Thanks, but why don't posters of info vids as this provide the transcript themselves, as I do? Convert to Html here for free. Thanks and glory be to God in Christ for all helps for good helpful purposes (which I hope this is to some).
Space News Update
While I have some new information for you about the New Glenn Blue Origin launch that failed to deliver the customer payload, we’re also learning about a space suit crisis that NASA is facing. And SpaceX made an unusual announcement in the middle of the night about one of their drone ships. So, let’s talk about it.
First and foremost, Blue Origin was getting a lot of heat from people saying, “Why are you guys just celebrating the successful landing and partial reuse of your booster when you should be talking about the fact that, you know, the primary focus of the mission to deliver this AS space mobile satellite was not completed?” It had been well over 24 hours before we finally heard a statement from Blue Origin. They released a statement a few hours after the launch, but Dave Lim finally wrote a statement on X, and this is what he had to say. Perhaps his delay in giving us more information was to get a more complete picture because he writes, “Now that we have a more complete view, we wanted to provide an update on our NG3 mission.
While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted and our team expects. Early data suggests that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit. Blue Origin is leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight to learn from the data and implement the improvements needed to quickly return to flight operations. We have been in steady communication with the team at A Space Mobile, and we appreciate their partnership, and we’re looking forward to many flights together.”
To which a lot of people responded in the comments, “Thanks for the update, but can you please give us an update on the status and planned de-orbit of the upper stage?” writes Joe Tagmire and many others. We have not heard anything from Blue Origin about that, but luckily Jonathan McDow has been attempting to track that as well. So that upper stage will re-enter and break up. Astronomer Jonathan McDow has been trying to track where exactly Bluebird 7 is going to re-enter. Apparently, there was a video shared over the Maldes claiming that it was the upper stage re-entering. But Space Force says this time was 25 minutes too early to be Bluebird 7. But on Monday, Space Force did issue a decay notice for Bluebird 7, saying that it had re-entered on April 20th with no further details.
So, it wasn’t just that the customer payload wasn’t delivered. The satellite was lost, but of course, that upper stage still had to come back down to Earth. Early this morning on Tuesday, SpaceX shared a video of just another Falcon 9 landing on a drone ship. This one is just “Read the Instructions,” but they announced that this is the last planned Falcon mission for this drone ship. They wrote, after 156 successful Falcon 9 landings, “Read the Instructions” will be fully dedicated to support Starship operations going forward. Now, a lot of people are speculating that this will be for transportation to the Cape, particularly because Starship doesn’t have landing legs, but it was a pretty big announcement kind of dropped in the middle of the night. So, I wanted to share it with you guys. This is public, and your personal data shouldn’t be.
And finally, let’s talk about a NASA Office of Inspector General report that just dropped, talking about a space suit crisis. Just yesterday, NASA shared this video. When astronauts venture outside the International Space Station or ISS, their lives depend on space suits designed over half a century ago. NASA has yet to complete a flight-ready replacement space suit for ISS spacewalks or finish the suits that will allow humans to return to the moon during the Artemis campaign. Our latest report examined the agency’s progress and whether its acquisition approach is delivering results.
In 2022, NASA awarded exploration extra vehicular activity services contracts currently worth up to $3.1 billion to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace. Through these firm fixed-price contracts, NASA will essentially rent the space suits from its providers following an initial demonstration. However, in 2024, NASA and Collins mutually agreed to remove the company’s task orders due to schedule challenges. Today, the agency continues to face delays and remains solely reliant on Axiom to develop both suits. We found that the original demonstration schedules were overly optimistic and unrealistic. In fact, both suits are at least a year and a half behind schedule. While firm fixed-price service-based contracts are effective for certain procurements, in this case, we determined that NASA’s approach introduced additional risks. Although NASA is taking proactive steps to enable Axiom’s success, it may be forced to significantly adjust the Artemis timeline if Axiom cannot meet the agency’s needs.
NASA could allow other contractors to submit proposals at any time, but agency officials do not believe this would help achieve their immediate goals. We made two recommendations to improve NASA’s management of this effort, ensuring astronauts can safely perform spacewalks, return to the moon, and push onward to Mars. This report is titled “NASA’s Acquisition of Next Generation Space Suit Services,” and it’s breaking down the current state of NASA’s efforts to replace its aging space suit fleet. A very important task. But NASA, as we know, is preparing for Artemis lunar missions and the final years of the International Space Station.
So, we know that NASA is going back to the moon, but there’s a massive problem. They don’t have enough working space suits. The suits astronauts use today are over 50 years old. They’re leaking water. They’re hard to fix. And NASA’s plan to replace them is currently hanging by a thread. I mean, at least they’re being transparent about it. But after spending nearly 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to build a new suit in-house, NASA gave up. So in 2021, they decided to try something different by renting them. These rentable suits are called XEVAs. So instead of building the suits, NASA is paying private companies like Axiom Space to provide space walking services. And this total cost is about $3.1 billion. NASA wanted two companies to compete so they would have a backup. But in June of 2024, one of the giants, Collins Aerospace, backed out because they couldn’t meet the deadline. So since then, all of the responsibility has been hanging on Axiom Space. And unfortunately, it sounds like they’re behind the timeline. NASA is saying that they will be ready for a moon landing in 2028, but the inspector general just dropped a bombshell. Based on how long these things actually take to build, we might not see the suits ready until 2031. That’s a three-year delay that could stall the entire Artemis campaign. So, the OIG has a few ideas on how to fix this. NASA needs to find new ways to bring back competition and make sure these suits can actually plug into the different lunar rovers being built. So, the question is, will Axiom be able to deliver on time?
So, there is your space news update for the day. My original video about the New Glenn launch aftermath did so well that I know it’s only a paragraph from Dave Limp, but it is an update telling us a little bit more about why they weren’t able to complete the mission successfully. And so, you can see too that as Space Mobile has had a drop in their stock over the last days. I wonder why. I didn’t really realize that so many people were invested in Space Mobile, but I have learned that scouring X. And so hopefully Blue Origin is able to get back in the saddle soon. But that is the latest for now. Thanks so much for watching this video, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Thumbnail photo taken by: Mark Usiak
