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Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13851: Feb 26th 2025 at 3:37:21 PM

Tune in tonight to watch the Intuitive Machines Nova-C IM-2 mission lift off for the Moon. T-0 is 00:16 UTC (7:16 PM EST) from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Booster B1083 is making its ninth flight and will land downrange on A Shortfall of Gravitas.

The live event is being streamed by NASA on YouTube and by SpaceX on X.

This will be Intuitive Machines' second attempt at landing on the Moon with its Nova-C spacecraft. As mentioned earlier, the previous attempt in February 2024 was partially successful. It touched down too hard and broke a leg, falling onto its side. It continued to operate for several days until the sunlight ran out. This mission hopes to make a clean landing.

The lander, dubbed "Athena", carries a number of scientific payloads for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. There are also a number of secondary payloads on the rocket that will deploy independently. Check out the link I provided above for details.

Athena will be taking a much more direct route to the Moon, enabled by the unique feature of the Nova-C spacecraft: a cryogenic propulsion system employing liquid oxygen and liquid methane. LC-39A was modified to include liquid methane supply to the payload fairing specifically for this purpose. If all goes as planned, it will make its landing attempt on March 6.

Updates:

Liftoff, booster landing, and orbital insertion were successful. Now in a coast phase prior to the lunar transfer orbit burn.

Transfer burn and payload deployment sequence completed. Waiting for acquisition of signal for the lander.

Acquisition of signal! That was a bit of a nail-biter.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2025 at 8:20:23 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13852: Feb 27th 2025 at 5:56:59 AM

IM-2 Mission Status

Intuitive Machines reports that its Nova-C "Athena" spacecraft is in communication and healthy as it makes its way to the Moon. The mission page is here if you want to follow along.

The posts are accompanied by some fantastic look-back selfies showing the Earth behind the lander.

Starship Flight 8

Flight 8 has been moved to March 3, presumably due to delays in getting the vehicles stacked and/or regulatory approvals. I mean, there's no ship on the pad yet, so it's definitely at least the first part.

SLS "Off-Ramp"

Ars Technica: Long-time advocate of SLS rocket says it’s time to find an “off-ramp”

The lights may be starting to go out for NASA's Space Launch System program.

On Wednesday, one of the Republican space policy leaders most consistently opposed to commercial heavy lift rockets over the last decade—as an alternative to NASA's large SLS rocket—has changed his mind.

"We need an off-ramp for reliance on the SLS," said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in written testimony. He issued the statement in advance of a hearing about US space policy, and the future of NASA's Artemis Moon program, before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

A physicist and influential policy expert, Pace has decades of experience researching and writing space policy. He has served in multiple Republican administrations, most recently as executive secretary of the National Space Council from 2017 to 2020. He strongly advocated for the SLS rocket after Congress directed NASA to develop it in 2011.

For a long time, it was political suicide to publicly oppose SLS in Congress. Now those seams are starting to tear. At the time the program was developed, there were no commercial super-heavy rockets capable of delivering something the size of Orion to lunar transfer orbit. Today we have as many as four: Falcon Heavy, Starship, New Glenn, and Vulcan.

SLS is simply not capable of delivering the pace required, never mind the cost. Pace says that we should be able to send multiple lunar missions per year, not one every 1-2 years.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#13853: Feb 27th 2025 at 6:24:12 AM

[up] It is here I suppose. Gets me thinking about the role of the state in space exploration. I have this vision where routine missions and rockets are handled privately while state conducts the exploration itself.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13854: Mar 1st 2025 at 10:17:30 PM

Oh, crap! I almost forgot that Firefly’s Blue Ghost is going to try to land on the Moon tonight, in just a few hours. Can’t stay up to watch it, but here are some links:

NASA+, YouTube

Feel free to post updates in the thread. I’ll check in after I get up.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#13856: Mar 1st 2025 at 11:47:02 PM

Communicaition is back after being on the farside.

Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#13857: Mar 1st 2025 at 11:55:42 PM

The moderators are showing a piece of landing leg.

Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13860: Mar 2nd 2025 at 6:33:36 AM

Oh, hell yes! Firefly has touched down on the Moon! It looked smooth as glass. All that accumulated learning from the CLPS missions pays off.

Blue Ghost sees its shadow.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/glcb9mqw8aaokte.jpg

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 2nd 2025 at 9:35:18 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#13861: Mar 2nd 2025 at 6:44:53 AM

What's it's mission? Just a testbed for landing technology?

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13862: Mar 2nd 2025 at 6:56:15 AM

The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is an effort by NASA to foster commercial lunar technology. The goal is to have spacecraft that act as delivery and support systems, that NASA and other partners can purchase space on for scientific payloads. As a commercial partner, you develop, build, launch, and operate the spacecraft, which must provide transportation, power, and communications services for the payloads.

There have been four CLPS missions launched to date: Peregrine (failed in Earth orbit), Intuitive Machines 1 (partial landing success), Blue Ghost 1 (success), Intuitive Machines 2 (in transit). Excluding China, there have been several other non-US lunar missions in recent years: Beresheet (Israel, crashed), HAKUTO-R (iSpace, Japan, crashed), Chandrayaan-2 and -3 (ISRO, crashed and successful respectively), SLIM (JAXA, partial landing success). HAKUTO-R M2 is in transit and should land in a month or so.

For a list of science payloads on Blue Ghost 1, see here.

Two of the payloads that I'm particularly excited by are an electrostatic dust repulsion system that can clear lunar dust off of spacecraft surfaces and a GNSS receiver that can navigate using GPS and Galileo signals.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 2nd 2025 at 10:08:11 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13863: Mar 3rd 2025 at 10:49:24 AM

Mission updates!

Firefly Blue Ghost

Scott Manley: Blue Ghost Landed On The Moon - But Can We Figure Out Where?

In which our favorite Scottish space-tuber shows us how to figure out where the Firefly Blue Ghost lander touched down and explains all of the dynamics of that shadow selfie that it took.

The lander continues to be healthy, and congratulations have been rolling in from all around the world. We also got a fantastic picture of the lunar sunrise.

Intuitive Machines IM-2 "Athena"

Intuitive Machines' Athena lander successfully executed a trajectory adjustment maneuver over the weekend to put it on target for a lunar orbit insertion burn. The spacecraft is performing nominally and expects to touch down on March 6.

iSpace HAKUTO-R M2 "Resilience"

iSpace's lunar lander is also on its way. If we recall, it launched on the same rocket as Blue Ghost but took a longer, lower-energy trajectory. The company reports that it's heading for the boundary of the Earth's gravitational influence. From this position it can easily drop itself into lunar orbit. It plans to touch down in May.

Astroforge "Odin"

One of the rideshare payloads on the IM-2 mission was an asteroid mining demonstration spacecraft named "Odin", built by Astroforge. It was successfully deployed, but when the company attempted to contact it, they ran into all sorts of issues. This blog post details the attempts to establish communications and reads like a comedy of errors.

In a nutshell, the spacecraft seems to be on, receiving power, and attempting to communicate, but they can't talk to it. They aren't going to give up, but it's not looking good.

SpaceX Loses a Falcon 9 Booster

Yesterday's Starlink Group 12-20 mission was successful, but the booster fell over shortly after landing on the drone ship due to a fire that caused one of the landing legs to collapse. Farewell, B1086.

Crew-10 Prepares for Flight

Keep an eye out for the SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station, which is currently scheduled to lift off on March 13 at 02:48 UTC. Aboard Dragon Endurance will be commander Anne McClain (NASA), pilot Nichole Ayes (NASA), mission specialist Takuya Onishi (JAXA), and mission specialist Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos).

This crew will relieve the Crew-9 astronauts, allowing Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to return home. I would say "finally", but that would play into the public idea that they are stranded, when this is not the case. It's not. Stop saying that and empowering idiots. Nick Hague (NASA) and Aleksandr Gorbunov (Roscosmos) will also be coming home.

Starship Flight 8

Starship Flight 8 is targeting liftoff today (Monday, March 3), with a 90-minute window opening at 5:30 PM CST (23:30 UTC). Here's the official livestream link, and there will obviously be plenty of fan coverage, such as by Everyday Astronaut, NASA Spaceflight, Lab Padre, and others. I'm going to trust people to find the links this time. Surface winds are a watch item.

As we have previously discussed, this mission will be a rough copy of Flight 7, with the goal of getting the Starship through orbital insertion and reentry. The previous flight failed because of a propellant leak from the engines, and there have been a number of upgrades designed to deal with this problem. The ship will attempt to deploy dummy Starlink satellites (on a suborbital reentry trajectory), relight an engine to demonstrate deorbit capability, and test out variations on the heat shield tiles.

The booster will, of course, attempt to return and be caught by the launch tower. The ship will simulate a catch profile in the Indian Ocean, and if all goes well, they may attempt a full orbit and a ship catch on Flight 9. From the available evidence it looks like the second launch tower is the one designed to catch the Starships, which would be truly amazing to see: a booster on one tower and a ship on the other.

Gilmour Space - Eris - Maiden Flight

Keep an eye peeled in about two weeks for the first ever launch attempt of an orbital rocket built and operated in Australia. Gilmour Space is targeting March 15 for the test flight of its Eris rocket. I'll have more to share on this later.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 No Longer a Threat

Remember that asteroid that was going to come around in 2032 and relieve us of our suffering? Well, NASA and others have revised the risk of collision to basically zero. This comes after weeks of tracking it to refine its orbit and get those uncertainties down. It will indeed pass very close to the Earth and there's a small but non-zero chance that it could hit the Moon, which would give us some pretty spectacular imagery.

Varda Space W-2 Mission Lands

Australian Space Agency: World-first historic space return lands in Australia

Varda Space launched its second Winnebago spacecraft a short while ago, seeking to demonstrate orbital manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. On February 28, this capsule reentered and landed in Australia, completing its mission.

The first mission ran into some hiccups with regulators because the company hadn't secured a reentry license, but that red tape was taken care of in advance this time.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 3rd 2025 at 3:52:24 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13864: Mar 3rd 2025 at 2:47:15 PM

Starship Flight 8

New T-0 of 23:45 UTC. Propellant load is go. Weather is looking a bit overcast; camera views might be challenging.

Holding at T-40 seconds to resolve some issues. We haven't seen a hold like this since the first flight, I think.

Scrub for today. They will offload and try again tomorrow if the technical issue can be resolved in time.

Intuitive Machines IM-2

Intuitive Machines reports that its Athena spacecraft successfully entered lunar orbit today. Still targeting touchdown on March 6 at 17:30 UTC. Finally, a civilized time for me to watch it live.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 3rd 2025 at 7:05:12 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Teemo from Nottingham, UK (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: In another castle
#13865: Mar 3rd 2025 at 10:04:55 PM

but the booster fell over shortly after landing on the drone ship due to a fire
So it's the Swamp Castle of boosters?

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13866: Mar 4th 2025 at 6:09:59 AM

The third one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth castle... stayed up!

More seriously, leaks and fires are the absolute bane of rocket engineers. Turns out that when you have high-pressure, high-temperature gases in a system that is operating under extreme mechanical stresses, stuff tends to break.

Making that sort of thing capable of reuse, never mind rapid and cost-effective reuse, is a very hard task. It's been ten years since SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 booster and nobody else has replicated the feat so far. Guess it wasn't so easy after all.

Edit: Starship Flight 8 is now Wednesday.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 4th 2025 at 11:18:04 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13867: Mar 4th 2025 at 12:05:04 PM

Firefly put up a video of its Moon landing, downloaded from Blue Ghost after its high-speed antenna deployed. All I can say is "holy shit". We haven't seen anything like this before, as far as I know.

If you look closely, you can see exactly how it touched down on three legs, then tipped over onto the fourth leg after engine shutdown. That's why we only saw three blues instead of four on the landing sensors.

Even more interesting is the pattern of lunar dust blown around by the landing engines. It behaves in a way completely unlike such dust would on Earth. If you need proof that this is real, it's right there.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 4th 2025 at 3:07:40 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13868: Mar 5th 2025 at 8:57:00 PM

Intuitive Machines IM-2

Tune in tomorrow to watch Intuitive Machines attempt to touch down on the Moon with its Athena lander. L-0 is 17:32 UTC (12:32 PM EST), with coverage beginning about an hour before. Livestreams: Intuitive Machines, NASA. Both are identical. Mission updates can be found here.

Ariane 6 CSO-3

The second flight of Ariane 6 is also scheduled for March 6 after a scrub last week. Liftoff is 16:24 UTC. The mission is CSO-3, an optical reconnaissance satellite originally intended to launch on a Soyuz. Livestream: Arianespace

(Edited because I forgot to add T-0.)

Starship Flight 8

Starship Flight 8 is now scheduled for March 6 at 23:30 UTC (5:30 PM CST). Livestream: SpaceX.

SPHEREx and PUNCH

NASA, SpaceX Update Launch Date for SPHEREx, PUNCH Missions

The two science missions will share a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket on Friday, March 8 at 03:09 UTC (Mar 7 7:09 PM PST). Livestream: NASA

Lunar Trailblazer

NASA Continuing Efforts to Contact, Command Lunar Trailblazer

Another of the rideshares on the IM-2 mission is in trouble. Engineers lost Lunar Trailblazer's signal last week and haven't been able to reestablish contact.

Based on telemetry before the loss of signal last week and ground-based radar data collected March 2, the team believes the spacecraft is spinning slowly in a low-power state. They will continue to monitor for signals should the spacecraft orientation change to where the solar panels receive more sunlight, increasing their output to support higher-power operations and communication.

SpaceX Crew-10

Reminder that Crew-10 is scheduled for March 13 at 00:48 UTC (Mar 12 7:48 PM EST). Livestream TBD.

Firefly Alpha Launch 6

While it has a spacecraft on the Moon, Firefly is also gearing up for the sixth flight of its Alpha rocket, with liftoff scheduled for March 15 at 14:25 UTC. Titled "Message in a Booster", the mission will carry a demonstration payload for Lockheed Martin.

Gilmour Space Eris

I mentioned it earlier, but Australia's Gilmour Space also plans the first flight of its Eris rocket on March 15. Stay tuned.

CRS NG-22

NASA reports that there may be delays to the CRS NG-22 mission, currently scheduled NET July, after the shipping container for the spacecraft suffered damage in transit. The next SpaceX CRS mission, in April, will have an altered cargo manifest to ensure that food and other supplies will be adequate.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2025 at 8:19:41 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13869: Mar 6th 2025 at 9:09:48 AM

I'll put all of today's mission status updates in this post.

Arianespace | Ariane 6 | First Commercial Flight

Liftoff and staging were successful. Now in a coast phase prior to upper stage reignition.

Successful payload deployment.

Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena

The stream is live and we are waiting for the deorbit burn, also known as the "powered descent".

As of 17:15 UTC, the braking burn has started. Controllers advise that they may temporarily lose communication as the lander's attitude changes and radio signals reflect off of the lunar surface.

Expected landing time has been reached. They are working to reacquire signal. Seems like they have some communications but not all.

Data indicates landing/touchdown, but there seem to be some software issues going on. Athena is on the Moon and operating, at least. We know that much. It doesn't seem to be receiving enough power.

In the post-landing press conference, they noted that they have power and communication, and are downloading imagery and other data to determine the spacecraft's attitude. It may have fallen over again.

Astroforge "Odin"

Astroforge is giving up on its attempts to communicate with its asteroid mining demonstration spacecraft, dubbed "Odin". While they were able to make intermittent contact, without a steady signal the position error is too great for the DSN antennas to lock on.

Starship Flight 8

SpaceX has indicated that systems are ready for the flight today.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2025 at 4:58:30 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13870: Mar 6th 2025 at 4:46:02 PM

Another disappointing day for Starship. What looked to be a flawless launch, and they did pull off another successful tower catch of Super Heavy. (Although they had some engines fail to re-light on the booster as it was returning.) But once again Ship was lost, this time during the last bit of its ascent burn.

Up through Flight 6, none of the previous test flights was flawless, but each one went farther than the last. Now, it seems like they are failing to make that steady progress.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13871: Mar 6th 2025 at 5:58:35 PM

It's a new version of Starship and it's having some teething problems. This time we had a much clearer view of the anomaly. During the ascent burn, a leak and fire can clearly be seen in the engine section, followed shortly by what looked like an explosion on the external camera view just before the ship started tumbling.

My preliminary guess is that a Raptor decided to leak and then RUD, and the failure took out three other engines. Without any steering from the center engines, the ship tumbled out of control.

It's not a good outcome, and I wonder if SpaceX will go back to the drawing board with Starship v2 and/or accelerate Raptor 3 development.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#13872: Mar 6th 2025 at 7:20:02 PM

The explosion caused the FAA to temporarily shut down Miami International, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, Orlando International, and Palm Beach International Airports in Florida due to debris near Cape Canaveral.

Edited by tclittle on Mar 6th 2025 at 9:20:31 AM

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13873: Mar 7th 2025 at 5:44:24 AM

That's part of the standard debris response area contingencies for this sort of event. It's all planned out in advance with the FAA. Obviously, they hope they won't have to activate the plans, but the idea is to minimize the impact to aviation by only shutting down airspace if it's needed.


Edited to add: Athena is dead.

Ars Technica: After less than a day, the Athena lander is dead on the Moon

Intuitive Machines provided an update on the company's second lunar mission. As with the first, the lander toppled over on touchdown, and we have some images confirming this. They'll obviously be trying to figure out what happened; it could have been as simple as landing on a rock.

Unlike the first mission, however, the lander is not receiving much power, presumably because its solar panels landed facing down. For this reason, it cannot maintain the charge in its batteries, and they have ended the mission after downloading as much data as possible.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 7th 2025 at 1:44:14 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13874: Mar 8th 2025 at 2:41:13 PM

Tune in tonight to watch SpaceX launch NASA's SPHEREx and PUNCH missions to a Sun-synchronous orbit. Liftoff is scheduled for 03:10 UTC (7:10 PM PST) from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Booster B1088 will be making its third flight and will return to land at LZ-4. Livestream: NASA.

SPHEREx is a space telescope designed to perform a spectral survey of the entire sky in an effort to understand more about the origins of the universe. PUNCH is a constellation of four satellites that will study the Sun's corona and the inner solar system in general.

Edit: According to the launchcast, the mission has been postponed.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2025 at 11:33:38 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13875: Mar 11th 2025 at 7:30:00 PM

After a lot of weather and other delays, SPHEREx and PUNCH are finally launching tonight. Watch here.

Liftoff, staging, booster landing, and parking orbit insertion are successful.

Circularization burn and first payload deployment successful. And there go the rest.


Today, I broke my rule and watched Neil Degrasse Tyson's recent Startalk clip where he talks about the value of reusable rockets. I say "broke my rule" because I have come to think of Tyson more and more as a "soft" science communicator who dumbs stuff down to the point where I don't gain much personal insight.

He's also had some odd takes. For example, he was one of the people he's talking about in the clip — the ones who pooh-poohed the value of commercial orbital launch services. Still, the more people who understand what SpaceX is accomplishing — and others are trying to accomplish — the better, and it's nice that Neil is on board now.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2025 at 12:06:55 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

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