Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will now not depart from the International Space Station (ISS) until sometime in July at the earliest. The decision was announced by NASA on June 21st, marking the fourth such delay in the vehicle’s return to Earth during its Crew Flight Test, which lifted-off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on June 5th, for what should have been a test flight of roughly a week’s duration.
Following a flawless launch and arrival in orbit, and as reported in these pages (see: Space Sunday: Bill Anders; Starliner &; Starship), the vehicle started to encounter further issues with its propulsion system, with further helium leaks (the cause of a number of delays ahead of the launch), together with faults with five of the reaction control thrusters as the craft approached the ISS for docking. However, these were largely resolved prior to docking – although problems with the helium purge system associated with the thrusters suffering leaks of decreasing size has continued to be a problem.
However, despite claims made by some, the delays are not the result of the vehicle being “unsafe” or “broken”; simply put, they are to allow NASA and Boeing to carry out multiple additional tests on the thruster systems – including multiple test firings whilst docked at the ISS – and delve deeper into the issue of the helium leaks.
This is particularly important as the thruster systems will not be making a return to Earth; as a part the vehicle’s service module they will be discarded to burn-up in the upper atmosphere. Ergo, NASA and Boeing want to be sure that as much data has been gathered to facilitate further post-flight investigations. This is particularly important for the problematic systems, as they will not be returning to Earth: as they are mounted on the outside of the vehicle’s service module, they will be detached prior to the capsule’s controlled re-entry into the atmosphere and left to burn-up with the rest of the service module.
No date has been given for any return following the latest postponement, NASA stating they are being data-driven in making decisions, not date-driven. However, as the Expedition 71 crew have had to postpone two EVAs to accommodate Starliner’s continued presence at the ISS, and these need to go ahead at the start of July.
A final consideration for the vehicle’s return lies with the landing sight – the so-called “Space Harbour” at White Sands, New Mexico. NASA and Boeing would rather the landing there takes place under certain lighting conditions, if possible, so that cameras, etc., can gather as much data as possible as well. These opportunities occur every 3 or 4 days, allowing for the ISS being in the correct position in its orbit in order for Starliner to depart it and arrive over its landing site to meet those conditions during its descent.
Virgin Galactic Pauses Sub-orbital Flights; Announces New Astronaut Selection & Seeks to Boost Share Price
It’s a busy old time at Virgin Galactic, the sub-orbital space company offering both private and commercial sub-orbital flights to the edge of space.
On June 8th, 2024, the company’s only operational space plane, VSS Unity, undertook its seventh – and final – passenger-carrying flight, this one was a mix of the company’s commercial research flights and a tourism flight, marking the first time the two have been combined into a single Virgin Galactic flight, research flights having previously been carried out as dedicated flights. The mission also marked Unity’s 12th flight overall to sub-orbital altitudes.
Galactic 07 featured Turkish research astronaut, Tuva Atasever, the second Turk to flight into space via a private mission – the first being Alper Gezeravcı, who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) during the Axiom Space Ax-3 mission in January 2024 – and it was Axiom who arranged for Atasever to fly with Virgin Galactic. He was joined by space tourists Andy Sadhwani, a principal propulsion engineer at SpaceX who previously did research at NASA and Stanford University; Irving Pergament, a New York real estate developer and private pilot; and Giorgio Manenti, an Italian investment manager living in London.
Atasever carried out a total of seven research experiments related to medicine and health, and also oversaw automated payloads from Purdue University to study propellant slosh in microgravity, and a 3D printing experiment from the University of California Berkeley, both of which were flown under the NASA Commercial Flight Opportunities Programme. The flight, which reached an altitude of 87.5 km, was commanded by Virgin Galactic veteran Nicola Pecile, making his fourth flight, with rookie Jameel Janjua, on his first spaceflight, as pilot.
It has been previously announced that Unity would be retired from active service in mid-2024. However, at the time of that announcement – November 2023 – it had been assumed that the company could be switching to use their new SpaceShip III craft. These are visually identical to the SpaceShipTwo vehicle type represented by VSS Unity, but with an evolution of flight systems. In all two vehicles in the SpaceShip III class has been unveiled: VSS Imagine and VSS Inspire. Imagine was rolled-out with great fanfare in 2021, and had been due to commence flight testing in 2022/23, but this never happened.
With the June 8th flight of Unity, the company confirmed that the SpaceShip III project had been cancelled, and neither Imagine or Inspire will fly; instead being relegated to the role of ground test articles. Instead, the company will not focus on their next generation of space plane, the Delta Class.
The Delta vehicle is said – again – the be visually the same as the SpaceShipTwo and SpaceShip III vehicles; however, the airframe has been completely redesigned to make much greater use of composites, much updated avionics and the ability for vehicle fabrication to be sub0contracted out so that Virgin Galactic only has to focus on final vehicle assembly, operation and maintenance. As such, it is expected that the Delta vehicles will be easier to manufacture and have much lower manufacturing, operational and maintenance costs. The first Delta vehicle(s) are due to be delivered for testing in 2025, with commercial flights using the first of them commencing in 2026.
If all goes according to plan, one of the first Delta class flights will feature an all-female research team flying with it, in the form of US national Kellie Gerardi, who flew aboard Galactic 05 in November 2023, along with Canadian Shawna Pandya and Ireland’s Norah Patten. All three are part of the non-profit International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), whose mandate includes testing technologies in suborbital aircraft and performing educational activities. Together, they will expand on research that Gerardi (also IIAS director of human spaceflight) performed during Galactic 05, focusing on fluid behaviour with applications to human health.
Despite a string of successful space tourist and commercial flights, Virgin Galactic has not been without financial issues; one of the reasons for the switch away from the SpaceShip III vehicles to focus solely on Delta is to reduce overall expenditure. More particularly, the company’s share price has tumbled from a peak of US $50 a share (2021) to around US $0.85 a share – meaning the company has been trading at below the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) minimum share price of US $1.00. Because of this, they have been given 6 months to reverse matters or be removed from listed on the exchange.
As a result the company is – with board approval – going ahead with a 1-for-20 share reversal , meaning 20 existing share will become a single share, increasing its value by a factor of 20. It is hoped that this will, combined with the US $870 cash and equivalents the company holds, be sufficient to see it move forward to starting-up flights with the Delta vehicles. Virgin Galactic hope that flights with just two Delta Class vehicles will yield around US $450 million in revenue.
Voyager 1 on 4; Hubble on 1
Two of NASA’s longest-running space missions, the Hubble Space Telescope and Voyager 1 having been facing troubles of late, as reported in these pages, which have proven equally hard to resolve, but for very different reasons.
With Voyager 1, the issue is that of distance: it is the most distant human-made object from Earth so far ever made; so far away, that two-way communications take almost 48 hours. The bad news is that in November 2023, the vehicle started returning gibberish to Earth during routine communications. The good news is that, as I reported in April 2024 (see: Space Sunday: Rocket Lab, Voyager, Hubble and SLIM), the root cause of the issue had been identified and corrected, leaving engineers and scientists to bring the craft’s remaining four science instruments back on-line.
On June 13th, 2024, the space agency announced all four instruments – which measure plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles in interstellar space – are back on-line, gathering data, and that data is being correctly transmitted to Earth without being converted to garbage.
In order to get things running solidly, the final step to returning Voyager 1 to a fully-operational status was a full communications sub-system software update: the first time an interstellar software update has every been carried out.
However, the news that Voyager 1 is once again telling us about the interstellar medium has been a bittersweet moment, coming has it did two days after the announcement that Edward C. “Ed” Stone, the man who oversaw the entire Voyager project from its formal inception in 1972 through until 2022, had passed away.
Allowing for declining energy from its decaying from their plutonium-238 power supplies (and the degradation of the thermocouples that turn the heat from that decay into electrical energy), both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 should be able to continue to transmit data through until 2030 – or even the mid-2030s -, although it is possible than one or more of the remaining instruments on either will have to be turned off in the intervening time.
For Hubble, meanwhile, the issue is not distance, but capability; in short, and again as I’ve previously reported, while the telescope might be operating in Earth orbit, we no longer have a vehicle suitable for rendezvousing with it in order for astronauts to swap-out worn-out parts or make other repairs. Again, as I reported in the Space Sunday edition linked-to above, one of the most delicate elements of the telescope is its gyroscopes – vital for pointing the telescope and maintaining its stability.
Normally, Hubble requires three gyros – which is good, because for the just few years, it has had only three of its original 6 in reasonable working order – and one of those has been unwell, as reported in the Space Sunday linked-to above. As that gyro cannot be reliably recovered, NASA made the decision to alter operations so that Hubble only uses a single gyro – the other of the remaining two being held in reserve.
As a result, a new technique has been developed to ensure the telescope can correct point itself at targets and remain steady during imaging, and the results of initial testing are more than promising. On June 20th, NASA released an image of NGC 1546, a galaxy 50 million light-years away. Capturing such an object at such a distance requires both precise pointing and rock-steady stability: and Hubble managed both, revealing the galaxy in as much detail and clarity as if it had been operating on all three gyros.
This is great news for deep-space operations with Hubble, and means the telescope can once again keep producing good science; but there is a price. Pointing and steady the telescope means that Hubble’s operational has to be cut by 25%, and it cannot track objects moving a reasonable speed – such as comets and asteroids inside the orbit of Mars. Even so, better that, than losing Hubble altogether.
