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Hey everyone. A rare failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 recovery system occurred Wednesday off the east coast of the US, with a booster tipping into the ocean shortly after landing. Apart from that, space is busy with launches and landings this week - and a small spacecraft named Starliner is still stuck in space.

Today’s Headlines:

• Polaris Dawn is delayed again - first weather, now a recovery mishap

• Starliner will return to Earth without crew following flight readiness review

• Read Payload’s insights on the risks of aging GPS satellites

Launch Tracker:

Noteworthy: The SpaceX F9 booster which carried Starlink Group 8-6 to orbit early Wednesday morning tipped over after landing on the droneship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ in the Atlantic. All F9 flights - including Polaris Dawn, which was scheduled for today, as well as Crew 9, which is supposed to take Starliner astronauts Butch and Suni back to Earth - are grounded by the FAA until “corrective actions” have taken place to rectify the issue. It’s a hit for the company with over 70 launches in the books this year alone. Nonetheless, ascent went perfectly, and the mission is a success. link

Also: Blue Origin launches its 8th suborbital New Shepard flight with 6 paying customers on board today at 13:00 UTC.

Eurofocus

Italy reaches for the Moon

In 2023, history was made with the launch of 3kgs of Barilla pasta to the International Space Station. The nation, however, has a whole lot more experience in space - as the 3rd largest contributor to ESA, the lead in projects such as the Vega smallsat launcher - and in human spaceflight. Now, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) is taking things up a notch with the planned first permanent European presence on the moon.

In 2022, ASI signed a pair of agreements with NASA which conferred the design of a lunar surface multi-purpose habitation module (MPH) upon the Italians. Thales Alenia Space (TAS) was awarded the preliminary design contract in November 2023, which lasted until a July 2024 mission definition review. TAS has now shared a preliminary review of key concepts of the lunar refuge.

Designed to be launched both on SpaceX’s Starship as well as Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy lift launch vehicles, the six-meter by three-meter module will weigh around 15 tons fully completed. Conceptually, the MPH was planned to function as a stationary base that could be used to extend surface missions before extended human presence. Now, the module is to be fitted with wheels to allow the habitat to survive the extremely cold lunar night without more complicated design requirements. This also gives the opportunity for inter-use between human missions at different landing sites.

MPH is to be powered by multiple vertically-extending solar panels, necessary for reaching sunlight in the cratered poles of the Moon, where the sun rises less than two degrees over the horizon. Key design features will also include specialised coatings to mitigate the hazards of lunar dust, as well as a modular interior “that can change shape based on use and time of day.” Program manager Nicola Genco mentioned the company has not “paid much attention to the exact shape of what the toilet will be like” (interesting). Life support systems will be capable of supporting one 30-day mission of two astronauts per year, with the module capable of conducting scientific research autonomously.

NASA will decide on the future of the MPH module in late 2025. link

Rapid-fire

• Rocket Factory Augsburg details cause of first stage loss

A fire in one of nine oxygen turbopumps, which ferry liquid propellant to the combustion chamber in high volume, cirvumvented multiple failsafes and led to the loss of RFA’s first flight article on the 19th of August.

• Artemis III’s Orion Service Module heads to the US

After structural manufacturing in Turin, Italy, and the integration of engines and subsystems in Bremen, Germany, the ESA-produced European Service Module is shipped to the US for integration at Kennedy Space Center.

• Norway’s Andøya Spaceport begins prep for orbital launch operations

The far-northern launch complex recieved a launch site operator license for up to 30 orbital launches per year. Isar Aerospace, a German private smallsat launcher company, aims to launch its first ‘Spectrum’ launcher from the spaceport “soon”.

Zooming out

A Mission to Forget

Starliner will return without Butch and Suni onboard, NASA announced earlier this week. The pair will fly home on SpaceX Dragon’s Crew 9 mission over concerns about Starliner’s capacity for crew safety and reliability.

Starliner, which launched June 5, was planned to spend just 8 days on the ISS. What was multiple days has turned into a four month stay for the spacecraft and an eight month stay for the crew as thruster failures and suspected leaks undermine SpaceX Dragon’s only challenger.

What has gone wrong so far? It started on approach to the ISS, when five of the capsule’s 28 reaction control thrusters turned unresponsive, delaying the docking process. Four of these thrusters were eventually restored to operability, an expanding teflon seal taking the blame for blocking propellant from flowing through the system. Testing at White Sands Missile Range revealed the problem.

But concerns about Starliner’s safety remain even after determining the root cause of the issue. Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said the team isn’t able to “totally prove with certainty what we’re seeing on orbit is exactly what’s been replicated on the ground.” "I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise," adding manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne had never encountered this issue before.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson made the decision to shift the Starliner crew to the upcoming Dragon mission, Crew 9. The decision was in part influenced by the lessons learned from the Challenger and Columbia disasters of the Space Shuttle era, “where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth.” Nelson noted how engineers were ignored when confronted with concerns over components and launch and landing environments ahead of both catastrophes, and that ever since, NASA “has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind, and I think, right, today is a good example of that", adding that safety was not only paramount responsibility but NASA’s “North Star.”

In the news

• JAXA concludes operations on SLIM lander contact efforts

• Single valve failure responsible for Peregrine lunar lander failure

• Lockheed Martin invests in inflatable space habitats after successful airlock tests

Research Report

Blue pill red pill

With elections in the US coming up quickly, the space industry is considering the impact Kamala Harris’ nomination has on space policy and politics. How does Trump’s record stack up against Biden’s in vying to secure the future of in-space dominance for western nations?

We look forward to publishing our first Research Report soon.

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