An artist’s impression of Lunar Flashlight scanning a permanently shadowed region on the Moon.
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight is on a mission to hunt for water ice on the Moon’s surface, but the mission appears to be in trouble as three of the craft’s four thrusters are “underperforming,” according to NASA.
The Lunar Flashlight team is in the midst of evaluating the three problematic thrusters as the spacecraft journeys toward the Moon, NASA said in a press release. Lunar Flashlight launched successfully on December 11 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket alongside Japan’s Hakuto-R lunar lander mission. In addition to scanning for water on the Moon’s surface, Lunar Flashlight is also expected to test a more environmentally-friendly propellant.
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NASA says that the trouble began three days after launch, when the mission team first noticed reduced thrust. Ground tests suggests the issue is due to obstructions in the spacecraft’s fuel lines. Since Lunar Flashlight fires its thrusters in short bursts, mission scientists are planning to operate the thrusters for longer durations in an attempt to clear the fuel lines. The spacecraft still needs to perform a series of trajectory correction maneuvers to reach its intended orbit around the Moon.
“In case the propulsion system can’t be restored to full performance, the mission team is drawing up alternative plans to accomplish those maneuvers using the propulsion system with its current reduced-thrust capability,” NASA-JPL wrote in a statement. “Lunar Flashlight will need to perform daily trajectory correction maneuvers starting in early February to reach lunar orbit about four months from now.”
Lunar Flashlight is a brief-case sized satellite that is currently in the midst of a four-month journey to the Moon, making these issues with its thrusters all the more perilous. The spacecraft is powered by a more “green” propellant called a monopropellant. Monopropellants don’t require a separate oxidizer to burn, making it safer to transport over the more commonly used hydrazine, NASA says.
If the mission goes according to plan, Lunar Flashlight will scan the Moon’s southern polar regions with infrared light to find reservoirs of water ice that are located in permanently shadowed regions. These reservoirs could be a source of drinking water, fuel, or even breathable oxygen for future crewed missions to the Moon.
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The Soyuz MS-22 crew ship is pictured docked to the Rassvet module. In the background, the Prichal docking module is attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Credit: NASA
NASA is supporting the ongoing investigation with the use of the Canadarm2 robotic arm to provide additional viewing of the Soyuz exterior on Sunday, December 18. To accommodate this change in plans, NASA has postponed the upcoming U.S. spacewalk to install an International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA), which was originally scheduled for Monday, December 19. The new target date for the spacewalk is Wednesday, December 21.
The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft carried NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin into space after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 21.
The leak was first detected on December 14 at around 7:45 p.m. EST, when data pressure sensors in the cooling loop showed low readings. At that time, Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin were preparing to conduct a spacewalk. The spacewalk was canceled, so the cosmonauts did not exit the space station or become exposed to the leaking coolant. From data analysis and cameras aboard the space station, the majority of fluid had leaked out by yesterday, December 15, around 1:30 p.m. EST.
More updates will be provided as data becomes available.
On station, the Expedition 68 crew members set up a variety of advanced research gear to capture high-definition video of Earth and house biology samples for observation.
Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio reviewed spacewalk robotics activities with Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (
Prokopyev and Petelin cleaned their Orlan spacesuits and stowed their spacewalking tools following the postponement of Wednesday night’s spacewalk.
Flight Engineer Anna Kikina also worked on post-spacewalk activities returning the station’s Russian segment to normal and checking radiation sensors worn on the Orlan suits. Kikina wrapped up her day treating surfaces inside the Zarya module with an anti-fungal agent to maintain cleanliness and health aboard the station.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is officially on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) after 2.5 years of delays.
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday (May 19) at 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT), carrying Starliner aloft on an uncrewed mission called Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2).
If all goes according to plan, Starliner will dock with the ISS on Friday evening (May 20) and spend four to five days attached to the orbiting lab before coming back to Earth for a parachute-aided landing in the western U.S. Success on all of those fronts would likely show that the Boeing spacecraft is ready to carry NASA astronauts to and from the station.
Live updates:Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 mission to ISS Related:Boeing’s Starliner OFT-2 test flight for NASA in amazing photos
Starliner got itself into the proper orbit after separating from the Atlas V on Thursday, a huge milestone for Boeing and NASA. After all, the capsule was unable to rendezvous with the ISS during the original OFT in December 2019 after suffering some software glitches shortly after launch. And it failed to get off the ground when OFT-2 first rolled out to the pad last summer; prelaunch checks revealed malfunctioning valves in Starliner’s propulsion system, a problem that took about eight months to address.
OFT-2’s liftoff was a big milestone for ULA as well, marking the 150th launch for the rocket company, which is a joint effort of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
At a post-launch press conference on Thursday night, NASA and Boeing experts were quick to congratulate their various teams for the hard work that led to the successful launch.
“Today was just a huge day for commercial crew,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. As he listed the hurdles and launch milestones of the day’s events, he also mentioned one small Starliner malfunction.
During the spacecraft’s orbital insertion burn, which occurred 31 minutes after liftoff, two of Starliner’s thrusters didn’t fire as expected. The first failed after only one second. Its backup immediately kicked on and was able to fire for another 25 seconds before it also failed. Redundancy failsafes activated a tertiary backup for the thruster group, and Starliner was able to complete the crucial burn without incident.
The Boeing spacecraft is outfitted with four of these thruster groups on its aft section, referred to in industry nomenclature as “doghouses,” which each contain three orbital maneuvering and attitude control (OMAC) thrusters used to perform significant maneuver burns like those that achieve orbital insertion. The two OMAC thrusters that malfunctioned, and the third that stepped in to compensate, were all in the same doghouse on Starliner’s aft section, Boeing representatives said.
“The system is designed to be redundant, and it performed like it was supposed to. Now the team is working the ‘why’ as to why we had those anomalies occur,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew program.
Nappi emphasized that the issue was not one that needed to be resolved prior to the completion of the OFT-2 mission. During the briefing, Stich pointed out that Starliner had performed a second significant burn with the same OMAC thrusters, putting it on course to rendezvous with the International Space Station.
“That second burn that we performed … did use that third thruster in that doghouse, and it performed fine for that entire burn. So, it doesn’t look like something that’s common to all three. And, as Mark [Nappi] said, they started firing right. The first one fired, and the second one picked up, fired for 25 seconds,” Stitch said.
“So, we’ll just have to go through a little bit more troubleshooting and see if we can figure out why those two thrusters didn’t complete that orbit insertion burn,” he added.
Starliner will catch up to the space station on Friday evening (May 20). Once within about 2 miles (3 kilometers) of the orbiting lab, the spacecraft will demonstrate stop-and-retreat maneuvers before moving in to dock at around 7:10 p.m. EDT (2310 GMT).
A new electric thruster that blasts out iodine has now been successfully tested in orbit, a milestone that could help lead to significantly tinier, simpler, cheaper and higher-performance engines for satellites and spacecraft, a new study reports.
Conventional rockets use chemical reactions to drive propulsion. In contrast, electric thrusters produce thrust by using electric power to accelerate propellants such as electrically charged ions away from a spacecraft.
Electric propulsion generates much less thrust than chemical rockets, making it too weak to launch a spacecraft from Earth’s surface. But electric thrusters are highly efficient at producing thrust, given the small amount of propellant they carry. This makes them very useful for spacecraft that are already in space.
Related:Superfast spacecraft propulsion systems (images)
Side view of a flight model of the NPT30-I2 iodine electric propulsion system firing in a vacuum chamber. (Image credit: ThrustMe)
Currently, xenon gas is the propellant of choice in electric thrusters. However, xenon is rare, making up less than 1 part per 10 million in Earth’s atmosphere. It is also expensive, at about $3,000 per 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram). Moreover, the gas requires bulky pressurized tanks, as well as complex networks of pipes, valves and pumps to shuttle it around a propulsion system.
A possible alternative to xenon that researchers have explored over the past 20 years is iodine, the same element often packaged with table salt and used as an antiseptic. Iodine is cheaper and more abundant than xenon and can be stored unpressurized as a solid that changes directly into a gas when heated, potentially enabling significant miniaturization and simplification. Previous research has shown electric thrusters using iodine can prove more efficient than ones employing xenon in ground-based tests.
However, iodine presents challenges of its own when it comes to propulsion. For example, iodine is highly corrosive, posing a potential danger to electronics and other systems onboard spacecraft. In addition, vibrations during launch and spacecraft motion once in orbit can make solid iodine break into pieces, which may damage the propulsion system, among other problems.
Now scientists have for the first time launched an iodine-based electric thruster into space and showed that it can help propel a spacecraft in orbit.
“We show that iodine can be safely used in space, bringing an option for propulsion systems onboard even the smallest spacecraft,” said study lead author Dmytro Rafalskyi, chief technical officer and co-founder of space propulsion company ThrustMe, which is headquartered near Paris.
The new electric thruster, the NPT30-I2 from ThrustMe, fits within a single package about 4 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches (10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters) in size and about 2.6 pounds (1.2 kg) in mass. It served as the propulsion system for a 44-pound (20 kg) cubesat, the Beihangkongshi-1 satellite operated by Chinese satellite company Spacety, which launched into space on a Long March 6 rocket on Nov. 6, 2020.
Ground radar stations confirmed that the NPT30-I2 helped the miniature satellite maneuver in orbit. All in all, the new thruster let out puffs of iodine that cumulatively boosted the cubesat’s altitude by more than 1.8 miles (3 kilometers).
The new findings show that iodine is not only a viable propellant, but can also achieve nearly 50% more efficient propulsion than xenon, because of factors such as how iodine is easier to electrify than xenon. The company has opened a production line for these new thrusters and has already delivered more than 10 of them to satellite manufacturers worldwide, Rafalskyi said.
“Our team of roughly 10 engineers and a few PhDs reached something that was a dream of the propulsion community for decades,” Rafalskyi said.
To deal with the problem of corrosion, the scientists developed ceramics and polymers to protect metal components within the satellite. To keep the iodine from shattering, they strengthened it by embedding the iodine crystals in a porous ceramic block.
“We are pioneers in using iodine, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t encourage others to switch to this propellant,” Rafalskyi said. “We are very open about our research results, and look forward to seeing more and more propulsion manufacturers converting to iodine.”
The new thruster could help tiny satellites and large networks of satellites, such as SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation, perform maneuvers in space, such as avoiding collisions, staying in orbit and changing from one orbit to another.
“Currently, the majority of the smallest satellites don’t have any propulsion options due to the complexity, cost and risks associated with the use of standard propulsion systems,” Rafalskyi said. “Iodine enables powerful propulsion for even the smallest satellites due to inherent properties of iodine. In-space maneuverability becomes accessible to any user, including universities and small startups.”
In the future, the researchers want to scale up their research to cover large Earth-orbiting satellites as well as deep space missions, Rafalskyi said.
The scientists detailed their findings in the Nov. 18 issue of the journal Nature.
Originally published on Space.com. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft docked to the ISS. Image: NASA
Late last week, a routine thruster test of a Soyuz spacecraft continued for longer than expected, causing the ISS to shift by nearly 60 degrees. It’s yet another troubling sign that all is not well in the Russian segment of the orbital outpost.
The incident happened on Friday, September 15, as Russian flight controllers were running a thruster firing test of the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, which arrived at the ISS in April. The test was being done in preparation for the departure of cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and a Russian film crew consisting of actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko.
When the test window ended, however, the thruster kept on firing, which wasn’t supposed to happen. With the spacecraft still attached to the ISS, the “station’s orientation was impacted,” according to Roscosmos.” The Russian space agency said attitude control “was swiftly recovered due to the actions of the ISS Russian Segment Chief Operating Control Group specialists,”and that the “station and the crew are in no danger.” The departure of the Soyuz spacecraft went as planned a few days later, with the crew of three landing successfully on October 17.
The loss of orientation began at 5:13 a.m. EDT, and it took flight controllers 30 minutes to return the orbital outpost to a “stable configuration,” according to NASA. The incident was serious enough for NASA to declare an emergency, in which its astronauts were told to reference procedures in the crew’s “warning book,” as the New York Times reports. Russian news agency Interfax cited Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the Russian segment, as saying the ISS shifted by 57 degrees.
A similar incident happened in July, when the newly docked Nauka module unexpectedly fired its thrusters, causing the ISS to shift by 540 degrees. It was one of the most serious episodes to have occurred in the space station’s 21-year history. A series of air leaks and signs of deterioration in the Russian segment suggest Russia is not doing its part to maintain the space station and that the aging ISS is becoming increasingly unsafe.
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NASA and Roscosmos are currently working together to figure out what happened on Friday. The New York Times cites NASA flight director Timothy Creamer as saying the thrusters may have “stopped firing because they reached their prop[ellant] limit.” In an email, I asked Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, what Creamer meant by that.
“The ‘prop limit’ was, I am led to understand, a software limit set for that burn,” rather than a limit having to do with dwindling fuel reserves, McDowell responded. “So the total amount of propellant used didn’t put the ship in danger of not being able to get home or anything like that…[so] I don’t think the situation was as concerning as the Nauka issue.”
That said, McDowell said incidents like this should not happen. This latest episode contributes “to the impression that the Russian segment of the ISS is being run in a rather cavalier fashion with insufficient quality control and safety checks on the thruster software and hardware,” he said.
At the same time, Russia is not being as transparent as it should be, McDowell added. “We know the burn lasted somewhere between 11 and 30 minutes but not exactly how long, and we don’t know how long it was meant to be in the first place, so that makes it harder to assess,” he said.
Roscosmos did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for more information, such as a likely cause for the incident.
Russia’s contribution to this historic space project may be coming to an end. The country has threatened to leave the ISS by 2025 and build its own space station by 2030. The current U.S. plan is to support the orbital outpost through at least 2030.
More: Russian Space Junk Hit a Chinese Satellite in March, Evidence Suggests.