This Tape Will Self-Destruct in 5 Seconds
Starliner’s troubled test run, an ESA experiment named for an Avenger, and JPL’s mission impossible to treat agency-wide burnout
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
I survived LA Tech Week – no small feat for a Wellesley alum with an honesty problem – so I decided to reward myself with the delightful guilty pleasure that is Stars on Mars. The recently debuted reality show follows 12 celebrities on their “analog” (and I put this in quotes because there are too many inaccuracies to count) mission to Mars. Yet, I can’t help but smile watching the contestants hustle to save their stranded crewmate, fix their communications tower, and talk about how they really feel like they are on Mars. And with gem soundbites like the following, I’m starting to better understand Blue Origin’s attempt to send Pete Davidson to space…
“Matt Damon not available. Welcome Tom Schwartz.”
“Can you believe we are here with Lance Armstrong, a real astronaut?” (Yes, Ariel Winter actually thought Lance Armstrong walked on the moon)
“We’ve got to get that 12th crewmate. It could be Beyonce.” (Spoiler: It was not Beyonce)
“Are you mission critical?”
Expect more mission updates from this Stars on Mars fan. And now, onto the space beat you came here for…
Top Headlines
God of Thunder – NASA and SpaceX celebrated a successful launch this past week with an ISS cargo mission that took off via a Falcon 9 on Monday June 5th, its Dragon capsule docking at the International Space Station early Tuesday morning. The CRS-28 mission is, according to ISS chief scientist Kirt Costello, “making up for the delays we had in our [Northrop Grumman] Cygnus vehicle,” which was meant to deliver station hardware and resupply for the ISS crew. Instead, CRS-28 was stuck with that cargo, leaving little space for science experiments as a result (NASA to NG: we’re not mad, we’re just disappointed). Despite the limited room for science, the mission did deliver some exciting payloads, including a set of solar panels for the station, scheduled to be installed on June 9th and 15th, as well as an experiment from ESA called THOR, fittingly designed to study thunderstorms and upward-directed lightning.
Starliner Grounded – An anticipated crewed flight to the ISS in July with Boeing’s Starliner will now delay “indefinitely” after significant safety issues were uncovered this past week. While certainly anxiety-inducing in and of itself, the failure of one of the three safety parachutes was not the biggest omen of the testing. Most detrimental, was the discovery that hundreds of feet of tape – used to cover the internal wiring of the spacecraft – were potentially flammable. Of course, this will likely take the longest to remedy, and Boeing will have to eat those additional expenses due to the fixed-cost nature of their contract with NASA. So, while the agency may be mourning their timeline, they won’t be grieving any lost cash with Starliner – nor Starship, which will likely spend above and beyond its anticipated budget after all the test launch drama this past April.
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Listen, this is a safe space, we can call them UFOs. In all seriousness, it’s pretty exciting that the US now has a team dedicated to applying the “scientific scrutiny that NASA is well known for” to a previously poo-pooed idea of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Rebranded to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) for cool factor – er, to create a wider breadth of study, including areas like the deep sea – 16 individuals were selected to begin the study last fall. Just last week, the agency shared a preview of the first full report set to come out “midsummer,” which we assume means sometime around July and not somewhere in the woods of Sweden. Based on the preview, most of the over 800 cases the team is currently looking at – spanning across the past 27 years – have “conventional explanations,” such as optical illusions affecting perceived speed, man-made objects like balloons catching the light in a certain way, and so on. While NASA has been harassed for covering up the “truth” with these science-based explanations, the team holds firm that there simply isn’t (yet) hard evidence of extraterrestrial life attached to these anomalies and that more and better data is needed. But they’re not giving up: the agency is considering an app to help “citizen scientists” provide better data for their study. So even in the realm of aliens and UFOS, there’s an app for that.
Inside the Psyche at JPL – In other NASA news, an asteroid mission veers back on track after multiple missed launch windows last year. This past week, an internal review concluded that the Psyche spacecraft – named after the metal-rich asteroid it intends to visit between Mars and Jupiter – is reliably scheduled to launch in October 2023. Though software bugs were the direct cause for previous delays, the underlying cause was determined to be pandemic-bred workplace dysfunction. JPL has since done a lot of work to address workload, staffing and communication issues, not only for the Psyche mission but also for the, well, psyche of the agency as a whole. Sorry, had to.
NOAA Under Watch – Last week, Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz put the watchdogs on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to ensure their new geostationary weather-tracking satellites are implementing “best practices.” In their letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Lucas and Cruz didn’t have any red flags to point out regarding the current six-satellite constellation known as GeoXO, but simply requested oversight due to past budget overruns of predecessor GOES-R. Talk about a troubled past coming back to haunt you! But at an anticipated $19.6 billion dollars, the GeoXO was bound to draw some attention.
COSMIC – The Space Force just opened a new office dubbed COSMIC, or Commercial Space Marketplace for Innovation and Collaboration. Specifically, the office plans to focus on commercial contracts around “positioning, navigation and timing that does not rely on GPS.” Perhaps, knowing they might need to call on commercial services in a crisis, the Space Force decided to sing a different tune than the one represented in their budget – and that tune is High School Musical’s “We’re All in this Together.” To the industry’s question about where the money’s at, the agency promises more transparency.
The JWST Download
In a galaxy far far away – 17 million light-years to be exact – a barred spiral galaxy not unlike our own shines bright with stars.
4/20 may be over but the JWST just found smoke molecules in deep space – the most distant organic molecules ever seen.
Producing competitively stunning space imagery this week – albeit a bit closer to home – was the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which captured some psychedelic “upward flowing plasma” within the dark, cool regions of our sun.
A Global Space
ESA – Eager to join the ranks of other nations currently (or soon to be) sending astronauts into space – the US, China, Russia and India – the European Space Agency announced its intentions to “develop its own sovereign access to space,” from Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond. At an event last week in Vienna, the agency generated excitement around a European lunar lander to be built in the next ten years and hosted a livestream of Mars from their orbiter. Part of this desired independence will also come from developing European owned and operated cargo capabilities, for which the agency is now collecting proposals from local companies.
China – In another exciting success for the nation, China welcomed home three astronauts, AKA taikonauts after their six month stay on Tiangong space station. Shenzhou 15 mission astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu landed safely in Mongolia last Saturday, June 3rd after being replaced by three new astronauts who arrived at the station at the end of May. China also set a new national record this week after one of their commercial launch firms shot 26 satellites into orbit. The solid rocket, known as Lijan-1, was smaller than the Long March 8 rocket, which held the nation’s previous record for launching 22 satellites back in February 2022.
UAE – In two short decades, the United Arab Emirates has become a prominent nation in the space race. The country proved that yet again this week after announcing an asteroid mission set to launch in 2028. Following the nation’s successful Hope spacecraft, which still provides integral observations and imagery of Mars – and its tiny, potato-shaped moon, Deimos – the MBR Explorer will make the UAE Space Agency the fifth national organization to launch asteroid-bound spacecrafts after NASA, China, JAXA and the ESA. The last of the MBR Explorer’s seven target main belt asteroids, Justicia, is speculated to have meandered from the far more distant Kuiper Belt, which NASA recently pulled its New Horizons spacecraft away from. This along with its other projected asteroid observations should make the spacecraft quite attractive in the eyes of NASA, who will be able to compare its findings to those of its Lucy probe. Hopefully, the UAE stays on track to meet their three-week 2028 window, which they’ll need to maintain in order to achieve their intended trajectory to Justicia.
Italy – Italy’s Committee of Aerospace Policies appointed a new board of directors for the Italian Space Agency (ASI) on May 29th, three of which are women. The commencement of Marica Branchesi, Luisa Riccardi and Elda Turco Bulgherini will mark the highest ever representation of women on the board.
Spain – Following the Czech Republic’s signing on May 3rd, Spain became the 25th country to ink the Artemis Accords last week at a ceremony in Madrid. In an accompanying statement, Spanish President Pedro Sanchez identified the space sector as a “priority for [the] country’s vision.” That concentration is clear not only with the nation’s signing of the Accords but also by their commitment to developing their own space agency and supporting burgeoning startup PLD Space.
Space Reads!
Can’t get enough stellar content? Here are some longer format space morsels we’ve been enjoying:
With all the space tourism hype, it’s easy to forget that our bodies were made for, well, Earth. A new study looks into what happens to our brains after spaceflight, and how we can best recover.
We keep talking about it, but the Moon is about to be lit. And by “about to be” we mean in the next decade and by “lit” we mean crowded AF. Read about a proposed registry which could help keep lunar activities like landing locations and schedules on lock.
Listen, there’s a lot we still need to learn about the reality of living in space – but we now have the most important question answered: yes, french fries CAN be cooked in space.
The ISS may not be the only one getting the solar treatment; scientists at Caltech have figured out a way to transmit solar power from space to Earth.
In our last newsletter, we mentioned the faux extraterrestrial signals organized by SETI as a practice round for the real thing. The public is now invited to play along, in a race to crack a code concocted by an artist. You can download the message and submit any thoughts, drawings or feelings (including alien anxiety) here.
We’ve covered it before, but if you want to read up on CHAPEA, NASA’s year-long Mars simulation that begins later this month, this article talks about the toxicity of social isolation. Okay, but will they also talk about the dangers of social surplus for us introverts?
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! Keep an eye out this coming Monday for MOONSHOT, our paid subscriber newsletter covering the commercial space sector. A big thank you to Tess Ryan for writing this edition with me and for keeping tabs on the cosmos! We hope you enjoyed reading Continuum this week and will share it with your friends. And if you really, really like us, then consider becoming a paid subscriber or gifting a subscription to someone — it would be a considerably cheaper gesture than this space-aged bourbon.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
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Multiverse Media (Gold Sponsor)
Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program (Silver Sponsor)
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