SpaceX’s Falcon 9 under investigation, again.

We still haven't figured out the term for grounding a rocket, but here we are. The SpaceX Falcon 9 is yet again grounded for the time being. Saturday's launch thankfully went off without any issue, and yes, the Crew 9 crew are all safely aboard the ISS, but there was an issue during the second stage deorbit. Previous Falcon 9 groundings were resolved in days, so if those are anything to go by, remember the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy's advice. Don't panic. Today is September 30th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausis, and this is T-Minus. [Music] Crew 9 docks with the ISS. SpaceX grounds Falcon 9 after a second stage off-nominal deorbit burn. And you, NASA report, questions ISS operations through 2030. And our guest today is astronomer Kat Troche. Kat will be telling us about how she became involved in astronomy from the sidewalks and parks of New York City. Yes, really, later in the show. Happy Monday everybody, and welcome to the International Space Station, Nick and Alexander. After the Crew 9 launch finally took off on Saturday from Kennedy Space Center, the SpaceX Dragon Freedom docked to the orbiting complex at 5.30 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, while the station was orbiting over Botswana. Colonel Nick Hague, who is a Space Force Guardian and a NASA astronaut, commanded the Crew 9 mission, and was joined by Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbinov. The two have joined the Expedition 72 crew aboard the ISS, where they will conduct scientific research and maintenance activities. The mission carried cargo resupplies for the orbiting lab along with scientific experiments. The crew will support hundreds of experiments across many scientific disciplines to advance fundamental and applied science and test new technology to benefit humanity. Among the many experiments are a student-led project to investigate the effects of radiation and the space environment on gene editing mechanisms, an experiment which plans to use 3D bioprinted cardiac organoids to study microgravity-induced atrophy on heart muscle cells, and multiple projects sponsored by the ISS National Lab and funded by NASA to focus on in-space manufacturing. All that said, the launch didn't go entirely to plan despite initial indications. SpaceX took to social media late in the day to share that, and a quote after today's successful launch of Crew 9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed of in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand the root cause. So yes, Falcon 9 is once again grounded pending investigation. And speaking of the International Space Station, there's a minor issue with a leak that is currently keeping engineers busy. No, it's not a new discovery. In fact, the module in question has been leaking since 2019, but a new report on NASA's management of risks to sustaining ISS operations through 2030 has shared that the leak rate is getting worse. The report states that ongoing cracks and air leaks in the service module transfer tunnel are a top safety risk, and NASA and Roscosmos are collaborating to investigate and mitigate the cracks and leaks, determine the root cause, and monitor the station for new leaks. However, in April 2024, NASA identified an increase in the leak rate to the highest level to date. Outside of structural risk mitigation, ISS program officials expect continuing operations of the station will require further repairs, and upgrades of key replaceable parts may become more difficult to acquire as suppliers decrease or cease production. The supply chain issues may become more persistent should NASA continue operations past 2030. That date has certainly been questioned a lot recently, and our own producer Alice Carouse put the following question to Robin Gaydons, who is director of NASA's ISS program and acting director of NASA's commercial spaceflight division. There's been reports recently that one of your commercial partners is quite behind. Russia hasn't committed beyond 2028 to be able to commit to the ISS. What are the contingency plans for NASA if something goes wrong and you aren't able to get something ready in time for you to do orbit? Yeah, so we're working really hard with our commercial partners to get a commercial space station by the end of the decade. And so I think our schedules, even though everything takes longer, and we're seeing that certainly with some of these companies because when you're developing something new, it generally takes longer. All of our vehicles have taken longer than scheduled, but I think we are still on a path to getting that capability by the end of the decade, and we're committed to doing that so that we can have a transition with no gap. That's the last thing we want is to break this 23 by then 28, 29-year streak of continuous presence by not having a place to go. So we're working really hard on that, and our commercial partners are doing well. They're making progress. We've got a lot of interested companies out there, and that's exciting to see. And we're going to be -- stay tuned because we're going to be -- we just released our Leo microgravity strategy, which outlines our goals and objectives for our future plans in low Earth orbit. And we're excited about that. We're excited about issuing our request for proposals next year and making some awards for the next phase of that development. China launched its first reusable and returnable test satellite, the Xinjiang-19, on Friday, using a Long March 2D rocket. The satellite will conduct space breeding experiments to accelerate germplasm resource innovation. No, I don't know what that means either. China is looking to space breeding as an important avenue for attempting to improve agricultural outputs. Exposure to space conditions is thought to accelerate genetic mutations that may enhance crop resilience and productivity. OK, so now I know. Xinjiang-19 is also carrying payloads from five countries, including Thailand and Pakistan. Development work on a Chinese European satellite designed to investigate solar wind was completed in China on Friday. The Solar Wind Magnetosphere/Ionosphere/Link Explorer, also known as SMILE, is a joint mission between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the European Space Agency, which aims to deepen the understanding of the Sun-Earth connection by observing the dynamic interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere. The satellite platform and payload module are expected to arrive at the European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands in October, where they will be integrated and tested. And SMILE is scheduled for launch by the end of 2025 from Europe's space launch site in French Guiana by Ariane Space's Vega-C launch vehicle. And speaking of the European Space Agency, they have awarded a space sustainability mission contract to Demos. Demos Space will manage ESA's Draco mission, which stands for Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object. The agreement for the first phase of the mission development is worth 3 million euros. The Draco mission is scheduled for launch in 2026, and it will be using a 150 kilo satellite, and it's set to be the world's first demo of a controlled breakup process in the Earth's atmosphere. So yes, you heard that correctly. They are launching a satellite just to study how it gets destroyed. All in the name of science, of course. The contract is ultimately worth about 17 million euros. And as we mentioned on last week's show, the US Office of Commerce's Traffic Coordination System for Space, also known as TRAX, has begun delivering space flight safety services to a beta group of satellite operators starting today. For the first time, satellite operators are receiving basic space situational awareness data and space traffic coordination services from the Commerce Department. Nine satellite operators, including NOAA, Maxar, Telesat, IntelSat, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Planet Labs, UTelsat OneWeb, Iridium, and the Aerospace Corporation, now receive validated safety notifications from TRAX. And TRAX will add satellite operators and provide more data and services as the program progresses. Andarill Industries has been awarded a $25.3 million contract by the US Space Force. This latest award follows $10.5 million in earlier space business innovation research or CBER contracts for similar work, which was scheduled through December 2024. And under the new contract, Andarill will enhance the data integration and communication systems of the Space Surveillance Network, also known as SSN. The SSN, which was first deployed in the late 1950s, is a global network of sensors including conventional radars, phased array radars, and telescopes. These assets are all used to track satellites, space debris, and to provide early warnings of ballistic missile launches. And as another program bites the dust at NASA, the space agency is scrambling to get the spacecraft that's near completion used by someone, anyone, Builer. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Planetary Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate has released a request for information to determine interest in a reconnaissance mission to the asteroid Apophis, ahead of the asteroid's 2029 close encounter with Earth. Specifically, NASA is interested in facilitating the development of a non-NASA-led mission to Apophis, using the agency's nearly-developed but still-unflown Janus spacecraft. Any approach to this potential mission to Apophis would need to be on an expedited schedule to meet a pre-April 2029 encounter opportunity. NASA has emphasized that this RFI is not a request for proposal, nor is it an invitation to bid. Regardless, more details can be found by following the link in our show notes. And that's it for our briefing for today. Links to further reading on all the stories mentioned in today's show can be found in the selected reading section of our show notes, as always. You'll also find in there an announcement from KKR on the acquisition of IQGEO. Hey T-minus crew, this is a programming note for you about this week and our daily shows. We here at N2K are having an annual Get Together in person on Wednesday and Thursday, so we will be publishing special episodes on those two days in lieu of our normal daily intel briefings. We will be back to our regular daily show on Friday, though. If you'd like to stay updated with the daily headlines in the meantime, we'll be sharing news items for you on LinkedIn, so go and find us at N2K T-minus. Today's guest is astronomer Kat Troesch. Now Kat and I met at the James Webb Space Telescope First Images NASA social event, which was held at Goddard two years ago, and Kat happens to do incredible outreach work in New York City. And today she tells me more about her work in this excerpt of our chat, and I should note our entire chat will be in this week's Deep Space episode, where she'll tell me all about her recent visit to the astronomical observatories in Atacama in Chile. I am an amateur astronomer based out of New York City. I am the administrator for NASA Nights Sky Network. We are operated through the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. I am also a NASA Solar System Ambassador, and I am the vice president of operations for the Amateur Astronomers Association. We were founded in 1927 in New York City with the sole purpose of educating the public through astronomy. That was a fantastic introduction. Thank you, Kat. You've done a lot of really cool things. And one of the things I love seeing when you post about it on Instagram is the outreach work that you do when you go to a park with your telescopes and you blow people's minds. All right, tell me about that, because I love that. Sure. So I started in astronomy in 2010 by accident. I was leaving work, and at the time my mental health wasn't great. I was in a kind of a bad place. My marriage was kind of falling apart, and I was just doing work home, work home, and I really felt like I needed an outlet. It just so happened that I was walking through Central Park, and I saw folks setting up telescopes in sheet metal. And I hung around because I was just, you know, being nosy, honestly, but I really wanted to see what was going on. And the folks that I met that night were super nice and super accommodating, and answered my million and one questions. And I ended up joining that club, and that was the Amateur Astronomers Association. So fast forward 14 years. I have been with them doing sidewalk astronomy throughout the five boroughs of New York. So basically what that constitutes is I take one of my telescopes, I go outside, I pop it down, and anyone that's walking past can have a free look at whatever we're looking at. So if we're looking at the moon, if we're looking at Jupiter, if we're looking at Saturn, if we're looking at the Orion Nebula, some of the larger, brighter objects in New York City, because I'm sure your listeners are going to say, "Well, you can't do stargazing in New York City." And yes, you can. It's not impossible. It's just challenging. If you aim at the brighter objects and the larger objects, you'll be able to see plenty. But all that said, what we try to do, and what I try to do is anyone that just happens to be passing by can experience this in a New York minute, this wonder of the universe, whether it is we're looking at the rings of Saturn, or maybe we're looking at Epsilon Lyrae, and we're seeing double stars, quadruple stars, really. We want to give that to people. And it's just a fun, safe activity that everyone can enjoy. And what's awesome about astronomy in general, especially if you're just doing observational astronomy, regardless of where you are in life, whether you're doing well for yourself or things are just not going that great, everyone is equal when they're looking through a telescope. Everyone has that sense of awe. Everyone has that sense of wonder. The playing field is so level for everyone in that moment. And I think there's something beautiful about that, because we can all revel in the beauty of whatever it is we're looking at through the telescope. And then we can also appreciate how things are around us in a small way, because of how small and insignificant we are overall. Tell me about those times when you've blown people's minds. I'm sure people who maybe are walking home from work or kids just out and about, not expecting to see, especially in the middle of New York, where it's not as easy to see things. Tell me about that. I don't know which part is more satisfying, the part where people look through and they see it and they're just like, wow, like their minds are blown. Or the part where sometimes people have a hard time kind of looking through the eyepiece. Maybe their head is angled wrong or they're just looking with their eye in the wrong direction. And then they finally see it and they have that aha moment. And then it's the shock and awe. It's just like, oh my goodness, this is incredible. Or sometimes my favorite, of course, is when you get an expletive and they're just like, holy crap. That's I always mentally tally those because when I get one of those, I feel super accomplished because then it's like, okay, I know that I really blew your mind. It's a genuine reaction. Yes, it is. It is such a genuine reaction. And so I almost envy them in a sense because I miss that first time of like, wow, like I'm seeing this for the first time. So it's like, man, I wish I could be you in this moment. Like I wish I could see this for the first time again. But I love that I'm able to give that to people. So I'm kind of experiencing it through them. It's sort of like, you know, living vicariously over and over and over again, which is nice. And you know, and it's it's really fun to sometimes set up one of my favorite places to set up to be honest is outside of a train station or out or like right at a bus stop because you're going to always have somebody who's coming and going who may not expect it. And if they're willing to stop for a few minutes, they are more than welcome to look through. Sometimes people will look through, they'll leave, and then they'll come back with more people. So like look through the telescope again. And I'm totally fine with that. I love that. But it's those unexpected moments of, you know, you just trying to get home from work or, you know, school or whatever. And seeing this telescope being curious, but not really knowing how to approach the one of the questions I always get, is it free? Of course, it's free. Everything we do with Sidewalk Astronomy in New York City is free, by the way, I just want to point that out. It's all volunteer, operated and run. And so we all take our time to just go outside with telescopes and give this to people all over the five boroughs. So that said, I love letting people experience that for the first time. And then it's just something that, you know, might break, that might make the difference in someone's day, honestly, because you don't know what's going on in someone's life. Yeah. It's not easy impressing New Yorker either. Yeah. We're not easily impressed. We are not easily shocked. No. So that to me, the fact that people are coming back, I'm like, that just tells you so much right there. He also said something I think is so interesting about seeing stuff for the first time. And I wonder if that feeling is sort of like why a lot of astronomers sort of chase that maybe through their career to find like a new thing for the first time. I imagine it would be. Yeah. I mean, it's you have some folks that are always looking for the next thing. And then you have a lot of folks that are happy to return to different objects to study them better. I kind of fall more on that. I fall more in the in the ladder portion of that. I don't, if I find something new or if I happen to see something new, that's great. But I'm not, I'm not chasing, I'm not chasing things down. I'm always happy to return to, you know, the same thing I've looked at over and over and over again, because you're always going to notice little things here and there are different. So the moon is a good example of this. As the moon waxes and wanes, you're able to see better crater definition throughout the month. And you can't possibly look at all of the craters all at once. So every night for months at a time, you could look at individual craters and study them as the light moves across the moon. And so I think that, I think that that's something that I probably, I would definitely say I'm not really looking for the next thing. I'm always coming back to the same things and seeing things in a different light. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. And today we're diving into the world of Lego, not that you have to twist my arm, I'll happily go there, where some seriously cool space themed sets are vying to be made into reality. The Lego Ideas Platform has just unveiled three amazing user submissions. One's a lunar landscape, another's a space projection telescope, and another one is a Voyager 1 pale blue dot set. Each of these builds captures the imagination, blending the thrill of exploration with the creativity of Lego and, trust me, even if you're not a brickhead like I am, you're still going to want to hear about these. Okay, so first up, let's talk about the lunar landscape. Imagine a Lego model that captures the eerie beauty of the moon's surface, complete with astronauts and a lunar module. This set is perfect for anyone who dreams of standing on the moon or just wants a mini-moon for their desk or their wall. And then there's the space projection telescope, which actually lets you project stars and planets on your ceiling. So it's both a brick build and a functional display. Now that is a clever use of bricks. Now finally, to me, the star of the show is Voyager 1's pale blue dot. And this set immortalizes that iconic moment when Voyager 1 turned back towards the Earth to capture the farthest image ever taken of our planet, that tiny blue speck in the vastness of space. Imagine building that moment in Lego form, honestly. It's more than just a set, it's a tribute to humanity's journey into the cosmos. So should these sets become reality? I think you know what I think, absolutely yes. But of course, it's up to the fans to vote and bring these space wonders to life. So if you agree with me and would like to see these sets become reality, find out more about placing your vote by following the link in our show notes. And that's it for T-minus for September 30th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. You could also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K Cyberwire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector, from the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. N2K makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your teams smarter. Learn how at N2K.com. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karpf. Simone Battrella is our president, Peter Kilpey is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]