WATCH LIVE NOW! ExoMars Mars Landing Webcast by ESA

The European Space Agency will have live coverage of the ExoMars lander's touchdown on Mars in a series of webcasts. First, a Social TV program will cover the arrival and landing from 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) and will be off an on ahead of ESA's main program. The main program follows in two parts, one from11:44 a.m. – 12:59 p.m. EDT (1544–1659 GMT) and the other from 2:25 – 4:03 p.m. EDT (1825–2003 GMT). The webcasts are among a series of broadcasts by ESA to chronicle the ExoMars arrival. You can watch the webcast directly from ESA here and in the window below. Preview Story: High Stakes: Europe Aims for 1st Successful Mars Landing Today

ExoMars at Mars

Three days before arriving at Mars on 19 October 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will release its entry, descent and landing demonstrator, Schiaparelli, towards the Red Planet. ExoMars is several missions in one. Its orbiter is a science and relay mission. The TGO will search for evidence of gases, such as methane, that may be associated with geological or biological processes. The Schiaparelli lander is a technology demonstrator to test key technologies for future missions

Mars arrival orbits

This animation shows the relative orbital paths of ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), the Schiaparelli Entry, descent and landing Demonstrator Module and ESA's Mars Express on 19 October 2016, when TGO and Schiaparelli arrive at Mars. At the start of the animation, TGO and Schiaparelli are shown already separated, which is set to occur at 14:42 GMT (16:42 CEST) on 16 October. The animation covers the time period between approximately 12:30 GMT (14:30 CEST) and 19:00 GMT (21:00 CEST)




Schiaparelli’s descent to Mars

Visualisation of the ExoMars Schiaparelli module entering and descending through the martian atmosphere to land on Mars. Schiaparelli will enter the atmosphere at about 21 000 km/h and in less than six minutes it will use a heatshield, a parachute and thrusters to slow its descent before touching down in the Meridiani Planum region close to the equator, absorbing the final contact with a crushable structure. The entire process will take less than six minutes: 

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Antares return to flight on space station cargo mission delayed to Monday

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — The return to flight of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket carrying a Cygnus cargo spacecraft has been postponed at least a day because of a problem with ground support equipment.

Orbital ATK said about seven hours before the scheduled 8:03 p.m. Eastern launch Oct. 16 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport here that a problem with a ground support equipment cable had forced them to delay the launch by a day. There are no problems with the Antares rocket itself or the Cygnus spacecraft, the company said.

“We have spares on hand and rework procedures are in process,” Orbital ATK said in a statement. If those repairs are completed, the launch will be rescheduled to Oct. 17 at 7:40 p.m. Eastern, with a 90 percent chance of acceptable weather.

#ICYMI, @OrbitalATK launched more than 5,100 lbs of cargo to @Space_Station from @NASA_Wallops at 7:45pm ET. Watch: https://t.co/9zWsewZKtw pic.twitter.com/zFF7u9ia8y

— NASA (@NASA) 18 de octubre de 2016

The launch represents the return to flight of the Antares after an October 2014 mission that suffered an engine failure seconds after liftoff, causing the vehicle to fall back to the ground and explode. That explosion caused $15 million in damage to the launch site.

An investigation blamed the accident on an explosion in the liquid oxygen turbopump of an AJ26 engine in the rocket’s first stage. Orbital ATK decided after the failure to replace the AJ26, a Soviet-era rocket refurbished by Aerojet Rocketdyne, with new RD-181 engines from NPO Energomash.

That engine swap did require some other work to the rocket to accommodate the more powerful engines. That included changes to the vehicle’s structure, different control systems and additional instrumentation, said Mike Pinkston, Antares program vice president and general manager at Orbital ATK, in an Oct. 15 briefing at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility here.

“It was a very detailed, meticulous process, but as evidenced by the stage test, we got it right, and we’re ready to go,” he said, referring to a static-fire test of an Antares first stage on the pad in May.

Frank Culbertson, president of Orbital ATK’s Space Systems Group, said the teams were working no issues with either the Antares rocket or the Cygnus spacecraft. “I’m very optimistic,” he said, expressing no specific concerns about placing a payload on the first flight of an upgraded rocket. “We understand those changes, and we feel like all the tests have covered the risks people have been able to think of.”

A tracking station in Bermuda, forced to shut down because of a passing hurricane and thus delaying the launch by two days, is ready to support the mission. “It fared remarkably well in that weather,” said Sarah Daugherty, test director at NASA Wallops, of that tracking station. “They are green and functioning normally at this time.”

The Cygnus, named the SS Alan Poindexter after the former astronaut who died in 2012, is carrying 2,425 kilograms of cargo for the ISS. That cargo includes science experiments, crew supplies and station hardware.

Lift off! @OrbitalATK's #Antares rocket launches to deliver science & supplies to @Space_Station. Keep watching: https://t.co/KX5g7zfYQe pic.twitter.com/OIbREmBJg1

— NASA (@NASA) 17 de octubre de 2016

An Oct. 16 launch would have allowed the Cygnus to arrive at the station early Oct. 19, with berthing scheduled shortly after 7 a.m. Eastern. With the delay, though, the Cygnus will wait until after the Oct. 21 docking of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three new ISS crew members. Joel Montalbano, NASA space station deputy manager, said that, even in a worst-case scenario, the Cygnus could loiter in orbit for more than 20 days after launch.

Montalbano also said that NASA added some cargo to the Cygnus after the Sept. 1 pad explosion of a SpaceX Falcon 9, which is expected to delay the next Dragon mission to the station that was previously scheduled for November. “We originally had some ballast that we were flying on this vehicle,” he said. “We’ve removed all that ballast and replaced it with crew supplies,” including food and clothing, as well as computer hardware and “a very small amount” of extravehicular activity hardware.

The Cygnus mission will continue for several days after it departs from the space station in late November. The spacecraft will carry out the second in a series of experiments known as Saffire that test how materials burn in weightlessness. The Cygnus will also maneuver to an altitude about 45 kilometers above the ISS to deploy four Lemur cubesats for Spire, a San Francisco company developing a constellation for ship tracking and weather data collection.

The higher altitude will allow the satellites to remain in orbit far longer than if they were deployed directly from an airlock on the ISS, as many other cubesats are. “We are estimating that these cubesats will be up there for three years, versus, out of the airlock, anywhere from six months to a year,” said Henry Martin, external payloads coordinator for NanoRacks, the company that arranged the satellite deployment.

Culbertson hinted that, in addition to the scientific and other cargo on the Cygnus, there will be something extra for the station’s crew. “Every cargo mission is like Christmas, right?” he said. “They never know what they’re going to find when they open the hatch.”

http://spacenews.com

China launches Shenzhou-11 crewed spacecraft

WASHINGTON — China successfully launched its first human spaceflight mission in more than three years Oct. 16, placing into orbit a spacecraft carrying two astronauts that will dock with a new space laboratory module.

A Long March 2F spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Oct. 16 (7:30 a.m. Beijing time Oct. 17) and placed the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft into orbit. The spacecraft separated from the rocket’s upper stage and deployed its solar panels a little more than 10 minutes after liftoff.

“The rocket is flying according to its original plan, and the Shenzhou spacecraft has entered its preliminary orbit,” said Gen. Zhang Youxia, chief commander of China’s manned space program, in a statement less than a half-hour after launch. “I announce the launch of Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft is a complete success.”

On board Shenzhou-11 are astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, publicly announced as the crew less than 24 hours before the launch. Jing is a veteran astronaut, having flown on Shenzhou-7 in 2008 and Shenzhou-9 in 2012. Chen is making his first spaceflight.

Shenzhou-11 is scheduled to dock with the Tiangong-2 module Oct. 18. That module, launched Sept. 15, will host the crew for 30 days, twice as long as the existing Chinese human spaceflight endurance record, set by the Shenzhou-10 mission in June 2013. That mission was also the last Chinese human spaceflight prior to the Shenzhou-11 mission.

During the 30-day mission, Jing and Chen will carry out a number of medical and space science experiments, as well as test various systems on the Tiangong-2 module. They will also engage in public outreach activities, including serving as “special correspondents” for the state-run Xinhua news service.

The mission is part of Chinese efforts to develop a permanent space station. Chinese officials have indicated that they expect this station, consisting of several modules but smaller than the International Space Station, to be completed by the early 2020s.

Blue Origin passed the test of UN emergency space

Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, launched a dramatic flight test over West Texas on Wednesday to verify the performance of an escape system on its reusable suborbital launcher designed to loft space tourists, researchers and commercial astronauts on short rides to the edge of space.

The stubby, single-stage New Shepard rocket took off from Bezos’ ranch north of Van Horn, Texas, at 11:36 a.m. EDT (1536 GMT) Wednesday, about a half-hour later then scheduled after engineers worked out unspecified issues in the final countdown.

About 45 seconds later, at an altitude of around 16,000 feet (nearly 5,000 meters) and a velocity close to the speed of sound, a prototype crew capsule fastened to the top of the rocket fired a solid rocket motor to catapult free of the booster for a crucial in-flight test of the spacecraft’s emergency escape system, which would be triggered to whisk passengers away from an exploding launcher.

No one was inside the capsule Wednesday, but the abort demo is a major milestone toward Blue Origin’s plans to begin flying test pilots on suborbital jaunts above 62 miles (100 kilometers) — the internationally-recognized boundary of space — as soon as next year.

The four-ton capsule spun around and tumbled after the solid-fueled abort motor’s two-second firing, which propelled the vehicle several hundred away from the New Shepard rocket. Guided by reaction control system thrusters, the capsule’s motion stabilized as it deployed three drogue parachutes and three main chutes for a relatively gentle ride back to the ground, touching down at a speed of around 3 mph (5 kilometers per hour) about four minutes after liftoff.

The headless booster continued upward after the capsule was severed, defying predictions that the intense aerodynamic loads and heat from the maneuver would be too much for the rocket’s control system to overcome.

But the New Shepard’s BE-3 main engine, burning a combination of cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, swiveled to deftly direct its thrust in response to the abort motor firing, keeping the rocket on course.

The engine throttled down as programmed after the capsule jettisoned and burned for about three minutes to reach a point near the von Karman line, the edge of space, before falling back to Earth. Commentators on Blue Origin’s live webcast did not say how high the booster flew.

On the way back down, the rocket, named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, extended a drag brake and wedge fins to slow its velocity, then ignited its BE-3 main engine again less than 30 seconds before landing. Four legs deployed from the base of the booster, and the engine steered the vehicle over Blue Origin’s landing site near New Shepard’s launch pad.

The rocket landing occurred about seven-and-a-half minutes after launch.

The launcher Blue Origin flew Wednesday has now flown five times, dating back to its maiden launch on Nov. 23, 2015, but this mission was its last.

“What an extraordinary test and a tremendous final flight for both craft,” said Ariane Cornell, a manager on Blue Origin’s strategy and business development team, who provided commentary during the company’s webcast of Wednesday’s flight. “As we very optimistically aimed for, both our crew capsule successfully executed its in-flight escape test, and the booster brilliantly continued to space and came home for a fifth landing on our landing pad just two miles north of where it took off from.”

Blue Origin’s crew capsule fires its abort motor moments after liftoff on the New Shepard booster. Credit: Blue Origin

In an email update last month, Bezos wrote that the booster would probably not survive the test flight

“What of the booster? It’s the first ever rocket booster to fly above the Karman line into space and then land vertically upon the Earth,” Bezos wrote. “And it’s done so multiple times. We’d really like to retire it after this test and put it in a museum. Sadly, that’s not likely.”

The New Shepard’s abort system features a solid rocket motor mounted at the base of the crew capsule to push the spaceship away from the rocket to escape an emergency during launch.

Most previous human-rated space capsules, including the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft, have their abort motors on top of the rocket, where they would pull the capsule away to get out of the way if the rocket failed. But Blue Origin’s suborbital crew capsule, like commercial orbital-class spaceships being developed by SpaceX and Boeing, has a “pusher” escape system.

The advantage is the escape motor does not have to be jettisoned and thrown away after every mission, as is the case with Soyuz flights. That makes the system more reliable by removing a potential failure mode, and less expensive because the abort motor can be reused until it is needed, then discarded.

With a multimillion-dollar government funding arrangement with NASA, Blue Origin tested the escape system during a pad abort test in October 2012, demonstrating the motor’s ability to drive the capsule away from an explosion on the launch pad.

NASA no longer provides monetary support to Blue Origin’s rocket development program, but the space agency still has “unfunded” agreements to offer engineering expertise.

“This upcoming flight will be our toughest test yet,” Bezos wrote last month. “We’ll intentionally trigger an escape in flight and at the most stressing condition: maximum dynamic pressure through transonic velocities.”

A successful escape test was expected to demonstrate the abort motor’s capability to save the passengers aboard the crew capsule even during the most stressing part of the flight.

During operational crew-carrying flights, a signal from the booster’s computer, the capsule, or mission control could initiate the abort sequence.

While the abort system’s design required the crew capsule to safely land, the New Shepard booster was never designed to survive such a maneuver, according to Blue Origin.

The New Shepard booster, under the control of its BE-3 main engine, kicks up dust just before landing Wednesday. Credit: Blue Origin

If the rocket ran into trouble after the abort command, its on-board computer would have ordered the BE-3 engine to shut down, and the booster would have plummeted back to the ground and exploded on impact.

“The capsule escape motor will slam the booster with 70,000 pounds of off-axis force delivered by searing hot exhaust,” Bezos wrote. “The aerodynamic shape of the vehicle quickly changes from leading with the capsule to leading with the ring fin, and this all happens at maximum dynamic pressure. Nevertheless, the booster is very robust and our Monte Carlo simulations show there’s some chance we can fly through these disturbances and recover the booster.”

It turns out those computer simulations were right.

Blue Origin officials said they plan to put the New Shepard booster and the crew capsule on public display. New Shepard was the first vehicle to fly to space and return to Earth with a vertical, rocket-assisted landing, logging that achievement on its first flight on Nov. 23, 2015.

The successful recovery of the New Shepard last year came a month before SpaceX, a rival commercial space firm led by Elon Musk, landed a Falcon 9 first stage booster at Cape Canaveral after it sent 11 Orbcomm communications satellites toward orbit.

The Falcon 9 is larger and reached higher speeds than New Shepard, but SpaceX has not yet re-flown a first stage booster. A commercial satellite operator, SES of Luxembourg, agreed in August to put a communications satellite on the first flight of a reused Falcon 9 rocket.

The highly-anticipated launch of a “flight-proven” Falcon 9 booster was supposed to occur this month, but SpaceX’s rockets are grounded after an explosion on the launch pad in Florida on Sept. 1. SpaceX aims to resume launches as soon as mid-November, although the company’s investigation into last month’s rocket mishap is still ongoing, so the schedule could slip further.

While the launcher flown Wednesday is 5-for-5, Blue Origin lost a previous New Shepard vehicle in April 2015. That rocket failed to land after an otherwise successful launch.

A successful test Wednesday could pave the way for Blue Origin to begin flying test pilots on New Shepard launches next year, ahead of the start of commercial operations in 2018.

Cornell said Blue Origin is working on the next iteration of its suborbital crew capsule, which could begin launching on a newly-built New Shepard rocket from West Texas in early 2017. It will be outfitted with windows and other accommodations for passengers.

“We already have a couple of those capsules in process and almost complete, and those are the ones that are going to be flying next,” Cornell said.

Blue Origin last month revealed the basic design of a larger orbital-class booster named New Glenn, after Mercury astronaut John Glenn, that could begin flying by the end of the decade. It will be propelled by a set of larger methane-burning BE-4 engines Blue Origin is currently testing on the ground.

United Launch Alliance has also tapped Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine as the preferred powerplant for its next-generation Vulcan rocket, which will replace the company’s existing Atlas and Delta rocket fleet.

http://spaceflightnow.com

Live coverage: Ariane 5 fueled for launch Wednesday

October 4 @ 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM EDT

Arianespace will use an Ariane 5 ECA rocket, designated VA231, to launch the Sky Muster 2 (NBN Co 1B) and GSAT 18 communications satellites. The Sky Muster 2 satellite will provide high-speed Internet services for Australia’s National Broadband Network. GSAT 18 is a multipurpose communications satellite for the Indian Space Research Organization. Sky Muster 2 replaced Japan’s Superbird 8 satellite on the mission after it was damaged during transport to the launch site.

Launch window: 2030-2145 GMT (4:30-5:45 pm EDT)

Details

Date:October 4 Time:

4:30 PM - 5:45 PMCost

Event Category:Uncrewed - Military

Organizer

Arianespace 

Website

http://www.arianespace.com/

Rosetta’s final hours

Live coverage of the final descent of Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Text updates will appear automatically below; 

10:04 Rosetta's last words

The last data packet of telemetry transmitted by Rosetta and received on Earth was timed at 10:39:28.895 GMT (spacecraft time). The final transmission was from the OSIRIS camera instrument.

08:47

Holger Sierks, Principal Investigator for Rosetta's OSIRIS camera, says all expected images were returned to Earth prior to the spacecraft's soft impact on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The last image recieved was taken just seconds before loss of signal.

08:37

One of the closest close-ups from Rosetta released so far. The OSIRIS narrow-angle camera captured this image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 1014 GMT from an altitude of about 1.2 kilometres. The image scale is about 2.3 cm/pixel and the image measures about 33 metres across.

08:19 Loss of signal

The signal from Rosetta has died, indicating the spacecraft is on the surface and has effectively been switched off.

08:17

Paolo Ferri, head of ESA's mission operations department, says controllers hope to see a signal from Rosetta in the final seconds of descent that shows the spacecraft is moving around, which would be a clear indication of touchdown.

Engineers expect part of Rosetta, such as one of its two large solar panels, will strike the comet first, sending the craft into a tumble. That would trigger a safe mode event in Rosetta's computer, and the spacecraft is programmed to not re-activate its transmitter once it goes into safe mode.

08:16

Paolo Ferri, head of ESA's mission operations department, says controllers hope to see a signal from Rosetta in the final seconds of descent that shows the spacecraft is moving around, which would be a clear indication of touchdown.

Engineers expect part of Rosetta, such as one of its two large solar panels, will strike the comet first, sending the craft into a tumble. That would trigger a safe mode event in Rosetta's computer, and the spacecraft is programmed to not re-activate its transmitter once it goes into safe mode.

08:11

The final images from Rosetta will show an open pit named Deir el-Medina, after a famous archaeological site in Egypt. It is part of a collection of pits in a region dubbed Ma'at, and experts believe they could play a role in spewing dust and gas around the comet when warmed by the sun.

Holger Sierks, chief scientist for Rosetta's OSIRIS camera, says the views coming down from the spacecraft are "super-duper."

08:09 The view from 1.5km

07:56

Rosetta has already reached the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but it takes 40 minutes for radio signals to reach Earth. So ground controllers in Germany are still receiving the final bits of data from the mission.

07:54

he European Space Agency is hosting a viewing event for this morning's cometary crash landing at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

07:54 Rosetta on target

Rosetta will land just below the large shadow in this image taken at 0821 GMT this morning.

07:37 Revised landing time

Flight controllers have revised Rosetta's landing time to 1119:08 GMT (Earth receive time). The spacecraft is now less than 400 metres from the surface.

07:23 1km and closing

Rosetta is now less than 1km from the surface.

06:50 Live streaming video coverage

ESA's live streaming video coverage starts at 0620 EDT / 1020 GMT / 1120 BST / 1220 CEST. If you do not see the live video above, please reload the page.

06:33 Falling to the nucleus

From an altitude of 5.8 km this image from Rosetta's shows a portion of the comet's surface about 255 metres across. It was taken by OSIRIS narrow-angle camera at 0818 GMT.

06:20 Look for the landing cue

This is what to look for when Rosetta's signal flatlines at the moment of touchdown, now less than two hours away.

Less than 3 hours to #CometLanding! How will we know the mission is ended? More about @ESA_Rosetta’s final signal at https://t.co/n0Fr2v1B7R pic.twitter.com/HJKfIwnbNz

— ESA Science (@esascience) 30 de septiembre de 2016

05:13 The rough and the smooth

Rosetta's view from 8.9 kilometres taken at 0653 GMT this morning showing amazing contrasts in textures.

04:31 Interviews with Rosetta project officials

In case you missed them, we posted video interviews yesterday with Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor and flight director Andrea Accomazzo explaining the science and space operations behind Rosetta's final descent to the comet.

04:24 Good morning from ESOC

We're reporting live from the European Space Operations Centre at Darmstadt, Germany, home of Rosetta mission control. The Rosetta spacecraft is now less than four hours from the end of its mission.

01:44

ESA reports engineers at the European Space Operations Center in Germany have just transmitted the final commands to Rosetta before its crash landing in a few hours.

Rosetta's science instruments and camera will record data and imagery, then transmit the information directly to Earth in real-time throughout the descent. Once Rosetta hits the comet, it will go into safe mode, and its computer has pre-programmed commands to turn off the craft's radio transmitter.

That will ensure Rosetta complies with regulations from the International Telecommunications Union, and free up the mission's frequency for use on a future deep space project.

In any case, Rosetta is so far away from Earth that it would be unable to return science data without the use of its high-gain antenna. The dish-shaped antenna mounted to the spacecraft's main body must be aimed directly at Earth to work, and engineers say the antenna will not be able to be accurately pointed once Rosetta is on the comet.

01:35

Based on the latest calculations, ground controllers should receive confirmation of Rosetta's crash landing around 1118:32 GMT (7:18:32 a.m. EDT), plus or minus two minutes.

The touchdown is expected at a speed of about 2 mph, or 90 centimeters per second, roughly an average person's walking pace.

Rosetta will actually reach the comet's nucleus at around 1038 GMT (6:38 a.m. EDT), but it takes 40 minutes for radio signals broadcast by the spacecraft to reach Earth, which is about 447 million miles (720 million kilometers) away.

01:25 Rosetta on final descent

The Rosetta spacecraft is heading for touchdown on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a successful rocket burn late Thursday that steered the probe onto an impact trajectory.

The burn began at 2048:11 GMT (4:48:11 p.m. EDT) and lasted 208 seconds, putting Rosetta on course for a final descent from an altitude of 12 miles -- about 20 kilometers -- above the comet's craggy nucleus.

The image above was captured by Rosetta's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera at 0120 GMT (9:20 p.m. EDT) at a range of about 10 miles, or 16 kilometers. It shows an area more than 2,000 feet (614 meters) across, according to ESA.

Landing is still expected around 1120 GMT (7:20 a.m. EDT), plus or minus 20 minutes. A refined landing time is expected shortly, once Rosetta's flight dynamics team computes a final trajectory solution

01:11

The European Space Agency’s $1.6 billion Rosetta spacecraft closed in Thursday for a deliberate crash landing on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko early Friday, a slow-motion kamikaze plunge to bring the enormously successful mission to an end after more than two years of unprecedented close-range observations.

Flying in tandem with the comet some 356 million miles from the sun, Rosetta and its quarry are now moving beyond the range where the spacecraft’s solar panels can generate enough energy to power all of the probe’s instruments and subsystems.

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