from the Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds-??? dept.
SpaceX drops protest of NASA launch contract
SpaceX withdrew a protest April 4 that it had filed with the U.S. Government Accountability Office Feb. 11 regarding a NASA launch procurement formally known as RLSP-35. That covered a contract NASA awarded Jan. 31 to ULA for the launch of Lucy, a mission slated for launch in October 2021 to visit several Trojan asteroids in the same orbit around the sun as Jupiter.
[...] SpaceX's decision to withdraw the protest comes to[sic] a relief to many familiar with development of Lucy. They were concerned about potential additional costs to the mission and threats to its schedule if GAO upheld the protest and forced NASA to recompete the contract for the launch. That additional work, such as planning to be compatible with two different launch vehicles while the contract was recompeted, threatened to negate any launch vehicle savings.
SpaceX will assist NASA's first-ever mission to redirect an asteroid
NASA has chosen SpaceX to help out on its first-ever attempt to deflect an asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will blast off on a Falcon 9 rocket in June 2021 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its mission: To smash a satellite into the Didymos asteroid's small moon in a bid to knock it off its orbit. What sounds like the plot of a Michael Bay movie could turn out to be NASA's first line of defense against Earth-bound asteroids.
[...] The total cost for the mission is expected at around $69 million including the launch service, which NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage. Fresh off the back of its successful Falcon Heavy launch and triple landing, SpaceX's involvement in DART sees its relationship with NASA evolving beyond its commercial payloads and resupply missions to the ISS. As usual, Elon Musk shared his reaction in a tweet: "Thanks on behalf of the SpaceX team. We ♥️♥️♥️ NASA!"
Coincidence? Maybe.
Double Asteroid Redirection Test contract also at Space News.
Previously: NASA to Redirect an Asteroid's Moon With Kinetic Impact
ESA Plans "Hera" Follow-Up Mission to NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test
SpaceX Protests NASA's Award of "Lucy" Launch Contract to ULA
Related Stories
NASA will impact a small asteroid with a spacecraft and measure changes in its orbit around a larger asteroid:
The first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense -- the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) -- is moving from concept development to preliminary design phase, following NASA's approval on June 23.
"DART would be NASA's first mission to demonstrate what's known as the kinetic impactor technique -- striking the asteroid to shift its orbit -- to defend against a potential future asteroid impact," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid."
While current law directs the development of the DART mission, DART is not identified as a specific budget item in the Administration's Fiscal Year 2018 budget.
The target for DART is an asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022, and then again in 2024. The asteroid is called Didymos -- Greek for "twin" -- because it's an asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about one-half mile (780 meters) in size, and a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 530 feet (160 meters) in size. DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65803_Didymos
Related: https://www.nas.nasa.gov/publications/articles/feature_asteroid_simulations.html
Earth's first mission to a binary asteroid, for planetary defence
Planning for humankind's first mission to a binary asteroid system has entered its next engineering phase. ESA's proposed Hera mission would also be Europe's contribution to an ambitious planetary defence experiment.
Named for the Greek goddess of marriage, Hera would fly to the Didymos pair of Near-Earth asteroids: the 780 m-diameter mountain-sized main body is orbited by a 160 m moon, informally called 'Didymoon', about the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
[...] By the time Hera reaches Didymos, in 2026, Didymoon will have achieved historic significance: the first object in the Solar System to have its orbit shifted by human effort in a measurable way.
A NASA mission called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, is due to collide with it in October 2022. The impact will lead to a change in the duration of Didymoon's orbit around the main body. Ground observatories all around the world will view the collision, but from a minimum distance of 11 million km away.
"Essential information will be missing following the DART impact – which is where Hera comes in," adds Ian. "Hera's close-up survey will give us the mass of Didymoon, the shape of the crater, as well as physical and dynamical properties of Didymoon.
Also at Popular Mechanics.
Previously: NASA to Redirect an Asteroid's Moon With Kinetic Impact
SpaceX protests NASA launch contract award
SpaceX has filed a protest over the award of a launch contract to United Launch Alliance for a NASA planetary science mission, claiming it could carry out the mission for significantly less money.
The protest, filed with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Feb. 11, is regarding a NASA procurement formally known as RLSP-35. That contract is for the launch of the Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter, awarded by NASA to ULA Jan. 31 at a total cost to the agency of $148.3 million. The GAO documents did not disclose additional information about the protest, other than the office has until May 22 to render a decision. NASA said that, as a result of the protest, it's halted work on the ULA contract.
[...] SpaceX confirmed that the company was protesting the contract. "Since SpaceX has started launching missions for NASA, this is the first time the company has challenged one of the agency's award decisions," a company spokesperson said in a statement to SpaceNews. "SpaceX offered a solution with extraordinarily high confidence of mission success at a price dramatically lower than the award amount, so we believe the decision to pay vastly more to Boeing and Lockheed for the same mission was therefore not in the best interest of the agency or the American taxpayers," the spokesperson added. ULA is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
[...] A key factor in the decision to award the contract to ULA was schedule certainty. Lucy has a complex mission profile with a series of flybys in order to visit several asteroid either leading or following Jupiter in its orbit around the sun. That results in a launch window that is open for only about 20 days in October 2021. Should the launch miss that window, the mission cannot be flown as currently planned.
Could it be retaliation for recent audits? Still, a matter of ±$70 million or so is almost nothing compared to the billions being spent annually on the Space Launch System.
Lucy (spacecraft) and trojans.
Also at Ars Technica and Teslarati.
Previously: NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids
NASA won't launch a mission to hunt deadly asteroids:
NASA says it can't afford to build a space telescope considered the fastest way to identify asteroids that might impact the Earth with terrible consequences.
A 2015 law gave the space agency five years to identify 90% of near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters in diameter, which could devastate cities, regions and even civilization itself if they were to impact the planet. NASA isn't going to meet that deadline, and scientists believe they have so far only identified about a third of the asteroids considered a threat.
Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led by principal investigator Amy Mainzer, developed a proposal for a space telescope called NEOCam that would use infrared sensors to find and measure near-Earth objects. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report this spring concluding that NEOCam was the fastest way to meet the asteroid-hunting mandate. But NASA will not approve the project to begin development. "The Planetary Defense Program at NASA does not currently have sufficient funding to approve development of a full space-based NEO survey mission as was proposed by the NEOCam project," a NASA spokesperson told Quartz this week.
The agency said it was prioritizing funding for ground-based telescopes looking for asteroids, though the NAS report concluded that they would not fulfill its mandate. The agency is also funding the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission (DART), which will pilot the technologies needed to do something about any threatening near-Earth objects. Still, the agency said the infrared telescope proposed for NEOCam "could be ready for any future flight mission development effort."
Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam).
See also: Poll: Americans Want NASA To Focus More On Asteroid Impacts, Less On Getting To Mars
Related: Nathan Myhrvold Challenges NASA's NEOWISE Asteroid Results With Peer-Reviewed Paper
SpaceX Drops Protest of "Lucy" Contract, Gets Double Asteroid Redirection Test Contract
Americans Polled on Attitudes Toward the Space Program
Falcon Heavy to launch NASA Psyche asteroid mission
NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX Feb. 28 for the launch of a mission to a large metallic asteroid on the company's Falcon Heavy rocket.
NASA said that it will use a Falcon Heavy to launch its Psyche mission in July 2022 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The contract is valued at $117 million, which includes the launch itself and other mission-related costs.
Psyche is one of two missions NASA selected in January 2017 for its Discovery program of relatively low-cost planetary science missions. Psyche will use a Mars flyby in 2023 to arrive at its destination, an asteroid also called Psyche, in January 2026. The spacecraft will go into orbit around the asteroid, one of the largest in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid is primarily made of iron and nickel, and could be the remnant of a core of a protoplanet that attempted to form there before high-speed collisions with other planetesimals broke it apart. Planetary scientists believe that studies of the asteroid Psyche could help them better understand the formation of the solar system.
The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University, with Maxar the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The launch will also carry two smallsat secondary payloads: Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE), which will study the Martian atmosphere, and Janus, which will study binary asteroids.
Also at TechCrunch.
Previously:
NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids
NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars
SpaceX Drops Protest of "Lucy" Contract, Gets Double Asteroid Redirection Test Contract
Nasa Contemplates Mission to the Core of a Protoplanet in 2022
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:08PM (3 children)
At taxpayers expense.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:24PM (2 children)
That's about as cheap as it gets for a space mission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:43PM (1 child)
This story [aiaa.org] says this mission costs $250 Million.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:50PM
I don't know what it costs anymore, so I removed the line from the summary.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/12/spacex-nasa-mission-redirect-asteroid/ [engadget.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:35PM (4 children)
They should have let SpaceX also design and build the impactor for this mission, not just the launcher. The company has been showing more creativity than NASA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:39PM (3 children)
It's because NASA doesn't mix whiskey and LSD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:51PM (2 children)
But they hire people who do to transport their astronauts. Meanwhile, this made-for-Hollywood mission gets the oatmeal eaters.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:53PM (1 child)
SpaceX hasn't killed a single astronaut.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @10:03PM
But in karmic balance, Tesla's autopilot has killed more people than Airbus' has...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:46PM (1 child)
did I miss the First Asteroid Redirection Test?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:51PM
They popped a cap in that ass. [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday April 13 2019, @10:31PM
Seems like a good one could take out several asteroids at once, which would be more efficient.
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