Let's move beyond tactics

In this op-ed piece in SpaceNews, Elliot Pulham announces his Space Foundation's release of their report "Pioneering: Sustaining US Leadership in Space." Does that sound like the official subtitle of the Augustine report? "A Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation." But the SF report's focus is more about how to reorganize NASA than about the technical aspects of going to the asteroids or Mars. It recommends that NASA concentrate on pioneering as a single unifying theme, and suggests some subsidiary measures (such as amending the Space Act) to support that theme.

In a sense, the SF report reinforces what XCOR CEO Jeff Greason, a member of the Augustine Commission, said in his ISDC 2011 talk at Huntsville. Greason called the motivation "settlement," while Pulham calls it pioneering.

Is there any difference? I think there is. You can be a pioneer if you go somewhere and never go back there. Settlement is not like that--the settlers need logistical support (even with in-situ resource utilization, no doubt.) The Space Foundation's definition of pioneering sounds like the precursor to settlement:

"The Space Foundation defines 'pioneering' as: 1. being among those who first enter a region to open it for use and development by others; and 2. being one of a group that builds and prepares infrastructure precursors, in advance of others. It is a term that is used throughout this report to describe the ideal focus for NASA. The Pioneering Doctrine has four phases: access, exploration, utilization, and transition."

Greason's talk also teaches us how to recognize when the "vision thing" has been done correctly. He says you need to think in this order: GOAL--STRATEGY--OBJECTIVES--TACTICS. We need to look for that clarity of thought, for instance when the NASA Administrator claims that we're "poised for tomorrow's progress."  Despite its claim of providing a strategy, the SF report is nothing but tactics, mostly organizational ones. Certainly there's no goal: the report intentionally eschews establishing where the pioneering effort should land.

And sadly, there is nothing approaching Greason's G-S-O-T pyramid coming out of NASA. The contention in this USA Today op-ed piece that the Administration's support of commercial space "has been a considerable success" should not fool us into thinking there's a strategy. Commercial companies like SpaceX are simply filling a vacuum.

One of the most important aspects of a pioneering program is how to pay for it. Greason made a compelling case that we'll never afford settlements if we rely on a government-only program. The SF report encourages continuing commercialization, but only as a means of shedding distractions.  Today, NASA supports commercial spaceflight--yet at the same time, it is developing the pork-barrel Senate Launch System, which undermines the commercial business. And right now, commercial spaceflight looks more like a stop-gap measure--"let's not have to rely on the Russians to get to ISS." That's not a worthy goal nor a strategy, and it is completely disconnected from pioneering and settlement.

Instead, what we need is a true public-private partnership. If a company fields space robots that can assemble spacecraft on orbit, NASA needs to give serious consideration to including them in a pioneering program--without worrying about its own budget. If a company finds a way to produce propellant on the Moon, NASA again needs to make that part of their program--and make sure that company is adequately compensated.

After Columbus' voyages, Spain didn't come to the New World for the science; they came for the gold. I'll give Professor Reynolds, author of the USA Today article, the final word:

"With free markets, you don't have to convince government bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators that your idea is a good one -- you just have to convince customers and investors. And though government bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators are deathly afraid of failure for political reasons, entrepreneurs succeed by courting -- and, sometimes, learning from -- failure. That's something government programs can't do."

Four different ways to keep satellites alive

In 2011, the communications satellite operator Intelsat and the Canadian firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (builders of the robot arm on the International Space Station) announced an agreement. MDA would build a robotic servicing vehicle to refuel Intelsat's 55 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit. That agreement was later cancelled; however, MDA has put out some materials to continue marketing the idea. Also last year, a new American company, Vivisat, was formed, to do the same mission with a somewhat different approach. Rather than refueling the spacecraft, they would attach a module with its own propulsion system. The end result would be the same: the spacecraft wouldn't need to be sent to the "graveyard" just because its propellant was exhausted.

This week, Vivisat has announced plans to have two of the modules built by ATK, an experienced aerospace company. So the vision of robotic satellite servicing continues to advance (although it seems painfully slow progress to those of us who have worked on the concept since 1999.) Also, since this is a private sector initiative, it is strictly business-case based, rather than having to rely on the vagaries of government funding. Private enterprise can also be more aggressive than government, as SpaceX has showed the world.

Not to be outdone, NASA has been contributing knowledge and resources to the satellite servicing game. Their Robotic Refueling experiments on ISS are ultimately targeted at GEO spacecraft as well. These experiments are more consistent with the Intelsat-MDA approach, in that they are testing ways of adding propellant to spacecraft that weren't designed to be refueled. Presumably the robotic mechanisms there would be tele-operated, as they were in the RRM experiments. One might be concerned that controlling robots over such large distances and long time delays would be highly risky, but a recent control experiment between ISS and the ground provides grounds for optimism.

The notional servicing mission NASA has conceived  uses a traveling fuel truck to go from customer to customer. Another concept they have discussed is an actual "service station" in GEO, a central point where the refueling of all GEO birds takes place. At this early stage it's unclear whether the customers use their own propellant to get to the service station, or whether a "tow truck" takes them there. The former approach requires less hardware, while the latter provides the ability to move dead satellites as well as functioning ones.

The "tow truck" concept itself represents yet another approach to keeping GEO satellites alive. It does not add fuel to the satellites; rather, it simply promises that, when they run out of propellant, the tow truck will take them to the graveyard. This ability to exhaust propellant could add several months to a couple of years of life to each spacecraft. It's not as long an extension as the other concepts promise; but it is much, much simpler technically. And the technology to dock spacecraft autonomously MUST be developed by any of the other methods anyway! NASA is working on it . For the record, a program that I conceived and managed for DARPA demonstrated it in the lab in 2005. The "tow truck" method has legal, insurance, and contractual implications, which have received some study .

Here are the bottom lines:

1. The space community seems to have moved past the point of skepticism regarding on-orbit servicing.

2. None of these four methods are perfect: the "life extension module" wastes expensive hardware by using it only once; the two refueling approaches require very complex manipulations; and the "tow truck" method doesn't provide as much life extension as the others (although it has other advantages.)

3. Autonomous rendezvous and docking is essential to any servicing method. Once docked, the robotic mechanisms have a static target (in relative space) to deal with rather than a dynamic one. This technology must be given very high priority.

4. The NASA and private efforts need to be integrated into a public-private joint enterprise. SpaceX could not have accomplished its missions to ISS without significant NASA support. Community leaders must establish that same kind of cooperation, to make robotic on-orbit servicing a reliable and profitable activity.

Doing more with less

Here's a column from FloridaToday.com that recommends that NASA do exactly that: find ways to be more innovative and get more exploration done using existing resources.

It's probably obvious to most readers that robots offer that opportunity: robotic space operations are MUCH cheaper and safer than the same operations done by astronauts.

Some parts of NASA seem to be getting that. Goddard Space Flight Center is leading an initiative to put a servicing station in geosynchronous orbit. Some earlier concepts to do that were manned, but I presume we are now talking about robotic operations there. Good thing, given how intense the radiation levels in GEO are.

Another initiative, to assemble a telescope at the Space Station using robotics, doesn't look like it will be funded this year. But hopefully the planning will go on.

What could put all this into high gear would be a COMMERCIAL initiative for robotic servicing of GEO spacecraft. There's a good business case for it, as laid out in this MIT master's thesis . (Truth in advertising: I was the sponsor.) When you keep spacecraft in GEO operating longer, whether by refueling them or by simply allowing their fuel to deplete, everyone wins. The satellite operator derives revenue for a longer time; the servicing provider gets a fee for the refueling or disposal service.

It's time to put that business plan into action!

Controlling robots from the Space Station

The BBC reports that a ground robot has been controlled successfully from the International Space Station . Why does this matter?

1. It means that it should work equally well in the other direction. So, for instance, if you are trying to control robots refueling satellites in geosynchronous orbit, you could use this delay-tolerant technique.

2. It shows a path to preparing for settlements on Mars. CEO of XCOR Aerospace, Jeff Greason, has laid out a strategy for developing a Mars settlement that begins with a landing on Phobos, and controlling robots on the Martian surface from there. This ISS robot-control demo shows that that idea will work, or at least the control part of it.

There are also even more advanced communications approaches being tested, although not on the Space Station yet, like this advanced optical communications approach .

Coolness. There are other nifty robotic things going on on ISS--for example, they have experimented with refueling satellites using teleoperated robots. They are thinking about having a refueling station in GEO, and about using robots to build things at ISS, like giant telescopes.

So ISS is becoming a lab for New Space testing! That's very important, because it really shows a mental shift at NASA. NASA became famous because of human spaceflight accomplishments--but this really will be the century of robots in space. NASA has decided to become a part of it.

I couldn't help myself

Living in Australia, I just had to post this:

The Commercial Resupply flight is about to launch

Apologies for the two-month absence. It's been a busy time here in Australia. We're preparing a concept for a spacecraft to monitor Australia's natural resources. I'm working at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research at the University of New South Wales.

More on that later--right now I'm watching NASA TV to see the launch of the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS on SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Tune in!

Space: a light to humanity

First, congratulations to JPL, NASA, the subcontractors, and everyone else involved in designing, building, launching, and guiding Curiosity to a successful landing in Gale Crater on Mars.

Google Earth (ha ha) gives a great perspective on the area around the landing site. Numerous photos from the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have wonderful detail. Using the "incline" feature on the Google Earth 3D viewer produces a very lifelike perspective.

The ridge, part of Mount Sharp, is about 5000 feet above the crater floor where Curiosity now sits.

The outpouring of enthusiasm for this UNMANNED, ROBOTIC mission is very encouraging. It says that missions to other planets don't need to have astronauts to provide inspiration.

Also a comment on nationalism: there has been an outpouring of American pride in this accomplishment. The pride is justified, although some of the expressions have been unseemly. American policy makers should try to evolve to a more global approach to space exploration. By involving many nations in projects like Curiosity, the exploration of space can become a unifying rather than a dividing enterprise.

As has been said before in this blog: we are going to need triumphs of space exploration in this century, to maintain our hope for the future. This is especially true in this century of resource exhaustion and population explosion. It will be all to easy to become dispirited by the challenges, by the losses. Let us build a world space program, to help everyone feel included in the successes and in the failures as well.

UPDATE: a friend has unearthed a letter from a NASA exec in the 1960s, explaining the benefits of space exploration to a nun working with starving children. That letter is far more eloquent than I have been. I recommend it highly. It was provided to the website by space historian Roger Launius.

Two spaces leaders with clear vision...

...but not, unfortunately, in the US.

The first is UK University and Science Minister David Willetts, who is getting behind space tourism, creating a new spaceport, and finding other ways to leverage the UK's highly successful aerospace industry.

The second is Vladimir Popovkin, the head of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. He has said that Russia will not look to put astronauts on the moon until the presence of water is confirmed. In other words, we should go there when we're ready to stay and do useful things, for prolonged periods--not just to plant a flag.

Hopefully this is a teachable moment for US space policy makers.

The history of New Space (second of a series)

In the 1990's, there were some space programs that inched along the community toward a New Space approach. These weren't New Space, but they had a positive influence.

IRIDIUM--LOW-COST MASS-PRODUCED SATELLITES

The cost of a satellite is driven by several factors. First, it is expensive to launch them. This in turn means that there is little tolerance for failure, so both launchers and satellites are highly engineered for reliability. A second cost is in the design, which must support both the mission and the reliability. Because space missions are often unique, the design cost cannot be amortized across multiple spacecraft. Then there is manufacturing, which is expensive because of extensive quality control, and the high labor costs.

Iridium's concept was to break several of these cost drivers at once. Because a large constellation would be needed to provide continuous phone coverage worldwide, the design costs would be spread across the many satellites needed. An innovative manufacturing process was implemented that turned out the spacecraft rapidly and cheaply, using the same sorts of techniques that had made consumer electronics so inexpensive. And the satellites were small enough that several could be put on a single launcher.

As a communication system, Iridium was not a success. But it inspired several other space technologies. For example, the large payload capacity of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (Delta IV and Atlas V) developed for the U.S. Air Force was motivated by the capability to launch large constellations for military purposes. (To date, this has never happened!) The DARPA Discoverer II program was going to apply an Iridium-like approach to mass-manufactured radar satellites. (Congress killed this program, one year before 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, where it would have been invaluable.)

Iridium continues to function today, after a bail-out by the US Defense Department. (The mobile phone for Iridium had to be outside to work--not something a business person would want, but it's great for military users.) And there are some other specialized users: for instance, the Australian Government will pay for Iridium service for users outside of cell phone coverage!

A second generation of Iridium spacecraft is coming, with launches to start in 2015.

NASA--FASTER, BETTER, CHEAPER

One of NASA's great successes during the 1990s was the Mars Pathfinder mission. It had very modest design requirements--a rover to function for only 7 days, and the lander for only 30. But for a budget of only $150M, that was demanding enough. Both the lander and the rover exceeded their design lifetimes by many times, and returned thousands of pictures and other valuable scientific data about the surface of Mars.

Faster-better-cheaper doesn't always work out. The year after Pathfinder, the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Observer both crashed. Pathfinder itself was followed by a series of ever-more-capable rovers, one example of its impact on the community. But Pathfinder was still captive to high launch cost, which was almost as high as the cost of the spacecraft.

Lighting a fire

My friend Madhu Thangavelu at the University of Southern California is trying to light a fire under the government to get something aggressive going in space exploration. Whether or not you agree with his idea of a U.S. Department of Space, at least Madhu is pushing for a forward-looking, inspirational approach to space activities. You go, Madhu!

Let's not repeat history so soon

The way to get costs down for launching things to space is to make all the parts reusable, right? It's obvious, isn't it? If you can reuse things, the launches must become cheaper, surely!

How can someone even THINK that that might be true? If this were 1972, it might be excusable, but we have 30 years of history that say it isn't.

Several years ago, I attended a lecture at MIT by Aaron Cohen, the first Space Shuttle project manager. He finished the lecture by saying [I paraphrase], "If you notice, the Space Shuttle did not achieve a single one of its top level requirements. If I had it to do over again, I'd look at those requirements a lot harder."

That is wisdom in its hardest won, most valuable form. The way to design a system is not by saying, "Here's what we want it to be (e.g. reusable)." The way to design a system is to first state clearly, "Here's what we want it to DO." Someone's favorite approach may be incompatible with their objectives.

Another example from history: expendable launch vehicles were long designed to maximize the fraction of their launch weight that they could get into orbit. That makes sense, right? Well, maybe not, if you look at how much the fancy engineering to achieve that winds up costing--$5,000 a pound to low Earth orbit in the best cases.

Within the last decade, a few people, notably Elon Musk of SpaceX and some others, started asking a different question: "How do I design a launch vehicle for lowest cost per pound to orbit?" It turns out that the design is much different. Using this new paradigm, the changes in launch vehicle design have only started to appear on the scene. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, when it achieves maturity, may give launch costs as low as $1,000 per pound to low Earth orbit (albeit only for huge payloads). Other approaches, not as far along, have visions of even lower costs, and for smaller payloads.

SpaceX has identified some savings that may be realized by recovery and reuse of their booster stages. I would never bet against them. But again, the vehicles were FIRST designed with low COST as the objective. Subsequent improvements to the overall business process are one thing; constraining the design to a certain approach with uncertain implications is another.

More on the politics of commercial spaceflight

We have said all this in previous posts, but this Aviation Week & Space Technology article really sums it up nicely: expensive government programs are being protected at the expense of more agile, more efficient and more productive commercial endeavors.

Some New Space activity on the Space Station

NASA has been doing some relatively quiet but important work on the International Space Station. They are investigating how to use robotics to refuel orbiting satellites. They have recently begun Phase 2 of the testing. A useful feature of the experiments is that some of the activities are controlled from the ground--thereby testing the effects of communications delays, bandwidth limitations, and limited perception.

The work is being managed by the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. They have posted their vision of a robotic servicing mission. Sadly, they fail to mention that such a mission was already flown five years ago--albeit not by NASA. Here's a video from one of the spacecraft during the 2007 mission showing one of the two spacecraft inspecting the other.

Presumably this omission by NASA has to do with the competition for resources--"if we don't mention the DARPA program, maybe no one will remember."

You can follow the NASA program on Facebook.

Congratulations to China

With the Shenzhou spacecraft today docking with the Tiangong module,  China has now become only the third nation to accomplish this feat. Congratulations to the Chinese engineers who made this possible, and to the Chinese people!

Chinese astronauts going up again

It isn't "new space," but China will launch another manned flight including its first female astronaut. Let us wish them well.

A great gift idea, or a Trojan horse?

Today we learn of a previously classified gift--the US's National Reconnaissance Office has given NASA two brand new telescopes. The scientific community has identified the telescopes, which of course would be flown in space, as perfect for dark matter searches. That's awesome and I wish them well.

There is a "new space" aspect to this story, however. Here is an excerpt from the New York Times story, quoting the NASA official in charge of the new instrument:

"Dr. Grunsfeld said the repurposing of the telescope for dark energy came at a personal cost. He had long dreamed that the Hubble, which he and the other astronaut servicing teams had said goodbye to forever in 2009, might be visited again and upgraded one more time to do the dark energy work. That dream, he admitted, was now dead.'If for half the cost, you could turn this into a telescope, why would you do that?' he said."

Well, you might do it if you could use robots instead of astronauts, and if the Hubble became the perfect test bed for robotic space technologies.

You might go that route if you remember the track record NASA has of estimating the cost of telescopes. The latest, the James Webb Space Telescope, has increased in cost by a factor of 16 from its original estimate. So the "savings" promised by the NRO gift might be illusory. It's kind of like my wife telling me how much she saved when she went shopping.

In 2004, I was part of a group presentation to NASA on how the Hubble might be serviced with robots. The subject had some urgency, because the shuttle Columbia had just been destroyed with the loss of 7 lives. Like the previous shuttle disaster, Challenger, the future of everything that depended on the shuttles was in doubt. And the Hubble needed servicing in a big way--both batteries and gyroscopes were approaching the ends of their useful lives. 

The NASA reaction was predictable. "Robotic servicing is too risky." Hmm, compared to sending up humans in a vehicle proven to have a 1% chance of killing them?

Now 8 years later, no robotic servicing capability has been developed. And even NASA is now getting ready to walk away from the Hubble.
 

If robotic servicing is developed now, it would be a win-win: our overall space robotics capability would be enhanced, with valuable test and operational experience that would help all future space endeavors. And the amazing Hubble Space Telescope would continue to serve humanity, not being discarded like some other piece of space junk. Perhaps this is more compelling than spending an unknown sum to "civil-ize" the NRO gifts.

Space policy without a space vision

In an earlier post, Congressional opposition to commercial space ventures like Dragon has already been discussed. Despite the incredible success of the Dragon mission to ISS, Congress wants to kill it, for obvious reasons. Notice that the most outspoken Senator has a large NASA center in his state, one which is in search of something useful to do.

What should the US space policy look like? The President's science advisor has admitted that today's space policy is difficult to explain. Of course it is, because it has no vision behind it. There is no President Kennedy saying, "I see no reason why America cannot put astronauts on the moon in this decade, and bring them safely back to Earth."

The Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Commission, also known as the Augustine Commission, laid out in its report a reasonably detailed set of options for missions and systems, that would culminate in human exploration of Mars.

But does anyone agree with their proposed approaches? Does the White House? And the commission didn't really say WHY it's so important to have humans there rather than robots. Nor is there a corresponding research program, with a sufficient budget, to address the huge challenges confronting human missions to Mars:

• bone mass loss
• radiation effects
• eyesight degradation
• resource conservation and reutilization
• etc., etc.

On the outside, there are people who do have exciting visions for a robust, productive, profitable future in space. Jeff Greason, CEO of Xcor Aerospace, a member of the Augustine commission, has a particularly compelling and coherent one. But, again, what is the intersection between Jeff's ideas and a national space policy? Certainly one area of intense disagreement is the development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Jeff thinks it's unnecessary and wasteful, as do I. But the Congress is determined to fund one. You'll find it referred to in the budget as SLS, the Space Launch System. Doesn't help the commercial people, doesn't do anything for other space missions, only supports the one mission--going to Mars. The Augustine commission seems to have been chartered to support this project, rather than investigating alternatives like robotic on-orbit assembly.

But it doesn't really matter. Until there is leadership again, the government will take whatever dwindling resources it allocates to space activities and fritter them away in uncoordinated, unproductive ways--until the government is no longer a player in space at all.

Dragon returns to Earth

Early this morning, SpaceX's Dragon capsule separated from the Space Station and began its trip home. After its reentry burn, Dragon began feeling the atmosphere around 8:30 AM Pacific time, and splashed down at 8:42.

NASA aircraft were able to pick up the descending Dragon capsule using infrared, as shown on NASA TV:

When the drogue parachutes deployed, they didn't give much of a visual impression:

...but the main chutes are unmistakable, even in infrared:

As of this writing, the recovery vessel has almost reached the capsule to lift it out of the water.

Try to get your head around this. Only ten years after SpaceX was founded, they have:

• developed and successfully flown two types of launch vehicles
• launched two satellites into orbit
• developed a recoverable space capsule, something only three nations have done in the past
• demonstrated successful reentry
• rendezvoused and berthed with the Space Station
• brought their capsule safely back to Earth, carrying 1,300 pounds of cargo from the Station

Congratulations to them. And good news for space.

The history of New Space (part 1 of a series)

The unloading and reloading of the Dragon capsule at the International Space Station, currently ongoing, is a clear reminder that things have changed in the space business. New Space has arrived. A private company, and a relatively small one at that, was able to build the rocket, build the capsule, and arrange for a successful rendezvous and berthing--and they're about to bring the Dragon back to Earth as well.

This milestone embodies one of the hallmarks of New Space:

• people working in space who didn't or couldn't before
• new missions and technologies that weren't possible before
• new reasons to be in space at all

New Space began to emerge in the late 1990's. One center of thought leadership was at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--which earlier sponsored the work that resulted in the Saturn V rocket, the Internet, and the Stealth fighter and bomber. Also at this time, some radical ventures that had sputtered along were starting to experience some successes. And there were some small centers of discontent within the NASA complex who were arguing for bolder initiatives.

The context in which New Space was emerging was, of course, Old Space. After the Apollo moon landings, manned space flight had been restricted to low Earth orbit--Skylab, Mir, the Shuttle and the Space Station. Scientific missions had had some spectacular successes, those most in the public eye being the Hubble Space Telescope and the Galileo mission to Jupiter. Perhaps the most important humanitarian function performed from space was weather, especially detection and tracking of hurricanes. The military continued to use satellites, classified and unclassified, to augment some of their capabilities--communications, imagery, missile launch warning, and weather. Commercially, the most successful space missions were for TV broadcast and data transmission around the globe. However, the biggest economic impact was from GPS, which began as a US military capability but turned into a critical piece of the global infrastructure. The number of space launches worldwide was 100 per year or less.

Question #1 for the "new space" thought leadership: what else can we do?

One of the striking things about Old Space was how expensive it was. (And this continues to be the case today, with some encouraging trends but no price breakthrough yet.) Launch costs tended to drive all the rest of the costs up as well. NASA claimed that Space Shuttle flights were a few hundred million per launch--but that didn't count infrastructure costs, which arguably made the real price over a billion dollars per launch. Unmanned rockets were less expensive but $5,000 per pound to low Earth orbit was common. And this forced the costs of the spacecraft to be even higher--you had to make sure that your payload would survive the launch, operate for years without any maintenance, and deal with the peculiarities of the space environment. No one could afford to "launch something and see how it works." Everything had to be tried and true; innovation was the enemy of reliability, and low reliability was unaffordable.

New space question #2: how do we bring down costs?

Old Space had one other unattractive characteristic: it was OLD. Space launch and space operations--the missions, the technologies, the procedures--didn't look much different than they had twenty years earlier, when the Space Shuttle started flying. Actually many of them didn't look much different from the 1960s! And this was the era when the Internet was starting to take off, cell phones and GPS were in everyone's hands, industries were becoming roboticized, and fiber optics were becoming ubiquitous.

New space question #3 in the late '90s: how can we leverage these incredible terrestrial technologies to enhance space capabilities?

In the next installment, we will look at some of the systems, technologies, missions, and lines of reasoning that emerged during this fruitful period.

Two become one

Astronaut Don Pettit used the Space Station's robot arm to capture the Dragon capsule, which was completed right about 6 AM Pacific time. This picture from NASA TV shows the result of years of work by the SpaceX team, and by NASA:

Dragon obeys its master

This morning's planned berthing of Dragon at the Space Station began with testing the ability of the Station crew to be in control: sending abort and hold commands. Prior to this, all commands had come from the SpaceX mission control center in Hawthorne, California.

Like yesterday's fly-by, today's flight began at 2.5 kilometers below Station. The distance was reduced to 1.4 km, then to 800 meters. Interestingly, the crew did not seem to acquire Dragon visually until it was within a kilometer, as opposed to yesterday when it was sighted several kilometers away. Here was the first image shown on NASA TV, several hundred meters away:

While the ISS cameras and crew were looking down on Dragon, it was looking back up with its thermal imager:

 

A safety zone of 250 meters (one WalMart) was maintained around ISS, shown here in NASA's ISS Mission Control:

 Dragon approached to 250m and held while awaiting approval to go ahead with the abort test. When passing into Earth nighttime over the Southern Ocean, the vehicle looked very bright by contrast at that range:

 If you use your imagination, you might be able to see the plumes from Dragon's thrusters firing. The plumes were actually quite clear on the video image, but were too short to capture reliably.

At about 2:30 AM Pacific time, Dragon and ISS passed over us here in Los Angeles--but it was cloudy.

The camera on ISS's robotic arm was getting good images, which is important since the arm will be capturing Dragon later today:

Once in the sunlight, the abort test proceeded, with astronaut Andre Kuipers sending the abort command when range had decreased from 250m to 235m. That small change in distance wasn't discernable visibly, but you could imagine it:

The abort test and hold test both went flawlessly. The sands of Morocco provide a nice backdrop:

At this moment, Dragon is holding at 235m while NASA evaluates some sensor data. The report just came in that all sensor data met expectations, so we can expect the capture and berthing to proceed.

By the way, here's a detailed explanatory video of the actual berthing mechanical operations. Thanks to friend and classmate Dan Nelson for the link.

Tonight's plan for Dragon

After that spectacular fly-by, Dragon went into an orbit that went above the Space Station. Tonight, the capsule will once again be brought to 2.5 km away. At that point, a shift in the command structure occurs. Up to this point, Dragon has been commanded by SpaceX. "Integrated operations" will start at the 2.5km point, where NASA will be making all the go/no-go decisions. Here is a diagram from NASA TV of the approach plan:

 

The next thing will be a detailed test of abort response: "will it back off if we tell it to?" Here's a diagram  of those demonstration maneuvers:

Assuming all goes well, Dragon will then be allowed inside the safety zone. It will hold at 30 meters. Then, finally, it will approach to a point only 10 meters away. There, astronaut Don Pettit will grab Dragon with the Station's robotic manipulator arm. Here's a picture of what that will look like, from SpaceX's press kit:

Remember, you can watch the whole thing LIVE on NASA TV beginning at 2:30 AM Eastern time. Space is better than sleep! But if you can't stay up, I'll let you know how it went in the morning.

Meanwhile, in Washington...

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule are fantastic achievements of the private sector. The latest mission to ISS has gone flawlessly. So, naturally, what do you think the politicians are doing?

They are cutting its budget in order to kill the program.

Many of the pols HATE the commercial space program. They would love to see it fail. Why? Because they have NASA centers in their districts--centers with tens of thousands of employees dedicated to flying the Space Shuttle.

"The Space Shuttle? But that's not flying anymore." Right--but the jobs are still there. And the pols, who could care less about New Space, about exploration, about expanding humanity into the solar system, are doing the one thing they are good at:

Getting re-elected.

And the centers are looking for new things to do. Perhaps in a future post, we can look at some of the make-work things that are going on.

New Space is going to win out. In the long run, it's not going to rely on government funding, except perhaps as one of many customers. It's going to win out because it is safer and less expensive than using astronauts for everything. It's going to win out because the resources that it will mine from the Solar System are valuable.

But for now, the Old Space government-political complex will throw as many rocks as it can, preserving the obsolete rice bowl.

Fantastic fly-by

As promised, I stayed up to watch the Dragon capsule pass the Space Station within one and a half miles. Awesome.

The events of the last few hours are all on this NASA graphic: (all images are screen captures from NASA TV):

 

The early morning events all happened on the green line across the bottom. Dragon executed two burns, one near the red arrow and one after the curved part, to put it on an orbit 2.5 km below ISS. Then Dragon's relatively higher speed (lower orbit = higher orbital velocity) allowed it to pass by ISS without further maneuvers.


Here was the camera view when astronaut Andre Kuipers first reported seeing Dragon. Can you see it?

Slowly, very slowly, the craft advanced under ISS. Here, looking nearly straight down, Dragon is seen as it and ISS cross the coast of South Africa--the country of origin of SpaceX's founder Elon Musk.

As the craft approached nadir (or "rbar crossing" in NASA-speak), you could finally make out details of Dragon--at least the fact that it's not just a dot:

 Good thing that I caught that one: just a moment later, ISS and Dragon passed into the Earth's shadow ("eclipse") and the capsule was no longer visible.

Congratulations to SpaceX and NASA on yet another milestone in this brilliant flight. By tomorrow, when Dragon has actually BERTHED at ISS, this fly-by will be a dim memory--but for now, it's amazing.

Dragon closes in on the Space Station

Yesterday morning, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifted its Dragon capsule into orbit. Since then, Dragon has been conducting tests to ensure that it is functioning safely, so that it can approach the ISS. This morning, NASA's ISS Update announced that all of the required tests had been completed satisfactorily. Some of the tests were of aborts--how the Dragon will move away if things don't go well.

Meanwhile, engineer-astronauts Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers have been practicing the maneuver they'll need Friday--grasping the Dragon with the Station's long manipulator arm.

Dragon is in essentially the same orbit as the Station, following it. Beginning tonight, it will perform a fly-under. You can watch it on  NASA TV beginning at 2:30 AM. If you don't want to stay up, I'll let you know how it went tomorrow at a decent hour.

SpaceX has prepared a truly excellent press kit that has all the details and schedules of this significant mission. Right now the point in the schedule is at the top of page 10.

Waking up on a "New Space" day

At 07:44 GMT, a Falcon 9 rocket flew out of Cape Canaveral and put its Dragon capsule in orbit.. Watching on NASA TV, the excitement of the team was shared with everyone. Launches are nerve-wracking; just three days earlier, the launch had to be scrubbed because of a minor engine malfunction. Relief burst out when the Dragon was in orbit and its solar panels deployed successfully. On TV, the CEO of the rocket's builder was seen running around the control room giving out hugs. I did a little air-pump and went to bed.

There's more to the story than just a successful launch, though. This Dragon spacecraft is headed for the International Space Station--the first non-government vehicle ever permitted to rendezvous with ISS. Dragon's approach to the ISS will start on Thursday.

When I woke up this morning, I realized that it was important to start talking about how we got here--and what is coming. I've been developing "New Space" concepts and hardware for over ten years. Most people have no idea of the revolution that is upon us. CNN had an article on the launch this morning, but unless you were a space geek like me, you didn't know you could watch it. They're talking about commercial space flight as the "new paradigm." But let's also talk about robots, about refueling on orbit, about adaptable space systems, and about using space to help humanity with its resource challenges.

New waves in the human experience happen because there is an economic driver. After Columbus' voyages to the Western Hemisphere, people only returned for gold and more room to expand. Living off government expenditures is not the recipe for success--in space, or anywhere else. "New Space" will combine technologies and put them to work for economic growth and the common good. This is "Rule Number One" of New Space.

With cooperation between governments, industry and science, we'll also be able to do MORE science missions and MORE exploration than we ever could do before--because growth in the sector will make it possible. First there were cars; THEN there were gas stations; THEN there were interstate highways.

It's exciting to be on this ride.