushes further, Monday morning is looking even better: 2m (6.5ft) waves, 3kt wind gusting 8kt.
What I'm using to get these numbers - www.windy.com/29.273/-73.8...
The "high sea state" Blue Origin speaks of appears to be forecasting 4.7 metre (15ft) waves, 20 knot wind gusting 31kt, according to wave data from windy.com, approx where Jacklyn is.
At the new launch time, the waves are forecast to be 3.9m (12.7ft), winds 18kt gusting 30kt.
Return of the samples is currently slated for around early 2035.
Even if a commercial option is selected, JPL will still be involved, according to Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, Dr Nicky Fox. “JPL is our Mars centre in NASA science. So regardless of which path we go forward with, JPL will have a key role moving forward”.
NASA can’t make the decision on which option go with right now because they need to flesh out all of the possibilities of what is required in the engineering for the commercial option. NASA wants the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back.
Both of the options presented are creating a much more simplified, faster, and less expensive version than the original plan, according to Nelson. He also said that “this is going to be a function of the new administration in order to fund this”.
Both options still use ESA's return vehicle, which will return the samples from Mars Orbit to Earth. NASA prefers a direct Earth return (think OSIRIS-REx) than a cislunar return. A cislunar return would require another vehicle to launch from Earth, rendezvous, and bring them home.
- Uses a redesigned landing platform to carry the Mars Ascent Vehicle to the surface of Mars.
- Replaces solar panels with a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.
- Requires a redesign of the sample loading system onto the lander. Redesign will simplify the backward planetary protection approach.
Option 2:
- Cost range of $5.8b - $7.1b.
- Looks at the possibility of going into commercial capabilities, a heavy lander with existing commercial partners.
- Nelson: "You all know” SpaceX and Blue Origin have expressed an interest, but it could be others as well.
Option 1:
- Cost range of $6.6b - $7.7b.
- Uses Sky Crane technology previously used with Perseverance & Curiosity. This technology has already been successfully tested with entry decent and landing capabilities on Mars.
- This MSR Sky Crane would be 20% bigger than what flew with Perseverance.
A thread of yesterday's NASA Mars Sample Return update
Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency will explore 2 options going forward for Mars Sample Return, with the final decision likely to come in 2026.
@nasaspaceflight.com
It would be great if BlueSky supported more than 300 characters per post. I’d love to bring my X feed here but my most popular X posts are 1000s of characters long. 300 just isn’t enough.
And it’d be nice to not have to put everything into threads.
@support.bsky.team
🆕 This Week in Spaceflight! 🆕
🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ZE...
