Space Stories: Starliner Not on the Schedule, More Questions About Artemis, and the Origin of Most Meteorites

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The International Space Station. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Space News: “NASA Further Delays First Operational Starliner Flight“

NASA will use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for its two crew rotation missions to the International Space Station in 2025 as it continues to evaluate if it will require Boeing to perform another test flight of its Starliner spacecraft. In an Oct. 15 statement, NASA said it will use Crew Dragon for both the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, scheduled for no earlier than February 2025, and the Crew-11 mission scheduled for no earlier than July. Crew-10 will fly NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with astronaut Takuya Onishi from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. NASA has not yet announced the crew for the Crew-11 mission.

—Bloomberg: “NASA’s $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere“

There are government boondoggles, and then there’s NASA’s Artemis program. More than a half century after Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon. It has so far spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground, yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. The next US president should rethink the program in its entirety.

—CNRS: “The Origin of Most Meteorites Finally Revealed“

An international team led by three researchers from the CNRS1 , the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Europe), and Charles University (Czech Republic) has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate from just three young asteroid families. These families were produced by three recent collisions that occurred in the main asteroid belt 5.8, 7.5, and about 40 million years ago. The team also revealed the sources of other types of meteorites; with this research, the origin of more than 90% of meteorites has now been identified. This discovery is detailed in three papers, a first published on 13 September 2024 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, and two new papers published on 16 October 2024 in Nature.

Return of the SpaceX Crew-8 Delayed

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Yes, another delay due to weather. This time it’s the International Space Station crew returning to Earth. The SpaceX Crew-8 was supposed to return yesterday (after being delayed from October 7 because of Hurricane Milton), but it has been delayed until Friday due to ongoing weather issues in Florida. The returning crew consists of NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who have been on the station since March.

Scheduling anything in Florida during hurricane season is questionable, but at least the Europa Clipper mission was able to get into the air quickly after the latest hurricane.

Update: The return of Crew-8 has been delayed again until Monday, October 21.

Second Update: The return date has been moved once more to Wednesday, October 23.

How Do Astronauts Vote While in Orbit?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Jackie Ramirez from Pixabay

Earlier this week, NASA issued an article on how astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) can vote in the upcoming election. Yes, they need to make arrangements like anyone planning to be out of town, but we have a least two astronauts (from Boeing) who did not plan to be on the station during the election.

The process as explained by NASA (and shown below) is as follows:

Just like any other American away from home, astronauts may fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot. After an astronaut fills out an electronic ballot aboard the orbiting laboratory, the document flows through NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the agency’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

From New Mexico, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson and then on to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. To preserve the vote’s integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk.

According to the Pew Research Center, about 66 percent of voting-eligible population cast a ballot in the 2020 election.

If astronauts can find a way to vote, the rest of us here on Earth have no excuse to miss the election.

Please remember to vote.

Credit: NASA

NASA’s Crew-9 Mission on its Way to the ISS

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The launch earlier today of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying tNASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the ISS. (NASA/Keegan Barber)

Earlier today, NASA contractor SpaceX successfully launched the Crew-9 mission towards the International Space Station aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The two crew members should be aboard the station tomorrow to join the rest of the Expedition 72 crew, who arrived at the station as part of two earlier launches.

While some are calling this a “rescue mission,” it is really a planned mission with a truncated crew roster to accommodate the two Boeing Starliner astronauts on the return back to Earth. Nothing to see here folks.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said it best:

This mission required a lot of operational and planning flexibility. I congratulate the entire team on a successful launch today, and godspeed to Nick and Aleksandr as they make their way to the space station…Our NASA wizards and our commercial and international partners have shown once again the success that comes from working together and adapting to changing circumstances without sacrificing the safe and professional operations of the International Space Station.

NASA has become quite flexible this year as it works with its commercial partners.