The Latest Update on Mobile Launcher 2 for the Next Variant of SLS...

Bechtel National Inc. / Allison Sijgers

NASA Kennedy Ground Systems Prepping Hardware for Artemis II, Beyond (News Release - January 17)

Teams with NASA are gaining momentum as work progresses toward future lunar missions for the benefit of humanity as numerous flight hardware shipments from across the world arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first crewed Artemis flight test and follow-on lunar missions. The skyline at Kennedy will soon see added structures as teams build up the ground systems needed to support them.

Crews are well underway with parallel preparations for the Artemis II flight, as well as buildup of NASA’s Mobile Launcher 2 tower for use during the launch of the SLS (Space Launch System) Block 1B rocket, beginning with the Artemis IV mission. This version of NASA’s rocket will use a more powerful upper stage to launch with crew and more cargo on lunar missions. Technicians have begun upper stage umbilical connections testing that will help supply fuel and other commodities to the rocket while at the launch pad.

In summer 2024, technicians from NASA and contractor Bechtel National, Inc. completed a milestone called jack and set, where the center’s mega-mover, the crawler-transporter, repositioned the initial steel base assembly for Mobile Launcher 2 from temporary construction shoring to its six permanent pedestals near Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building.

“The NASA Bechtel Mobile Launcher 2 team is ahead of schedule and gaining momentum by the day,” stated Darrell Foster, ground systems integration manager, NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program at NASA Kennedy. “In parallel to all of the progress at our main build site, the remaining tower modules are assembled and outfitted at a second construction site on center.”

As construction of the Mobile Launcher 2’s base continues, the assembly operations shift into integration of the modules that will make up the tower. In mid-October 2024, crews completed installation of the chair, named for its resemblance to a giant seat. The chair serves as the interface between the base deck and the vertical modules which are the components that will make up the tower, and stands at 80-feet-tall.

In December 2024, teams completed the rig and set Module 4 operation where the first of a total of seven 40-foot-tall modules was stacked on top of the chair. Bechtel crews rigged the module to a heavy-lift crane, raised the module more than 150-feet, and secured the four corners to the tower chair. Once complete, the entire Mobile Launcher structure will reach a height of nearly 400 feet – approximately the length of four Olympic-sized swimming pools placed end-to-end.

On the opposite side of the center, test teams at the Launch Equipment Test Facility are testing the new umbilical interfaces, which will be located on Mobile Launcher 2, that will be needed to support the new SLS Block 1B Exploration Upper Stage. The umbilicals are connecting lines that provide fuel, oxidizer, pneumatic pressure, instrumentation and electrical connections from the Mobile Launcher to the upper stage and other elements of SLS and NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

“All ambient temperature testing has been successfully completed and the team is now beginning cryogenic testing, where liquid nitrogen and liquid hydrogen will flow through the umbilicals to verify acceptable performance,” stated Kevin Jumper, lab manager, NASA Launch Equipment Test Facility at Kennedy. “The Exploration Upper Stage umbilical team has made significant progress on check-out and verification testing of the Mobile Launcher 2 umbilicals.”

The testing includes extension and retraction of the Exploration Upper Stage umbilical arms that will be installed on Mobile Launcher 2. The test team remotely triggers the umbilical arms to retract, ensuring the ground and flight umbilical plates separate as expected, simulating the operation that will be performed at lift-off.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Bechtel National Inc. / Allison Sijgers


Bechtel National Inc. / Allison Sijgers


Bechtel National Inc. / Allison Sijgers

Quick as a flash!

Teams at Kennedy continue to make progress prepping hardware for #Artemis II and beyond, including umbilical retract testing, seen here! This will be installed on mobile launcher 2 and used at liftoff for Artemis IV and beyond.

More: https://t.co/Dy531VJt33 pic.twitter.com/t0QWKyYp7U

— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) January 17, 2025

The Next SLS Rocket Continues to Take Shape at KSC...

NASA / Frank Michaux

Artemis II SRB Stacking (Photo Release - January 14)

Engineers and technicians with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program transfer the right center center segment with the NASA worm insignia to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, January 14, 2025. The booster segment is shown attached to a lifting beam ahead of integration onto the Mobile Launcher.

The boosters will help support the remaining rocket components and Orion spacecraft during final assembly of the Artemis II Moon rocket and provide more than 75 percent of the total SLS (Space Launch System) thrust during liftoff from NASA Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39B.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Frank Michaux


NASA / Frank Michaux


NASA / Frank Michaux


NASA


NASA

SpaceX Update: IFT-7 Ends in Dramatic Fashion...

SpaceX

Starship's Seventh Flight Test (News Release - January 16)

The first Starship flight test of 2025 flew with ambitious goals: seeking to repeat our previous success of launching and catching the world’s most powerful launch vehicle while putting a redesigned and upgraded Starship through a rigorous set of flight demonstrations.

It served as a reminder that developmental testing, by definition, can be unpredictable.

On its seventh flight test, Starship successfully lifted off from Starbase in Texas at 4:37 p.m. CT on Thursday, January 16. At launch, all 33 Raptor engines powered the Super Heavy booster and Starship on a nominal ascent. Following a successful hot-stage separation, the booster successfully transitioned to its boostback burn, with 12 of the planned 13 Raptor engines relighting, to begin its return to the launch site.

Super Heavy then relit all 13 planned middle ring and center Raptor engines and performed its landing burn, including the engine that did not relight for boostback burn. The landing burn slowed Super Heavy down and maneuvered itself to the launch and catch tower arms, resulting in the second successful catch of a Super Heavy booster.

Following stage separation, the Starship upper stage successfully lit all six Raptor engines and performed its ascent burn to space. Prior to the burn’s completion, telemetry was lost with the vehicle after approximately eight and a half minutes of flight. Initial data indicates that a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Starship flew within its designated launch corridor – as all U.S. launches do to safeguard the public both on the ground, on water and in the air. Any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area. If you believe that you have identified a piece of debris, please do not attempt to handle or retrieve the debris directly.

Instead, please contact your local authorities or the SpaceX Debris Hotline at 1-866-623-0234 or at recovery@spacex.com.

As always, success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary. Data review is already underway as we seek out root cause. We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.

The ship and booster for Starship’s eighth flight test are built and going through prelaunch testing and preparing to fly as we continue a rapid iterative development process to build a fully and rapidly-reusable space transportation system.

Source: SpaceX

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Alex D. - @adavenport354 on X

America's Newest Super Heavy-Lift Rocket Has Successfully Taken Flight!

Blue Origin

Blue Origin’s New Glenn Reaches Orbit (News Release)

New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today's NG-1 mission, accomplishing our primary objective.

New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines ignited on January 16, 2025, at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 UTC) from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The second stage is in its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well. We lost the booster during descent.

“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin. “We knew landing our booster, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”

New Glenn is foundational to advancing our customers’ critical missions as well as our own. The vehicle underpins our efforts to establish sustained human presence on the Moon, harness in-space resources, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low-Earth orbit. Future New Glenn missions will carry the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and Mark 2 crewed lander to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

The program has several vehicles in production and multiple years of orders. Customers include NASA, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile and several telecommunications providers, among others. Blue Origin is certifying New Glenn with the U.S. Space Force for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program to meet emerging national security objectives.

"Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space," said Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President, New Glenn. "We're focused on ramping our launch cadence and manufacturing rates. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous amount of work in making today's success possible, and to our customers and the space community for their continuous support. We felt that immensely today."

Source: Blue Origin

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Blue Origin


Blue Origin - Dave Limp


Blue Origin


Blue Origin


Blue Origin - Dave Limp

The International Space Station Is Set to Receive Another Power Upgrade...

NASA

Redwire Successfully Delivers Fourth Pair of Roll-Out Solar Array Wings for ISS Power (Press Release)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Redwire Corporation (NYSE: RDW), a leader in space infrastructure for the next-generation space economy, announced today the successful delivery of the fourth pair of Roll-Out Solar Array (ROSA) wings for the International Space Station (ISS), also known as the IROSA program. The wings were developed and delivered through a follow-on contract with Boeing, NASA’s prime contractor for ISS operations.

The IROSA wings enhance the space station’s power supply to support critical research and space operations. The fourth pair of wings were developed in partnership with Boeing’s Spectrolab and delivered through a follow-on contract awarded in June 2022. Since 2021, a total of six Redwire-built arrays have been deployed on the ISS, modernizing its critical power supply.

“With eight IROSA wings produced, and six currently deployed and powering the ISS to date, IROSA is a proven technology for powering sustained human activities in space,” said Peter Cannito, Redwire Chairman and CEO. “The technical success of the program paves the way for new opportunities for commercial space stations and sustained power infrastructure on the Moon and beyond.”

The delivery of the most recent set of IROSA wings follows acceptance testing consisting of multiple ambient functional deployments, vibration, and cold and hot temperature deployments. The wings are undergoing flight package integration in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and are slated to launch on an upcoming commercial resupply mission to the ISS.

Each wing provides an additional 20+ kW of power for over 10 years once deployed, and all eight IROSA wings combined will provide more than 160 kW. Since installation on the ISS, the six currently-deployed wings have operated nominally, enabling extended operation of ISS to 2030 and beyond.

Redwire has continued to advance ROSA technology to power other spaceflight platforms and ambitious missions with reliable and stable power solutions for civil, DoD and commercial customers. Redwire is currently building ROSA systems for the Power and Propulsion Element for NASA’s Gateway program, a part of the agency’s Artemis program, and Astrobotic’s Lunar Vertical Solar Array program, which aims to provide sustainable power on the lunar surface. Along with its previous success on the ISS, Redwire’s ROSA technology also powered NASA’s DART spacecraft to impact the asteroid Dimorphos, successfully altering the asteroid’s orbit in September 2022.

Source: Redwire Space

Photos of the City of Angels During the SoCal Firestorms, as Seen from the ISS...

NASA / Don Pettit

Los Angeles at Night During Wildfires (Photo Release - January 10)

City lights illuminate the Los Angeles, California, metropolitan area at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time as the Palisades, Hurst and Eaton wildfires rage around nearby suburbs including Malibu, San Fernando and Pasadena.

The International Space Station was orbiting 258 miles above the southwestern United States at the time of this photograph (above).

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Don Pettit


NASA / Don Pettit

The Latest Update on Launch Preps for the Next SLS Flight...

NASA

Artemis Teams Successfully Test Uninterruptible Power for Mobile Launcher (News Release)

Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) Program, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, successfully tested the new uninterruptible power supply for Mobile Launcher 1 while it’s in Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). This marks the next set of integrated ground systems testing that the EGS teams are conducting to prepare for the Artemis II crewed mission.

During this test, engineers turned off the power to the Mobile Launcher and verified that new batteries, which are located in High Bay 3 of the VAB, did not negatively impact any systems. These batteries provide power to the Mobile Launcher, SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft - and allow teams to safe all systems in the unlikely event the structure loses power while it’s inside the VAB. There are similar batteries that are used for the same purpose at Launch Complex 39B, from which crewed Artemis missions will launch.

The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign, sending NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA

The First Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle That Flew to the Moon Is Back in Cape Canaveral...

NASA

Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Returns to Florida (News Release)

The Artemis I Orion crew module, now known as the Orion Environmental Test Article (ETA), returned to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on December 21, 2024, following an 11-month test campaign at the agency’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.

This is not the first time that the ETA has been at Kennedy. After splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2022, following its journey around the Moon during the Artemis I mission, the spacecraft was transported by truck from Naval Base San Diego in California to Kennedy’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility (MPPF) to be reconfigured from spacecraft to test article and complete a series of crew module functional tests.

Now returned to the spaceport after testing at the Armstrong Test Facility, engineers will begin testing on the ETA in Kennedy’s MPPF to undergo propulsion functional testing, which includes putting the crew module’s twelve reaction control system (RCS) thrusters through a simulated hot fire. RCS thrusters provide control of rotation while in orbit, during re-entry and certain abort scenarios.

Once testing is complete, the ETA will travel down the road to Kennedy’s Space Systems Processing Facility for an acoustic noise demonstration test that will help improve future acoustic testing for NASA and Lockheed Martin, the agency’s primary contractor for Orion. In addition to undergoing further testing at Kennedy, teams will remove hardware from the ETA for reusability studies that could impact future Artemis missions. With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars.

Source: NASA.Gov

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America's Newest Super Heavy-Lift Rocket Is Set to Fly by this Weekend...

Blue Origin

New Glenn Launch Targeting No Earlier Than January 10 (News Release)

New Glenn’s inaugural mission (NG-1) is targeting no earlier than Friday, January 10, from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The three-hour launch window opens at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC). NG-1 is our first National Security Space Launch certification flight.

The payload is our Blue Ring Pathfinder. It will test Blue Ring’s core flight, ground systems and operational capabilities as part of the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Orbital Logistics prototype effort.

Our key objective is to reach orbit safely. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious—but we’re going for it.

“This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” said Jarrett Jones, SVP, New Glenn. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”

Source: Blue Origin

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Blue Origin - Dave Limp

Photos of the Day: A Mini Mega-Moon Rocket...

Richard T. Par

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Just thought I'd share these images that I took of the LEGO® Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that I got as a Christmas gift by one of my siblings last week.

This Artemis 1 LEGO set contains 3,601 pieces...and took me about a day-and-a-half to complete. By comparison, the LEGO Perseverance Mars rover that my sibling got me for Christmas a year ago contains over 1,100 pieces—but took me two full days to finish, I believe. (I never built LEGO sets of such complexity when I was a kid!)

Just like with LEGO Percy (and Ginny, as in the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter), I ordered an acrylic case online to put the SLS rocket in for posterity. The case should be delivered to my home by the end of next month.

I'll take more photos of the LEGO SLS once it's finally enshrouded by its glass case. Have a wonderful 2025!


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par