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Science

CNN Exclusive: Secretive process to select astronauts for NASA’s next moon mission

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CNN
 — 

Sometime this spring, NASA will make one of the biggest announcements in its history when it names the initial four-person crew for its flagship Artemis program to return astronauts to the moon for the first time in 50 years.

Scheduled to launch in 2024, Artemis II will be the program’s first crewed mission to orbit the moon, flying farther into space than any humans since the Apollo program and paving the way for the Artemis III crew to walk on the moon in 2025 — all aboard the most powerful rocket ever built and at a price tag that by then will approach $100 billion.

Yet, as publicized as the Artemis II mission is, the process of how its crew will be chosen is so secretive that it remains a mystery even for many on the inside. Other than announcing the astronauts’ nationalities — three Americans, one Canadian — NASA has said almost nothing publicly about who will be selected or how that decision will be made.

CNN spoke with nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts to pull back the curtain on the secretive selection process. Based on those interviews, CNN not only gained exclusive insights into how the crew will be selected — it has also whittled down the list of candidates those insiders say are generating the most buzz at NASA.

At the top of everyone’s list for the first Artemis crew is Reid Wiseman, a 47-year-old decorated naval aviator and test pilot who was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009. Wiseman stepped down as chief of the astronaut office in November, a prestigious job historically responsible for selecting the initial crew assignment for each mission, but which also comes with a big catch — the chief isn’t eligible to fly in space.

“Being chief is a crummy, lousy job,” former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman told CNN. “No one wants it, especially now.”

While it may be a job that few astronauts want ahead of the Artemis crew assignments, it does come with one big advantage.

“Historically, the one benefit of being chief is that, when you did step down, you gave yourself the best flight assignment available at the time. That was kind of an acknowledged perk,” Reisman said. “You did this horrible job on our behalf. Thank you for doing that. Here’s your reward. You get to put yourself in the best seat around.”

Without question, the best open seat right now is on Artemis II — a high-pressure, high-visibility mission that will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day mission around the moon and back.

INTERACTIVE: Trace the path Artemis I will take around the moon and back

Before stepping down as chief in November, just two days before the launch of Artemis I, the program’s first successful uncrewed test flight, Wiseman made another consequential move in August, when he reversed a previous NASA decision to select the Artemis crew from an initial core group of just 18 astronauts previously deemed the “Artemis Team.”

Instead, Wiseman expanded the group of candidates to all 41 active NASA astronauts.

“The way I look at it, any one of our active astronauts is eligible for an Artemis mission,” Wiseman said at the time. “We just want to assemble the right team for this mission.”

Determining the “right team” for a mission to space has always been a mysterious process, going all the way back to the 1950s. That’s when NASA was making its first flight assignments for its initial Mercury missions, made famous by Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff.”

Though the criteria may have changed, the process remains incredibly secretive. CNN has learned the decision for who gets to go to the moon will be made by three key people at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where every US astronaut has lived and trained since 1961.

The first person in the decision process is the chief astronaut, a role currently filled on an acting basis by Wiseman’s deputy, Drew Feustel. Sources told CNN that the chief, whether it’s Feustel or someone else, will take their initial recommendations to the head of the Flight Operations Directorate, Norm Knight, and then on to the director of Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, who is responsible for signing off on the final four selections.

Cracking the code on how that decision is made is as complex as spaceflight itself.

“To this day, it’s a dark area,” former NASA astronaut Mike Mullane told CNN. “It’s terra incognita (unknown territory). Nobody knows! At least not in our era they didn’t.”

What is known is that NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida, will have no role in the process, something he confirmed for the first time to CNN earlier in January when he said that the space agency’s Washington leadership will “stay out of the selection” of the Artemis II crew.

“That is done by the people at the Johnson Space Center. They will make the decision,” Nelson told CNN. “I do not know if they’ve decided who the crew is, nor should I.”

The only thing set in stone is that the Artemis II crew will consist of three American astronauts and one Canadian, terms that were cemented in a 2020 treaty between the two countries. From the beginning, NASA has also emphasized the need for a program named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, Artemis, to have a crew with a heavy mix of gender, racial and professional diversity.

NASA has a far more diverse pool of astronauts to choose from now than during the Mercury program, when all seven astronauts were White, male, military test pilots. More than a third of the Artemis generation’s 41 astronauts are women and 12 are people of color.

The Artemis generation of astronauts is also professionally diverse, with only 16 pilots in its ranks. The rest are “mission specialists” with expertise in biology, geography, oceanography, engineering and medicine.

Nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts told CNN they anticipated multiple test pilots being named to the crew of Artemis II, since the mission marks the first crewed test flight to the moon since the Apollo program.

“Just having the courage to go in there and be the first ones and be cool about it, that does take a certain amount of skill and experience and maturity,” said Reisman, the former astronaut. “We’re going beyond Low Earth Orbit for the first time in a very long time, on only the second flight of this vehicle.”

If Wiseman, a White man, is selected, that means the other spots will almost certainly need to go to at least one woman and at least one person of color.

People familiar with the process tell CNN that along with Wiseman, there are a handful of other candidates atop the list. Among them is Victor Glover, a 46-year-old naval aviator who returned to Earth from his first spaceflight in 2021 after piloting the second crewed flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and spending nearly six months aboard the International Space Station. The veteran of four spacewalks earned a master’s in engineering while moonlighting as a test pilot.

Randy Bresnik, 55, is also a decorated naval aviator and test pilot who flew combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has flown two missions to the International Space Station: one on the Space Shuttle, another on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Bresnik is often mentioned as a top contender for Artemis because, since 2018, he has overseen the astronaut office’s development and testing of all rockets and spacecrafts that will be used in the Artemis missions.

There are four women who people familiar with the process tell CNN are atop the list of likely candidates. Among them are Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, both of whom made history in 2019 when together they performed the first all-female spacewalk.

The 43-year-old Koch, a veteran of six spacewalks, also holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with a total of 328 days in space. Koch, an electrical engineer, and Meir, a 45-year-old biologist, were both selected as mission specialists in NASA’s 2013 astronaut class after stints at remote scientific bases in polar regions. That experience of surviving in hostile climates and uncomfortable environments is critical for a crew who will be cramped inside a 17-foot-wide (5-meter-wide), gumdrop-shaped capsule for roughly 10 days.

“We pride ourselves on expeditionary behavior: being a good teammate, emptying the trash can when it’s full, cleaning out the dishwasher when your parents ask you. Those sorts of things,” Wiseman said in August. “That’s really what we’re looking for in those first Artemis missions. Technical expertise. Team player.”

Anne McClain is a decorated army pilot and West Point graduate who flew more than 200 combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and went on to graduate from the US Naval Test Pilot School in 2013, the same year she was selected to be a NASA astronaut. After launching on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2018, the 43-year-old spent more than 200 days in space at the International Space Station and served as lead spacewalker on two spacewalks.

Stephanie Wilson is the most senior astronaut on this list. The 56-year-old was selected to be an astronaut more than a quarter century ago in the class of 1996. Wilson served as a mission specialist on three Space Shuttle flights, including the first flight after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts.

The final seat on the Artemis II crew will be filled by a Canadian, and Jeremy Hansen is the most buzzed about astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency. Hansen was selected to be an astronaut almost 14 years ago, but he’s still waiting for his first flight assignment. The 47-year-old fighter pilot recently became the first Canadian to be put in charge of training for a new class of NASA astronauts.

All eight astronauts on CNN’s list of top contenders are highly qualified overachievers in the prime of their careers. But sometimes the deciding factor can come down to something frustratingly small.

“The problem is it can be influenced by trivial things, like what size spacesuit you wear. If there is only a medium and a large and you need the extra-large, you’re screwed. You’re not going to get assigned to the mission,” said Reisman, the former astronaut and veteran of three spacewalks. “It can be crazy, little things that dictate how it all comes out and it’s not always the most equitable or transparent process.”

Typically, NASA also strives for a professionally diverse crew with a healthy blend of rookies and veterans, aiming for a mix of military pilots and citizen scientists — doctors, engineers, astrophysicists, biologists and geologists — with a range of strengths.

“Not all astronauts are created equal when it comes to how good they do the job. Not all astronauts are equally as good at doing spacewalks. Not all astronauts are equally as good at doing robotics,” Reisman said. “The standard line is, if you’re qualified, you’re qualified. If you pass the test, then it shouldn’t matter. But when you have really tricky missions, it does matter, and you do want to put your best team forward.”

That is especially true for the crew of Artemis II, which will be riding on a rocket that’s only had one successful test flight.

As secretive as the crew selection process is for Artemis, it used to be even more confusing. That was especially true during the early days of the Space Shuttle program when, for the first and only time in NASA’s history, a non-astronaut had near total control over who flied and who stayed behind on Earth: George Abbey.

“George didn’t operate by committee any more than Josef Stalin had. His was the only voice that counted,” wrote Mullane, the retired astronaut, in his memoir, “Riding Rockets,” about the former director of the Johnson Space Center. “Everything about the most important aspect of our career — flight assignments — was as unknown to us as the dark matter of space was to astrophysicists.”

By the time former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who famously spent a year in space, was selected in 1996, the power had shifted back to the chief astronaut. Kelly described the flight assignment process as still “shrouded in mystery,” though he did recall a push toward more transparency by then-Chief of the Astronaut Office Bob Cabana, the current associate administrator of NASA.

“Bob put a big board in his office. He had all the shuttle flights lined up and certain people’s names would be penciled in next to them,” Kelly said. “Reid (Wiseman) did something similar. He was more of an open book. He would tell people what he was thinking.”

Now, Wiseman is on the other side, waiting along with every other active astronaut for the announcement of a lifetime, which the NASA administrator said would come “later in the spring.”

For those who don’t make the cut, Artemis is far from the only game in town. NASA astronauts are currently training and flying to the International Space Station for long-duration spaceflights on the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. A third option, Boeing’s Starliner, is slated to fly astronauts for the first time this spring. The expectation is that every active astronaut will eventually be assigned to a flight. But only eight will get to fly to the moon on either Artemis II or Artemis III.

“This is a special and unique opportunity and, frankly, I’m going to be super jealous of whoever they pick,” Reisman said.

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World

Russia strikes Ukraine’s cities hours after Western countries pledge tanks to Kyiv

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CNN
 — 

Ukraine has urged the West to get military hardware into the hands of its troops as quickly as possible, as Russia fired missiles toward Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities just hours after Germany and the US announced their plans to provide modern tanks to the country.

Russia launched 55 missiles at Ukraine on Thursday morning, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram. Shmyhal said the salvo was aimed at the country’s “energy facilities” and some power substations had been hit.

“The main targets were energy facilities to deprive Ukrainians of power and warmth,” Shmyhal said on Telegram. “The majority of missiles and drones were intercepted by our defenders. Unfortunately there were hits at substations. Nevertheless the situation in the power grid remains under control. Power engineers are doing everything to provide power supply.”

Emergency power outages were introduced in the Kyiv region after the attack.

One person died in the capital, and an air raid alert was in place across the whole country, according to the city’s mayor. The person who died was identified as a 55-year-old man, who was killed “due to the fall of missile fragments,” he head of the Kyiv city military administration, Serhiy Popko, added.

Popko accused Russia of using the Iranian-made attack drones it sent to Ukraine overnight to try and distract Ukrainian air defense units. Fifteen attack drones were fired over over the capital on Thursday, “aimed not only at hitting targets on the ground,” he said. “According to the new tactics of the aggressor, the drones constitute the first wave of a combined air attack for detecting and exhausting Ukrainian air defense.”

The fresh assault comes amid Russian rage at the West’s decision to provide Ukraine with high-tech tanks. Germany finally approved the transport of Leopard 2 tanks on Wednesday, joining the US in sending a batch of vehicles after weeks of geopolitical negotiations.

But a race to get those tanks onto the battlefield has now begun, and Thursday’s attack indicates Moscow will aim to damage Ukrainian resolve in the intervening period.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the West for further weapons supplies following the attack.”This evil, this Russian aggression can and should be stopped only with adequate weapons,” Zelensky told Ukrainians in his nightly address on Thursday. “Weapons on the battlefield. Weapons that protect our skies.”

Ukraine was able to shoot down most of the missiles, a feat Zelensky attributed to the Western-donated air defense systems.

“Today, thanks to the air defense systems provided to Ukraine and the professionalism of our warriors, we managed to shoot down most of the Russian missiles and Shaheds,” he said. “These are at least hundreds of lives saved and dozens of infrastructure facilities preserved.”

Germany is planning to deliver its 14 pledged Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine by the end of March “at the latest,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced Thursday. That will follow a period of training for Ukrainian soldiers.

”This is not too late,” Pistorius said.

The arrival of 31 American Abrams tanks is expected to take far longer, given the complexity of the systems and the logistics of getting a battalion across the Atlantic Ocean and into eastern Ukraine. In the meantime, the US will begin a “comprehensive training program” for the Ukrainians, which will require significant maintenance once they are deployed, according to the White House.

Kyiv will hope that Germany’s Leopards are incorporated into their operations before an anticipated Russian offensive in the spring begins.

Alongside Russia’s Thursday attack on Ukraine came another round of anger from the Kremlin over the supply of tanks. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Moscow sees the delivery of modern Western battle tanks to Ukraine as “direct involvement” in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

But NATO nations dismissed Russia’s ire, and shown a willingness to open up a possible new stage of the war with weapons that will allow Ukraine to take the fighting to Moscow’s forces, rather than focus on repelling Russian attacks.

Kyiv is also continuing to press for more Western stocks, including improved missile systems and modern fighter jets. “We have to unlock the supply of long-range missiles to Ukraine, it is important for us to expand our cooperation in artillery, we have to achieve the supply of aircraft to Ukraine,” Zelensky said on Wednesday, adding he had spoken with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg about the desire.

Zelensky referred to the request as “a dream,” but also “an important task for all of us,” indicating another lengthy period of international dialogue in which Ukraine will look to warm up the West to the entire of stepping up its military aid again.

The country’s defense minister meanwhile told CNN on Wednesday that Ukraine’s “wish list” for Western-supplied weapons includes fighter jets.

“I sent a wish list card to Santa Claus last year, and fighter jets also [were] including in this wish list,” Oleksii Reznikov told Christiane Amanpour.

But he said that his government’s first priority was air defense systems, to prevent Russia from carrying out air and missile strikes. “We have to close our sky, to defend our sky,” he said. “That’s priority number one. After that, we need to get more armed vehicles, tanks, artillery systems, UAVs, etc. etc. We have people, but we need weaponry.”

On the ground, Russian forces were “intensifying their pressure” on the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister said on Wednesday.

“The intensity of the battles is increasing,” Hanna Maliar said on Telegram. “The enemy is intensifying their pressure at the Bakhmut and Vuhledar directions. Heavy fighting continues.” That account tallies with two Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, who said Wednesday that Russian forces were attempting to advance north and south of the city, with one telling CNN that the situation was “very alarming.”

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Science

South Korea’s moon probe captures stunning Earth, moon images

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CNN
 — 

South Korea’s first lunar probe has returned some striking images of Earth and the moon.

The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter began orbiting the moon in December after the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s spacecraft had launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August.

The probe, also known as “Danuri” thanks to a public naming contest in the country that combined the Korean words for moon and enjoy, will orbit the moon for 11 months.

The stunning images captured by the probe showcasing Earth and the moon in black and white look like something photographer Ansel Adams might have taken had he ever enjoyed such an opportunity. The orbiter is flying at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface.

Data collected by the orbiter will be used to inform future lunar exploration, including the Artemis program, which eventually aims to land humans at the lunar south pole in late 2024.

The probe’s imagery could help with selecting landing sites for future Artemis missions, as well as mapping resources like water.

South Korea signed the Artemis Accords in 2021 and collaborates with NASA on lunar exploration.

The probe carries six instruments, including the NASA-funded ShadowCam, developed by Arizona State University.

Universities and research institutes in South Korea developed the probe’s high-resolution camera to scout future landing sites, a polarized camera to analyze surface particles, an instrument to measure the lunar magnetic field and a gamma-ray spectrometer to identify elements in the lunar surface.

ShadowCam’s main objective is to take images of the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles that will help researchers searching for ice, mapping terrain and watching for seasonal changes.

ShadowCam is several hundred times more sensitive than the cameras on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, enabling it to take detailed images in incredibly low-light conditions.

The probe recently used ShadowCam to peer inside Shackleton crater, one of the permanently shadowed regions on the lunar surface.

Previous images taken of this crater by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were able to spot its illuminated rim, but ShadowCam could actually see the interior, including the crater floor and boulder tracks that rocks left behind after tumbling inside.

Officials at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, or KARI, sees the Danuri orbiter as a “first step for ensuring and verifying its capability of space exploration,” according to the organization.

The US, Russia, Japan, China, European Union and India have all sent missions to the moon, and South Korea wants to dive into space exploration and develop its own missions.

“Korea is planning to successfully land onto the surface of the Moon or asteroids and make safe return,” according to the institute. “Korea is expecting to achieve strategic space technologies.”

In addition to the orbiter, KARI aims to make an initial lunar landing on the moon by 2030.

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Science

Boeing’s role in building NASA’s new rocket

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New York
CNN Business
 — 

In the fervor-filled days leading up to the November 16 launch of the long-awaited Artemis I mission, an uncrewed trip around the moon, some industry insiders admitted to having conflicting emotions about the event.

On one hand, there was the thrill of watching NASA take its first steps toward eventually getting humans back to the lunar surface; on the other, a shadow cast by the long and costly process it took to get there.

“I have mixed feelings, though I hope that we have a successful mission,” former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao said in an opinion roundtable interview with The New York Times. “It is always exciting to see a new vehicle fly. For perspective, we went from creating NASA to landing humans on the moon in just under 11 years. This program has, in one version or another, been ongoing since 2004.”

There have been numerous delays with the development of the rocket at the center of the Artemis I mission: NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket ever flown — and one of the most controversial. The towering launch vehicle was originally expected to take flight in 2016. And the decade-plus that the rocket was in development sparked years of blistering criticism targeted toward the space agency and Boeing, which holds the primary contract for the SLS rocket’s core.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) repeatedly called out what it referred to as Boeing’s “poor performance,” as a contributing factor in the billions of dollars in cost overruns and schedule delays that plagued SLS.

“Cost increases and schedule delays of Core Stage development can be traced largely to management, technical, and infrastructure issues driven by Boeing’s poor performance,” one 2018 report from NASA’s OIG, the first in a series of audits the OIG completed surrounding NASA’s management of the SLS program, read. And a report in 2020 laid out similar grievances.

For its part, Boeing has pushed back on the criticism, pointing to rigorous testing requirements and the overall success of the program. The OIG report also included correspondence from NASA, which noted in 2018 that it “had already recognized the opportunity to improve contract performance management” and agreed with the report’s recommendations.

In various op-eds, the rocket has also been deemed “the result of unfortunate compromises and unholy politics,” a “colossal waste of money” and an “irredeemable mistake.”

Despite all the heated debate that has followed SLS, by all accounts, the rocket is here to stay. And officials at NASA and Boeing said its first launch two months ago was practically flawless.

“I worked over 50 Space Shuttle launches,” Boeing SLS program manager John Shannon told CNN by phone. “And I don’t ever remember a launch that was as clean as that one was, which for a first-time rocket — especially one that had been through as much as this one through all the testing — really put an exclamation point on how reliable and robust this vehicle really is.”

The Artemis program manager at NASA, Mike Sarafin, also said during a post-launch news conference that the rocket “performed spot-on.”

But with its complicated history and its hefty price tag, SLS could still face detractors in the years to come.

Many have questioned why SLS needs to exist at all. With the estimated cost per launch standing at more than $4 billion for the first four Artemis missions, it’s possible commercial rockets, like the massive Mars rocket SpaceX is building, could get the job done more efficiently, as the chief of space policy at the nonprofit exploration advocacy group Planetary Society, Casey Dreier, recently observed in an article laying out both sides of the SLS argument.

(NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted that the $4 billion per-launch cost estimate includes development costs that the space agency hopes will be amortized over the course of 10 or more missions.)

Boeing was selected in 2012 to build SLS’s “core stage,” which is the hulking orange fuselage that houses most of the massive engines that give the rocket its first burst of power at liftoff.

Though more than 1,000 companies were involved with designing and building SLS, Boeing’s work involved the largest and most expensive portion of the rocket.

That process began over a decade ago, and when the Artemis program was established in 2019, it gave the rocket its purpose: return humans to the moon, establish a permanent lunar outpost, and, eventually, pave the path toward getting humans to Mars.

But the SLS is no longer the only rocket involved in the program. NASA gave SpaceX a significant role in 2021, giving the company a fixed-price contract for use of its Mars rocket as the vehicle that will ferry astronauts to the lunar surface after they leave Earth and travel to the moon’s orbit on SLS. SpaceX’s forthcoming rocket, called Starship, is also intended to be capable of completing a crewed mission to the moon or Mars on its own. (Starship, it should be noted, is still in the development phases and has not yet been tested in orbit.)

Boeing has repeatedly argued that SLS is essential and capable of performing tasks that other rockets cannot.

“The bottom line is there’s nothing else like the SLS because it was built from the ground up to be human rated,” Shannon said. “It is the only vehicle that can take the Orion spacecraft and the service module to the moon. And that’s the purpose-built design — to take large hardware and humans to cislunar space, and nothing else exists that can do that.”

Starship, meanwhile, is not tailored solely to NASA’s specific lunar goals. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has talked for more than a decade about his desire to get humans to Mars. More recently, he has said Starship could also be used to house giant space telescopes.

Yet, another reason critics remain skeptical of SLS is because of its origins. The rocket’s conception can be traced back to NASA’s Constellation program, which was a plan to return to the moon mapped out under former President George W. Bush that was later canceled.

But the SLS has survived. Many observers have suggested a big reason was the desire to maintain space industry jobs in certain Congressional districts and to beef up aerospace supply chains.

Much of the criticism levied against SLS, however, has focused on the actual process of getting the rocket built.

At one point in 2019, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine considered sidelining the SLS rocket entirely, citing frustrations with the delays.

“At the end of the day, the contractors had an obligation to deliver what NASA had contracted for them to deliver,” Bridenstine told CNN by phone last month. “And I was frustrated like most of America.”

Still, Bridenstine said, when his office reviewed the matter, it found “there were no options that were going to cost less money or take less time than just finishing the SLS” — and the rocket was never ultimately sidelined. (Bridenstine noted he was also publicly critical of delayed projects led by SpaceX and others.)

NASA continued to stand by Boeing and the SLS rocket even as it became a political hot potato, with some in Congress both criticizing its costs and refusing to abandon the program.

The SLS rocket ended up flying its first launch more than six years later than originally intended. NASA had allocated $6.2 billion to the SLS program as of 2018, but that price tag more than tripled to $23 billion as of 2022, according to an analysis by the Planetary Society.

Those escalating costs can be traced back to the type of contracts that NASA signed with Boeing and its other major suppliers for SLS. It’s called cost-plus, which puts the financial burden on NASA when projects face cost overruns while still offering contractors extra payments, or award fees.

In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Science last year, current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized the cost-plus contracting method, calling it a “plague.”

More in vogue are “fixed-price” contracts, which have a firm price cap, like the kind NASA gave to Boeing and SpaceX for its Commercial Crew Program.

In an interview with CNN in December, however, Nelson stood by cost-plus contracting for SLS and Orion, the vehicle that is designed to carry astronauts and rides atop the rocket to space. He said that without that type of contract, in his view, NASA’s private-sector contractors simply wouldn’t be willing to take on a rocket designed for such a specific purpose and exploring deep space. Building a rocket as specific and technically complex as SLS isn’t a risk many private-sector companies are anxious to take on, he noted.

“You really have difficulty in the development of a new and very exquisite spacecraft … on a fixed-price contract,” he said.

“That industry is just not willing to accept that kind of thing, with the exception of the landers,” he added, referring to two other branches of the Artemis program: robotic landers that will deliver cargo to the moon’s surface and SpaceX’s $2.9 billion lunar lander contract. Both of those will use fixed-price — often referred to as “commercial” — contracts.

“And even there, they’re getting a considerable investment by the federal government,” Nelson said.

Still, government watchdogs have not pulled punches when assessing these cost-plus contracts and Boeing’s role.

“We did notice very poor contractor performance on Boeing’s part. There’s poor planning and poor execution,” NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said during testimony before the House’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics last year. “We saw that the cost-plus contracts that NASA had been using…worked to the contractor’s — rather than NASA’s — advantage.”

Shannon, the Boeing executive, acknowledged in an interview that Boeing and SLS have faced loud detractors, but he said that the value of the drawn out development and testing program would become evident as SLS flies.

“I am extremely proud that NASA — even though there were significant schedule pressures — they could set up a test program that was incredibly comprehensive,” he said. “The Boeing team worked through that test process and hit every mark on it. And you see the results. You see a vehicle that is not just visually spectacular, but its performance was spectacular. And it really put us on the road to be able to do lunar exploration again, which is something that’s very important in this country.”

But the rocket is still facing criticism. During a Congressional hearing with the House’s Science, Space, and Technology Committee in March 2022, NASA’s Inspector General said that current cost estimates for SLS were “unsustainable,” gauging that the space agency will have spent $93 billion on the Artemis program from 2012 through September 2025.

Martin, the NASA inspector general, specifically pointed to Boeing as one of the contractors that would need to find “efficiencies” to bring down those costs as the Artemis program moves forward.

In a December 7 statement to CNN, Boeing once again defended SLS and its price point.

“Boeing is and has been committed to improving our processes — both while the program was in its developmental stage and now as it transitions to an operational phase,” the statement read, noting the company already implemented “lessons learned” from building the first rocket to “drive efficiencies from a cost and schedule perspective” for future SLS rockets.

“When adjusted for inflation, NASA has developed SLS for a quarter of the cost of the Saturn V and half the cost of the Space Shuttle,” the statement noted. “These programs have also been essential to investing in the NASA centers, workforce and test facilities that are used by a broad range of civil and commercial partners across NASA and industry.”

The successful launch of SLS was a welcome winning moment for Boeing. Over the past few years, the company has been mired in controversy, including ongoing delays and myriad issues with Starliner, a spacecraft built for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and scandal after scandal plaguing its airplane division.

Now that the Artemis I mission has returned safely home, NASA and Boeing can turn to preparing more of the gargantuan SLS rockets to launch even loftier missions.

SLS is slated to launch the Artemis II mission, which will take four astronauts on a journey around the moon, in 2024. From there, SLS will be the backbone of the Artemis III mission that will return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in five decades and a series of increasingly complex missions as NASA works to create its permanent lunar outpost.

Shannon, the Boeing SLS program manager, told CNN that construction of the next two SLS rocket cores is well underway, with the booster for Artemis II on track to be finished in April — more than a year before the mission is scheduled to take off. All of the “major components” for a third SLS rocket are also completed, Shannon added.

For the third SLS core and beyond, Boeing is also moving final assembly to new facilities Florida, freeing up space at its manufacturing facilities to increase production, which may help drive down costs.

Shannon declined to share a specific price point for the new rockets or share any internal pricing goals, though NASA is expected to sign new contracts for the rockets that will launch the Artemis V mission and beyond, which could significantly change the price per launch.

Nelson also told CNN in December that NASA “will be making improvements, and we will find cost savings where we can,” such as with the decision to use commercial contracts for other vehicles under the Artemis program umbrella.

How and whether those contracts bear out remain to be seen: SpaceX needs to get its Starship rocket flying, a massive space station called Gateway needs to come to fruition, and at least some of the robotic lunar landers designed to carry cargo to the moon will need to prove their effectiveness. It’s also not yet clear whether those contracts will result in enough cost savings for the critics of SLS, including NASA’s OIG, to consider the Artemis program sustainable.

As for SLS, Nelson also told reporters December 11, just after the conclusion of the Artemis I mission, that he had every reason to expect that lawmakers would continue to fund the rocket and NASA’s broader moon program.

“I’m not worried about the support from the Congress,” Nelson said.

And Bridenstine, Nelson’s predecessor who has been publicly critical SLS, said that he ultimately stands by SLS and points out that, controversies aside, it does have rare bipartisan support from its bankrollers.

“We are in a spot now where this is going to be successful,” Bridenstine said last month, recalling when he first realized the Artemis program had support from the right and left. “All of America is going to be proud of this program. And yes, there are going to be differences. People are gonna say well, you should go all commercial and drop SLS…but at the end of the day, what we have to do is we have to bring together all of the things that are the best programs that we can get for America and use them to go to the moon.”



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Science

SpaceX launches next-generation GPS satellite

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CNN
 — 

SpaceX fired a new GPS satellite into orbit on behalf of the US military on Wednesday, continuing an effort to bolster the constellation of global positioning and navigation satellites that underpin smartphone apps, wartime operations and more.

The GPS satellite launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:24 a.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX confirmed the satellite had been deployed in a subsequent tweet featuring video of the moment.

The mission carried the sixth spacecraft in a new generation of GPS satellites, called GPS III, to an orbit about 12,550 miles (20,200 km) above the Earth’s surface, where more than 30 GPS satellites are currently operating. They swing around the planet once about every 12 hours and constantly beam radio signals to determine the precise location of objects on the ground. The next-generation GPS III satellites, built by Lockheed Martin, will modernize that system, with plans to build up to 32 of the satellites, including the six that have launched since 2019.

Though GPS services are routinely used by smartphones, Lockheed Martin notes on its website that it also serves military purposes.

“Space has become a more contested environment — with more-competitive adversaries,” the company’s website reads. “Our warfighters need enhanced capabilities to take on evolving threats. The need to return the focus on GPS as a ‘warfighting system’ has never been clearer.”

The previous generation of GPS satellites began entering service in the late 1990s.

After Falcon 9 launched from Cape Canaveral and expended most of its fuel, the first stage — the large bottommost portion that gives the initial thrust at liftoff — detached from the rocket’s second stage and the satellite and returned to a pinpoint landing on a platform at sea. It’s a routine maneuver for SpaceX, which regularly recovers and reuses its rockets to drive down costs.

The first-stage rocket booster used Wednesday previously launched SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission, which carried four astronauts to the International Space Station in October 2022.



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World

Brovary, Ukraine: Helicopter crash kills 16, including Ukrainian interior minister

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CNN
 — 

A helicopter crash near a kindergarten in the Kyiv region has killed at least 16 people, including the leadership team of Ukraine’s interior ministry who were traveling on the aircraft and three children on the ground, according to officials.

At least 30 others, including 12 children, are in the hospital following the incident in the city of Brovary on Wednesday, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration.

Tymoshenko has revised down the number of people killed in the crash on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital – the previous death toll was 18.

Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevheniy Yenin and State Secretary Yuriy Lubkovychis died, Anton Geraschenko, a ministry adviser, confirmed on social media.

All nine people onboard the helicopter (six ministry officials and three crew members) were killed, leaving another seven dead on the ground, including three children, Tymoshenko said. A search and rescue operation is continuing, he added.

The Ukrainian Security Services, the SBU, has launched an investigation into the crash, and posted on Facebook that “several versions of the tragedy are being considered.”

They include: “violation of flight rule, technical malfunction of the helicopter (and) deliberate actions to destroy the helicopter.”

There has been no suggestion from any other Ukrainian officials about Russian involvement in this crash. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the incident as a “tragedy.”

A CNN team on the ground in the Kyiv region noted gray skies and very low visibility.

The helicopter that crashed was a Eurocopter EC225 “Super Puma,” the CNN crew confirmed after seeing remnants of flight manuals among the debris.

The State Emergency Services of Ukraine (SES) said that this helicopter “was repeatedly involved in the transportation of personnel to emergency sites.”

An SES statement posted on Facebook added: “The crew of the aircraft was trained to perform tasks in difficult conditions and had the required number of hours of flying time.”

It landed near a kindergarten and a residential building, Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, said earlier.

“At the time of the tragedy, there were children and the staff in the kindergarten. At the moment, everyone was evacuated,” he wrote on Telegram.

Paramedics, the police and firefighters are responding at the scene, Kuleba added.

In a written statement, President Zelensky called the crash “a terrible tragedy,” adding that he has ordered the Ukrainian Security Services to “to find out all the circumstances.”

Zelensky ended his statement by saying the interior ministry officials were “true patriots of Ukraine. May they rest in peace! May all those whose lives were taken this black morning rest in peace!”

The officials are thought to be the most senior government figures to have died since Russia invaded Ukraine last February.

Monastyrsky, 42, was a lawyer by training. According to a biography published on the ministry’s website, he spent some years teaching law and management at a university in his home town of Khmelnytskyi, before deciding to turn “from theory to practice” and become involved in politics.

He worked on reforming Ukrainian law enforcement following the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, rose through the ranks and was appointed interior minister in July 2021.

Last year, Monastyrsky accompanied a CNN crew on a visit to abandoned Russian military positions in Chernobyl.

News of Monastyrsky’s death sparked a wave of reactions from many of his counterparts and other foreign leaders.

“Saddened by the tragic death of the Ukrainian Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky. Thoughts for all the victims of this terrible event that occurred near a kindergarten, for the children and the families,” French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly described Monastyrsky as “a true friend of the UK.”

Charles Michel, president of the European Council, also paid tribute to Monastyrsky as “a great friend of the EU.” Michel tweeted that the European Union joins Ukraine “in grief following the tragic helicopter accident in Brovary.”

Yenin, also 42, served as Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor general and deputy minister of foreign affairs before becoming Monastyrsky’s first deputy in September 2021, according to the ministry’s website.

Lubkovychis was 33 and, like the other two men, was also appointed to the ministry in 2021.

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World

Nepal: Harrowing video purportedly shows last moments inside cabin before deadly plane crash

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CNN
 — 

A Facebook Live video purportedly showing the last terrifying moments inside the cabin on Yeti Airlines flight 691 before it crashed in Nepal on Sunday has circulated widely online, as search and recovery efforts continue on the ground.

The plane crashed while en route from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu to Pokhara, a tourist gateway to the Himalayas. There were 72 people on board, including four crew members, according to an airline spokesperson.

With all but one body recovered, the crash marks the country’s deadliest air disaster in more than 30 years.

The search to locate the last remaining victim is ongoing, Anil Shahi, a local official, said Tuesday.

The video was purportedly live streamed from inside the plane by a passenger, Sonu Jaiswal, with footage beginning moments before the plane crashed. It shows a plane window with the wing seen outside as the aircraft banks sharply to the left.

At one point, seemingly unaware of the impending danger, Jaiswal turns the video to himself, smiling slightly amid chatter and laughter in the background. Several passengers can be heard conversing excitedly in a mix of Hindi and Punjabi; one person says, “Look at that body of water, it’s excellent,” as the plane passes by a lake.

The mood inside the plane appears calm, with no emergency warnings from the pilot or airline crew. Seconds later, the video abruptly starts shaking with shouts heard; the camera loses focus, only showing flashes of light and loud noise, before the scene erupts in fire.

CNN has corroborated the video based on geolocation, a flight manifest and information on the Yeti Airlines website.

Jaiswal is listed as a passenger on the flight manifest, and the seat number listed for him on the airline website matches the visuals taken from inside the plane.

A close friend of Jaiswal in India, Arman Ansari, also confirmed it was Jaiswal seen in the video. He added that he was watching a Facebook Live stream from Jaiswal during the flight.

“We were watching it. We had watched for just a few seconds and then it got cut. We did not think much about it,” he said.

Aryaka Akhouri, the chief of Gazipur district in India where Jaiswal lived, said she had spoken to Jaiswal’s parents, and confirmed he was on the plane and the one filming the video.

A spokesman for Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has said the video is not from Sunday’s crash. When pressed, he said he and his team had no technical evidence to support that claim. Instead, he pointed to passengers laughing at the first sign of turbulence before panic set in seconds later as evidence it could not be the Yeti Airlines flight.

Aviation analyst Mary Schiavo told CNN the video could be helpful in the investigation, saying it could have captured details not recorded in the plane’s black box. For instance, the aircraft’s flap, which gives extra lift during landing, “does not look like (it’s) fully extended,” she said.

She added that what seems to be the sound of an engine suggests “they had power to at least one engine.”

– Source:
CNN
” data-fave-thumbnails=”{“big”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230116190941-nepal-plane-crash.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”},”small”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230116190941-nepal-plane-crash.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”}}” data-vr-video=”” data-show-name=”Situation Room” data-show-url=”https://www.cnn.com/shows/situation-room” data-check-event-based-preview=”” data-network-id=”” data-details=””>

Tragic twist discovered involving co-pilot in Nepal plane crash

Search and recovery efforts continued on Tuesday for the two people still missing, according to Nepali police. District police chief Ajaya KC said foggy weather was making the search difficult and authorities planned to use drones to locate those missing when the weather improves.

Meanwhile, an investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing, with assistance from French investigators who will be on site by Tuesday. The plane’s black box, which records flight data, was recovered on Monday and would be handed to CAAN, officials said.

Aviation authorities said Tuesday that the pilot of the plane had asked air traffic controllers for a change of runway just minutes before the aircraft went down.

Pokhara airport has two runways that pilots can choose between when landing and the pilot’s request had been accepted, CAAN spokesperson Jagannath Niroula said.

“When the Yeti Airlines pilot asked the tower if he can take the second runway to land, the tower approved it,” he said. “The tower controllers didn’t ask why the pilot wanted to use a different runway than originally planned since it wasn’t an issue technically from their end which runway the pilot chooses to land,” Niroula told CNN.

No distress calls were reported from the pilot to the Pokhara airport tower controllers, he added.

In Kathmandu and Pokhara, crowds held candlelight vigils for the victims on Monday.

Of the bodies recovered, at least 41 have been identified, Yeti Airlines said in a statement Monday. Some bodies will be handed over to their families in Pokhara, while others – including those of foreign nationals – will be airlifted to Kathmandu on Tuesday, police said.

Fifteen foreign nationals were aboard, hailing from India, Russia, South Korea, Australia, Ireland, Argentina and France, according to CAAN.

Videos on Monday showed grieving families in Pokhara, waiting outside the hospital where autopsies are being conducted. The postmortems were delayed because a team of forensic experts didn’t reach Pokhara until Monday afternoon, according to police and airline officials.

Some families have begun speaking out about the loss of their loved ones. In a statement Tuesday, the family of Australian victim Myron Love said the 29-year-old teacher had been a keen cyclist who “lived life to the fullest.”

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World

Search resumes for missing people as Yeti Airlines disaster highlights dangers of flying in Nepal

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CNN
 — 

Hundreds of emergency personnel on Monday resumed a search and recovery mission in Nepal following a deadly plane crash that has once again highlighted the dangers of air travel in a country often referred to as one of the riskiest places to fly.

Of the 72 people on board, at least 68 were killed when a Yeti Airlines flight crashed near the city of Pokhara Sunday.

Four others remain missing, but Kaski District Police Chief Superintendent Ajay K.C. said Monday that the chance of finding survivors was “extremely low” as workers used a crane to pull bodies from the gorge.

The crash is the worst air disaster in the Himalayan nation in 30 years. It is also the third-worst aviation accident in Nepal’s history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network.

Experts say conditions such as inclement weather, low visibility and mountainous topography all contribute to Nepal’s reputation as notoriously dangerous for aviation.

The Yeti Airlines flight Sunday had nearly finished its short journey from the capital Kathmandu to Pokhara when it lost contact with a control tower. Some 15 foreign nationals were aboard, according to the country’s civil aviation authority.

Pokhara, a lakeside city, is a popular tourist destination and gateway to the Himalayas. It serves as the starting point for the famous Annapurna Circuit trekking route, with more than 181,000 foreigners visiting the area in 2019.

A government committee is now investigating the cause of the crash, with assistance from French authorities. The Yeti Airlines plane was manufactured by aerospace company ATR, headquartered in France.

The plane’s black box, which records flight data, was recovered on Monday and would be handed to the civil aviation authority, officials said.

Fickle weather patterns aren’t the only problem for flight operations. According to a 2019 safety report from Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, the country’s “hostile topography” is also part of the “huge challenge” facing pilots.

Nepal, a country of 29 million people, is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, and its beautiful rugged landscapes make it a popular tourist destination for trekkers.

But this terrain can be difficult to navigate from the air, particularly during bad weather, and things are made worse by the need to use small aircraft to access the more remote and mountainous parts of the country.

Aircraft with 19 seats or fewer are more likely to have accidents due to these challenges, the Civil Aviation Authority report said.

Kathmandu is Nepal’s primary transit hub, from where many of these small flights leave.

The airport in the town of Lukla, in northeastern Nepal, is often referred to as the world’s most dangerous airport. Known as the gateway to Everest, the airport’s runway is laid out on a cliffside between mountains, dropping straight into an abyss at the end. It has seen multiple fatal crashes over the years, including in 2008 and 2019.

A lack of investment in aging aircraft only adds to the flying risks.

In 2015, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, prioritized helping Nepal through its Aviation Safety Implementation Assistance Partnership. Two years later, the ICAO and Nepal announced a partnership to resolve safety concerns.

While the country has in recent years made improvements in its safety standards, challenges remain.

In May 2022, a Tara Air flight departing from Pokhara crashed into a mountain, killing 22 people.

In early 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka to Kathmandu crashed on landing and caught fire, killing 51 of the 71 people on board.

And in 2016, a Tara Air flight crashed while flying the same route as the aircraft that was lost Sunday. That incident involved a recently acquired Twin Otter aircraft flying in clear conditions.

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Science

SpaceX’s most powerful rocket returns to flight

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CNN
 — 

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, the towering launch vehicle known for its boosters’ aerial acrobatics and synchronized landings when returning to Earth, took to the skies Sunday, delivering national security payloads to orbit for the US military.

The mission, called USSF-67, took off at 5:56 p.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the fifth successful flight of the rocket recently dethroned as the world’s most powerful operational launch vehicle. This mission was initially advertised to launch on Saturday, and the reason for the one-day delay was not immediately clear.

The Falcon Heavy debuted to much fanfare in 2018 when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attached his personal Tesla Roadster as a test payload on the launch. The car is still in space, taking an oblong path around the sun that swings out as far as Mars’ orbital path.

The rocket followed up that test mission with two launches in 2019 before taking a three-year hiatus; the vast majority of SpaceX’s missions don’t require the Falcon Heavy’s amped-up power. On the other hand, SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket launched more than 60 times in 2022 alone, sending two groups of astronauts to space as well as Starlink satellites and a variety of other spacecraft.

But SpaceX is now making good on lucrative military launch contracts it signed for the Falcon Heavy years ago. The rocket returned to flight in November with the launch of the US military’s USSF-44 mission, and Sunday’s liftoff was a follow-up to that display.

“USSF-44 included six payloads on one satellite that advance communications, space weather sensing, and other technologies into near-geosynchronous orbits,” according to the military’s Space Operations Command.

And USSF-67 will make use of the same type of spacecraft deployed on USSF-44, called LDPE, which is essentially a bus for outer space that can carry smaller satellites. The Falcon Heavy also carried a communications satellite, called the Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM, for the US Space Force.

Additional details about the satellites on Sunday’s mission were not immediately available.

With each launch, the Falcon Heavy rocket puts on a dramatic show back on Earth.

After Sunday’s mission, the company recovered two of the Falcon Heavy rocket’s first-stage boosters — the tall white sticks strapped together to give the rocket its heightened power at liftoff. After expending most of their fuel, the side boosters fell away from the center core and reoriented themselves to slice back through the Earth’s atmosphere.

As they approached the ground, the boosters reignited their engines and completed a synchronized landing on ground pads near the Florida coastline. It’s a signature move for SpaceX, which routinely recovers and reuses its rocket boosters to drive down the cost of launches.

SpaceX did not attempt to recover the center booster because of fuel requirements.

The company hasn’t successfully retrieved all three boosters yet, although it’s come close. The two side boosters made a pinpoint, synchronized landing on ground pads after an April 2019 mission, and the rocket’s center booster touched down on a seafaring platform. But rough waves toppled it over.

For years, the Falcon Heavy was the world’s most powerful operational rocket. But in November, NASA’s new moon rocket, called Space Launch System, or SLS, stole that title with its inaugural launch. SLS launched the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission around the moon, paving the way for future missions with astronauts on board.

While the Falcon Heavy gives off about 5 million pounds of thrust, SLS is puts out as much as 8.8 million pounds of thrust — 15% more than the Saturn V rockets that powered the Apollo moon landings.

At its experimental facilities in South Texas, SpaceX is in the final stages of preparing for the first orbital launch attempt of its Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket. Though the test flight still awaits final approval from federal regulators, it could lift off in the coming weeks.

If successful, SpaceX’s Starship would dethrone the SLS as the most powerful rocket flying today.

The Starship system is expected to outpower both SLS and Falcon Heavy. The forthcoming Super Heavy booster, which is designed to vault the Starship spacecraft into space, is expected to put off about 17 million pounds of thrust.

It’s not all a competition, however. Both the SLS rocket and SpaceX’s Starship are integral to NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon’s surface for the first time in half a century.

SpaceX has its own, ambitious vision for the Starship: ferrying humans and cargo to Mars in hopes of one day establishing a permanent human settlement there.

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World

How Ukraine became a laboratory for western weapons and battlefield innovation

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CNN
 — 

Last fall, as Ukraine won back large swaths of territory in a series of counterattacks, it pounded Russian forces with American-made artillery and rockets. Guiding some of that artillery was a homemade targeting system that Ukraine developed on the battlefield.

A piece of Ukrainian-made software has turned readily available tablet computers and smartphones into sophisticated targeting tools that are now used widely across the Ukrainian military.

The result is a mobile app that feeds satellite and other intelligence imagery into a real-time targeting algorithm that helps units near the front direct fire onto specific targets. And because it’s an app, not a piece of hardware, it’s easy to quickly update and upgrade, and available to a wide range of personnel.

US officials familiar with the tool say it has been highly effective at directing Ukrainian artillery fire onto Russian targets.

The targeting app is among dozens of examples of battlefield innovations that Ukraine has come up with over nearly a year of war, often finding cheap fixes to expensive problems.

Small, plastic drones, buzzing quietly overhead, drop grenades and other ordinance on Russian troops. 3D printers now make spare parts so soldiers can repair heavy equipment in the field. Technicians have converted ordinary pickup trucks into mobile missile launchers. Engineers have figured out how to strap sophisticated US missiles onto older Soviet fighter jets such as the MiG-29, helping keep the Ukrainian air force flying after nine months of war.

Ukraine has even developed its own anti-ship weapon, the Neptune, based off Soviet rocket designs that can target the Russian fleet from almost 200 miles away.

This kind of Ukrainian ingenuity has impressed US officials, who have praised Kyiv’s ability to “MacGyver” solutions to its battlefield needs that fill in important tactical gaps left by the larger, more sophisticated Western weaponry.

While US and other Western officials don’t always have perfect insight into exactly how Ukraine’s custom-made systems work – in large part because they are not on the ground – both officials and open-source analysts say Ukraine has become a veritable battle lab for cheap but effective solutions.

“Their innovation is just incredibly impressive,” said Seth Jones, director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has also offered the United States and its allies a rare opportunity to study how their own weapons systems perform under intense use – and what munitions both sides are using to score wins in this hotly fought modern war. US operations officers and other military officials have also tracked how successfully Russia has used cheap, expendable drones that explode on impact, provided by Iran, to decimate the Ukrainian power grid.

Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations,” said one source familiar with Western intelligence. “This is real-world battle testing.”

For the US military, the war in Ukraine has been an incredible source of data on the utility of its own systems.

Some high-profile systems given to the Ukrainians – such as the Switchblade 300 drone and a missile designed to target enemy radar systems – have turned out to be less effective on the battlefield than anticipated, according to a US military operations officer with knowledge of the battlefield, as well as a recent British think tank study.

But the lightweight American-made M142 multiple rocket launcher, or HIMARS, has been critical to Ukraine’s success – even as officials have learned valuable lessons about the rate of maintenance repair those systems have required under such heavy use.

How Ukraine has used its limited supply of HIMARS missiles to wreak havoc on Russian command and control, striking command posts, headquarters and supply depots, has been eye-opening, a defense official said, adding that military leaders would be studying this for years.

Another crucial piece of insight has been about the M777 howitzer, the powerful artillery that has been a critical part of Ukraine’s battlefield power. But the barrels of the howitzers lose their rifling if too many shells are fired in a short time frame, another defense official said, making the artillery less accurate and less effective.

The Ukrainians have also made tactical innovations that have impressed Western officials. During the early weeks of the war, Ukrainian commanders adapted their operations to employ small teams of dismounted infantry during the Russian advance on Kyiv. Armed with shoulder-mounted Stinger and Javelin rockets, Ukrainian troops were able to sneak up on Russian tanks without infantry on their flanks.

The US has also closely studied the conflict for larger lessons on how a war between two modern nations might be waged in the 21st century.

The operations officer said that one lesson the US may take from this conflict is that towed artillery – like the M777 howitzer system – may be a thing of the past. Those systems are harder to move quickly to avoid return fire – and in a world of ubiquitous drones and overhead surveillance, “it’s very hard to hide nowadays,” this person said.

When it comes to lessons learned, “there’s a book to be written about this,” said Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

US defense contractors have also taken note of the novel opportunity to study – and market – their systems.

BAE Systems has already announced that the Russian success with their kamikaze drones has influenced how it is designing a new armored fighting vehicle for the Army, adding more armor to protect soldiers from attacks from above.

And different parts of the US government and industry have sought to test novel systems and solutions in a fight for which Ukraine needed all the help it could get.

In the early days of the conflict, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency sent five lightweight, high-resolution surveillance drones to US Special Operations Command in Europe – just in case they might come in handy in Ukraine. The drones, made by a company called Hexagon, weren’t part of a so-called program of record at the Defense Department, hinting at the experimental nature of the conflict.

Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at the time, even boasted publicly that the US had trained a “military partner” in Europe on the system.

“What this allows you to do is to go out underneath cloud cover and collect your own [geointelligence] data,” Sharp told CNN on the sidelines of a satellite conference in Denver last spring.

Despite intense effort by a small group of US officials and outside industry, it remains unclear whether these drones ever made it into the fight.

Meanwhile, multiple intelligence and military officials told CNN they hoped that creating what the US military terms “attritable” drones – cheap, single-use weapons – has become a top priority for defense contractors.

“I wish we could make a $10,000 one-way attack drone,” one of these officials said, wistfully.

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