Europe celebrates performance of Orion service module

As the Artemis 1 mission nears its conclusion, European Space Agency and industry officials praised the performance of the Orion spacecraft’s service module, which some see as a step towards a European crewed spacecraft. The Artemis 1 mission is set to conclude Dec. 11 with the reentry and splashdown of the Orion crew capsule, shortly after it separates from the European Service Module. That module provided power, propulsion and other services for the spacecraft since its Nov. 16 launch. “We are coming towards the end of what you might think of as a 100-meter race that’s followed a marathon,” said David Parker, ESA’s director for human and robotic exploration, during a Dec. 9 briefing. “The marathon was the 10 years of effort and preparation needed to build and prepare the first European Service Module for its journey to the moon and back again, and 100-meter race has been that actual mission itself.” During that 100-meter sprint, the service module has not broken stride. “The mission has gone really perfect from our point of view,” said Ralf Zimmermann, head of moon programs and the Orion European Service Module at Airbus, the prime contractor for the module. “We have absolutely flown a perfect mission so far.” There have been minor issues with the module, he noted, “but nothing mission critical.” One persistent issue has been with devices called latching current limiters in one part of the spacecraft’s power system. Those devices, similar to circuit breakers, have opened at least 17 times during the course of the mission without being commanded to do so, NASA officials said at a Dec. 8 briefing, but have not significantly affected spacecraft operations.

A view of the aft section of the European Service Module of the Orion spacecraft taken as the Artemis 1 mission nears its conclusion. Credit: NASA

“It’s not a big deal because they can be recommanded on,” said Philippe Deloo, ESA program manager for the service module. “We don’t have an idea of what is the root cause. We are investigating, looking at all possible options.”

One possibility, he said, is that electromagnetic interference or noise in the power system is causing the latching current limiters to open. Another possibility is they are being affected by transmissions from spacecraft antennas. Engineers are doing as much testing as they can before the end of the mission to identify the cause. “This is going to be a difficult one to troubleshoot.”

Zimmermann emphasized the issue was not serious. “When they open uncommanded, the effect on the mission is not that big,” he said, noting it affects only one of eight power lines on the spacecraft. “It is a glitch, not a mission-critical failure.”

Other parts of the European Service Module have exceeded expectations. The spacecraft is producing more power than expected, yet using less power than planned. Deloo said the reduced power consumption is, in turn, linked to the spacecraft dissipating less heat than expected, meaning it has to use heaters less frequently to maintain its proper temperature. “This is one of the major lessons learned.”

The service module has also produced many of the stunning images and video the mission has returned, thanks to GoPro cameras mounted on the tips of each of the four solar arrays. “We are calling them now four selfie sticks,” quipped Matthias Gronowski, chief engineer for the European Service Module at Airbus.

The Artemis 1 mission, and excellent performance of its service modules, comes as some in Europe advocate for ESA to develop its own human spaceflight capability. Human spaceflight was one of the long-term “inspirator” concepts endorsed by ESA member states a year ago, and remains a topic of debate in Europe.

“We have to see how far politicians are willing to look into this,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a Dec. 1 speech at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here, noting the topic would come up at a second European “space summit” scheduled for late 2023. “Does Europe want to be more independent, more autonomous in human space transportation?”

“In terms of technical capability, can Europe build a human-rated space vehicle? I don’t doubt it,” Parker said, citing the success not just of the Artemis 1 mission but work on International Space Station modules and elements of the future lunar Gateway. What would be needed, he said, was experience in end-to-end operations of a crew spacecraft and development of safety systems, like a launch abort system, as well as a human-rated launch vehicle.

During the International Astronautical Congress in September, ArianeGroup released a concept for a vehicle called Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration (SUSIE). The vehicle is designed to be a new, reusable upper stage for the Ariane 6 rocket, but could be used as a cargo and crew transportation vehicle. Morena Bernardini, head of strategy and innovation at ArianeGroup, said in an interview at the conference that a cargo version of SUSIE could be ready as soon as 2030 followed by a crewed version “immediately after.”

At the briefing, Zimmerman suggested Airbus was more interested in working with others, along the lines of the existing partnership on Orion, than developing a European crewed vehicle. “We need to unite forces and share the costs,” he said, noting he was offering his personal opinion. “This is, to me, much more important than saying its Germany, France, England or Europe in total against the Americans.”

Parker said the success of the service module shows ESA is ready for the next phases of Artemis. “We learned that we can send a crew-rated capsule to the moon and back again on its first flight, and that means it gives us a lot of confidence to go forward in the next steps in Artemis.”

ESA has a contract with Airbus to produce service modules through Artemis 6, at a total value of a little more than two billion euros. ESA’s member states approved plans to produce three more service modules at November’s ministerial meeting, and Parker said the agency will get those under contract some time in 2023.

The Artemis 1 service module will end its mission about 40 minutes before splashdown when it separates from the crew capsule shortly before reentry. The service module will burn up in the atmosphere, with any surviving pieces falling into the Pacific Ocean west of Peru.

“It’s a little sad, but we’ve accomplished the mission,” Zimmerman said of the impending demise of the service module. “We are proud of all that has happened.”

“You cannot be sad when you accomplish your mission,” Deloo said. “Everything has a life. The end of the life is part of the life. As long as the life has been successful, this is a great success. So, I’m happy about it.”

Orion swings by the moon on its way back to Earth

NASA’s Orion spacecraft flew by the moon for a second and final time Dec. 5, performing a maneuver that sets up the spacecraft for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six days. The Orion’s European Service Module fired its main engine for 3 minutes and 27 seconds starting at 11:43 a.m. Eastern. The maneuver, called the Return Powered Flyby, took place during a close approach to the moon that brought Orion within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. NASA officials said at a later briefing that the maneuver, the largest and last major engine burn of the Artemis 1 mission, went as expected, putting the spacecraft on a trajectory that returns it to Earth for a Dec. 11 splashdown. That maneuver “is essentially our deorbit burn,” said Judd Frieling, flight director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, at the briefing. “This sets us up for the landing trajectory that going to occur on Dec. 11.” With the flyby complete, NASA is moving ahead with preparations for splashdown. Mike Sarafin, NASA Artemis 1 mission manager, said the mission management team gave its approval to deploy recovery forces on Dec. 7. That includes a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Portland, that will host the recovery forces and bring the Orion spacecraft onboard to return to the port of San Diego, California. Melissa Jones, landing and recovery director for the mission at NASA, said the recovery team completed a three-day rehearsal for the recovery last week. “We are ready and honored, as an integrated team, to bring Orion home on the last leg of her journey,” she said. Orion, which launched nearly three weeks ago, continues to perform well with only minor problems. That includes continuing issues with latching current limiters in the spacecraft’s power distribution system. Four of those devices had switched off during a test, affecting power to six reaction control thrusters. Controllers were able to restore power to those thrusters.

A view of the Orion spacecraft, moon and Earth during the Dec. 5 return powered flyby of the moon by Orion. Credit: NASA

“What it appears is that they were commanded open, but there were no commands sent,” Debbie Korth, NASA Orion deputy program manager, said of the current limiters at the briefing. “We’re not exactly sure of the root cause yet.”

She said engineers are doing some testing of the power system in a ground-based lab, and will likely propose some tests to do later this week on the spacecraft ahead of the end of the mission. “We discard the service module, so we have a pretty limited window if there’s anything we want to do before that happens.”

She and other agency officials at the briefing downplayed the significance of it, noting there are redundant systems onboard. Had it taken place on a crewed mission, Frieling said, the astronauts would have been informed on their displays, but would not have noticed any other effects.

There was also a communications outage lasting four and a half hours on Dec. 3 that was caused by a hardware problem with a Deep Space Network (DSN) center in Goldstone, California. The outage would have been longer, Sarafin said, but the mission was able to negotiate with other missions using the DSN to get time on the network.

Praise from former agency leaders

The success of the mission to date won praise from two previous top NASA officials who see it as evidence that the overall Artemis effort is now on track after years of development delays.

“I feel really good about it,” former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a SpaceNews event Dec. 5. “I think one of the biggest achievements is that there’s a lot of hardware here that has been under development for a long time. The Artemis program just gave all that hardware a mission, which is what we needed in order to get to where we are today.”

“I think it truly is a great thing to see this mission being so successful, as Jim said. A long time to get here, for sure,” said former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver at the same event.

Bridenstine, who gave the Artemis program its name while in office during the Trump administration, credited the Biden administration for retaining it. “NASA has a long history of programs getting cancelled, and billions of dollars being wasted,” he said. “And in this case, they kept continuity of purpose and moved forward and I’m just very grateful for that.”

Garver, deputy administrator during the Obama administration, noted the program brought together hardware started in various administrations. “I think the timing was right and it was good to do,” she said. However, she expressed skepticism that the technical approach, including use of the Space Launch System, was the right one for the long term.

“I do not believe that the country can or should probably spend the amount of money we are on launch infrastructure over the longer term. I think that when we have private launch capabilities that rival this we should transition, and that will make me feel a lot better about the future and the future success of Artemis,” she said.

She said she had argued against SLS and Orion while at NASA, but lost that argument. “I was clear when I was at NASA that, once that decision had been made, our job was to make it the very best vehicle we could have.”

“You did not lose the argument,” Bridenstine said. “You got the argument started. It is still going forward and it’s transitioning how we do space.”

SpaceX rolls out new business line focused on military satellite services

SpaceX on Dec. 2 revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies. This sector of SpaceX intends to leverage the Starlink internet constellation in low Earth orbit to develop products and services — including secure communications, remote sensing and space surveillance payloads — that are in growing demand by U.S. defense and intelligence organizations. “While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads,” the company said on its website. The Starshield site is heavy on marketing and light on details but conveys SpaceX’s vision to disrupt the national security satellite sector much like it has in launch, commercial broadband and civil space. “SpaceX’s ongoing work with the Department of Defense and other partners demonstrates our ability to provide in-space and on-ground capability at scale,” said the company. These statements suggest that as SpaceX has expanded its reach in the national security launch and satellite broadband markets, it decided it needs to offer more specialized products in order to win big-ticket contracts. Starshield will offer “end-to-end systems,” meaning complete services from launch vehicles to satellites and user terminals. “It appears they have finally understood that going all commercial and asking national security space customers to use it doesn’t always work, so they are going to offer alternative products that are focused on national security but based on Starlink technology and production lines,” an industry analyst told SpaceNews.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches Starlink satellites July 7, 2022. Credit: SpaceX

Starshield products and services will include satellites with sensing payloads that can deliver processed data directly to the user, secure global communications and user equipment, and customized satellite buses.

Satellite communications services offerings would draw from the company’s experience in Ukraine, where Starlink demonstrated its can operate in a combat zone and proved to be more resilient than the U.S. military would have expected from a commercial system. The Air Force has bought Starlink services to support units in Europe and Africa due to the system’s ability to operate in a hostile electronic environment.

Starshield also is capitalizing on SpaceX’s participation in the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency’s missile-tracking and missile-detection constellation, where it partnered with Leidos to develop four classified infrared sensor satellites scheduled to launch before the end of the year.

SpaceX will offer to host “classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements,” the company said.

Starshield satellites would be equipped with laser terminals to make them interoperable with military satellites. Interoperability is a key requirement as DoD wants to use commercial low Earth orbit satellite capacity to transport data collected by remote sensing systems. Defense officials warned the current Starlink network, because of its highly proprietary technology, cannot be integrated into a hybrid architecture that DoD hopes to build.

SpaceX also promises “rapid deployment and development” of capabilities, a pitch that resonates with DoD space buying agencies that for years have been frustrated by the slow pace and high cost of satellite procurements.

Some of the more advanced capabilities advertised by Starshield will probably not be available until SpaceX deploys its second-generation Starlink satellites. These will be larger than the first-generation version and designed with performance features needed to host national security payloads and deliver higher levels of encryption than the commercial Starlink service.

To date SpaceX has launched approximately 3,500 first-generation Starlink satellites and recently won licensing approval to deploy Gen2 spacecraft.

Rocket Lab launches subsidiary focused on national security market

Rocket Lab, a launch services company and space hardware manufacturer, announced Dec. 1 it is creating a separate entity to focus on U.S. defense and intelligence agency customers. The new business sector, called Rocket Lab National Security, also will work with U.S. allies, the company said. Rocket Lab, which went public in August 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, is looking to sign more defense and intelligence customers for its small launch vehicle Electron and its future medium-lift rocket Neutron — expected to debut in 2024. The company decided it needs a separate business dedicated to this market, a spokesperson said in a statement to SpaceNews. “National security missions and payloads on Electron and Neutron, which can have different bureaucratic requirements to commercial launches, will be contracted through the RLNS subsidiary,” the spokesperson said. Having a dedicated national security subsidiary will help understand these customers’ requirements, “which may be dedicated rapid call-up launch, satellite design, build and integration, spacecraft operations, or all of the above.” The establishment of a national security business follows Rocket Lab’s recent introduction of a “responsive space” program aimed at government customers. Rocket Lab USA is based in Long Beach, California. The company operates a launch site in New Zealand and will soon start flying from Wallops, Virginia. Since Electron’s first launch in 2017, Rocket Lab has secured multiple deals with national security agencies, including the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. Space Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

A Rocket Lab Electron in July 2021 launched an Air Force Research Laboratory demonstration satellite called Monolith. Credit: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab’s solar power business supplies solar cells for U.S. Space Force missile-warning satellites. Another sector of the company recently won contracts to provide separation systems for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency satellites.

Rocket Lab also signed a research agreement with the United States Transportation Command to explore the use of rockets for point to point cargo delivery.

“Top of the list for national security is reliability and responsiveness,” said Brian Rogers, senior director of Rocket Lab’s global government launch services.

Shenzhou 15 astronauts arrive at China’s space station for first crew handover

China has six astronauts aboard its recently-completed space station for the first time following the arrival of three crew members aboard Shenzhou-15. Shenzhou-15 launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 10:08 a.m. Eastern Nov. 29. Rendezvous and docking with the Tiangong space station was completed at 4:42 p.m., China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, confirmed. Astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu are to be greeted aboard Tiangong by Shenzhou 14 crew members Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, who have spent the last six months aboard the station and overseen the arrival of two new modules. The Shenzhou 15 crew will be sustained by supplies delivered to Tiangong aboard the Tianzhou-5 cargo mission launched Nov. 11 Eastern time. The Tiangong space station now consists of three roughly 22-ton modules in a 393 by 386-kilometer orbit. The 13.5-ton Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft and two roughly 8.2-ton Shenzhou spacecraft are docked with it. The Shenzhou-14 crew are expected to return to Earth in early December. The first crew rotation marks the start of science operations on Tiangong, which carries 24 experiment cabinets and a payload airlock. China aims to keep the orbital outpost constantly occupied and operational in orbit for at least ten years. China will begin to send international experiments to the station through an initiative with UNOOSA in the near future.

A Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft and crew rises into the sky against a lunar backdrop. Credit: CCTV/framegrab

It is expected that Tiangong will outlast the aging International Space Station and could become the only permanent crewed outpost in orbit. The arrival of Shenzhou-15 at Tiangong signifies the completion of plans approved in 1992 to develop human spaceflight capabilities and build a space station.

The country’s first crewed mission, Shenzhou-5 in 2003, made it only the third to develop independent human spaceflight capabilities. Two Tiangong test labs followed in the 2010s to test rendezvous and docking, life support and on-orbit operations. At the same time China was effectively barred from joining the ISS by U.S. legislation which effectively prevented NASA engagement with Chinese state entities.

China aimed to launch its first proper space station module in 2018 and complete the station with further module launches in 2020 and 2022. A failure of the Long March 5 rocket in July 2017 and subsequent issues with the rocket’s engines and turbopumps delayed this schedule.

With the Long March 5B finally operational, China condensed the construction phase of Tiangong to fit inside 18 months. The Tianhe core module launched in April 2021, and culminated 10 launches later with Shenzhou-15 arriving at the completed T-shaped complex.

Tiangong itself could also be expanded from three to six modules, according to Chinese space officials. Such an expansion may depend upon other countries joining the project.

The Xuntian optical module—a co-orbiting, Hubble-class space survey telescope with a two meter aperture and 2.5 gigapixel camera—is planned to join Tiangong in orbit in late 2023 or 2024.

The decision to embark on a space station program was taken back when the country’s economy represented around 2% of the global economy and seeking a foothold in the international launch market.

China has since become the world’s second largest economy behind the United States, and achieved a number of feats in space, including a Mars rover landing, lunar far side landing, building its Beidou GNSS constellation and more.

The country is also moving forward with a robotic lunar exploration program with the goal of building a lunar base in the vicinity of the south pole of the moon in the 2030s.

This pathway is designed to converge with human spaceflight experience gained from Tiangong and the development of new, large rockets to allow China to send astronauts to the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).