SpaceX to launch cargo resupply mission despite Crew Dragon mishap

The "anomaly" experienced by SpaceX's Crew Dragon over the weekend won't affect the company's planned space station resupply mission. According to NASA officials, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is still scheduled to launch the company's Dragon cargo spacecraft on April 30. "The NASA and SpaceX teams are still assessing the anomaly that occurred, but I can tell you we are still tracking, as of today, for Tuesday, April 30, and that launch will be at 4:22 a.m. Eastern time," NASA public affairs officer Joshua Finch told reporters during a teleconference on Monday, according to Space.com. The resupply mission was originally scheduled to blast-off on April 26, but last week, NASA announced a delay. "April 30 is the most viable date for both NASA and SpaceX due to station and orbital mechanics constraints," the space agency noted in an update. On Saturday, a cloud of smoke rising from test facilities at Cape Canaveral could be seen from miles away. Reports confirmed the smoke was the result of an explosive accident involving SpaceX's Crew Dragon. Both SpaceX and NASA acknowledged the failure. SpaceX referred to the accident an "anomaly" during the final of a series of engine test fires. "Ensuring that our systems meet rigorous safety standards and detecting anomalies like this prior to flight are the main reasons why we test," SpaceX told UPI in released statement. "Our teams are investigating and working closely with our NASA partners."

An unverified video of the accident, first published by Business Insider, shows what appears to the Crew Dragon spacecraft being destroyed by a fiery explosion.

Though SpaceX has yet to confirm the authenticity of the video, the company did report that the anomaly was quickly contained and that no one was injured.

"The NASA and SpaceX teams are assessing the anomaly that occurred today during a part of the Dragon Super Draco Static Fire Test at SpaceX Landing Zone 1 in Florida," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted on Saturday. "This is why we test. We will learn, make the necessary adjustments and safely move forward with our Commercial Crew Program."

The exploded spacecraft was the same vessel that completed the first commercial crew program test flight earlier this year. The Crew Dragon capsule was supposed to conduct another test flight this summer. The latest accident could jeopardize NASA's plans to launch American astronauts from the United States.

Currently, the space agency and its astronauts rely on Russian rockets and crew capsules to ferry Americans to and from ISS -- an agreement with Roscosmos that ends in early 2020.

SpaceX Crew Dragon test firing results in cloud of smoke, called 'anomaly'

A cloud of smoke was seen at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Saturday, which SpaceX and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine described as an "anomaly" that occurred during a test firing of the Crew Dragon capsule's thrusters. Bridenstine tweeted that the nation's planned space missions with crews will move forward safely. The test firing was a preliminary event leading to a return to manned launches from the United States, which hasn't happened since the last space shuttle lifted off in 2011. The smoke was first reported by Florida Today, which had a photographer shooting a surf fest nearby in Cocoa Beach. "This is why we test," Bridenstine said in a tweet about the test firing. Neither SpaceX nor NASA gave immediate updates on the status of the capsule, which was scheduled for its first flight with a crew this year. SpaceX in a statement to UPI said, "Ensuring that our systems meet rigorous safety standards and detecting anomalies like this prior to flight are the main reasons why we test. Our teams are investigating and working closely with our NASA partners." SpaceX calls Dragon "a free-flying spacecraft designed to deliver both cargo and people to orbiting destinations." Currently Dragon has been carrying cargo to space, but it was designed from the beginning to carry humans. The first demonstration flight under NASA's Commercial Crew Program launched on March 2. The spacecraft successfully docked with the space station. The Dragon spacecraft is capable of carrying up to seven passengers to and from Earth orbit, and beyond.

Toward the base of the capsule and contained within the nose cone are the Draco thrusters, which allow for orbital maneuvering. It was those thrusters that were being test-fired Saturday.

Jim Williams, spokesman for the Air Force's 45th Space Wing, said in a statement the anomaly "was contained and there were no injuries."

NASASpaceflight.com reported that significant delays, if they occur, might threaten to throw NASA's entire crew program into doubt because Boeing Starliner, a competing program, also is dealing with setbacks.

NASA has been relying on multimillion-dollar paid seats on Russia's Soyuz rocket and capsule to get to the International Space Station for years.

TESS discovers its first Earth-sized planet

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, has discovered its first Earth-sized exoplanet. The planet, named HD 21749c, is the smallest world outside our solar system that TESS has identified yet. In a paper published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, an MIT-led team of astronomers reports that the new planet orbits the star HD 21749 - a very nearby star, just 52 light years from Earth. The star also hosts a second planet - HD 21749b - a warm "sub-Neptune" with a longer, 36-day orbit, which the team reported previously and now details further in the current paper. The new Earth-sized planet is likely a rocky though uninhabitable world, as it circles its star in just 7.8 days - a relatively tight orbit that would generate surface temperatures on the planet of up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. The discovery of this Earth-sized world is nevertheless exciting, as it demonstrates TESS' ability to pick out small planets around nearby stars. In the near future, the TESS team expects the probe should reveal even colder planets, with conditions more suitable for hosting life. "For stars that are very close by and very bright, we expected to find up to a couple dozen Earth-sized planets," says lead author and TESS member Diana Dragomir, a postdoc in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "And here we are - this would be our first one, and it's a milestone for TESS. It sets the path for finding smaller planets around even smaller stars, and those planets may potentially be habitable."

TESS has been hunting for planets beyond our solar system since it launched on April 18, 2018. The satellite is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission that is led and operated by MIT, and is designed to observe nearly the entire sky, in overlapping, month-long patches, or "sectors," as it orbits the Earth. As it circles our own planet, TESS focuses its four cameras outward to monitor the nearest, brightest stars in the sky, looking for any periodic dips in starlight that could indicate the presence of an exoplanet as it passes in front of its host star.

Over its two-year mission, TESS aims to identify for the astronomy community at least 50 small, rocky planets, along with estimates of their masses. To date, the mission has discovered 10 planets smaller than Neptune, four of their masses which have been estimated, including p Men b, a planet twice the size of Earth, with a six-day orbit around its star; LHS 3844b, a hot, rocky world that's slightly bigger than Earth and circles its star in a blistering 11 hours; and TOI 125b and c - two "sub-Neptunes" that orbit the same star, both within about a week. All four of these planets were identified from data obtained during TESS' first two observing sectors - a good indication, the team writes in its paper, that "many more are to be found."

Dragomir picked out this newest, Earth-sized planet from the first four sectors of TESS observations. When these data became available, in the form of light curves, or intensities of starlight, she fed them into a software code to look for interesting, periodic signals. The code first identified a possible transit that the team later confirmed as the warm sub-Neptune they announced earlier this year.

As is usually the case with small planets, where there's one, there are likely to be more, and Dragomir and her colleagues decided to comb through the same observations again to see if they could spot any other small worlds hiding in the data.

"We know these planets often come in families," Dragomir says. "So we searched all the data again, and this small signal came up."

The team identified a small dip in the light from HD 21749, that occurred every 7.8 days. Ultimately, the researchers identified 11 such periodic dips, or transits, and determined that the star's light was being momentarily blocked by a planet about the size of the Earth.

While this is the first Earth-sized planet discovered by TESS, other Earth-sized exoplanets have been discovered in the past, mainly by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, a since-retired telescope that monitored more than 530,000 stars.

In the end, the Kepler mission detected 2,662 planets, many of which were Earth-sized, and a handful of those were deemed to be within their star's habitable zone - where a balance of conditions could be suitable for hosting life.

However, Kepler observed stars that are many leagues further away than those that are monitored by TESS. Therefore, Dragomir says that following up on any of Kepler's far-flung, Earth-sized planets would be much harder than studying planets orbiting TESS' much closer, brighter stars.

"Because TESS monitors stars that are much closer and brighter, we can measure the mass of this planet in the very near future, whereas for Kepler's Earth-sized planets, that was out of the question," Dragomir says.

"So this new TESS discovery could lead to the first mass measurement of an Earth-sized planet. And we're excited about what that mass could be. Will it be Earth's mass? Or heavier? We don't really know."

Kepler and Magellan to fly innovative smart radiator device on satellite mission

Kepler Communications ("Kepler"), a Canadian satellite telecommunications provider, and Magellan Aerospace Corporation have signed a Letter of Intention to fly an innovative Smart Radiator Device (SRD) on Kepler's third satellite, scheduled for launch later this year. The unique SRD, designed to significantly improve temperature management on-board future satellites, is being developed by MPB Communications in partnership with Magellan Aerospace. This innovative SRD technology is being developed as part of a technology development program with the goal to improve its technology readiness level by eventually operating in the space environment. Kepler intends to be the first to use this technology as part of their satellite's thermal control hardware suite before the end of 2019. The SRD radiator design has a unique property in which its effectiveness in emitting or retaining heat (its "emissivity") changes with temperature. Heat dissipation increases at elevated temperatures and reduces at lower temperatures. The tunable radiator keeps the spacecraft within tighter temperature bounds and reduces the need for survival heaters when the spacecraft is cold. The SRD's properties are highly desirable for space applications, especially for communication satellites where the payloads tend to rapidly heat up at the time of transmitting signals (up to 80C) and quickly get colder (down to -20C) when dormant.

With the SRD, Kepler will be able to keep the spacecraft in the "Goldilocks Zone": not too hot, not too cold. "We are looking forward to seeing this new technology in action and how it will benefit next-gen satellite platforms moving forward," says Jared Bottoms, Kepler's Lead Systems Engineer.

"Magellan is looking forward to continuing the development of the SRD with MPB, and is excited about the upcoming flight opportunity with Kepler" says Corey Mack, Space Business Unit Leader at Magellan.

UAE Names First Astronaut to Fly to ISS on Board Russian Soyuz Vehicle

The United Arab Emirates' Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) said that Hazzaa AlMansoori will be the country's first astronaut to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) on board the Russian Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft. "@MBRSpaceCentre announces that it has selected Hazzaa AlMansoori as the prime astronaut and Sultan AlNeyadi as the backup astronaut for the International Space Station (ISS) mission. The Emirati astronaut Hazzaa AlMansoori will fly for an eight-day space mission to ISS aboard a Soyuz-MS 15 spacecraft on 25 September 2019", the center wrote on Twitter late on Friday. The flight of the UAE mission to the ISS was initially scheduled for this April. However, it was postponed due to the aborted launch of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft last October. Roscosmos and the MBRSC concluded a deal to fly the first UAE astronaut to the ISS last June. Last September, the two astronauts from the Middle Eastern country began training for their mission. Meanwhile, Sergey Krikalev, director of manned spaceflight at Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos has told Sputnik that the UAE is planning to buy a Soyuz spacecraft and launch services from Russia to send two domestic astronauts to orbit in one mission.

According to Krikalev, if UAE signs a contract with Roscosmos, an additional Soyuz spacecraft will be manufactured, as it cannot be part of the Russian manned program for delivering Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station.

SpaceX carries out first commercial launch of Falcon Heavy

SpaceX carried out its first commercial launch on Thursday with its Falcon Heavy rocket easing a Saudi telecoms satellite into orbit. The bright white rocket rose with a roar and spewed thick gray smoke on the ground as it made its way up into clear blue skies over Cape Canaveral, Florida, trailing a long plume of orange fire. About 34 minutes after liftoff, the shiny silver satellite was successfully deployed. Staff in the control room cheered and clapped. Earlier, boisterous spectators chanted along with the launch announcer who counted down the final 10 seconds before liftoff. The Falcon Heavy rocket exerts 5.1 million pounds of thrust -- that of more than a dozen jetliners, SpaceX said. The rocket carried a Saudi Arabian satellite operated by Arabsat, a year after sending SpaceX founder Elon Musk's slick red Tesla roadster into orbit as a test. The Falcon Heavy had been scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday but that was delayed because of strong winds in the upper atmosphere. The job was to place the six-ton Arabsat-6A satellite into geostationary orbit about 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. It went off without a hitch. The satellite is designed to provide television, internet, telephone, and secure communications to customers in the Middle East. Less than 10 minutes into the flight, the rocket's three boosters detached from the Falcon Heavy on schedule. Two of them, as planned, landed safely back on pads at Cape Canaveral, to a roar of approval from the crowd. It was quite a spectacle, with the boosters coming down gently, and vertically, fiery end first.

A third landed, also as planned, on a barge out in the Atlantic.

"Three for three boosters today," a SpaceX webcast commentator said.

SpaceX has two operational rockets: the Falcon 9, which with 21 launches in 2018 dominates the US market, and the Falcon Heavy, which as its name suggests is designed to lift much heavier payloads into more distant orbits.

It consists of the equivalent of three Falcon 9 rockets combined, tripling its thrust.

In Falcon Heavy's first launch, in February 2018, a dummy dubbed Starman was placed behind the wheel of Musk's roadster, which is currently orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars.

Since then, the US military and private clients have signed contracts for Falcon Heavy launches, and NASA has raised the possibility it may use the rocket for its planned missions to the Moon.

ESA boosts startup to the Moon

European Space Agency operations specialists are helping flight planners at new European space startup PTScientists, headquartered in Berlin, pilot their way to the Moon. PTScientists are planning to launch lunar landers and rovers as a regular service in the future, with an inaugural flight expected in 2020. Specialists from ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, are providing consultancy on flight dynamics and flight operations as well as preparing for driving two lunar rovers. In recent years, ESA has worked on the Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network developing expertise in operating robots and in working with the specialised networks needed to remotely operate a vehicle on a moon or planetary surface from space. Agency teams have supported live tests, including controlling a rover in Quebec, Canada, from Darmstadt, and enabling ESA astronaut Tim Peake to control a rover in the UK from the International Space Station. This ESA experience and long-time know-how in mission operations will help PTScientists reach their lunar goals. "We are supporting PTScientists in defining their mission operations concepts. All of the elements of which are important," says ESA project lead Kim Nergaard, from ESOC's Solar System and Exploration Missions Division. "To be successful, their team needs to prepare for the end-to-end operations of the lander from launch to landing on the Moon and handle all aspects of near-real time surface operations, as well as fitting that into a bigger mission control environment." "Right now, we are in the early stages, mapping out what their needs will be. As it becomes clear what will be needed to achieve mission success, we aim to support them with a suite of tools to achieve that."

Cooperation also fits ESA's long-term plans
As well as drawing on a wealth of experience, the cooperation builds nicely into ESA's long-term plans for lunar operations.

"We're happy to work with PTScientists during the definition of mission operations, and perhaps more in the future," says Andrea Accomazzo, Head of the Solar System and Exploration Missions Division at ESA.

"While we help them to develop expertise, there is also a benefit to ESA in consolidating aspects of our operations concepts, so it should really be worthwhile for both sides."

The first mission is planned to demonstrate technology, including a mobile-phone-style 4G communications network on the Moon, as well as revisiting - at a safe distance - the last Apollo landing site.

ESA's Estrack ground station network will help make sure that mission controllers on ground can communicate with PTScientist's ALINA spacecraft, as they have done for recent Chinese missions to the Moon.

First privately financed mission to the Moon
"We are delighted with the support we are receiving from ESA's highly skilled experts. Together, we will perform the first privately funded European lunar landing. For PTScientists, this is the first stage of what we expect to be a long-term collaboration with ESA," says Robert Boehme, CEO and founder of PTScientists.

Enabling European industry to make use of ESA's expertise and infrastructure is a key aspect of the Agency's support for the emerging 'ecosystem' of commercial space startups.

Earlier this year, ESA announced that it was making mission control facilities available to organisations such as universities or small companies wishing to fly their own cubesats.

More Delays Ahead for Boeing's New Space Capsule for Astronauts

Boeing's new space capsule for astronauts faces more launch delays. The Starliner capsule was supposed to make its debut this month, after a series of postponements. But the first test flight is now off until August. And the second test flight, with astronauts, won't occur until late in the year. NASA announced the revised lineup Wednesday. At the same time, officials said the first Starliner crew will remain at the International Space Station longer than the few weeks originally anticipated. The mission length will be decided later. SpaceX, NASA's other commercial crew provider, successfully flew its new Dragon capsule without a crew to the International Space Station last month. The first flight with astronauts could be as early as this summer, but the schedule is under review. Boeing said the last major milestones have been cleared and the capsule is almost finished. But scheduling conflicts with an early summer Air Force launch helped push the Starliner's debut into August. The Starliner will fly on United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket, the same kind of rocket needed for the Air Force's critical mission in late June, from the same pad. While the first SpaceX astronauts will visit the space station for a few weeks at most, the Starliner's three-person crew will move into the orbiting complex for an extended period. The typical station stay is about six months.

NASA wants to reduce its reliance on expensive Russian Soyuz capsules as soon as possible, and so the Boeing test flight will double as a taxi mission for station residents. NASA astronauts have been riding Russian rockets since the end of the space shuttle program.

SpaceX Dragons and Boeing Starliners will return human launches to Florida, following the eight-year hiatus. NASA contracted with the two companies to handle space station ferry flights, so it could focus on getting astronauts to the moon and, eventually, Mars.

China's commercial carrier rocket finishes engine test

China's first carrier rocket for commercial use, the Smart Dragon-1 (SD-1), has finished its engine test, paving way for its maiden flight in the first half of 2019, according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT). The rocket is the first member of the Dragon series commercial carrier rockets family to be produced by CALT. It has a total length of 19.5 meters, a diameter of 1.2 meters and a takeoff weight of 23.1 tonnes. It is capable of sending over 150 kg payloads to the sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 km. It took only six months to produce the rocket and 24 hours to prepare it for launch. It can be used for launching both single satellite or multiple satellites at the time. Besides the solid-propellant Smart Dragon rocket series, the CALT will also develop liquid-propellant commercial rockets with larger payloads.

Scientists find likely source of methane on Mars

The mystery of methane on Mars may finally be solved as scientists Monday confirmed the presence of the life-indicating gas on the Red Planet as well as where it might have come from. In the 15 years since a European probe reported traces of the gas in the Martian atmosphere, debate has raged over the accuracy of the readings showing methane, which on Earth is produced by simple lifeforms. Because methane gas dissipates relatively quickly -- within around 12 years on Earth -- and due to the difficulty of observing Mars' atmosphere, many scientists questioned previous studies that relied on a single data set. Now an international team of experts have compared observations from two separate spacecraft, taken just one day apart in 2013, to find independent proof of methane on our neighbouring planet. Furthermore, they conducted two parallel experiments to determine the most likely source of methane on Mars to be an ice sheet east of Gale Crater -- itself long assumed to be a dried up lake. "This is very exciting and largely unexpected," Marco Giuranna, from Rome's National Astrophysics Institute, told AFP. "Two completely independent lines of investigation pointed to the same general area of the most likely source for the methane." Europe's Mars Express probe measured 15.5 parts per billion in the atmosphere above the Gale Crater on June 16, 2013. The presence of methane in the vicinity was confirmed by readings taken 24 hours earlier by NASA's Curiosity rover. Using the data, Giuranna and the team divided the region around the crater into grids of 250 by 250 square kilometres.

One study then ran a million computer-modelled emissions scenarios for each section while another team studied images of the planet surface for features associated on Earth with the release of methane.

- 'Indicator of life' -

The most likely source was a sheet of frozen methane beneath a rock formation, which the team believes periodically ejects the gas into the atmosphere.

Giuranna said that while methane is a sign of life on Earth, its presence on Mars doesn't necessarily constitute evidence of something similar on the Red Planet.

"Methane is important because it could be an indicator of microbial life," he said. "But life is not required to explain these detections because methane can be produced by abiotic processes."

"Though not a direct biosignature of life, methane can add to the habitability of martian settings, as certain types of microbes can use methane as a source of carbon and energy," he added.

Though there is no liquid water on Mars, the European Space Agency said in February its imaging equipment had shown further evidence of dried up river beds, suggesting the Red Planet may once have been home to simple organisms.

Giuranna said that further research was needed to determine the extent of the methane ice sheet near Gale Crater.

If founded to be extensive, the methane it contains "could support a sustained human presence" on Mars as a possible source of fuel for industrial processes and a propellant for returning manned missions to Earth, he said.

India launches PSLV-C45, with spysat and 28 microsats onboard

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle has successfully launched EMISAT and 28 international customer satellites into their designated orbits. The PSLV-C45 mission lifted off at 09:27 Hrs (IST) on April 01, 2019 from the second launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota in its 47th flight. This flight marked the first mission of PSLV-QL, a new variant of PSLV with four strap-on motors. About 17 minutes and 12 seconds after lift-off, EMISAT was successfully injected into intended sun-synchronous polar orbit of 748 km height. After the separation of EMISAT, the vehicle's fourth stage engines were restarted twice to place the 28 international customer satellites precisely into a sun-synchronous orbit of 504 km height. The last customer satellite was placed in its designated orbit 1 hour and 55 minutes after lift-off. About 3 hours after lift-off, the fourth stage (PS4) of the vehicle was moved to a lower circular orbit of 485 km after two restarts to establish it as an orbital platform for carrying out experiments with its three payloads. The PS4 payloads are Automatic Identification System from ISRO, Automatic Packet Repeating System from AMSAT, India and Advanced Retarding Potential Analyzer for ionospheric studies from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.

Spaceflight Prepares to Send 21 Rideshare Satellites Aboard PSLV C45

Seattle WA (SPX) Mar 26 - Spaceflight, the leading satellite rideshare and mission management provider, reports it will launch 21 spacecraft on a rideshare mission from India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) at India's Satish Dhawan Space Center.

The launch is scheduled for Mon., April 1, 2019 Indian Standard Time (Sun., March 31 PDT). Payloads aboard the mission include the Astrocast-02 3U cubesat from Switzerland-based Astrocast and Flock 4a, 20 next-generation Dove satellites from Planet.

This launch represents Spaceflight's eighth launch on a PSLV and with the completion of this mission, the company will have sent 95 spacecraft to orbit aboard PSLVs.

"PSLV missions continue to offer a reliable and proven launch option for our customers," said Curt Blake, CEO of Spaceflight.

"By working with Antrix/ISRO and a wide range of vehicle providers, we are uniquely positioned to offer the greatest number of launch options to our customers. Having greater flexibility in launches can minimize the negative impacts of delays which is especially valuable for organizations launching multiple spacecraft."

Spaceflight successfully launched the first test satellite of Astrocast's IoT Nanosatellite Network on its historic SSO-A dedicated rideshare mission in December 2018.

Astrocast's network of 64 cubesats will securely extend the reach of two-way communications to the 90 percent of the globe currently not covered by cellular networks. Using L-Band frequencies, Astrocast's small form factor modules, miniaturized antennas, and optimized data protocol make it the most advanced nanosatellite on the market today.

"Reliable access to space is critical to Astrocast's mission," said Fabien Jordan, CEO of Astrocast. "With Spaceflight, we were able to successfully deploy our first satellite and are looking forward to the PSLV launch as well as other missions in the near future."

In what is Planet's first launch of 2019, Flock 4a will join its current constellation of more than 100 Doves, replenishing the on-orbit fleet and providing upgrades to its imaging chain to improve image sharpness, radiometric consistency and spectral precision.

This mission marks Spaceflight's second launch of 2019 and its first PSLV mission of the year following the successful launches of GTO-1, which deployed the first commercial lunar lander in February aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, and SSO-A, the company's historic dedicated rideshare mission, which launched 64 unique smallsats in December 2018.

To date, the company has negotiated the launch of 224 satellites and has plans for approximately 10 missions in 2019 launching nearly 100 payloads across a wide variety of launch vehicles, include the Falcon 9, Antares, Electron, Vega, Soyuz, and LauncherOne.