Tag: Spacecraft

Parker Solar Probe will soon go deeper into the sun than ever before

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Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe

NASA GSFC/CIL/Brian Monroe

In less than two weeks, a spacecraft will pass through the atmosphere of our nearest star as part of its mission to “touch” the sun.

“On Christmas Eve of this year, the Parker Solar Probe will be the closest human-made object ever to a star,” Nour Rawafi at Johns Hopkins University said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC on 10 December. “We are at the moment we’ve been waiting for for nearly 60 years.”

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December 11, 2024
The End Is Near for NASA’s Voyager Probes

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Saturn as captured by the Voyager program.

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Once the Voyagers’ planetary journeys were over, it was possible to begin a new mission phase. After their last planetary stops, both probes reached escape velocity for the solar system, allowing them to be released from the sun’s gravity. Since 2012 for Voyager 1, and 2018 for Voyager 2, they have become interstellar. We know this because after those dates, sensors on the probes showed that charged particles from the sun became less numerous and energetic than those detected from the galactic environment. This was a golden opportunity to study the boundaries of the solar system and the environment outside of it.

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft carried Golden Records—recordings of sounds and images intended to show extraterrestrial beings the life and culture of Earth.

Space Frontiers/Getty Images

The Secret to a Long Life

Reaching such a distance is only possible with the right energy source. Many probes use solar panels, but if they move too far from the sun, they become useless (the farthest probe that uses them is the Juno probe orbiting Jupiter). The secret of the Voyagers lies in their atomic hearts: both are equipped with three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs—small power generators that can produce power directly on board. Each RTG contains 24 plutonium-238 oxide spheres with a total mass of 4.5 kilograms.

Plutonium-238 is an unstable isotope, which means it undergoes radioactive decay. The plutonium atoms in the RTGs release alpha particles—comprising two protons and two neutrons—and these hit the RTG canister, heating it up. The heat is then converted into electricity.

An RTG built for the Voyager program.

NASA/JPL/Voyager

But as time passes, the plutonium on board is depleted, and so the RTGs produce less and less energy. The Voyagers are therefore slowly dying. Nuclear batteries have a maximum lifespan of 60 years.

In order to conserve the probes’ remaining energy, the mission team is gradually shutting down the various instruments on the probes that are still active. For example, in October, Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument—which measures electrically charged atoms passing the probe—was turned off; the same device on Voyager 1 was turned off in 2007 due to a malfunction. These instruments were used to study charged particles in the sun’s magnetic field, and it is precisely this detector in 2018 that determined that Voyager 2 had exited the heliosphere and become interstellar.

Four active instruments remain, including a magnetometer as well as other instruments used to study the galactic environment, with its cosmic rays and interstellar magnetic field. But these are in their last years. In the next decade—it’s hard to say exactly when—the batteries of both probes will be drained forever.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

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December 2, 2024
Our only visit to Uranus came at an unusual time for the planet

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Uranus is more normal than we had thought

NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute

Uranus’s strange magnetic field may be much less weird than astronomers first thought, which means its largest moons could be much more active, and even perhaps have global oceans.

Our only direct measurements of Uranus’s magnetic field come from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by the planet in 1986. The spacecraft’s readings suggested that the magnetic field was lopsided – meaning it wasn’t aligned with the planet’s rotation – as well as being unusually rich in extremely energetic electrons and devoid of the plasma that is common in the magnetic fields of other gas giants like Jupiter. Astronomers at the time thought the results so bizarre that they invoked complex physics to try to explain the readings – or simply dismissed them as evidence that Voyager 2’s instruments had gone haywire.

Now, Jamie Jasinski at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and his colleagues have reanalysed the Voyager 2 data and found that it was skewed by a rare burst of solar wind that squashed Uranus’s magnetic field just before the spacecraft arrived, disturbing the readings. This means everything we thought we knew about Uranus’s magnetic field might be wrong, says Jasinski. “This kind of almost resets everything,” he says.

Jasinski and his team found that the solar wind compressed Uranus’s magnetic field to a size that it would typically only adopt 4 per cent of the time – but that scientists have, for the past 40 years, assumed was its normal state. The squashed magnetic field explains the previous strange results, such as its lack of plasma and highly energetic electrons, says Jasinski.

If there is, in fact, plasma in Uranus’s magnetic field – and Voyager 2 just happened to miss it – then it might not all come from the planet itself. Some might come from Uranus’s moons, the largest of which are called Titania and Oberon. Until now, we have assumed these moons were inert, but the new study leaves open the possibility that they are geologically active after all. This would fit with recent calculations indicating the moons might have hidden oceans. “The solar wind could have essentially eradicated all the evidence of active moons just before the flyby happened,” says Jasinski.

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November 11, 2024
China’s New Heavy Lift Rocket Looks a Whole Lot Like SpaceX’s Starship

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When Chinese space officials unveiled the design for the country’s first super heavy-lift rocket nearly a decade ago, it looked like a fairly conventional booster. The rocket was fully expendable, with three stages and solid motors strapped onto its sides.

Since then, China has been revising the design of this rocket, named Long March 9, in response to the development of reusable rockets by SpaceX. As of two years ago, China had recalibrated the design to have a reusable first stage.

Now, based on information released at a major airshow in Zhuhai, the design has morphed again. And this time, the plan for the Long March 9 rocket looks almost exactly like a clone of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.

This Looks Familiar

Based on its latest specifications, the Long March 9 rocket will have a fully reusable first stage powered by 30 YF-215 engines, which are full-flow staged combustion engines fueled by methane and liquid oxygen, each with a thrust of approximately 200 tons. By way of comparison, Starship’s first stage is powered by 33 Raptor engines, also fueled with methane and liquid oxygen, each with a thrust of about 280 tons.

The new specifications also include a fully reusable configuration of the rocket, with an upper stage that looks eerily similar to Starship’s second stage, complete with flaps in a similar location. According to a presentation at the airshow, China intends to fly this vehicle for the first time in 2033, nearly a decade from now.

In related news, last week, a quasi-private Chinese space startup, Cosmoleap, announced plans to develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX successfully employed during Starship’s fifth flight test last month.

Let’s be real for a minute. These are not the first times Chinese rocket programs have emulated SpaceX, such as when Space Pioneer planned to develop a Falcon 9 clone. Both the state-run rocket agency and the company’s private industries are copying the best practices of SpaceX as they seek to catch up. At this point, China’s launch industry is basically hanging out in the SpaceX waiting room to see which ideas it should swipe next.

The Real Race Begins to Unfold

It is, of course, not new that the Chinese industry seeks to copy—and in some cases, steal—ideas from Western competitors. To its credit, the Chinese space industry recognizes that the future of spaceflight is fully reusable, and even its state enterprises are recalibrating toward such an outcome.

By contrast, US policymakers seem determined to force NASA to continue building the ultraexpensive and expendable Space Launch System rocket for decades. This consumes a NASA budget that could otherwise be directed toward the kind of technological advances that might keep the US civil space program ahead of China.

NASA and Chinese space agencies are presently locked into a second space race, with both countries building international coalitions to explore the south pole region of the moon and eventually establish settlements there. Because the real estate near the south pole (especially close to craters, where there is likely to be water ice) is relatively limited, winning this race really matters for long-term space ambitions.

China intends to use a more conventional rocket for its initial lunar missions, the Long March 10 vehicle. These initial forays will last for only a few days. The country is counting on the much more powerful, and reusable, Long March 9 to support more robust lunar operations.

If the ultimate aim is to develop lunar settlements, therefore, the real winner is not the country or space agency that puts astronauts on the surface first. It’s the first country that develops a fully reusable super heavy-lift rocket and funds a program that takes advantage of this revolutionary capability. The United States presently has a lead in this race given that Starship is flying.

But the race is not yet won by any means, and the latest design of Long March 9 indicates that China knows where the finish line lies.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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November 5, 2024
The Polaris Dawn Spaceflight Was More Than Just a Billionaire Joyride

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A white spacecraft, lightly toasted like a marshmallow and smelling of singed metal, fell out of the night sky early on Sunday morning and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico not all that far from Key West.

The darkened waters there were carefully chosen from among dozens of potential landing spots near Florida. This is because the wind and seas were predicted to be especially calm and serene as the Crew Dragon spacecraft named Resilience floated down to the sea and bobbed gently, awaiting the arrival of a recovery ship.

Inside waited a crew of four—commander Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who funded the mission and had just completed his second private spaceflight; SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who were the company’s first employees to fly into orbit; and pilot Kidd Poteet.

They were happy to be home.

“We are mission complete,” Isaacman said after the spacecraft landed.

A Significant Success

Their mission, certainly the most ambitious private spaceflight to date, was a total success. Named Polaris Dawn, the mission flew to an altitude of 1,408.1 kilometers on the first day of the flight. This was the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown and the farthest humans have traveled from our planet since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago.

Photograph: SpaceX/Getty Images

Then, on the third day of the flight, the four crew members donned space suits designed and developed within the past two years. After venting the cabin’s atmosphere into space, first Isaacman, and then Gillis, spent several minutes extending their bodies out of the Dragon spacecraft. This was the first-ever private spacewalk in history.

Although this foray into space largely repeated what the Soviet Union, and then the United States, performed in the mid-1960s, with tethered spacewalks, it nonetheless was significant. These commercial space suits cost a fraction of government suits and can be considered version 1.0 of suits that could one day enable many people to walk in space, on the moon, and eventually Mars.

Finally, on the mission’s final full day in space, the Dragon spacecraft demonstrated connectivity with a mesh of Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit. The crew held a 40-minute, uninterrupted video call with flight operators back at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. During that time, according to the company, Dragon maintained contact via laser links to Starlink satellites through 16 firings of the spacecraft’s Draco thrusters.

This test demonstrated the viability of using the thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit as a means of providing high-speed Internet to people and spacecraft in space.

Wait, Isn’t This Just a Billionaire Joyride?

Some people have misunderstood the mission. They saw in Isaacman a financial tech billionaire gratifying his desire to go to space, inside a crew vehicle built by Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. Thus, this appeared to be just a roller-coaster ride for the ultrarich and famous—for those who could not sate their thrill-seeking with the pleasures attainable on planet Earth.

I understand this viewpoint, but I do not share it.

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September 16, 2024
Boeing Starliner Returns Home to an Uncertain Future

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Until now, NASA has paid Boeing roughly $2.7 billion of the $4.6 billion total potential value of its commercial crew contract, according to Finch. The Starliner contract NASA awarded Boeing in 2014 originally had a maximum value of $4.2 billion, but contract modifications since 2014 have added $400 million to the deal. Most of the money NASA has paid Boeing to date has been for Starliner development costs, while the remaining funds under the contract cover future service payments for operational flights.

So, if Boeing walked away from Starliner, the company would be giving up nearly $1.9 billion on potential revenue from NASA, still more than the $1.6 billion in losses it has taken on the program so far.

Ready for Departure

Since deciding last month to fly Starliner home without its crew, NASA managers have reviewed plans for the spacecraft to depart the space station in autopilot mode. The preparations included updating Starliner’s software parameters to enable the autonomous undocking. Then, last Thursday, NASA officials convened a Flight Readiness Review and cleared Starliner to return to Earth.

“Everybody polled ‘go’ in that review, pending the operational status of the vehicle and the landing weather,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “So we’re proceeding toward undock and landing on Friday.”

As Starliner approached the space station on June 6, five of the ship’s 28 Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters dropped offline, requiring Wilmore to take manual control while ground controllers tried to recover some of the control jets.

Engineers tested thrusters and analyzed data for over two months to track down the cause of the thrusters’ failure. Ground teams were able to bring four of the five failed thrusters back online, but NASA officials could not assure themselves the same thrusters, or perhaps more, won’t overheat again and fail as Starliner departs the station and heads for reentry.

Investigators found that repeated pulses of the RCS jets led to rising temperatures in the thrusters. This likely caused a seal in each of the problematic thrusters to bulge and deform, restricting the flow of propellant, according to NASA officials.

Stich said Wednesday that possible solutions to the problem on future Starliner flights range from changing the way the ship fires its thrusters to prevent overheating, to changing the seal design, to modifying the doghouse-shaped propulsion pods where the thrusters reside on the spacecraft’s service module. The design of these “doghouses” cause them to retain heat like a thermos, exacerbating the thermal problem.

Boeing and NASA also must resolve helium leaks that plagued the Starliner test flight. Engineers believe a separate set of degraded seals is causing helium leaks, which the spacecraft uses to pressurize the propulsion system and drive propellants into its thrusters. Ground controllers have closed valves to isolate the helium system and close off the leaks while Starliner has been docked at the space station. Those isolation valves will open before Starliner departs the space station, but NASA officials say the spacecraft has more than enough helium for the six-hour flight from undocking until landing Friday night.

Wilmore and Williams originally planned to stay at the space station for around eight days, but will now remain as residents on the complex until February, when they will come home in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS program manager, said Wednesday that the Starliner astronauts, both veterans of previous six-month stays on the space station, are fully trained to perform spacewalks, operate the lab’s robotic arm, and conduct maintenance and scientific experiments. They will be fully integrated into the space station’s long-duration crew, which usually includes seven residents. With the Starliner crew’s extended stay, the station crew size has grown to nine people.

The crew shakeup forced NASA to remove two astronauts from the next SpaceX Dragon crew flight launching to the ISS later this month, leaving two seats empty to accommodate Wilmore and Williams when the Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth early next year. This upcoming SpaceX crew rotation will bring the station crew size back to its usual complement of seven US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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September 6, 2024
NASA Nears Decision Time on Boeing Starliner’s Fate

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With no consensus on the safety of the Starliner crew capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday they need another week or two before deciding whether to bring two astronauts back to Earth on Boeing’s spacecraft or extend their stay on the International Space Station until next year.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, stricken by suspect thrusters and helium leaks, is taking up a valuable parking spot at the space station. It needs to depart the orbiting research complex, with or without its two-person crew, before the launch of SpaceX’s next Dragon crew mission to the station, scheduled for September 24.

“We can juggle things and make things work if we need to extend, but it’s getting a lot harder,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate. “With the consumables we’re using, with the need for the use of the ports for cargo missions, those types of things, we’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner.”

Last week, NASA officials said they expected to make a decision in mid-August—presumably this week—but Bowersox said Wednesday NASA probably won’t make the final call on what to do with the Starliner spacecraft until the end of next week, or the beginning of the week of August 26.

“We’ve got time available before we bring Starliner home and we want to use that time wisely,” Bowersox said.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched inside Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5. Their mission is the first crew test flight on Boeing’s capsule before NASA clears Starliner for regular crew rotation flights to the space station. But after software setbacks, parachute concerns, and previous problems with its propulsion system, Boeing’s Starliner program is running more than four years behind SpaceX’s Dragon crew spacecraft, which flew astronauts to the station for the first time in 2020.

And now, there’s a significant chance the Starliner crew won’t come home in the spacecraft they launched in. Bowersox, a former astronaut, said NASA brought in propulsion experts from other programs to take a fresh look at the thruster issue.

Engineers are still investigating the root cause of why five of Starliner’s 28 reaction control system thrusters, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, failed during approach to the space station the day after launch. The thrusters overheated as they pulsed over and over again to fine-tune the ship’s rendezvous with the station. Tests of a similar control jet on the ground suggested a Teflon seal in an internal valve could swell at higher temperatures, restricting the flow of propellant to the thruster.

Four of the five thrusters that failed before Starliner docked at the station have recovered and generated near-normal thrust levels during test-firings last month. But many engineers at NASA aren’t convinced the thrusters will work normally on Starliner’s journey from the space station back to Earth. These control jets are needed to keep the spacecraft pointed in the right direction when four larger rocket engines fire for the deorbit burn to steer the capsule on a trajectory back into the atmosphere for landing.

Rapid pulses of the thrusters, coupled with a long firing of the four larger engines, could raise temperatures inside four doghouse-shaped propulsion pods around the perimeter of Starliner’s service module. Once the deorbit burn is complete, Starliner will jettison the service module to burn up in the atmosphere, and its crew module will use a different set of thrusters to guide its reentry. Then, it will deploy parachutes to slow for landing, likely at White Sands, New Mexico.

Elevated risk

Bowersox said the outside engineers brought in from other NASA centers have, so far, largely agreed with the assessments made by the team working full time on Starliner.

“There are a lot of folks out there that have worked with similar thrusters, and have seen similar issues,” he said. “So we’ve gotten feedback on what we’re seeing, and a lot of it is confirming what we thought was causing the signatures that we were observing on orbit. It’s really tough when you don’t have the actual hardware to look at, when it’s up in space.”

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August 16, 2024
NASA Still Hasn’t Decided How to Get the Boeing Starliner Astronauts Home

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During a news conference on Wednesday, NASA officials for the first time publicly discussed divisions within the agency about whether the Starliner spacecraft is really reliable enough to return two veteran astronauts—Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—back to Earth from the International Space Station.

The space agency also confirmed key elements exclusively reported by Ars over the past week, chiefly that NASA has quietly been working for weeks with SpaceX on a potential rescue mission for Wilmore and Williams, that the Crew-9 mission launch has been delayed to September 24 to account for this possibility, and that Starliner is unable to undock autonomously with the current software configuration on the vehicle.

The chief of space human spaceflight operations for NASA, former astronaut Ken Bowersox, said no final decisions have been made on how Wilmore and Williams return to Earth. He said there were reasonable disagreements among engineers at NASA, which is the customer for the spaceflight, and Boeing, which developed and operates Starliner, about the viability of the 28 reaction control system thrusters that are used for delicate maneuvering and pointing of the vehicle.

“I think it’s been very healthy,” Bowersox said of these internal discussions during a call with reporters on Wednesday. “I have to admit that sometimes when we get disagreement, it’s not fun. It can be painful having those discussions, but it’s what makes us a good organization.”

NASA has been studying various contingencies, but officials appear to have settled on two different options for bringing the two astronauts back to Earth. They could still fly back on Starliner if NASA engineers become more comfortable with the uncertainty about the thruster performance, and if so, they would do so during the second half of this month or the first part of September. Alternatively, NASA could launch the Crew-9 mission with a complement of two rather than four astronauts, and Wilmore and Williams would join that “increment” on the space station and fly back to Earth in February 2025.

Asked if he thought one of the two scenarios was more likely than the other, Bowersox said he could not say. However, a final decision will be made fairly soon. Bowersox said NASA needs to choose the astronauts’ return path by mid-August.

Thruster Issues

NASA’s concern about Starliner’s thrusters boils down to the failure of five of them during the vehicle’s ascent to the space station. Starliner’s flight computer shut off five thrusters, provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne, in flight. Four of the five thrusters were recovered after overheating.

Since then Boeing and NASA have conducted ground- and space-based tests of the small thrusters to try to replicate the failure and better understand, fundamentally, what is occurring. By getting to the root cause, the engineers will feel confident in their ability to address the problem for Starliner’s flight back to Earth.

In ground tests, the engineers were able to demonstrate similar failures. Subsequent inspections showed bulging in a Teflon seal in an oxidizer valve known as a “poppet,” which could restrict the flow of nitrogen tetroxide propellant. The thrusters consume the nitrogen tetroxide and mix it with hydrazine fuel for combustion. Despite the tests, however, engineers still don’t understand precisely why the bulging is occurring and whether it will manifest on Starliner’s flight back to Earth.

“People really want to understand the physics of what’s going on relative to the physics of the Teflon, what’s causing it to heat up, and what’s causing it to contract,” said Steve Stich, who manages the Commercial Crew program for NASA. “That’s really what the team is off trying to understand. I think the NASA community in general would like to understand a little bit more of the root cause.”

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August 8, 2024
NASA Is ‘Evaluating All Options’ to Get the Boeing Starliner Crew Home
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It has now been eight weeks since Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched into orbit on an Atlas V rocket, bound for the International Space Station. At the time NASA officials said the two crew members, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, could return to Earth as soon as June 14, just eight days later.

Yes, there had been some problems on Starliner’s ride to the space station that involved helium leaks and failing thrusters. But officials said they were relatively minor and sought to downplay them. “Those are pretty small, really, issues to deal with,” Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a post-docking news conference. “We’ll figure them out for the next mission. I don’t see these as significant at all.”

But days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months as NASA and Boeing continued to study the two technical problems. Of these issues, the more pressing concern was the failure of multiple reaction control system thrusters that are essential to steering Starliner during its departure from the space station and setting up a critical engine burn to enter Earth’s atmosphere.

In the last few weeks, ground teams from NASA and Boeing completed testing of a thruster on a test stand at White Sands, New Mexico. Then, last weekend, Boeing and NASA fired the spacecraft’s thrusters in orbit to check their performance while docked at the space station. NASA has said preliminary results from these tests were helpful.

Dragon Becomes a Real Option

One week ago, the last time NASA officials spoke to the media, the agency’s program manager for commercial crew, Steve Stich, would not be drawn into discussing what would happen should NASA conclude that Starliner’s thrusters were not reliable enough for the return journey to Earth.

“Our prime option is to complete the mission,” Stich said one week ago. “There are a lot of good reasons to complete this mission and bring Butch and Suni home on Starliner. Starliner was designed, as a spacecraft, to have the crew in the cockpit.”

For a long time, it seemed almost certain that the astronauts would return to Earth inside Starliner.

However, there has been a lot of recent activity at NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX that suggests that Wilmore and Williams could come home aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft rather than Starliner. Due to the critical importance of this mission, Ars is sharing what we know as of Thursday afternoon.

One informed source said it was greater than a 50-50 chance that the crew would come back on Dragon. Another source said it was significantly more likely than not they would. To be clear, NASA has not made a final decision. This probably will not happen until at least next week. It is likely that Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, will make the call.

Asked if it was now more likely than not that Starliner’s crew would return on Dragon, NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars on Thursday evening, “NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible. No decisions have been made, and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.”

Putting Together Puzzle Pieces

What follows are some data points that Ars can confidently report based on multiple sources:
- NASA keeps delaying a decision. A Flight Readiness Review meeting had been scheduled for today, August 1, several days in advance. However, it was canceled. Instead, NASA put out a vague blog update on Thursday stating, “Following the completion of Starliner’s return planning, which is expected to continue into next week, more information will be shared about the agency’s return readiness review preparations and subsequent media briefing.” So maybe the meeting will take place next week.
- NASA issued a $266,678 task award to SpaceX on July 14 for a “special study for emergency response.” NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner’s problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams.
- SpaceX has been actively working on a scenario in which two or four astronauts launch on board Crew 9. (A normal crew is four) This mission has a nominal launch date of August 18, but it could well be delayed. SpaceX has already identified flight suits that would fit Wilmore and Williams, allowing them to fly home on the Crew-8 spacecraft (presently docked to the space station) or the Crew-9 vehicle. It is unclear how crews would be assigned to the two Dragon return flights. It is possible, if four astronauts launch on Crew 9, that five people could fly home on each of the two Dragons.
- Two sources told Ars that in meetings this week at NASA field centers, there have been vigorous discussions about whether or not to fly crew home on Starliner. Multiple groups remain “no” on Starliner as of Wednesday. It is unclear how this will be resolved. Some engineers believe that if there are questions about Starliner, then NASA should opt for the safe course—flying on Crew Dragon, which has safely launched 13 times and landed 12 times.
The Toughest of Calls

NASA officials face a difficult decision. Because there is still at least a small risk to flying Starliner in its present condition, the space agency and Boeing have tested the thrusters as thoroughly as possible while the spacecraft is docked to the space station. This testing was intended to “buy down” these risks. But while the data is good, it has not addressed all of NASA’s concerns.

So what will the space agency do? Starliner probably could make it back to Earth safely. But there appears to be some reasonable doubt that Starliner will come back safely. If NASA defers to its fallback plan, flying on Dragon, it may spell the end of the Starliner program. During the development and testing of Starliner, the company has already lost $1.6 billion. Reflying a crew test flight mission, which likely would be necessary should Starliner return autonomously, would cost much more. Boeing might opt to cancel Starliner and leave NASA with just a single provider of crew transportation. That would be painful for both NASA and Boeing.

But the alternative—Starliner not coming home safely with the crew inside—is far, far worse. This is the risk-reward decision that Free, Stich, and other NASA officials ultimately must balance in the coming days.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
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August 3, 2024
Pooping on the Moon Is a Messy Business

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In addition to raising these legal and ethical quandaries, the Apollo waste bags have also inspired exciting scientific questions. How long did those bagged microbes last on the Moon? Did exposure to such unforgiving conditions prompt any mutations or adaptations? Since all species on Earth descend from microbes, this line of research would shed new light on the great mysteries of how and where life emerges in the universe. Answers to some of the most profound and ancient questions about our place in the cosmos may indeed be waiting in Neil Armstrong’s 55-year-old spent diapers.

“We are this multiplicity,” says Katherine Sammler, a human geographer at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, who has written about waste management in space through the lens of critical social theory. “We bring with us nonhuman passengers, like microbes and bacteria, as well as our own bodies and the things that go in and out of them. We have to think about the passengers that come with us and their experience of gravity and radiation on the moon.” The bags of waste would be rich sites for doing research, she adds. “What’s there? What’s left?”

In his mission concept, Lupisella proposes answering some of those questions by conducting biomolecular sequencing, among other experiments, on samples of Apollo astronaut poop. These efforts could potentially reveal whether the microbes experienced an altered rate of genetic mutations after being marooned on the Moon, which hypothetically could provide an adaptive advantage. Lupisella is also curious about whether any microbial spores in the bags could be revived in the right conditions.

“We already know life outside humans is robust, and can survive weird environments, but if the human microbiome can survive in those environments, like say on the Moon, that’s even more of a strong indicator of how tenacious life can be,” Lupisella says. “It would be another data point that says it’s a little bit easier to believe that life can exist in lots of places throughout the galaxy, solar system, and universe at large.”

Astronauts have often reported that the number one question they receive from schoolchildren is how they go to the bathroom in space. It’s a simple query that exposes a complex and ever-evolving set of challenges, many of which remain unresolved. It’s not clear that we will ever unlock satisfying solutions to these problems, but the ongoing effort to confront the legal, ethical, and practical obstacles of waste management in space will yield returns back here on Earth as well.

“I’m so excited about working on space issues, because we do have an opportunity to do better,” de Zwart says. “We should be going in a way that is sustainable and responsible. We should be thinking about how to minimize waste. Of course, if you can crack that nut for space, then it’s going to have massive benefits on Earth, so that we can help our game here about waste management and disposal.”

For instance, billions of people on Earth do not have access to safe sanitation services, a situation that has galvanized campaigns to build more innovative toilets and sewage systems. Meanwhile, growing numbers of livestock worldwide, and the billions of tons of feces they produce each year, are straining waste management programs. Wastewater frequently pollutes environments and exposes humans to health risks, including respiratory illnesses or waste-related pathogens. Wastewater systems currently contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, while the effects of climate change, including extreme weather events like floods or hurricanes, impose more stress on waste infrastructure.

“Perhaps humanity can avoid the worst effects of global climate change by embracing what even the military-industrial complex determined was an absolutely necessity to any spacecraft, namely a bioregenerative life support system,” Munns and Nickelsen say in their book.

“In writing a book about what people have done with their shit in space, we have also written a book that speaks to the problem of what people have to do with their shit on Earth,” they conclude.

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June 25, 2024