Month: September 2020

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  Falcon 9 B1060 and 60 Starlink satellites standing on LC-39A in preparation for launch at 9:29an EDT on September 1, 2020. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ]

SpaceX launched three missions in August—two carrying its own Starlink satellite payloads, and the SAOCOM 1B mission for Argentina. Now, beginning as early as Thursday morning, SpaceX may go for three more launches this month to continue building out its Starlink satellite-Internet constellation.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off at 8:46am EDT (12:46 UTC) Thursday from Kennedy Space Center while carrying a payload of 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. This will be the 12th launch of a large batch of Starlink satellites, although the first 60 satellites launched in May 2019 were, to some extent, a test bed for future iterations. After this mission, the company will have placed more than 700 of its satellites into orbit to provide broadband service.

The need to build out a constellation of thousands of satellites, with the eventual goal of providing broadband Internet across the globe, has allowed SpaceX to fly its Falcon 9 rocket frequently this year. So far in 2020, the company has launched 15 missions, including the suborbital Crew Dragon in-flight abort test on January 19. Of those, nine have been Starlink missions.

Enlarge / WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 2, 2020: Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), removes his protective mask before speaking. (credit: Getty Images / Pool)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging states to be ready to begin distributing a COVID-19 vaccine by November 1—an extremely ambitious plan that conspicuously falls just days before the presidential election.

Though public health experts say federal and state officials should certainly be planning for a vaccination rollout—and the daunting task of eventually vaccinating more than 300 million Americans against COVID-19 in a phased, equitable, orderly way—the pre-election deadline for the work heightens fears of political interference in the effort.

In recent weeks, critics and experts have been alarmed by policy changes and decisions at the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration that appear politically motivated. The CDC, which will help orchestrate vaccine distribution, recently reversed evidence-based testing guidelines, for instance. The move so alarmed and outraged experts that two high-profile scientists and former officials encouraged states to disregard the agency entirely and set their own evidence-based public health policies.

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  Northrop Grumman's full-scale booster ignites on Wednesday afternoon. [credit: NASA TV ]

On Wednesday afternoon in Northern Utah, Northrop Grumman fired up a full-scale test version of the boosters it is building for NASA's Space Launch System rocket. Although engineers were still reviewing 300 channels of data, Charlie Precourt, vice president of propulsion systems at Northrop Grumman, said the test was successful.

Two of these large boosters, each with a mass of 1.6 million pounds, account for 75 percent of the SLS rocket's thrust during the first two minutes of flight. They are composed of five segments of a powderized, solid fuel that is ignited upon launch. Northrop has already built 26 of the 30 segments NASA needs for the first three launches of the SLS rocket.

The primary reason for Wednesday's test was that Northrop's supplier of aluminum-based fuel could no longer deliver the product. Therefore, Northrop needed to ensure that a new vendor could provide the solid rocket fuel needed for future launches of the SLS rocket beyond the first three. NASA also used the test to assess some changes to the nozzle design, said Bruce Tiller, manager of the SLS boosters office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.