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Sierra Space Bolsters Human Spaceflight Center And Astronaut Training Academy Team

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Sierra Space Bolsters Human Spaceflight Center And Astronaut Training Academy Team
Hires Veteran NASA Astronaut and Former Head of ISS Medical Operations Dr. Tom Marshburn as Chief Medical Officer

Sierra Space, a leading space company building the first end-to-end business and technology platform in space,  today announced Thomas H. Marshburn, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer for the company’s Human Spaceflight Center and Astronaut Training Academy. Dr. Marshburn will report to Sierra Space President and former NASA astronaut, Dr. Janet Kavandi.

Dr. Marshburn, also a veteran astronaut, will be based out of Sierra Space’s facilities located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He is a veteran of three spaceflights, STS-127, Expedition 34/35, and Expedition 66/67 as part of Crew-3. Prior to becoming an astronaut, Marshburn served as a Flight Surgeon, assigned to Space Shuttle Medical Operations and to the joint U.S./Russian Space Program. Dr. Mashburn went on to become the Medical Operations Lead for the International Space Station.

“Today is a landmark for Sierra Space, as we welcome Tom to the team,” said Sierra Space President Dr. Janet Kavandi. “With the development of the Sierra Space Human Spaceflight Center and Astronaut Training Academy, we are changing the landscape of the commercial space economy. Tom will play a pivotal role in shaping Sierra Space’s bold and ambitious plans. We look forward to seeing all the contributions that his expertise, capabilities and strengths as a physician and veteran leader will provide Sierra Space and the future astronauts we will train.”

Marshburn served as pilot of the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which launched on November 10, 2021. He also served as a flight engineer on Expedition 66 and commander of Expedition 67 during that mission.  Returning on May 6, 2022, the international crew of four spent 177 days in orbit.

“I am thrilled to join Sierra Space in this important role with the Human Spaceflight Center,” added Marshburn. “I look forward to creating and developing the rules, regulations and training that will ensure Sierra Space properly equips the future astronaut corps with the tools to succeed as the company expands humanity’s reach into space with the launch of the Dream Chaser spaceplane and Orbital Reef space station.”

Marshburn received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Davidson College, North Carolina, in 1982; a Masters in Engineering Physics from the University of Virginia in 1984; a Doctorate of Medicine degree from Wake Forest University in 1989; and a Masters in Medical Science from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in 1997.

Sierra Space is building the world’s first commercial space platform, enabling a vibrant new space economy where companies in multiple industries can develop their next breakthrough products and services in the unique environment of space, delivering the discoveries of tomorrow to benefit life on Earth. The company’s new Human Spaceflight Center and Astronaut Training Academy will recruit, train and prepare the future astronaut corps required for the developing commercial space economy.

About Sierra Space

Sierra Space (www.sierraspace.com) is a leading commercial space company at the forefront of innovation and the commercialization of space in the Orbital Age. Sierra Space is building platforms in space to benefit life on Earth. The company is in the latter stages of doubling its headcount, with large presences in Colorado, Florida and Wisconsin. Significant investors in Sierra Space include General Atlantic, Coatue, and Moore Strategic Ventures.

With more than 30 years and 500 missions of space flight heritage, Sierra Space is enabling the future of space transportation with Dream Chaser®, the world’s only winged commercial spaceplane. Under construction at its Colorado headquarters and expected to launch in 2023 on the first of a series of NASA missions to the International Space Station, Dream Chaser® can safely carry cargo – and eventually crew – to on-orbit destinations, returning to land on compatible commercial airport runways worldwide. The company is also establishing a Human Spaceflight Center and Astronaut Training Academy. Sierra Space is additionally building an array of in-space destinations for low-Earth orbit (LEO) commercialization including the LIFE™ (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a three-story commercial habitation and science platform designed for LEO. Both Dream Chaser and LIFE are central components to Orbital Reef, a mixed-use business park in LEO being developed by principal partners Sierra Space and Blue Origin, which is expected to be operational by the end of the decade.

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CONTACTS:

Alex Walker
Sierra Space
(303) 803-2297
[email protected]

Eric Becker
ICR for Sierra Space
(303) 638-3469
[email protected]

Webb Space Telescope, Keck Team Up To Study Saturn’s Moon Titan

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Webb Space Telescope, Keck Team Up To Study Saturn’s Moon Titan
Evolution of clouds on Titan over 30 hours between Nov. 4 and Nov. 6, as seen by near-infrared cameras on the James Webb Space Telescope (top) and Keck Telescope. Titan’s trailing hemisphere seen here is rotating from left (dawn) to right (evening) as seen from Earth and the sun. Cloud A appears to be rotating into view, while Cloud B appears to be either dissipating, or moving behind Titan’s limb. Clouds are not long-lasting on Titan or Earth, so those seen on Nov. 4 may not be the same as those seen on Nov. 6. (Image credit: NASA/STScI/Keck Observatory/Judy Schmidt)

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has turned its infrared cameras on Saturn’s moon Titan, giving astronomers another eye on the largest and one of the most unusual moons in the solar system.

The only satellite with a dense atmosphere, it’s also the only world besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid on its surface, including rivers, lakes and seas — though the liquid is thought to be methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons that are toxic to humans.

The new observations, combined with those from Earth-bound telescopes, will help astronomers understand the weather patterns on Titan in advance of a NASA mission to the moon, called Dragonfly, that is scheduled for launch in 2027. A multirotor lander, Dragonfly will assess the habitability of Titan’s unique environment, investigate the moon’s unusual chemical stew, and search for signatures of water-based or hydrocarbon-based life.

Astronomers have observed Titan for decades, since before the Voyager encounter in 1980. Over approximately the past 25 years, they focused powerful ground-based and orbital telescopes on the satellite, complementing observations by NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, which observed Titan between 2004 and 2017. University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Imke de Pater led many Titan observations using high-resolution adaptive optics on the Keck Telescopes in Hawai’i.

A Keck telescope image of Titan taken on Nov. 7, 2022, showing bright clouds in the Northern Hemisphere at 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock. (Image credit: NASA/STScI/Keck Observatory/Judy Schmidt)

After the JWST imaged Titan on Nov. 4, the telescope’s Titan team saw what looked like two clouds in the atmosphere. Titan team lead Conor Nixon quickly emailed de Pater and Katherine de Kleer — a UC Berkeley Ph.D. who is now an assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology — to help confirm the clouds and track their movement with the Keck Telescope.

A series of Keck images taken about 30 and 54 hours later showed similar clouds — likely the same ones — but slightly displaced because of the moon’s rotation relative to Earth.

“We were concerned that the clouds would be gone when we looked at Titan one and two days later with Keck, but to our delight there were clouds at the same positions, looking like they might have changed in shape,” said de Pater, a UC Berkeley Professor of the Graduate School.

The power of JWST

Though the quality of the JWST and Keck images may look about the same to the untrained eye, de Pater noted that JWST has instruments that can measure aspects of Titan’s atmosphere that Keck cannot, complementing one another. In particular, JWST’s infrared spectroscopic capability allows it to pinpoint the altitudes of clouds and hazes with much better accuracy.

Saturn’s moon Titan captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument on Nov. 4, 2022. The left image, taken through a 2.12-micron filter, shows clouds and lower atmospheric haze. The right image is a color composite using four filters. Kraken Mare is thought to be a methane sea; Belet is composed of dark-colored sand dunes; Adiri is a bright feature. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Pagan [STScI]. Science: JWST Titan GTO Team)

In particular, at wavelengths where Earth’s atmosphere is opaque — that is, Titan cannot be seen from any Earth-based telescope — JWST can observe and provide information on the lower atmosphere and surface.

In early September, and again earlier this week, de Pater and de Kleer participated in an international observing campaign to catch the occultation by Titan of a distant star. Organized by Eliot Young, a senior program manager at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the occultation offered an opportunity to probe Titan’s atmospheric structure in more detail using the Keck Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. These observations are coordinated with occultations observed from other large telescopes and Doppler wind retrievals on Titan from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a radio telescope in Chile.

In conjunction with recent wind modeling results, these observations contribute to a broader understanding of atmospheres on Earth, on planets around other stars, and on our neighboring planets and moons in the solar system.

“This is some of the most exciting data we have seen of Titan since the end of the Cassini-Huygens mission in 2017, and some of the best we will get before NASA’s Dragonfly arrives in 2032,” said Zibi Turtle of Johns Hopkins University, who is Dragonfly’s principal investigator. “The analysis should really help us to learn a lot about Titan’s atmosphere and meteorology.”

By Robert Sanders
Source Berkeley News

Artemis I Flight Day 16 – Orion Successfully Completes Distant Retrograde Departure Burn

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Artemis I Flight Day 16 – Orion Successfully Completes Distant Retrograde Departure Burn
art001e001820 (Dec. 1, 2022): On flight day 16, a camera mounted on one of Orion’s solar arrays snapped this image of our Moon as the spacecraft prepared to exit distant retrograde orbit during the Artemis I mission.

Orion has left its distant lunar orbit and is on its return journey home. The spacecraft successfully completed the distant retrograde departure burn at 3:53 p.m. CST, firing its main engine for 1 minute 45 seconds to set the spacecraft on course for a close lunar flyby before its return home.

The burn changed Orion’s velocity by about 454 feet per second and was performed using the Orion main engine on the European Service Module. The engine is an orbital maneuvering system engine modified for use on Orion and built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The engine has the ability to provide 6,000 pounds of thrust. The proven engine flying on Artemis I flew on 19 space shuttle flights, beginning with STS-41G in October 1984 and ending with STS-112 in October 2002.

The burn is one of two maneuvers required ahead of Orion’s splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11. The second will occur on Monday, Dec. 5, when the spacecraft will fly 79.2 miles above the lunar surface and perform the return powered flyby burn, which will commit Orion on its course toward Earth.

Teams also continued thermal tests of the star trackers during their eighth and final planned test. Star trackers are a navigation tool that measure the positions of stars to help the spacecraft determine its orientation. In the first three flight days of the mission, engineers evaluated initial data to understand star tracker readings correlated to thruster firings.

A trajectory correction burn is planned for approximately 9:53 p.m. CST today, when Orion’s auxiliary thrusters will fine-tune the spacecraft’s path.

Just after 4:30 p.m. CST on Dec. 1, Orion was traveling 237,600 miles from Earth and 52,900 miles from the Moon, cruising at 2,300 mph.

Images are available on NASA’s Johnson Space Center Flickr account and Image and Video Library. When bandwidth allows, views of the mission are available in real-time.

By cballart
Source NASA

NASA To Provide Live Coverage Of US Spacewalks Outside Space Station

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NASA To Provide Live Coverage Of US Spacewalks Outside Space Station
NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio is pictured during a spacewalk tethered to the International Space Station’s starboard truss structure. Credits: NASA

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station will conduct a pair of U.S. spacewalks in December to install rollout solar arrays to increase electrical power in support of station operations and scientific research.

NASA will provide live coverage of the first spacewalk beginning at 6 a.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 3 on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 7:25 a.m. and last about seven hours.

NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio will exit the station’s Quest airlock to install an International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) to augment power generation for the 3A power channel on the station’s starboard truss structure.

In addition to installing an iROSA, the spacewalkers will disconnect a cable to ensure the 1B channel can be reactivated. Flight controllers recently changed electrical power routing to remove one of the eight International Space Station power channels from use to ensure batteries were being charged at expected levels. Station systems normally powered by the 1B channel are currently using electricity from the 1A power channel with no impact to station operations.

This spacewalking task will restore redundancy for affected station systems following unexpected tripping observed on the 1B channel Nov. 26. By isolating a section of the impacted array, which was one of several damaged strings, the goal is to restore 75% of the array’s functionality.

Cassada and Rubio are scheduled to conduct the next U.S. spacewalk Dec.19, this time to install an iROSA on the 4A power channel on the port truss. The exact times of the spacewalk and NASA coverage will be determined later.

For the Dec. 3 spacewalk Cassada will serve as extravehicular crew member 1 (EV 1) and will wear a suit with red stripes. Rubio will serve as extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2) and will wear the unmarked suit. For the Dec. 19 spacewalk, Rubio will serve as extravehicular crew number 1 (EV 1) and will wear a suit with red stripes. Cassada will serve as extravehicular crew member 2 and will wear the unmarked suit. The spacewalks will be the second and third spacewalks in both Cassada and Rubio’s careers.

The iROSAs arrived at the space station on Nov. 27, following a launch aboard the agency’s 26th SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission on Nov. 26.

These will be the third and fourth iROSAs installed on space station out of a total six planned for installation. Overall, the iROSAs will increase power generation capability by up to 30%, increasing the station’s total available power from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts.

Get breaking news, images and features from the space station on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Learn more about the International Space Station and its crew at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

Josh Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
[email protected]

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
[email protected]

By Roxana Bardan
Source NASA

Mysteriously Bright Flash Is A Black Hole Jet Pointing Straight Toward Earth, Astronomers Say

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Mysteriously Bright Flash Is A Black Hole Jet Pointing Straight Toward Earth, Astronomers Say
Astronomers identified an extremely bright black hole jet, halfway across the universe, pointing straight toward Earth. Credit: Dheeraj Pasham, Matteo Lucchini, and Margaret Trippe.

Earlier this year, astronomers were keeping tabs on data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, an all-sky survey based at the Palomar Observatory in California, when they detected an extraordinary flash in a part of the sky where no such light had been observed the night before. From a rough calculation, the flash appeared to give off more light than 1,000 trillion suns.

The team, led by researchers at NASA, Caltech, and elsewhere, posted their discovery to an astronomy newsletter, where the signal drew the attention of astronomers around the world, including scientists at MIT. Over the next few days, multiple telescopes focused in on the signal to gather more data across multiple wavelengths in the X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and radio bands, to see what could possibly produce such an enormous amount of light.

Now, the MIT astronomers along with their collaborators have determined a likely source for the signal. In a study appearing today in Nature Astronomy, the scientists report that the signal, named AT 2022cmc, likely comes from a relativistic jet of matter streaking out from a supermassive black hole at close to the speed of light. They believe the jet is the product of a black hole that suddenly began devouring a nearby star, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process.

Astronomers have observed other such “tidal disruption events,” or TDEs, in which a passing star is torn apart by a black hole’s tidal forces. AT 2022cmc is brighter than any TDE discovered to date. The source is also the farthest TDE ever detected, at some 8.5 billion lights years away — more than halfway across the universe.

How could such a distant event appear so bright in our sky? The team says the black hole’s jet may be pointing directly toward Earth, making the signal appear brighter than if the jet were pointing in any other direction. The effect is “Doppler boosting” and is similar to the amped-up sound of a passing siren.

AT 2022cmc is the fourth Doppler-boosted TDE ever detected and the first such event that has been observed since 2011. It is also the first TDE discovered using an optical sky survey.

As more powerful telescopes start up in the coming years, they will reveal more TDEs, which can shed light on how supermassive black holes grow and shape the galaxies around them.

“We know there is one supermassive black hole per galaxy, and they formed very quickly in the universe’s first million years,” says co-author Matteo Lucchini, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “That tells us they feed very fast, though we don’t know how that feeding process works. So, sources like a TDE can actually be a really good probe for how that process happens.”

Lucchini’s MIT co-authors include first author and Research Scientist Dheeraj “DJ” Pasham, postdoc Peter Kosec, Assistant Professor Erin Kara, and Principal Research Scientist Ronald Remillard, along with collaborators at universities and institutions around the world.

Animated video of the discovery of a relativistic jet, launched by a black hole. The new AT2022cmc signal was detected by researchers at MIT and elsewhere. This video was produced by MIT, with the collaboration of Dheeraj Reddy (MIT), Tomás E. Müller Bravo (ICE-CSIC and IEEC) and Noel Castro Segura (University of Southampton), among others. Credit: Dheeraj Pasham, Matteo Lucchini, and Margaret Trippe.

Feeding frenzy

Following AT 2022cmc’s initial discovery, Pasham and Lucchini focused in on the signal using the Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER), an X-ray telescope that operates aboard the International Space Station.

“Things looked pretty normal the first three days,” Pasham recalls. “Then we looked at it with an X-ray telescope, and what we found was, the source was too bright.”

Typically, such bright flashes in the sky are gamma-ray bursts — extreme jets of X-ray emissions that spew from the collapse of massive stars.

“This particular event was 100 times more powerful than the most powerful gamma-ray burst afterglow,” Pasham says. “It was something extraordinary.”

The team then gathered observations from other X-ray, radio, optical, and UV telescopes and tracked the signal’s activity over the next few weeks. The most remarkable property they observed was the signal’s extreme luminosity in the X-ray band. They found that X-ray emissions from AT 2022cmc swung widely by a factor of 500 over a few weeks,

They suspected that such extreme X-ray activity must be powered by an “extreme accretion episode” — an event that generates a huge churning disk, such as from a tidal disruption event, in which a shredded star creates a whirlpool of debris as it falls into a black hole.

Indeed, the team found that AT 2022cmc’s X-ray luminosity was comparable to, though brighter than, three previously detected TDEs. These bright events happened to generate jets of matter pointing straight toward Earth. The researchers wondered: If AT 2022cmc’s luminosity is the result of a similar Earth-targeting jet, how fast must the jet be moving to generate such a bright signal? To answer this, Lucchini modeled the signal’s data, assuming the event involved a jet headed straight toward Earth.

“We found that the jet speed is 99.99 percent the speed of light,” Lucchini says.

To produce such an intense jet, the black hole must be in an extremely active phase — what Pasham describes as a “hyper-feeding frenzy.”

“It’s probably swallowing the star at the rate of half the mass of the sun per year,” Pasham estimates. “A lot of this tidal disruption happens early on, and we were able to catch this event right at the beginning, within one week of the black hole starting to feed on the star.”

“We expect many more of these TDEs in the future,” Lucchini adds. “Then we might be able to say, finally, how exactly black holes launch these extremely powerful jets.”

Reprinted with permission of MIT News

By Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
Source MIT

Arianespace Ariane 6 To launch Intelsat Satellites

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Arianespace Ariane 6 To launch Intelsat Satellites

Arianespace signed a contract with longtime customer Intelsat to launch two satellite payloads, IS-41 and IS-44, using the heavy-lift Ariane 64 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in 2025. This agreement repurposes a previous launch contract and adds one additional satellite.

“We are honored, yet again, by our faithful longtime partner Intelsat with another significant contract,” said Stéphane Israël, CEO of Arianespace. “Intelsat is entrusting us with two highly sophisticated payloads for flight aboard our next generation heavy lift vehicle, the Ariane 64. What a tremendous vote of confidence in our team and our launcher! This special relationship goes back four decades and spans the entire Ariane line.”

“Launched with the Ariane 6, these innovative satellites will extend Intelsat’s 5G global reach and Media neighborhoods with high-speed, dynamically-allocated connectivity across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia for commercial and government mobility customers, as well as cellular network backhaul,” said David C. Wajsgras, CEO of Intelsat. “Without world-class, international aerospace partners like Arianespace, Intelsat would not be the global leader it is today.”

Thales Alenia Space is manufacturing the IS-41 and IS-44 satellites, which are based on the innovative and flexible Space Inspire product line. The two software-defined satellites, fully reconfigurable in orbit, will collectively weigh close to 8000 kg at launch and will be placed into the requested geostationary transfer orbit.

Ariane 6 has been designed from the outset to be scalable and able to integrate, during its life and on a regular basis, new technologies. Ariane 6’s incremental development is intended to regularly improve the performance of the launch solutions offered by Arianespace and always better fulfil the needs of both institutional and commercial customers. These developments are funded and managed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and implemented by Ariane 6’s launcher system prime contractor ArianeGroup.

About Arianespace

Arianespace uses Space to make life better on Earth by providing launch services for all types of satellites into all orbits. It has orbited over 1,100 satellites since 1980. Arianespace is responsible for operating the new-generation Ariane 6 and Vega C launchers, developed by ESA, with respectively ArianeGroup and Avio as industrial primes. Arianespace is headquartered in Evry, near Paris, and has a technical facility at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, plus local offices in Washington, D.C., Tokyo and Singapore. Arianespace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which holds 74% of its share capital, with the balance held by 15 other shareholders from the Ariane and Vega European launcher industry, and ESA and Cnes as censors.

TI Expands Space-Grade Product Portfolio With Radiation-Hardened And Radiation-Tolerant Plastic Packages For Missions From New Space To Deep Space

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TI Expands Space-Grade Product Portfolio With Radiation-Hardened And Radiation-Tolerant Plastic Packages For Missions From New Space To Deep Space

Texas Instruments (TI) (Nasdaq: TXN) announced an expansion in its portfolio of space-grade analog semiconductor products in highly reliable plastic packages for a diverse range of missions. TI developed a new device screening specification called space high-grade in plastic (SHP) for radiation-hardened products and introduced new analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that meet the SHP qualification. TI also introduced new product families to the radiation-tolerant Space Enhanced Plastic (Space EP) portfolio. Compared to traditional ceramic packages, plastic packages offer a smaller footprint that enables designers to reduce system-level size, weight and power, and thus help reduce launch costs.

In the past, space applications and programs used hermetically sealed, ceramic Qualified Manufacturers List (QML) Class V devices to ensure reliability. Today, applications like those in new space, designed to increase commercial access to space programs through short-term missions in low Earth orbit (LEO), are helping expand communication and connectivity. For new space applications, there is a growing need for smaller components that help reduce system size and weight – and therefore lower the cost required to launch an application into space. Plastic substrate ball-grid array (PBGA) and plastic-encapsulated devices offer an alternative to traditional space semiconductor packages.

Meet radiation and reliability requirements with space-grade plastic packages

New SHP ADCs improve thermal efficiency and increase bandwidth in a smaller size

TI’s SHP specification indicates integrated circuits (ICs) that meet the rigorous design requirements of deep space missions with extremely harsh environmental conditions. The SHP specification includes both PBGA and plastic-encapsulated packages for radiation-hardened semiconductors. The 10-mm-by-10-mm-by-1.9-mm ADC12DJ5200-SP and ADC12QJ1600-SP ADCs in flip-chip BGA SHP packages are the first products from TI that meet the SHP specification. These ADCs help enable designs as much as seven times smaller than those using equivalent ceramic-packaged devices, maximize data communication speeds with SerDes rates up to 17.1 Gbps, and reduce thermal resistance. Learn more about TI’s SHP specification by reading “How SHP in Plastic Packaging Addresses 3 Key Space Application Design Challenges.”

Space EP product families increase power efficiency and save board space for new space missions

TI’s Space EP portfolio is the industry’s largest plastic, radiation-tolerant power management and signal-chain portfolio, with devices specifically designed for smaller, high-volume LEO satellite applications. Space EP devices can help save as much as 50% board space compared to traditional ceramic packages, and deliver high-performance power supplies with rail-to-rail input/output operation. The TPS7H5005-SEP family of pulse-width modulation (PWM) controllers are the newest products in TI’s Space EP portfolio, and support multiple power-supply topologies and field-effect transistor (FET) architectures. TPS7H5005-SEP PWM controllers minimize power loss through synchronous rectification, enabling at least 5% higher power efficiency compared to equivalent devices. Learn more about TI’s Space EP products by reading the application note, “Reduce the Risk in Low-Earth Orbit Missions with Space Enhanced Plastic Products.”

With over 60 years in the space market, TI continues to develop radiation-hardened and radiation-tolerant products and packaging that enable designers to meet mission-critical requirements with increased power density, performance capabilities and reliability.

Availability

Space EP and SHP devices are available for purchase on TI.com and through authorized distributors. Full and custom-quantity reels are available on TI.com and through other channels. Manufacturers can select specific date and lot codes before placing their order on TI.com. Each QML lot ships with a certificate of conformance – a quality conformance inspection and a processing conformance report summarizing traceability and testing performed – per Military Performance Specification (MIL-PRF)-38535. See these and all of TI’s products for space at TI.com/space.

About Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Incorporated (Nasdaq: TXN) is a global semiconductor company that designs, manufactures, tests and sells analog and embedded processing chips for markets such as industrial, automotive, personal electronics, communications equipment and enterprise systems. Our passion to create a better world by making electronics more affordable through semiconductors is alive today, as each generation of innovation builds upon the last to make our technology smaller, more efficient, more reliable and more affordable – making it possible for semiconductors to go into electronics everywhere. We think of this as Engineering Progress. It’s what we do and have been doing for decades. Learn more at TI.com.

Trademarks

All registered trademarks and other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Texas Instruments

“Amelia Earhart” Departs Buckley Space Force Base

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“Amelia Earhart” Departs Buckley Space Force Base
The USSF and Missile Systems Center deliver a GPS III satellite to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Credit: US Space Force/Los Angles Air Force Base.

GPS III Space Vehicle (SV) 06 named “Amelia Earhart” for the United States Space Force was successfully moved from a Lockheed Martin facility in Denver, Colorado via the Buckley Space Force Base flightline, enroute to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida on Oct. 24, 2022.

After being declared “Available for launch” by U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command SV06, is the sixth of 10 GPS III satellites that will be joining the operational constellation consisting of 31 GPS satellites.

“The Total Force Airmen and Space Force Guardians of Buckley are prepared to assist in any movements or support to the Department of Defense,” said Col. Marcus Jackson, BSFB installation commander. “I am proud of the coordination, community partnership, and logistical efforts of our service members to continue creating a lean and agile service.”

Members in support of GPS III Space Vehicle (SV) 06 “Amelia Earhart” come together to travel with the satellite to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., from Buckley Space Force Base, Colo., Oct. 24, 2022. GPS III will be processed at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Fla., where it will undergo final post-ship functional testing, be loaded with its onboard propellant, and then encapsulated for launch in January. (U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Shaun Combs)

GPS III SV06 will deliver enhances performance and accuracy through a variety of improvements, including increased signal protection and improved accuracy. The GPS III constellation will also expand the civilian L5 signal, dubbed the “safety-of-life” signal.

GPS III SV06 will be processed at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida.

While at Astrotech, it will undergo final post-ship functional testing, be loaded with its onboard propellant, and then encapsulated for launch aboard a Space X Falcon 9 vehicle at Cape Canaveral, Florida in January 2023.

Once launched and set healthy, GPS III SV06 will enhance operational capability support to Space Delta 4. The addition of the new satellite will increase the resiliency of the operating system, ensuring long lasting readiness into the foreseeable future.

“GPS III supports all of Delta 4 missions as a provider of precisions timing and is a key asset supporting satellite positioning,” Lyon said. “Having a GPS capability, allows our Guardians to provide real-time synchronization with our Space Based Infrared Systems’ constellations, securing our readiness in Space.”

GPS III Space Vehicle (SV)06 “Amelia Earhart” is being prepared for takeoff from Buckley Space Force Base, Colo., enroute to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., Oct. 24, 2022. GPS III will deliver some capability improvements, including increased signal protection, and the addition of a new civilian GPS signal. (U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Shaun Combs)

As a crucial technological foundation for internet, financial, transportation, and agricultural operations, GPS delivers the gold standard in positioning, navigation, and timing services supporting U.S. and allied operations worldwide.

Artemis I Flight Day 15 – Team Polls “Go” For Distant Retrograde Orbit Departure

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Artemis I Flight Day 15 – Team Polls “Go” For Distant Retrograde Orbit Departure
art001e000669 (Nov. 27, 2022) On flight day 12 of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission, a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays captured the Moon as Orion travels in distant retrograde orbit around the Moon.

The Artemis I mission management team met today to review the overall status of the flight test and polled “go” for Orion to depart from its distant retrograde orbit, where it has been since Nov. 25. Orion will conduct a burn to depart the orbit at 3:53 p.m. CST Thurs., Dec. 1 and begin its trek back toward Earth.  

“We are continuing to collect flight test data and buy down risk for crewed flight,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager. “We continue to learn how the system is performing, where our margins are, and how to operate and work with the vehicle as an integrated team.” 

On Flight Day 15, Orion also performed a planned orbit maintenance burn to maintain the spacecraft’s trajectory and decrease its velocity ahead of its Thursday departure from a distant lunar orbit. During the burn, Orion used six of its auxiliary thrusters on the European Service module to fire for 95 seconds. The burn was initially planned for a shorter duration but was lengthened as part of the team’s effort to add test objectives to the mission. The 95-second burn provided additional data to characterize the thrusters and the radiative heating on the spacecraft’s solar array wings to help inform Orion’s operational constraints. All previous thruster burns were 17 seconds or less.  

Orion’s European-built service module has provided the propulsive capabilities to adjust the spacecraft’s course in space via its 33 engines of various types, and serves as Orion’s powerhouse, supplying it will electricity, thermal control, and air and water for future crews, in addition to propulsion. Artemis I is the first time NASA is using a European-built system as a critical element to power an American spacecraft. Provided by ESA (European Space Agency) and its partner Airbus Defence and Space, the service module extends NASA’s international cooperation from the International Space Station into deep space exploration.  

NASA is continuing to extend its relationships with its international partners to explore the Moon under Artemis. The agency’s Gateway, a multi-purpose outpost in development to orbit the Moon that will provide essential support for long-term lunar exploration, includes contributions from ESA as well as the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Agencywide, NASA has more than 600 active international agreements with organizations and space agencies around the world. 

Teams also elected to add four additional test objectives to Orion’s return trip to Earth to gather additional data on the spacecraft’s capabilities. Two will evaluate whether opening and closing a valve the pressure control assembly affects a slow leak rate in that system; a third will demonstrate Orion’s ability to perform attitude maneuvers at the rate that will be necessary for a test on Artemis II; and the fourth will test its capability to fly in a three degree of freedom attitude control mode, as opposed to the six degree of freedom mode it typically flies in.

Prior to today’s orbital maintenance burn, a total of 5,681 pounds of propellant had been used, 203 pounds less than values expected before launch. Some 2,004 pounds of margin is available beyond what is planned for use during the mission, a 94-pound increase above prelaunch expected values. 

Just after 4 p.m. CST on Nov. 30, Orion was traveling 253,079 miles from Earth and 50,901 miles from the Moon, cruising at 2,052 mph. 

Coverage of the distant retrograde orbit departure burn will begin Thursday at 3:30 p.m. CST, with the burn scheduled to occur at 3:53 p.m. Watch live on NASA TV, the agency’s website, and the NASA app. 

View the latest imagery of the Moon, Earth, and Orion on NASA’s Johnson Space Center Flickr account and Image and Video Library. When bandwidth allows, views of the mission are available in real-time. 

By Shaneequa Vereen
Source NASA

Airbus Reveals Hydrogen-Powered Zero-Emission Engine

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Airbus Reveals Hydrogen-Powered Zero-Emission Engine

Airbus has revealed that it is developing a hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine. The propulsion system is being considered as one of the potential solutions to equip its zero-emission aircraft that will enter service by 2035. 

Airbus will start ground and flight testing this fuel cell engine architecture onboard its ZEROe demonstrator aircraft towards the middle of the decade. The A380 MSN1 flight test aircraft for new hydrogen technologies is currently being modified to carry liquid hydrogen tanks and their associated distribution systems. 

“Fuel cells are a potential solution to help us achieve our zero-emission ambition and we are focused on developing and testing this technology to understand if it is feasible and viable for a 2035 entry-into-service of a zero-emission aircraft,” said Glenn Llewellyn, VP Zero-Emission Aircraft, Airbus. “At scale, and if the technology targets were achieved, fuel cell engines may be able to power a one hundred passenger aircraft with a range of approximately 1,000 nautical miles. By continuing to invest in this technology we are giving ourselves additional options that will inform our decisions on the architecture of our future ZEROe aircraft, the development of which we intend to launch in the 2027-2028 timeframe.”

Airbus identified hydrogen as one of the most promising alternatives to power a zero-emission aircraft, because it emits no carbon dioxide when generated from renewable energy, with water being its most significant by-products. 

There are two ways hydrogen can be used as a power source for aircraft propulsion. First via hydrogen combustion in a gas turbine, second, by using fuel cells to convert hydrogen into electricity in order to power a propeller engine. A hydrogen gas turbine can also be coupled with fuel cells instead of batteries in a hybrid-electric architecture.

Hydrogen fuel cells, especially when stacked together, increase their power output allowing scalability. In addition, an engine powered by hydrogen fuel cells produces zero NOx emissions or contrails thereby offering additional decarbonisation benefits.

Airbus has been exploring the possibilities of fuel cell propulsion systems for aviation for some time. In October 2020, Airbus created Aerostack, a joint venture with ElringKlinger, a company with over 20 years of experience as both a fuel cell systems and component supplier. In December 2020, Airbus presented its pod-concept which included six removable fuel cell propeller propulsion systems. 

To find more about Airbus’ fuel cell engine and demonstrator, click here.

Click on the following links to find out more about fuel cell technology, and the ZEROe demonstrator.

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