Main Engine Cut Off

I’ve also heard from a few different places that ahead of this launch, they’re taking some time to knock off a few other items from their to-do list. Let’s hope all goes well and they can get into smooth operations for 2019.

“The Cygnus spacecraft’s BT-4 main engine, supplied by IHI Aerospace of Japan, fired for 50 seconds Tuesday. The engine produces around 100 pounds of thrust, and the maneuver raised the orbit of the roughly 450-ton space station by 295 feet (90 meters).”

The entire Russian space industry is crumbling, from engine sales to launches, so they’d be thrilled to continue selling us the unused Soyuz seat for the next few years for $80+ million (instead of a fraction of that for a tourist).

The total firing duration was about two Shuttle flights to orbit, so total duration isn’t the surprising thing here—it’s the fact that they could turn the engine around quick enough to pull this off. We’ll see where this goes from here, but I don’t have high hopes.

Dawn is now in its final orbit at Ceres, and it has a shockingly-low periapsis of 35 kilometers. For some perspective, SpaceShipTwo’s most recent flight achieved a peak altitude of 34.9 kilometers.

I’ve heard that they did lose a day due to weather last week, and have been working around some since, but this is at least somewhat encouraging. I’ve also heard a lot of skepticism about the vehicle that is supposed to be attached to this engine, but I guess we’ll see soon.

My long-term gut feeling: we’ll one day look at life in the solar system the way we do water and geologic activity today. We used to think just about everywhere but Earth was barren and static, and we’re constantly surprised whenever we go somewhere.

Yowza. They’ll need to get an additional $800 million approved by Congress, and the launch is now set for about a year from the estimated retirement date of Ariane 5.

The HYDROS-C propulsion unit is tiny—just 1U in size. NASA also has a nice video up showing PTD-1 in action.

Just in time for opposition, when we take out our telescopes and try to get a glimpse of some surface detail. Hoping it clears up for us —and Opportunity—by mid-July.