Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft starts testing ahead of moon mission with astronauts in 2025

NASA's next moon spacecraft for humans made one small leap into an altitude chamber for vital testing before it brings astronauts on board. The Orion spacecraft for Artemis 2 is slated to fly around the moon with four astronauts no earlier than September 2025 — but first, engineers with NASA want to make sure it is ready for the job. Testing in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Kennedy Space Center began Wednesday (April 10) to assess Orion for "electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility," NASA officials wrote in a statement. The aim is to make sure the spacecraft can continue working well amid these fields, both spacecraft-generated and space-generated, ahead of the big launch day. The four Artemis 2 astronauts who will fly around the moon aboard Orion are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to go beyond LEO) and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American to achieve the feat). Their spacecraft, now at KSC's Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, is inside a chamber with a lot of moon heritage. It was used to "test environmental and life support systems on the lunar and command modules during the Apollo program" that brought nine astronaut crews to the moon between 1968 and 1972, NASA officials wrote.

The Artemis 2 moon spacecraft lifts into an altitude chamber at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on April 4, 2024. The Orion spacecraft will undergo electromagnetic compatibility and interference testing inside the chamber at the Operations and Checkout Building. (Image credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson)

The Artemis 2 moon astronauts pose in the well deck of the USS San Diego during recovery exercises on Feb. 25, 2024. From left: Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch, NASA pilot Victor Glover and NASA commander Reid Wiseman. (Image credit: NASA/Isaac Watson)

There are multiple altitude chambers available at KSC; Orion is in the west chamber, which was upgraded to "test the spacecraft in a vacuum environment that simulates an altitude of up to 250,000 feet (76.2 km)," NASA wrote.

Technicians hoisted Orion into that chamber on April 4 using a newly installed 30-ton crane in the building, which can move the stacked Orion crew and service modules into the chamber, manipulate the lid of the chamber and carefully transfer the spacecraft in the building's high bay.

While Orion spacecraft have flown to space twice before, this mission will be the first with astronauts on board. It will also test new systems, such as life support. (The spacecraft model's previous journeys were the Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to lunar orbit in late 2022 and a brief trip to Earth orbit in 2014.)

Artemis 2's Orion has more work in store after the altitude chamber. It will next be sent to another zone, called Final Assembly and Systems Testing, in the same KSC building. Then, more altitude testing will happen "to conduct a test that simulates as close as possible the conditions in the vacuum of deep space," NASA wrote. Those altitude tests could begin as soon as this summer.

Artemis 2 will kick off the larger crewed Artemis program, which plans to put boots on the moon again with Artemis 3 as soon as 2026. Both missions were delayed in January 2024 due to technical issues; Artemis 2 was pushed back about nine months while Artemis 3 is forecast to wait an extra year.

The NASA-led Artemis program is eventually slated to put a settlement at the moon's south pole, near water resources that exist there.

The Artemis Accords include 35 countries committing to peaceful space exploration norms led by NASA; a subset of those countries, including Canada, are providing hardware for moon missions. Japan, another signatory to Artemis, committed to a pressurized lunar rover for astronauts and will be the first country other than the United States to land an astronaut on the moon, NASA and Japan announced on Wednesday (April 10).

Scout Space eyes military customers for space domain awareness sensor

Scout Space, a startup based in Reston, Virginia, is developing a space domain awareness sensor aimed at the military market as the U.S. seeks new ways to monitor and protect its assets in orbit. The company on April 4 announced it won a $1.8 million Small Business Innovation Research contract under the SpaceWERX Tactically Responsive Space challenge, in partnership with the Space Systems Command’s Space Safari program office. Scout’s chief executive Philip Hover-Smoot said the company is using a portion of the funding to accelerate the development of Owl, an optical telescope designed to track objects in space with great detail. This can be valuable for the military in situations where they need to identify a specific type of satellite or even its functionality. “The space domain awareness capabilities of the Owl sensor enable flexibility and our ability to quickly respond to meet the mission need,” said Capt. George Eberwine, program manager at Space Safari. “This partnership with Scout is an example of Space Safari’s efforts to accelerate innovation to support future TacRS operations.” Since it was founded in 2019, the company has developed smaller sensors for space traffic management and other applications in low Earth orbit. The Owl sensor is designed for “more exotic deployment opportunities,” said Hover-Smoot, including geostationary satellites and lunar missions. “It is a large sensor and it has substantial power requirements.”

Illustration of Scout Space Owl on an orbital transfer vehicle spacecraft. Credit: Scout Space

The Space Force is going to seek new types of space domain awareness technologies, he added, as the U.S. military is prioritizing space surveillance to defend its assets against potential threats from rivals like China and Russia.

“There is a lot of competition and there is a lot of need as every platform that goes to space needs sensors — for safety and security applications as space becomes more congested,” said Hover-Smoot.

China launches first of a new series of Yaogan reconnaissance satellites

China launched its first Yaogan-42 satellite late Tuesday, adding to the country’s growing military satellite reconnaissance capabilities. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 6:56 p.m. Eastern (2256 UTC) April 2. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success within the hour. CASC’s statement also revealed the previously unknown payload to be Yaogan-42 (01) (“remote sensing-42 (01)”). The satellite was later tracked by the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron (SDS) in a roughly 500-kilometer-altitude orbit inclined by 35 degrees. Both Yaogan-42 (02) and its Long March 2D launcher were developed and provided by CASC’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). Neither CASC nor Chinese state media provided any details regarding the classified satellite. These statements omitted the usual general description of Yaogan satellites. Some Yaogan satellites are described as being for purposes including land survey, crop yield estimation, environmental management, meteorological warning and forecasting, and disaster prevention and reduction. Uses of others include “electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests.”

A Long March 2D lifts off from Xichang spaceport on April 2 (UTC), 2024, carrying the Yaogan-42 (01) satellite. Credit: Ourspace

Outside observers assess Yaogan series satellites to be designated for military and civilian purposes.

The various series of Yaogan satellites are understood to include optical imaging, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) satellites. This combination provides high-resolution imagery and all-weather and all-day and night imagery, along with the collection of electronic signals from radar, communication systems and other electronic devices, with coverage of both land and sea.

The vast majority of Yaogan satellites operate in a series of low Earth and sun-synchronous orbits. Some groups of Yaogan satellites, such as Yaogan-31, could be analogous to U.S. Department of Defense Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellite triplets. Other groups, in orbits with inclinations of 35 degrees, ang spaced 60 or 120 degrees apart, provide near constant surveillance over areas of security concern close to China.

Additionally China launched the Yaogan-41 satellite towards geosynchronous orbit in late 2023. That satellite launched on a Long March 5, China’s largest operational rocket. The mission A used a new, elongated 18.5-meter-long, 5.2-meter-diameter payload fairing.

Tuesday’s launch was China’s 15th orbital mission of 2024. The country is aiming to launch around 100 times across 2024. Around 70 will be conducted by CASC, with China’s commercial launch service providers planning around 30 launches.

Commercial activity will include the new Tianlong-3 from Space Pioneer. The 71-meter-long rocket will be capable of lifting 17 tons of payload to low Earth orbit, or 14 tons to 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit, according to the firm. The rocket would become China’s second most capable rocket, behind the Long March 5. It is intended to have a reusable first stage in the future.

SAST plans to launch its new, 3.8-meter-diameter Long March 12, previously referred to as the “XLV,” during 2024.

SpaceX launches Eutelsat 36D, lands booster on seventh reuse anniversary

SpaceX launched Eutelsat’s latest geostationary satellite March 30 on a trip due to take around half a year to a geostationary orbit slot over Africa and Eurasia. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the roughly 5,000-kilogram Eutelsat 36D lifted off 5:52 p.m. Eastern from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and placed the satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit 34 minutes later. Eutelsat 36D is based on the all-electric Airbus Eurostar Neo platform and equipped with 70 physical Ku-band transponders for providing TV and government connectivity services from 36 degrees East. The satellite has a steerable antenna and is set to replace French fleet operator Eutelsat’s aging Eutelsat 36B satellite. Eva Berneke, Eutelsat’s CEO, said Eutelsat 36D is on track to start commercial services in the second half of 2024, after reaching position and completing health checks. The satellite would be co-located with Ekspress-AMU1, also known as Eutelsat 36C, which Russia’s RSCC operates. Ekspress-AMU1 is one of the satellites Eutelsat leases capacity from to have been caught up in sanctions amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

SpaceX launched a geostationary satellite for Eutelsat in its 30th mission so far this year. Credit: SpaceX

Reuse anniversary

The rocket’s first stage landed as planned on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean post-launch, marking the 273rd time SpaceX has returned a Falcon 9 booster for reuse.

SpaceX launched its first reused Falcon 9 booster for a customer seven years earlier in a mission for SES of Luxembourg March 30, 2017.

The Eutelsat 36D launch also marked SpaceX’s 30th mission this year.

But less than four hours later, SpaceX launched a batch of satellites for its Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband constellation from a nearby pad at the Cape.

SpaceX had planned to launch another set of Starlink satellites March 30 from Vandenberg, California, but scrubbed this mission because of poor weather.

Alongside 35 geostationary satellites, Eutelsat operates a network of more than 600 LEO satellites after buying OneWeb last year.

The company expects to have completed 90% of the ground network OneWeb needs for full global services by the end of June.

According to Eutelsat, multi-orbit capabilities will give it an edge over Starlink and other single-orbit constellations by offering enterprise and government customers extra network redundancy and flexibility.

NASA optimistic about resolving Voyager 1 computer problem

A NASA official says he is optimistic that a problem with the Voyager 1 spacecraft that has kept it from transmitting intelligible data for months can be resolved. Speaking at a March 20 meeting of the National Academies’ Committee on Solar and Space Physics, Joseph Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division, said it appeared possible to fix the computer problem on the nearly 50-year-old spacecraft that has disrupted operations since last November. “I feel like we’re on a path now to resolution,” he said. “They’re on the right path and I think we’re going to get to a point where Voyager 1 is going to continue, alive and kicking in space.” Spacecraft controllers first noticed a problem with the spacecraft in November, when the data transmitted by the spacecraft was unusable. Engineers concluded that the problem was with an onboard computer called the flight data system (FDS), which collects data from the spacecraft’s instruments and other spacecraft telemetry. Several factors have hampered efforts to correct the problem. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is now more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth, which means it takes 22.5 hours for signals to travel between Earth and the spacecraft. None of the people who developed the FDS in the early to mid 1970s are available to assist now, so the project has had to turn to documentation to help identify the problem.

NASA is optimistic engineers can fix the computer problem that has kept Voyager 1 from transmitting usable data for months. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA announced March 13 progress in fixing the FDS when a command called a “poke” was transmitted to Voyager, and the spacecraft responded by sending back a readout of its memory. The agency said at the time it will compare that readout to one transmitted before the problem to help identify the issue.

Westlake said at the committee meeting that the problem appears to be a corrupted memory unit on the spacecraft. “It’s a part failure on one of the memories and they’re looking for a way to move a couple hundred words of software from one region to another in the flight computer,” he said. A word is two bytes.

He did not estimate how long it would take to make those software changes. NASA, in its latest statement about the spacecraft, said that using the FDS memory readout “to devise a potential solution and attempt to put it into action will take time.”