Dear readers,
Welcome to Quartz’s Extraterrestrial Economic Opportunities newsletter. Please forward widely and let me know what you think. This week: We’re expecting a moon launch, the Falcon Heavy earns another payload, and what’s really going on behind these James Webb Space Telescope images.
After 18 years of work, NASA is finally ready to demonstrate how it will take the next group of humans to the lunar surface. The US space agency plans to launch an unmanned mission into orbit around the moon as soon as August 29.
The launch, known as Artemis 1, will kick off a multi-year campaign to explore the moon. Although much is known about Earth’s nearest neighbor, the Apollo visits in the 1970s avoided the most interesting places for safety reasons. Since then, robotic exploration has identified water ice on the moon, which could allow for longer stays and more science there.
Artemis 1 will be the first launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, among the most powerful vehicles ever built, carrying the Orion spacecraft. After leaving the planet, the Orion spacecraft (with test dummies Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos on board) will autonomously orbit the Moon, demonstrating its ability to carry humans safely into deep space – and back.
The most important goal, according to Mike Sarafin, NASA’s executive director in charge of the mission, will be to test the heat shield built by Lockheed Martin that protects Orion as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. Returning from the moon, the vehicle would be traveling at 24,500 miles per hour, or about 32 times the speed of sound, and hitting the atmosphere at that speed would generate about half the heat of the sun. There is no way to replicate these conditions on Earth.
The four- to six-week mission is also expected to demonstrate that the launch vehicle and spacecraft are performing well overall and that the environment of deep space, especially with its higher levels of cosmic radiation, will not affect Orion. It’s also a chance for the agency to practice recovering the spacecraft after a fall and launch some additional science payloads. If all goes according to plan, it will make a manned lunar orbit, perhaps in 2025.
Speaker Warning: Launch dates tend to change, especially during Florida’s hurricane season. Still, the fact that NASA is moving toward specific dates at all is an important step after SLS launch rehearsals ran into more problems than expected. The success of this mission will be a step towards realizing NASA’s still amorphous plans for the Moon.
This hardly means that everything is going fast. This week we heard bad news about two companies that have been hired by NASA to send scientific payloads to the surface of the moon before humans arrive.
NASA’s VIPER rover, originally expected to take off on a mission managed by the company Astrobotic next year, has now been delayed until 2024. The space agency will pay the company an additional $70 million to conduct more tests on its lander. to make sure it works when the chips are down. This concern is not a good sign, but additional tests are not unusual when NASA hires a private company as a service provider – we saw similar actions with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
Meanwhile, Masten Space, another firm with a contract for NASA’s lander, appears to be on the brink of failure after putting employees on furlough while unsuccessfully looking for new investors. Parabolic Arc reports that the company was shortlisted by NASA because executives thought the mission could also carry a private payload, but the intended customers apparently backed out. It is not yet clear what will happen to Masten or his mission in 2023.
Still, there are eight other companies contracted for these missions, with Astrobotic’s first mission still planned for later this year. The reality is that NASA chose this model — hiring private companies rather than building these rovers themselves — to pursue a riskier, more rewarding approach to exploration. That includes those Commercial Lunar Payload Services missions, as well as the pioneering satellite launched into a unique orbit between the Earth and the Moon last month.
These faster, cheaper missions are helping NASA fill in the gaps in its plans as the agency’s Moon heavy rocket prepares for its first launch. But the real fun is just beginning: Before the first woman or person of color lands on the moon, NASA will need spacesuits and a lander, also built by private companies.
The James Webb Space Telescope has generated some fascinating images, but this one is the most distressing – an analysis that shows the effect of a meteor hitting the telescope’s giant primary mirror. This image shows the expected performance of the mirror on the left and the current results on the right, with a white spot showing the location of the failure.
Image copyright: NASA
Scientists knew that space debris would impact the mirror and there were ways to reconfigure it to minimize problems, but the size of this impact has raised concerns that the telescope’s expected 20-year life could be cut short.
SPACE WASTE
Why not Mars? Relativity Space says it is partnering with Impulse Space (PLEASE the founders stop putting a space in the company name) to launch a private mission to Mars. It’s unclear who will send payloads, but the two can hope to attract scientific customers. Getting to Mars cheaply has long been a dream in commercial space transportation. Can this team make it happen?
Why not Nancy? NASA has awarded a $255 million contract to SpaceX to launch Rome’s Nancy Grace Space Telescope in 2026. This drew some attention because last year SpaceX won a $178 million contract to launch a probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa in 2024 The extra cost could be explained by specific NASA requirements for the mission — or a price increase caused by the lack of other competing rockets capable of flying the large telescope.
What goes into these arresting JWST images. The images we see from space telescopes are actually visualizations of data that are based on a complex combination of science, design and history.
Russia’s erratic space leader is out of a job. Dmitry Rogozin, a key figure in Russia’s space program since 2011, was replaced by lawmaker Yuri Borisov. Known for his wacky rhetoric and penchant for spewing insults, Rogozin may not be missed by his colleagues around the world, but he may be missing his old job, given rumors that he will play a new role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Starlink’s Growing Pains. As SpaceX rushes to add subscribers to Starlink thanks to its new approval for mobile users, home users are complaining of increasing network congestion during peak hours — perhaps growing pains in the still-unfinished network, but it could signal more difficulties to come .
The Pentagon isn’t done investing in space. The US military has approved a $1.3 billion contract to buy 28 prototype satellites to be used for early warning and tracking of hypersonic weapons.
your friend,
Tim
This was issue 143 of our newsletter. We hope your week is out of this world! Please send your Artemis 1 launch predictions, Starlink delay experiences, tips and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.
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