SpaceX is at it again. Love it or hate it, Starlink is growing again. The company is getting ready to launch the next batch of 60 satellites into orbit in just a few days.  The original launch was postponed until after the successful launch of the crew dragon Demo-2 mission for NASA.

 Now that the astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station, SpaceX turns its focus back on Starlink.  This launch, originally planned to launch before the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, now looks promising for a launch this week.

The constellation consists of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit adds up quickly. Each Falcon 9 launch gets packed full of sixty Starlink satellites. 60 satellites neatly fit in both size and mass limitations of the Falcon 9’s reusable configuration.  Elon’s company delivered more than 420 satellites into orbit to date. 
SpaceX now plans to loft the next batch into space Wednesday around 9:25 p.m. EDT.  Visitors at the Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad should be able to witness the launch so long as the weather holds out… and the weather is looking promising.   

According to a report from a CBS affiliate in Wichita Falls, Tex.,  Texas Governor Greg Abbott told a local television reporter he had the opportunity to talk to Elon Musk and he’s genuinely interested in Texas and genuinely frustrated with California. 

Tesla stopped making cars at its Fremont plant on March 23.  Elon Musk shared frequently his views that the state and local restrictions aimed at mitigating the spread of the coronavirus were actually not in the best interest of California, the people of California, and not Tesla either. 

Why is Tesla Fremont important?

Looking back in history, the GM automotive assembly plant in South Fremont used to be the town’s largest employer.  In the 1980s, the plant became a joint venture automotive assembly plant of Toyota and GM, and renamed NUMMI becoming one of the most effective small car factories for GM. In early 2010, NUMMI came to an end and closed. Enter TESLA to rescue Fremont.  Tesla acquired part of the plant and in June 2010 by Elon Musk earmarked it as Tesla’s primary production plant.  By 2017, Tesla was the largest employer in Fremont with roughly 10,000 employees.

New spacecraft experience setbacks all the time. SpaceX Starship prototype violently disassembled several times. Boeing launched the CST-100 but ended up in the wrong orbit. China isn’t a stranger to setbacks either.

China tested a prototype spacecraft on May 5th, 2020 in efforts to prove the technology was ready. It’s good it was a test and not an actual mission since the spacecraft did not perform as expected. The news agency Xinhua reported the spacecraft launched from Hainan China, operated abnormally during its return.  

Heat Shields Need to work or expect a terrible day.

Spacecraft experience tremendous heat during the last minutes of their mission. The heat shield protects the spacecraft from that heat. NASA looked at lots of materials and tested many before using for heat shields. 

You may have heard of the expression, May the 4th be with you. If you don’t already know, May the 4th is unofficially Star Wars Day. The date was chosen for the play on words on the classic catchphrase from the movies. “May the Force be with you” and “May the Fourth be with you”.   

The pop culture fan base for Star Wars embraced the May 4th date and popularized it. Lucasfilm and later Disney could not have a better day to advertise Star Wars stuff. This is a testament to the many Star Wars fans across the world who have chosen to celebrate the holiday. Lucasfilm and parent company Disney now also wisely have embraced the date as an annual celebration of Star Wars. 

So you might be a die-hard Star Wars fan, or maybe you enjoy the movie. If you don’t like Star Wars, well, not sure why you are reading. Maybe you have a loved one and you are trying to figure out what to do with them on this very important day to them. So we are going to go on the assumption that you know at least a little something about Star Wars.

Alright, to the Coruscant of the article.  (Hey, it is a Star Wars article after all!)

One of the three companies NASA announced today will land the next NASA astronauts on the Moon. NASA awarded three firm-fixed-price, milestone-based contracts for the human landing system awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2. The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for the 10-month base period. 

 NASA downselected from the five companies in the running to only three.  

The contenders for the Moon mission contract.

NASA released the Human Landing System (HLS) solicitation on October 25, 2019. Five companies submitted proposals by the required due date of November 5, 2019. Listed below in alphabetical order: 

In 2018, The Federal Communications Commission granted SpaceX approval to launch up to 4,425 low-Earth-orbit satellites at several different altitudes between 1,110km to 1,325km. The following year, the FCC approved a license modification to cut the orbital altitude in half for 1,584 of those satellites. The lower altitude for the Starlink satellites reduces the latency of the Starlink. Yeah initial Starlink will be nearly the mass of the ISS.

No, it’s not a high budget Mission Impossible action movie, but it could have been. Tom Cruise wasn’t piloting a helicopter that grabbed a rocket falling back to the Earth. Instead, a crew wearing black Rocket Lab t-shirts with the words “recovery team” written on the back took the skies in helicopters to grab a falling rocket. Since it wasn’t Tom Cruise, the video of the team grabbing a rocket midflight ranked higher on the awesome scale.

Daring capture of Booster

A few weeks ago, Rocket Lab took a major step forward to recover boosters. In a recent release to media, Rocket Lab shared videos successfully grabbing a parachute & test booster out of the sky using a helicopter. On the first try, the helicopter grabbed the first stage test article with a grappling hook.

There are intrinsic risks with helicopters. Recently SpaceX lost a test article when it became necessary to prematurely drop a Crew Dragon test article. However, Rocket Lab did better in the Electron parachute tests. The success marks another step closer for the company in recovering the boosters it uses to launch small payloads into low earth orbit.

Russia seems to see the writing on the wall. No longer can disposable rockets win business for the Russian Space Industry. NASA put an end to the ongoing launches of astronauts into space with the development of domestic. The Russian space industry plans on maintaining or growing market share.

“In 2020, 33 launches are planned, of which 12 launches of satellites under the Federal Space Program, nine launches of commercial vehicles, three from the Guiana Space Center,”

Dmitry Rogozin the head of Roscosmos.

According to https://tass.ru/, Russia is planning on completing 30 commercial launches in 2020. To compete in the international market, Roscosmos announced the cost of launch services will be reduced by more than 30%. The allegation is that American companies are price dumping. With the emergence of SpaceX into the launch sector and other new space companies, the launch vehicle options increased greatly. SpaceX specifically has captured a lot of commercial launch contracts with the partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has proven the booster reuse capability up to five times and disclosed that the reusability is much greater.

Dmitry Rogozin’s claim of American companies engaging in price dumping may not be a valid comparison. American companies diversified the supply. New innovative rockets have been designed, built and launched by American companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab. 

From the US territory Guam, sightings came in of a fireball falling from the sky. The strategic location of Guam and the U.S. military stationed there has drawn attention for years. Guam thrust into the limelight during heightened tensions with North Korea. In August 2017, North Korea launched missiles that flew over Japan and into the northern Pacific Ocean in an apparent attempt to threaten the US territory of Guam. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not follow up on his threats, but a fireball came crashing down from a different source. 

Local officials quickly released an announcement indicating the Chinese Long March Launch as a likely source of the fireball. Indeed, an Indonesia satellite launched on a Chinese rocket came crashing back to Earth. The satellite failed to reach orbit. The failure of the new communications satellite for Indonesia to reach orbit marked the second failure for china’s space agency in less than a month, state media reported April 9. 

It is unlike the Chinese Long March 3, workhorse of the Chinese launch industry, series rocket to fall.    According to the Xinhua News Agency, the rocket lifted off at 7:46 p.m local time from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the Sichuan province. The rocket traveled according to plan during the first and second stages. The Rocket third stage experienced abnormal conditions.

The ESA probe BepiColombo flew past Earth on the way to Mercury. The probe launched in 2018 and made the last visit of our home before continuing onward to the final destination. The spacecraft needs to shed velocity to arrive at Mercury in 2025 at a velocity to enter orbit. The spacecraft will make multiple additional planetary flybys of Venus and Mercury to slow down to enter orbit.

In space travel, mission planners need to balance mission resources. The amount of fuel required to either speed up or slow down a spacecraft greatly impacts the cost of the mission. Using a longer flight path can reduce the propellent requirements for a mission but the mission will take longer. Gravity assists can, therefore, allow a spacecraft to be launched on a cheaper, less powerful rocket.

Gravity assist flyby?

A Gravity assist flyby has other names including a gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver, or swing-by. Gravity assistance maneuvers increase or decrease its speed or redirect the orbital path. The spacecraft slingshots around another object with a gravitational field and transfers some of the energy during that slingshot. In the case of BepiColombo, the spacecraft needs to slow down to be captured by Mercury…