Month: January 2024

Cape Canaveral, Florida — The first U.S. lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed toward the moon Monday, launching private companies on a space race to make deliveries for NASA and other customers.

Astrobotic Technology’s lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. The Vulcan streaked through the Florida predawn sky, putting the spacecraft on a roundabout route to the moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on Feb. 23.

The Pittsburgh company aims to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished. But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly, and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.

“First to launch. First to land is TBD” — to be determined, said Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton.

NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers.

Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.

The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972.

Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, closing out an era that has remained NASA’s pinnacle.

The space agency’s new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years.

First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly before the end of the year.

Highlighting Monday’s moonshot was the long-delayed initial test flight of the Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The 61-meter rocket is essentially an upgraded version of ULA’s hugely successful workhorse Atlas V, which is being phased out along with the company’s Delta IV. Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, provided the Vulcan’s two main engines.

The Soviet Union and the U.S. racked up a string of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting touchdowns on pause. China joined the elite club in 2013 and India in 2023. But last year also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the moon. An Israeli nonprofit crashed in 2019.

Next month, SpaceX will provide the lift for a lander from Intuitive Machines. The Nova-C lander’s more direct one-week route could see both spacecraft attempting to land within days or even hours of one another.

The hourlong descent to the lunar surface — by far the biggest challenge — will be “exciting, nail-biting, terrifying all at once,” said Thornton.

Besides flying experiments for NASA, Astrobotic drummed up its own freight business, packing the 1.9-meter-tall Peregrine lander with everything from a chip of rock from Mount Everest and toy-size cars from Mexico that will catapult to the lunar surface and cruise around, to the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

The Navajo Nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the human remains, saying it would be a “profound desecration” of a celestial body revered by Native Americans.

Thornton said the December objections came too late but promised to try to find “a good path forward” with the Navajo for future missions.

One of the spaceflight memorial companies that bought room on the lander, Celestis, said in a statement that no single culture or religion owns the moon and should not be able to veto a mission.

More remains are on the rocket’s upper stage, which, once free of the lander, will indefinitely circle the sun as far out as Mars.

Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1.2 million per kilogram, not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even. But for this first flight, that’s not the point, according to Thornton.

“A lot of people’s dreams and hopes are riding on this,” he said.
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Cape Canaveral, Florida — The first American spacecraft to attempt to land on the Moon in more than half a century is poised to blast off early Monday — but this time, private industry is leading the charge.  

A brand-new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, should lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:18 a.m. (7:18 GMT) for its maiden voyage, carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander. The weather so far appears favorable.

If all goes to plan, Peregrine will touch down on a mid-latitude region of the Moon called Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, on February 23.

“Leading America back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since Apollo is a momentous honor,” Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s CEO John Thornton said ahead of the launch.

Until now, a soft landing on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor has only been accomplished by a handful of national space agencies: the Soviet Union was first, in 1966, followed by the United States, which is still the only country to put people on the Moon.  

China has successfully landed three times over the past decade, while India was the most recent to achieve the feat on its second attempt, last year.

Now, the United States is turning to the commercial sector to stimulate a broader lunar economy and ship its own hardware at a fraction of the cost, under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

A challenging task  

The space agency has paid Astrobotic more than $100 million for the task, while another contracted company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, is looking to launch in February and land near the south pole.

“We think that it’s going to allow… more cost effective and more rapidly accomplished trips to the lunar surface to prepare for Artemis,” said NASA’s Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration.

Artemis is the NASA-led program to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade, in preparation for future missions to Mars.

Controlled touchdown on the Moon is a challenging undertaking, with roughly half of all attempts ending in failure. Absent an atmosphere that would allow the use of parachutes, a spacecraft must navigate through treacherous terrain using only its thrusters to slow descent.

Private missions by Israel and Japan, as well as a recent attempt by the Russian space agency have all ended in failure — though the Japanese Space Agency is targeting mid-January for the touchdown of its SLIM lander launched last September.

Making matters more fraught is the fact it is the first launch for ULA’s Vulcan, although the company boasts it has a 100 percent success rate in its more than 150 prior launches.

ULA’s new rocket is planned to have reusable first stage booster engines, which the company, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, expects will help it achieve cost savings.

Science instruments, human remains

On board Peregrine are a suite of scientific instruments that will probe radiation and surface composition, helping to pave the way for the return of astronauts.

But it also contains more colorful cargo, including a shoebox-sized rover built by Carnegie Mellon University, a physical Bitcoin, and, somewhat controversially, cremated remains and DNA, including those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, legendary sci-fi author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke, and a dog.

The Navajo Nation, America’s largest Indigenous tribe, has said sending these to the Moon desecrates a body that is sacred to their culture and have pleaded for the cargo’s removal. Though they were granted a last-ditch meeting with the White House, NASA and other officials, their objections have been ignored.  

The Vulcan rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the Sun after it deploys the lander, is meanwhile carrying more late cast members of Star Trek, as well as hair samples of presidents George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.  
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New Delhi — India has achieved another milestone in space exploration by successfully placing a spacecraft in an orbit from which it will study the sun for five years.

India joined a select group of nations already studying the sun four months after it became the first country to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon’s southern polar region, cementing its reputation as a nation that is emerging on the frontlines of space exploration.

The Indian Space Research Organization said that the space observatory, Aditya L-1, reached the position from which it can monitor the sun’s outer layer and send data back to Earth on Saturday. The spacecraft, which was launched September 2, took four months to reach its destination.

“The orbit of Aditya-L1 spacecraft is a periodic Halo orbit which is located roughly 1.5 million km [kilometers] from earth,” according to an ISRO statement.

Aditya-L1 is named after the Hindu god of the sun, called Aditya in Sanskrit. “L1” refers to Lagrange point 1, the location in space between the sun and Earth, where the satellite has been parked.

“This demonstrates India’s capability to travel over a million kilometers away from the Earth’s orbit. It is a capability that very few countries have and India is the first in Asia to do so,” according to Chaitanya Giri, associate professor of environmental sciences at Flame University in Pune. “The ability to maintain deep space communication with a spacecraft that has traveled so far and sustain a mission for a long period is also significant.”

The Indian mission is scheduled to study the sun for five years. The “Lagrange 1” point, where the spacecraft has been positioned provides an uninterrupted view of the sun, even during eclipses.

The major focus of the mission is to gain a better understanding of space weather, variations in the environment in space between the Earth and the sun, which is crucial for protecting satellites and other spacecraft, according to space scientists.

“It is vital to understand space weather at a time when there are thousands of satellites in space,” Ajay Lele, space scientist and former senior fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, said.

“Space weather is about disturbances that happen on the sun such as solar winds, solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These three components need to be studied,” he said.

Aditya-L1 is expected to be able to give warnings about space storms that can have an impact on Earth, occasionally affecting the operation of satellites and radio communications.

The spacecraft is equipped with seven scientific instruments to study solar wind particles and magnetic fields.

Solar observatory missions have been launched so far by the U.S. space agency NASA, the European space agency, Japan and China.

India’s space program, which began in the 1960s, has gained prominence under Prime Minister Narendra Modi — it is seen as part of his efforts to promote India’s global stature.

“India creates yet another landmark. It is a testament to the relentless dedication of our scientists in realizing among the most complex and intricate space missions,” Modi said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday.

Other major missions planned by the Indian space agency include a manned mission to space that is due to be launched this year and an interplanetary mission to Mars.

Besides scientific space explorations such as these, India is also looking to enhance its military capabilities in space, according to experts. The first signal that it is giving a military profile to its space program came in 2019 when it conducted an anti-satellite weapon test to demonstrate that it could shoot down satellites in space — a capability that only the United States, China and Russia have.

India has plans to develop 50 new satellites based on artificial intelligence technology in the next five years to beef up the country’s border surveillance and enhance its “geo-intelligence” capabilities, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman S. Somanath said last month.

Enhancing surveillance capabilities from space from a military perspective is key for India, according to experts. Its concerns center both on its Himalayan borders with China, where disputed borders between the two have sparked military tensions, and on the Indian Ocean region, where China has been increasing its influence.
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LONDON — U.K. police have opened a fraud investigation into Britain’s Post Office over a miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused of stealing money when a faulty computer system was to blame.

The Metropolitan Police force said late Friday that it is investigating “potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions,” relating to money the Post Office received “as a result of prosecutions or civil actions” against accused postal workers.

Police also are investigating potential offenses of perjury and perverting the course of justice over investigations and prosecutions carried out by the Post Office.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 post office branch managers were accused of theft or fraud because computers wrongly showed that money was missing. Many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the company, and some were convicted and sent to prison. Several killed themselves.

The real culprit was a defective computer accounting system called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, that was installed in local Post Office branches in 1999.

The Post Office maintained for years that data from Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty when the system showed money was missing.

After years of campaigning by victims and their lawyers, the Court of Appeal quashed 39 of the convictions in 2021. A judge said the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of Horizon and had committed “egregious” failures of investigation and disclosure.

A total of 93 of the postal workers have now had their convictions overturned, according to the Post Office. But many others have yet to be exonerated, and only 30 have agreed to “full and final” compensation payments. A public inquiry into the scandal has been underway since 2022.

So far, no one from the publicly owned Post Office or other companies involved has been arrested or faced criminal charges.

Lee Castleton, a former branch manager who went bankrupt after being pursued by the Post Office for missing funds, said his family was ostracized in their hometown of Bridlington in northern England. He said his daughter was bullied because people thought “her father was a thief, and he’d take money from old people.”

He said victims wanted those responsible to be named.

“It’s about accountability,” Castleton told Times Radio on Saturday. “Let’s see who made those decisions and made this happen.”

The long-simmering scandal stirred new outrage with the broadcast this week of a TV docudrama, Mr. Bates vs the Post Office. It charted a two-decade battle by branch manager Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, to expose the truth and clear the wronged postal workers.

Post Office Chief Executive Nick Read, appointed after the scandal, welcomed the TV series and said he hoped it would “raise further awareness and encourage anyone affected who has not yet come forward to seek the redress and compensation they deserve.”

A lawyer for some of the postal workers said 50 new potential victims had approached lawyers since the show aired on the ITV network.

“The drama has elevated public awareness to a whole new level,” attorney Neil Hudgell said. “The British public and their overwhelming sympathy for the plight of these poor people has given some the strength to finally come forward. Those numbers increase by the day, but there are so many more out there.”
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