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NASA Mars 2020 rover arrives in Florida to prep for July launch to the red planet

The Mars 2020 rover has arrived in Florida ahead of its planned July launch. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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NASA’s next Mars rover arrived in Florida this week (Feb. 12) to begin final preparations ahead of its planned July launch. The six-wheeled rover (and its accompanying Mars Helicopter) were ferried across the country by two Air Force C-17 Globemaster cargo planes.  The duo touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at approximately 3 p.m. EST (12 p.m. PST), completing a 2,300-mile (3,700-kilometer) journey.

“Our rover has left the only home it has ever known,” said John McNamee, Mars 2020 project manager, referring to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. “The 2020 family here at JPL is a little sad to see it go, but we’re even more proud knowing that the next time our rover takes to the skies, it will be headed to Mars.”

Two C-17 Globemaster cargo planes transported the Mars 2020 rover to Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA

The first bits of the rover were assembled in Jan. 2018, and now, just over two years later, the soon-to-be-named rover is complete.

In the next few hours, the rover will be transported to its home for the next several months: a specialized facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center known as the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) — the same spacecraft processing facility where Curiosity was housed prior to its launch in 2011. 

Curiosity is currently exploring Gale Crater and assessing the region’s past habitability. Could life have once thrived on the red planet? While there’s no definitive answer yet, Curiosity has made many promising discoveries and is working to solve some Martian mysteries.

Mars 2020’s duties on the red planet are going to be a bit different as the advanced rover is packing equipment that will enable it to look for biosignatures, bag up samples for a later return, and test out technologies that future human missions to Mars will rely on. The craft will ouch down at Jezero Crater in Feb. 2021 and will perform some incredible in-situ science.

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The Mars 2020 rover has arrived in Florida ahead of its planned July launch. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

But before it gets there, it needs to launch. Later this week, engineers will start testing the rover’s systems to see how it fared during its cross-country journey. Many months of testing and final assembly await the rover before it is encased in its aeroshell in June.

After that, the rover will be transported over to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where it will be attached to its launcher: an Atlas V.

Mars 2020 will look for biosignatures (signs of life) while also collecting rock and soil samples to store in sealed tubes on the planet’s surface. Subsequent missions will collect the samples and then return them to Earth so that scientists around the world will be able to study them.

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SpaceX rescue mission for stranded ISS astronauts nears end — Here’s when they’ll return home

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is ready to bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the two astronauts that have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months.

Last week, SpaceX launched its Crew-10 mission, which would dock onto the ISS late Saturday night and be the two astronauts’ ride home. Now, the end is in sight, and it appears both NASA and SpaceX are planning to have the two home this week, perhaps earlier than expected.

SpaceX readies to rescue astronauts from International Space Station

The agency and the company have announced that Dragon will autonomously undock from the ISS on Tuesday at 1:05 a.m. ET and should re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splashdown off the Florida coast about 17 hours later.

SpaceX said:

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“SpaceX and NASA are targeting Tuesday, March 18 at 1:05 a.m. ET for Dragon to autonomously undock from the International Space Station. After performing a series of departure burns to move away from the space station, Dragon will conduct multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, jettison the trunk, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere for splashdown off the coast of Florida approximately 17 hours later the same day.”

Crew-9 astronaut Nick Hague will be alongside Williams and Wilmore on the flight home, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Hague and Gorbunov have been in space since Saturday, September 28.

SpaceX was tasked with bringing Wilmore and Williams home after the Boeing Starliner that sent them there was determined not to be suitable for their return.

A report from the New York Post in late August said that Boeing employees routinely made fun of SpaceX workers, only for the company to bail them out:

SpaceX bails out Boeing and employees are reportedly ‘humiliated’

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Crew-10 will bring the astronauts home, ending an extensive and unscheduled stay in space.

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SpaceX readies to rescue astronauts from International Space Station

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is readying to launch the Crew-10 mission this evening, which will bring home U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck on the International Space Station for nine months.

SpaceX is working alongside NASA to bring the two astronauts home, and all systems and weather conditions are looking ideal to launch the mission this evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Boeing was originally tasked with the rescue mission.

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The company sent a Starliner aircraft to the ISS in late September in an effort to bring Williams and Wilmore home. However, malfunctioning thrusters and other issues on the Starliner aircraft prevented NASA from giving the green light to the astronauts to board and come home.

SpaceX was then tasked with bringing the two home, and it appears they will be on their way shortly.

The launch was intended to occur on Wednesday, but a last-minute problem with the rocket’s ground systems forced SpaceX and NASA to delay until at least Friday. Things are looking more ideal for a launch this evening.

The launch is targeted for 7:03 p.m. ET, but another backup opportunity is available tomorrow, March 15, at 6:41 p.m.

SpaceX writes about the Dragon spacecraft that will be used for the mission:

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“The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew NASA’s Crew-3Crew-5, and Crew-7 missions to and from the space station. This will be the second flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched the SES 03b mPOWER-e mission. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.”

The mission will not only aim to bring the two astronauts who have been stranded for nine months home, but it will also conduct new research to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

If Crew-10 launches at the planned time this evening, it will dock to the ISS at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night.

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SpaceX explains reasoning for Starship 7 upper stage loss

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is set to launch its eighth test flight of the Starship rocket this Friday. Ahead of the most recent test in what could be the most revolutionary spaceflight program since NASA’s Apollo, SpaceX is clearing the air about what went wrong during its previous test flight, which resulted in the loss of the second stage during its ascension.

On January 16, SpaceX successfully launched Starship while also completing its second successful catch of the lower-stage booster.

However, the flight did not go as smoothly as initially anticipated, as the company lost Starship’s upper stage roughly eight minutes and twenty seconds into flight.

Now, the company is clarifying what happened that led to the demise of the upper stage, which SpaceX has identified with the recognition of “flashes” that occurred after vehicle separation.

SpaceX completes second catch of lower stage, but loses Starship

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SpaceX says that a flash was observed roughly two minutes into its burn after vehicle separation. The flash, along with sensors that was a pressure rise in the attic, indicated a leak:

“Approximately two minutes into its burn, a flash was observed in the aft section of the vehicle near one of the Raptor vacuum engines. This aft section, commonly referred to as the attic, is an unpressurized area between the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank and the aft heatshield. Sensors in the attic detected a pressure rise indicative of a leak after the flash was seen.”

This was not the only flash that was observed. Two minutes after the first, another flash was seen, but this one was followed by sustained fires in the attic. These fires caused Starship’s engines to perform a controlled shutdown:

“These eventually caused all but one of Starship’s engines to execute controlled shut down sequences and ultimately led to a loss of communication with the ship. Telemetry from the vehicle was last received just over eight minutes and 20 seconds into flight.”

SpaceX clarified that Starship was destroyed and communication with the ship was lost before it was able to initiate any destruct rules for its Autonomous Flight Safety System. The company said this was “fully healthy when communication was lost.”

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It went on to say that the “most probable root cause” of the loss was likely due to an environment not seen during testing:

“The most probable root cause for the loss of ship was identified as a harmonic response several times stronger in flight than had been seen during testing, which led to increased stress on hardware in the propulsion system. The subsequent propellant leaks exceeded the venting capability of the ship’s attic area and resulted in sustained fires.”

Nevertheless, Starship will launch for the eighth time soon, with CEO Elon Musk noting that the most likely date will be Friday. This could be the second of potentially 25 Starship launches planned for 2025.

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Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

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