General Space News.

[John Fedup]

Will be interesting to see how LM's Orion lunar spacecraft performs. If it screws up like Boeing's Starliner, there will likely be a new player to join Space X at some point.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

This is a video of the closest flyby of a planet ever, as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on 4 September 2024. The first few images are taken in the days and weeks before the flyby. Mercury first appears in an image taken at 23:50 CEST (21:50 UTC) on 4 September, at a distance of 191 km. Closest approach was at 23:48 CEST at a distance of 165 km.

In this video during the flyby, a large crater is visible. This crater is named after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). The flyover of Vivaldi crater was the inspiration for using Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ as the soundtrack for this timelapse. And it really fits.
Timelapse of BepiColombo’s fourth Mercury flyby - YouTube

 

[John Fedup]

This is a video of the closest flyby of a planet ever, as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on 4 September 2024. The first few images are taken in the days and weeks before the flyby. Mercury first appears in an image taken at 23:50 CEST (21:50 UTC) on 4 September, at a distance of 191 km. Closest approach was at 23:48 CEST at a distance of 165 km.

In this video during the flyby, a large crater is visible. This crater is named after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). The flyover of Vivaldi crater was the inspiration for using Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ as the soundtrack for this timelapse. And it really fits.
Timelapse of BepiColombo’s fourth Mercury flyby - YouTube

These long distance remotely controlled missions rarely disappoint.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

I was first confused by the name, i thought Blue Origin tried to imitate Space X, but it was Deep Blue Aerospace (Jiangsu Shenlan Space Co.) which developed Xingyun-1 (Nebula-1). Anyway, the video looks awesome. Sadly they do not show the whole landing, which ended probably catastrophic. But hey, this is china....
Nebula-1 VTVL test (youtube.com)

Some more info.
Drone captures Chinese reusable test rocket's fiery end | Popular Science (popsci.com)

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

An interesting video.
Quite worrying is the way the chinese carry out their space program.
(The video is after the 14th minute just an advertisement)
The Problems with China's Space Program (youtube.com)

 

[Ananda]

You can call all you want on Ellon, but this is cool.

 

[John Fedup]

You can call all you want on Ellon, but this is cool.

Probably could have done more cool stuff if he hadn’t wasted billion and time with Twitter/X!

 

[DDG38]

You can call all you want on Ellon, but this is cool.

I can and I will, because he's not an engineer who created this amazing feat, he's merely a tech bro who got lucky with paypal.

 

[John Fedup]

As Space X continues with successes, Boeing gets a slap from NASA wrt future missions anytime soon. Nine successful manned Dragon flights and Starliner, after half of the 4 billion, none,......a real high-tech David versus Goliath story.

NASA halts Boeing space missions following Starliner fiasco (msn.com)

 

[Terran]

Ironically David used to be Goliath in this case.

 

[OldTex]

Seems like Boeing just take a trick at the moment. It has been reported that Intelsat 33E has died. This makes the second of the Boeing EpicNG satellites for Intelsat to have died (Intelsat29E in 2019 and now Intelsat 33E). It has been reported as:
"Intelsat 33e launched in August 2016 and entered service in January 2017 at 60 degrees East, about three months later than planned following an issue with its primary thruster. A second propulsion issue that emerged during in-orbit tests helped knock off around 3.5 years from the satellite’s initially estimated 15-year lifespan. Intelsat 33e is the second in Intelsat’s EpicNG (next-generation) series of high-throughput satellites.

The first, Intelsat-29e, was declared a total loss in 2019 after just three years in orbit. That failure was pinned on either a meteoroid impact or a wiring flaw that led to an electrostatic discharge following heightened solar weather activity."

While a meteoroid strike is something that can't be blamed on Boeing, the other possible cause (wiring flaw) is clearly a Boeing QA issue.

 

[OldTex]

The situation with Intelsat 33E has gone from bad to worse. It is reported that the satellite has broken up and at least 20 fragments are being tracked.
" The US Department of Defense's space-tracking website, SpaceTrack, also confirmed the incident. An alert on the platform said the US Space Forces also said it is "currently tracking around 20 associated pieces" of the satellite."
Such a break-up creates a substantial risk to other satellites in geosynchronous orbit including WGS-2 (57 E) and WGS-10 (60.3 E)

 

[John Fedup]

Wonder what caused the breakup, propellant explosion, meteorite or space junk impact? I guess foreign interference is a remote possibility. In any event another very bad month for Boeing. I read about a minor asset sale along with with a new multi billion dollar financing package but I wonder if some major asset sale is likely, especially after their recent requisition of Spirit Aerospace, perhaps spinning off Boeing Defence (tough sell and government objection) or their space business. The latter seems most likely now.

 

[OldTex]

Wonder what caused the breakup, propellant explosion, meteorite or space junk impact? I guess foreign interference is a remote possibility. In any event another very bad month for Boeing. I read about a minor asset sale along with with a new multi billion dollar financing package but I wonder if some major asset sale is likely, especially after their recent requisition of Spirit Aerospace, perhaps spinning off Boeing Defence (tough sell and government objection) or their space business. The latter seems most likely now.

Without any other information readily available you have probably listed the 3 most likely causes in rapidly descending order. Space junk tends to be a much larger problem in LEO than GEO orbits from what I understand.
Can't say that Boeing Space business would be a big money spinner at this moment, but agree that trying to sell Boeing Defence business (or even parts of it) would be extremely difficult in the face of objections from both US government and Congress.

 

[John Fedup]

Agree, the defence business would likely face some Congressional blowback but then again, detaching it from the current management might reassure decision makers regarding both the USAF and USN NGAD programs (assuming they move forward and other stuff). Not sure which corporate entity is worthy wrt to fit and political acceptance however. An unpopular spin off versus a mega billion dollar bailout by taxpayers might be more acceptable to pollies.

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

A chinese company shamelessly try to copy Space X ...

And NASA says it will postpone its first moon landing mission since the Apollo program by nearly a year to mid-2027.
NASA to postpone moon landing mission to mid-2027 | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

Today the Parker Solar Probe has passed the Sun at a distance of only 6,1 million kilometers.

The spaceprobe was launched by NASA in August 2018, and it travels with 692.000 km/h, making it the fastest spaceprobe ever made.

Niet eerder kwam een ruimteschip zo dicht bij de zon als vandaag

Een onbemand Amerikaans ruimteschip scheert dinsdag op 6,1 miljoen kilometer langs de zon. De mensheid kwam nog niet eerder zo dicht bij een ster. Het ruimtevaartuig kwam rond 11.53 uur het dichtst bij de zon.

www.nu.nl