August 2024 Vol. 1

The Second Space Race

China Proposing Cislunar Infrastructure

Last month, Chinese scientists proposed a plan to improve China’s already heavy presence on the Moon. The plan has three phases:

-The first phase will place satellites in Elliptical Frozen Orbits (or ELFOs) around the moon.

-The second phase would place even more satellites in ELFOs while adding some to the Earth-Moon Lagrange points 1, 2, 4, and 5, and some in Geostationary Orbits and Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits.

-The final phase would oversee the placing of satellites in Distant Retrograde Orbits (DROs) to finish off the constellation and by then would ensure the creation of ground-based facilities.

All of these plans were proposed to assist future Chinese and its ally’s missions to the moon, including their future moon base, ILRS.

China isn’t the only country thinking about cislunar infrastructure, though. The US is planning to launch their very own Oracle spacecraft and ESA is developing proposals for their Moonlight initiative, which calls for a constellation of their own.

Boeing Starliner Plagued With Problems

Commercial Spaceflight

The long anticipated launch of the Boeing Starliner finally took place 2 months ago after two unsuccessful attempts. While the ascent was nominal, problems occurred with the infamous service module, including a helium leak. This pushed back the departure date even more and more until it reached the planned undocking date (as of publishing) to sometime around August.

Don’t be mistaken though; the Starliner is able to return to Earth immediately, even in this condition. The only reason it is being kept up is so that Boeing engineers can try to figure out what’s happening. In the meanwhile, the Starliner has racked up a whopping 57 days in space! (This mission was only supposed to be 8 days long.)

Launch Vehicles

Ariane 6 Finally Launches!

On July 9th Ariane 6 finally launched carrying a mass simulator as well as a few rideshare spacecraft. Before this launch, the European Space Agency (or ESA) had no orbital launch vehicles as the previous Ariane 5 retired early. During the launch, the core stage and the boosters preformed as expected and the upper stage managed to ignite at T+8 minutes.

The first upper stage burn was also successful, placing it in a preliminary orbit. The second burn did just as well, getting it into a circular orbit. But the third burn, which required the upper stage to fire its APUs to make itself come back to Earth, failed. This is a problem as ESA aims to demonstrate that they can get the upper stage back into the atmosphere to burn up so it doesn’t turn into uncontrollable space debris.

Spacecraft

The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) probe, a collaboration between the USA and India has had its launch postponed. The probe had to be shipped back to California from its launch site in India due to concerns about temperatures during storage in launch. At California, NASA added a special coating to the spacecraft to mitigate the problems. Finally, on July 29th, NASA announced that it was close to completion in a blog post. However the launch isn’t expected to take place until February 2025.

NISAR Probe On Hold

What Will Happen Next Month

In the coming month we are expecting:

-The return of the Starliner capsule, which will land at White Sands Missile Range, NW, USA. It is expected to take place before Crew 9's launch on August 18th.

-Starship Integrated Flight Test (IFT) 5, which will attempt to get Starship to survive reentry to splash down in the Indian Ocean, and the first ever catching of the Super Heavy Booster via the “Chopsticks” (A pair of mechanical arms attached to the Launch Tower). The exact date is not known.

-The launch of Polaris Dawn, an all civilian mission on SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule. It will attempt to preform not only the first all civilian spacewalk, but the highest spacewalk. It will launch around mid-August.

-As mentioned above, Crew 9 will launch somewhere around August 18, carrying astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague and Stephanie Wilson to the ISS.

-When Crew 9 arrives at the ISS, Crew 8 will head back to Earth, however it is not known when or where it will land.