Issue No. 221

The Orbital Index Issue No. 221 | Jun 7, 2023 🚀 🌍 🛰

¶Starliner’s got more problems. The much-delayed Starliner crewed capsule, which failed to reach the ISS in 2019 in an uncrewed test, and then mostly succeeded three years later in 2022, has now been delayed for an indeterminate length of time (press teleconference). Next month’s now-postponed Crew Flight Test (CFT) was meant to be the last milestone before Starliner entered NASA’s commercial crew program rotation alongside Crew Dragon. Two primary issues are driving this latest delay. The first is the discovery that parachute lines could snap if one of the capsule’s three chutes were to fail to deploy 😱. The second issue, and perhaps harder to correct in the short term, is the potential flammability when chafed of wire harness wrapping material used in the capsule—estimates for the length of harness that needs to be re-wrapped or over-wrapped are at least “hundreds of feet” which will include significant disassembly, testing, reassembly, and finally recertification of the capsule. Luckily for NASA, Boeing has confirmed that it will continue Starliner development and, since Commercial Crew Development contracts are fixed cost, this latest delay will again be borne by the company and not the agency. These issues feel like they should have been found significantly earlier in the development process, and yet again call into question Boeing’s ability to create crew-quality hardware, which is worrying given their planned involvement in developing the Orbital Reef commercial station with Blue Origin and Sierra Space. (Related: Perhaps tellingly, Boeing’s involvement in Blue’s HLS design was limited to the contribution of the docking adapter.) The Orbital Index is made possible through generous sponsorship by:   ¶Papers. Our bodies evolved to counter the effects of gravity by pushing blood upwards. In space, this can lead to Space Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome, where too high average pressure in the cerebrospinal fluid can damage astronauts’ retinas. Until now, this could only be detected through invasive methods, but University of Western Australia researchers are developing a non-invasive measurement system that uses camera observation of retina blood vessel pulsations to measure cerebrospinal fluid pressure (paper). There is a correlation between the number of nearby supernovae and the fraction of organic matter buried in Earth’s sediments. A recent paper explains this observation via supernovae’s influence on Earth’s climate—ions created by cosmic ray interactions result in the formation of clouds, so a higher number of supernovae leads to a colder climate, which results in stronger winds and more ocean mixing, in turn exposing more nutrients and sequestering more organic material. All we need to do to fix climate change is to blow up a nearby star. 🤔 Relatedly, another fun study, this time of ancient crustal minerals, suggests “a rhythm of crust production every 200 million years or so that matched our Solar System's transit through areas of the galaxy with a higher density of stars” (i.e. our galaxy’s spiral arms), leading the researchers to posit that these denser regions of stars dislodged more comets, increasing planetary bombardment rates and leading to “greater melting of the Earth's surface to produce the buoyant nuclei of the early continents." A non-alien explanation for 'Oumuamua’s anomalous acceleration as it moved away from the Sun comes in the form of outgassing hydrogen. In this hypothesis, during its journey between stars, the interstellar object was struck by cosmic rays penetrating meters into its ice and eventually converted up to a quarter of the water into pockets of trapped molecular hydrogen gas. Due to 'Oumuamua’s small size, hydrogen outgassing as the Sun warmed it would be sufficient to produce the detected, noticeable acceleration effect (Nature paper). “We were able to replicate and confirm prior authors' detection of a moon orbiting the Earth with high confidence.” XKCD #2783 ¶News in brief. Both NASA and China’s Manned Space Agency announced requests for proposals for crewed lunar rovers ● Shenzhou-15 and crew returned to Earth ● Dragon CRS-28 launched to deliver cargo to the ISS ● RFA completed a full duration upper stage test fire ● Spain joined the Artemis Accords, the 25th country to do so ● Inmarsat’s acquisition by ViaSat closed ● The Psyche mission is back on track for an October launch ● A Chollima-1 rocket from North Korea carrying the country’s first spy satellite failed to reach orbit after an upper-stage failure, crashing off the Korean Peninsula’s western coast ● India-headquartered Pixxel raised a $36M Series B for their hyperspectral satellite constellation ● Hubble Network raised a $20M Series A for a satellite constellation that can talk directly to Bluetooth low energy devices, a ~5 orders of magnitude improvement in range on unmodified devices that we’d be very impressed by ● The Pentagon is paying SpaceX for Starlink service in Ukraine ● Sierra Space powered up Dream Chaser for the first time—Dream Chaser, pictured below, was the third crew capsule bidder, unchosen in favor of Starliner and Crew Dragon, from the initial commercial crew program process. ¶Etc. Before Ax-2 returned to Earth, and after the launch of Shenzhou 16, there was a period of a few hours where 17 people were in orbit, a new record for humanity. 🏆 A downloadable PDF map of all of the world’s current and potential spaceports and ballistic missile testing sites—there are 80+ operational, planned, or announced. Betelgeuse is at it again, now it’s 50% brighter than normal. JPL’s GUARDIAN system is working to detect tsunamis by watching ionospheric effects and their impact on GPS signals. Pixpaint. A bunch of detailed images of the Sun from the Inouye Solar Telescope. (One is below.) “This image reveals the fine structures of a sunspot in the photosphere. Within the dark, central area of the sunspot’s umbra, small-scale bright dots, known as umbral dots, are seen. The elongated structures surrounding the umbra are visible as bright-headed strands known as penumbral filaments.” Image Credit: NSF/AURA/NSO

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