Short Takes – 8-15-24 – Space Geek Edition

US space industry struggles with ‘constitutional crisis’ in quest to bring shipments back to Earth. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: “As the battle to determine who is in charge of regulating the industry continues, Varda is landing further afield: at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia, which offers vast, flat plains like Utah’s as well as an easier reentry environment. From there, company capsules will commute back across the Pacific by freighter.”

NASA Says It Needs to Decide Soon How Starliner Astronauts Will Come Home. NYTimes.com article. Pull quote: “At a meeting last week, people working on the Starliner mission did not reach a consensus about whether the astronauts should return on Starliner. Russ DeLoach, the chief of safety and mission assurance at NASA, said the conflicting opinions did not necessarily reflect strong dissent.”

Engineers conduct first in-orbit test of 'swarm' satellite autonomous navigation. ScienceDaily.com article. Pull quote: “StarFOX employs the Space Rendezvous Lab's angles-only Absolute and Relative Trajectory Measurement System -- ARTMS, for short -- which integrates three new space robotics algorithms. An Image Processing algorithm detects and tracks multiple targets in images and computes target-bearing angles -- the angles at which objects, including space debris, are moving toward or away from each other. The Batch Orbit Determination algorithm then estimates each satellite's coarse orbit from these angles. Last but not least, the Sequential Orbit Determination algorithm refines swarm trajectories with the processing of new images through time to potentially feed autonomous guidance, control, and collision avoidance algorithms onboard.”

SpaceX announces first human mission to ever fly over the planet’s poles. ArsTechnica.com article. Pull quote: “The "Fram2" mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX's launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three- to five-day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.”

FAA postpones hearings on Starship environmental review. SpaceNews.com article. Pull quote: “The FAA’s announcement that it was postponing the public hearings coincided with a report by CNBC Aug. 12 that regulators had concluded that SpaceX was discharging industrial wastewater at Starbase without a permit. Those discharges were linked to the deluge system installed on the Starship launch pad after the vehicle’s first flight in April 2023 caused significant damage to the pad.”