Stratolaunch: A Newfangled Satellite Launch System?

Despite the delays since it was announced back in 2011, is Scaled Composites’ Stratolaunch now the largest aircraft by wingspan to ever take flight and a unique satellite launch system to boot?

By: Ringo Bones

Stratolaunch finally took its successful maiden flight back in Saturday, April 13, 2019 10:00 AM local time from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port, which now makes it the world’s largest aircraft to ever take flight. Its 385-foor wingspan beats out Howard Hughes Spruce Goose by a significant margin and its primary purpose is to launch satellites into space at a much reduced cost than existing launch methods.

Originally designed by Silicon Valley billionaire Paul Allen and its construction was made possible by the Northrop Grumman subsidiary called Scaled Composites and the plane’s completion was first announced back in 2011. Unfortunately, Stratolaunch remained on the ground far beyond its originally planned first test flight date back in 2016. Paul Allen died near the end of 2018 of complications related to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though the project continued in his stead.

Despite being made almost entirely of carbon fiber material and related lightweight composites, Stratolaunch weighs in at 500,000 pounds. Much of it is due to the plane’s twin fuselage design and to further reduce costs, the plane uses six Pratt & Whitney jet engines similar to ones used on the iconic Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet and also the plane’s 28-wheel landing gear is also similar to the one used on the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.

Only a handful of twin-fuselage planes have been developed in the past few decades and Stratolaunch will primarily be used for spaceflight – as in a satellite launch system for launching payloads into space. Even though it only attained a speed of 189 miles per hour during its maiden flight, the plane is still very capable of reaching 35,000 to 40,000 feet at such relatively low speeds because launching payloads into space at such heights provides significant rocket fuel savings compared to existing launch methods of using static rockets on ground-based launch pads. Not only satellites, but Stratolaunch can also be used as a basis of a low-cost system to launch manned spacecraft into low Earth orbit and en route into the International Space Station.

Launching payloads at such altitude also minimizes complications from bad weather as the plane can simply fly over storm systems and further fuel savings can be made by flying Stratolaunch over the Earth’s equator and launch satellites there. The plane is capable of launching up to three of Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rockets. Sadly, due to the aircraft’s rather “unique” shape, there are still delays on the plane’s certification by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, not to mention additional more test flights before it can start launching payloads off the planet. And Stratolaunch is also facing competition from Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit – a satellite launch system that’s based on a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft and due to Branson’s plane having a “more conventional profile” compared to Stratolaunch, Virgin Orbit could get FAA approval much sooner than the twin-fuselage Stratolaunch.

Was Israel’s First Lunar Landing Mission A Total Failure?

Slated to perform a series of scientific experiments on the Sea of Serenity, was Israel’s first ever lunar mission a total failure?

By: Ringo Bones

The dishwasher-sized robotic spacecraft was called Beresheet – a Biblical reference that means “in the beginning” – attempted Israel’s first ever privately-funded lunar landing on the night (7:23 PM Israel local time) of Thursday, April 11, 2019, but a failure of its main engine put an end to that. The 600-kilogram four-legged space probe was designed and built by an Israeli nonprofit firm called SpaceIL and with a total cost of about 95-million US dollars, including launch, Beresheet was a bargain-basement spacecraft. Had the mission been successful, it would have made Israel the fourth nation ever (together with the United States, Russia / the then USSR, and The People’s Republic of China) to have an unmanned spacecraft survive a lunar-landing attempt. Nonetheless, Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander managed to transmit one final “photo”, a kind of the unmanned spacecraft’s own selfie, about 23-kilometers above the lunar surface before its main engine failure.

The planned landing site for the Beresheet spacecraft was Mare Serenitatis, or the “Sea of Serenity” in the northern hemisphere of the Moon – a dark lava-covered site of ancient volcanic eruptions and a long-source of magnetic and gravitational anomalies of every unmanned lunar orbital spacecraft that flew above the site. As seen from planet Earth’s surface, the Sea of Serenity is the famed “left eye” of the Man in the Moon.

Beresheet was designed to take measurements of the Moon’s magnetic field using an instrument supplied by the University of California, Los Angeles. If the craft had landed safely, SpaceIL would have shared the spacecraft’s data with NASA and other space agencies and “hop” Beresheet to another location using its thrusters. Bersheet not only spent seven weeks in space but also closed the 3.7-million kilometer gap between planet Earth and the Moon and then entered into lunar orbit – making Israel the seventh country ever to do so – and successfully completed a series of engine burns to poise it for a landing attempt. Due to its low cost, the mission was far from a total failure because the underwriters of the first ever Israel lunar landing mission still has a budget for a second attempt.

NASA Now Paying 19-Thousand USD To Volunteers To Stay In Bed For Two Months?

Does NASA’s recent “laziness experiment” an actual analog for replicating prolonged weightlessness?

By: Ringo Bones

I think it was around the middle of the 1990s when I first heard of NASA’s aviation medicine specialists stating in a press interview that the bone loss experienced by astronauts in prolonged weightlessness is physiologically similar to anyone who’s lying in bed for prolonged periods. Does this make bedsores now the so-called “final frontier” when it comes to tackling one of current space travel’s thorniest problems?

NASA and two other space agencies are asking for 24 volunteers to lie in bed for two months as part of a study, which will pay them about 19,000-US dollars. And the venue of the study will be the European Space Agency’s astronaut training facilities in Germany because part of the requirement of the study is that the volunteers must also possess a working knowledge of the German language. NASA and ESA officials say that “We are looking for test persons to take part in a bed rest study from September to December 2019 in Cologne, Germany and spend 60 days lying down.”

The point of the study is to “research how the body changes in weightlessness. Bed rest simulates this condition.” Based on the study results, scientists will develop techniques to reduce the negative effects of prolonged weightlessness on astronauts. During the two months, the volunteers will live in a single room, but will be divided into two groups. One group will be rotated around in a centrifuge, similar to an artificial gravity chamber, which will force blood back to their extremities. The second group will not be moved. And when they say you’ll do everything lying down, they aren’t kidding. The volunteers must eat, exercise, get dressed and even shower while lying flat on their beds. Another catch, the participants’ beds are tilted slightly downward to encourage fluids to pool in their upper body to mimic as close as possible weightless conditions experienced by astronauts in space.

Did India’s Anti-Satellite Missile Test Endanger The International Space Station?

Even though the target satellite was in an orbit lower than that of the International Space Station did last week’s Project Shakti test generated enough debris to endanger the ISS?

By: Ringo Bones

Last week’s Project Shakti anti-satellite missile test had definitely bolstered India’s space and national defense standing in the world, not to mention Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s poll numbers. But more recently, an announcement by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine claims that India’s recent anti-satellite test could endanger other satellites and objects in space – including the International Space Station.

The target of India’s Project Shakti anti-satellite missile last week was believed to be its own spy satellite Microsat-R that was launched a few months ago. The resulting kinetic impact that destroyed the spy satellite created a field of satellite debris at that orbital altitude. The debris now poses a problem because a significant number of it was kicked-up into the same orbital altitude as the International Space Station. In a worse-case scenario, some of the debris could impact the ISS creating a scenario akin to that in the movie Gravity. Some of those pieces are currently too small for NASA to reliably track, meaning we’ll have no way of predicting an impact beforehand. NASA Administrator Bridenstine announced on Monday, April 1, 2019, that “What we are tracking right now, objects big enough to track – we’re talking about 10-cm (4-inches) or bigger – about 60 pieces have been tracked”.

India deliberately targeted a satellite that had a lower orbital altitude than that of the International Space Station to prevent this very sort of situation, but a significant number of the debris appears to have been flung to a higher orbital altitude. Of those 60 debris and objects tracked by NASA, Bridenstine says 24 of them are now at the same altitude as the ISS or higher.

The nature of the region of space in low Earth orbit means that even debris residing above the ISS’ orbit could still pose a threat. Satellites and debris are gradually slowed down by the very thin atmosphere that exists there. The International Space Station, for instance, must routinely fire its booster rockets in order to maintain its orbital altitude and counter the residual atmospheric drag.

Over time, the resulting debris of the recent Indian anti-satellite test would lose altitude and eventually burn up when it hits the denser parts of the Earth’s atmosphere, but the higher altitude debris will have to come down first to within the orbital altitude of the International Space Station posing danger of an impact. The danger of debris impact could still happen months after the test. Even Mainland China’s anti-satellite missile test back in January 11, 2007 still has free-floating debris that could potentially endanger the crew of the ISS.