NOAA is moving forward in implementing a congressional directive to conduct a pilot project to purchase commercial weather data and assess the viability of incorporating it into NOAA’s numerical weather models.  NOAA has concerns about the accuracy, verifiability and reliability of commercial data.  The pilot project is intended to answer some of those questions.

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) led the effort to include the provision in the FY2016 appropriations act.  Congress allocated $3 million for the pilot project in FY2016 and NOAA is requesting $5 million in FY2017.  In a report submitted to Congress in March, but made public only this week, NOAA says it is still working through the details of how to spend that money, but estimates one-third will be spent on purchasing data and two-thirds on NOAA’s evaluation of the data’s utility.

“Commercial Weather Data Pilot Program: Report to Congress” is posted on the website of NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce along with the agency’s January 2016 Commercial Space Policy.

A spokesperson for Bridenstine’s office told SpacePolicyOnline.com that the Congressman is glad to see the report has been released and that NOAA continues to take steps to begin incorporating innovative commercial data sources into its weather forecasts.  He will continue to track NOAA’s progress and, as chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee’s Environment Subcommittee, carry out oversight to ensure the timelines laid out in the report are met.

In an interview on April 14, Steve Volz, NOAA’s Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information Services, National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Services (NESDIS), told SpacePolicyOnline.com that he hopes several vendors, perhaps two to four, will respond to a Request for Proposals (RFPs) to be issued in the next quarter.   He prefers to use the money to obtain data from more vendors than to get more data from one vendor.  He thinks it will take through the end of FY2017 to complete the pilot project.

NOAA has chosen radio occultation (RO) data as the focus of the pilot project.  Such data are currently obtained by a constellation of COSMIC satellites built by NOAA in cooperation with the Air Force and Taiwan.  Sensors on the satellites use Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to make measurements of temperature and water vapor throughout the lower parts of the atmosphere.  When combined with measurements from polar-orbiting weather satellites, better weather forecasts are enabled.

Thousands of measurements per day are useful and COSMIC currently provides about 2,000-3,000.   NOAA and Taiwan are building a follow-on system, COSMIC-2, that will increase that number to about 10,000.  Commercial sources could increase that to 50,000-100,000, which Volz says is an upper limit in terms of when costs would outweigh benefits.  From an operational standpoint, such data have a useful lifetime of only about a day, Volz added, although they can be useful for research
thereafter.

The goal of using commercial sources is not just to reduce costs to the government, but to increase the resiliency of weather satellite systems.   Bridenstine frequently expresses concerns about the vulnerability of the “Battlestar Gallactica” spacecraft in service today, arguing in favor of a disaggregated approach of  using many smaller satellites, which reduces the risk of a single launch or satellite failure and complicates potential enemy targeting.

One NOAA concern about using commercial data is that companies typically restrict a customer’s use of data so they can sell it to multiple clients.  The United States, however, makes weather satellite data available globally on a free and open basis in compliance with World Meteorological Organization Resolution 40 (WMO 40).  Volz calls it an “underlying tenet of how we do business.”  Many other countries also do so and “we use more than we give,” he asserted and pointed to Europe’s recent agreement to make all data from its Copernicus system available.

At a March 16 hearing before his House SS&T Environment Subcommittee, Bridenstine questioned whether WMO 40 really requires that all data be provided on that basis, however.  He asked NOAA to determine precisely what commercial data could remain proprietary while stressing that he supports U.S. compliance with WMO 40.  His goal is to ensure “we’re not destroying a market that would not otherwise exist” by providing more data for free than necessary.

The witness at the hearing was NOAA Administrator Kathy Sullivan.  She said she had just returned from meeting with the WMO Secretary General in Geneva, Switzerland, but had not engaged in detailed discussions with him on this topic.  Overall, Sullivan is “intrigued” watching the space sector evolve and finds the prospect of commercial weather data “promising, but still quite nascent.”

In addition to releasing the report to Congress this week, NOAA published a draft Commercial Space Activities Assessment Process last week.  It is open for comment until May 9.  Links to the draft and instructions on how to comment are on the Office of Space Commerce website.

Bridenstine is proposing a parallel commercial weather data pilot for the Department of Defense.  The provision is in his just-introduced American Space Renaissance Act, but he has indicated that he will attempt to also include it in the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) will markup that bill at the end of this month.  Bridenstine serves on both the House SS&T Committee, which oversees NOAA, and HASC.

Update:  This article was updated on April 15, 2016 to incorporate Congressman Bridenstine’s reaction to NOAA’s report.

SpaceX accomplished not only a successful launch today, but its first successful landing of the Falcon 9 first stage on an autonomous drone ship out at sea.  Although the company had successfully returned a first stage to a landing site at Cape Canaveral, FL in December 2015, its prior attempts to land on a drone ship encountered one problem after another.  Almost eclipsed by the excitement of the landing was the primary objective of the launch — placing a Dragon spacecraft in orbit to deliver equipment and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).  Dragon should arrive there on Sunday.

SpaceX believes that the cost of launching anything into space can be sharply reduced by reusing the rockets.  Not everyone is convinced.  NASA’s space shuttle was mostly reusable, but its costs remained very high because refurbishing the rocket stages and engines for the next launch was very expensive and the number of launches per year was small, so costs could not be amortized over a large base.

SpaceX and other companies, like Blue Origin, which just flew the same New Shepard rocket for the third time, still believe in reusability, though.

Falcon 9 rockets are used to place spacecraft into orbit from Cape Canaveral, FL or Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.  SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is testing landing the first stage either on land or an “autonomous spaceport drone ship” (ASDS) at sea.  After a series of initial tests to “land” on the ocean itself to determine if the landing legs would deploy and the engine would fire correctly, SpaceX was ready to try its first landing on an ASDS in January 2015.  

The company has two ASDS’s, whimsically named “Of Course I Still Love You” and “Just Read the Instructions.”   They are “drone ships,” not barges, because they have engines.  Barges do not.  They can operate with no one aboard, autonomously, which is important when landing a rocket on deck.

On SpaceX’s first attempt to land on an ASDS in January 2015, the fuel was exhausted too soon.   On the second attempt in April 2015, the landing was too hard.  The third time, in January 2016, it landed, but one of the four landing legs broke.  On the fourth attempt, in March 2016, again there was insufficient fuel, which SpaceX anticipated and it took efforts to dampen expectations in advance.

In December 2015, however, the company did land successfully at a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the first time it was attempted.  That was a launch of 11 Orbcomm OG-2 satellites to low Earth orbit. 

Today, everything went very smoothly and SpaceX now has two successful landings under their belt — one on land, one at sea.

SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage after landing on ASDS Of Course I Still
Love You, April 8, 2016. Screenshot from spacex.com live coverage.

Meanwhile, Dragon successfully reached orbit and is on its way to the ISS with about 7,000 pounds of supplies, equipment and scientific experiments.  It will arrive there on Sunday, April 10, and remain until May 11.  SpaceX’s U.S. competitor for launching cargo to the ISS is Orbital ATK’s Cygnus.  For the first time, a Dragon and a Cygnus will be attached to the ISS at the same time.  Cygnus arrived there two weeks ago (and a Russian Progress cargo ship docked last week).

Among the cargo on this Dragon mission is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which will be attached to the ISS for two years to conduct tests of this innovative approach to building space habitat modules.

Dragon is the only ISS spacecraft that not only take cargo to the space station, but return it to Earth.  It lands in the Pacific using parachutes.  NASA uses it to return the results of scientific experiments and failed equipment that it wants to analyze.

SpaceX’s eighth operational commercial cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX CRS-8 (or SpX-8), is on track for launch tomorrow at 4:43 pm ET from Cape Canaveral, FL.  The weather is 90 percent favorable.  Among the 7,000 pounds of supplies, equipment and experiments in its Dragon capsule is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) developed by Bigelow Aerospace in partnership with NASA. 

SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9 first stage on one of its autonomous drone ships out at sea.  It has attempted such landings four times so far without success.  Its one successful return was back at Cape Canaveral on land.   SpaceX Vice President Hans Koenigsman explained today that the decision on whether to land at sea or on terra firma depends on the trajectory needed for a particular mission and an ocean landing is needed in this case.  Eventually, the company hopes to be able to return one-third to one-half of its rockets to land as part of its goal to have reusable rockets.  Only one reusable rocket system has been successfully developed to date — NASA’s space shuttle.

The Dragon spacecraft being launched tomorrow is packed with a range of scientific experiments to be conducted on ISS, including those to study muscle atrophy and bone loss, seek insight into interactions of particle flows at the nanoscale level, and use protein crystal growth to help design new drugs.   ISS Deputy Chief Scientist Kirt Costello said 4,300 pounds of the cargo is for “utilization” of the ISS, of which 3,100 pounds is the BEAM module.  Koenigsman added that BEAM is packed into a structure inside the unpressurized Dragon trunk and all together weighs 6,000-7,000 pounds.

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).   Image credit: Bigelow Aerospace.

BEAM is an expandable module that millionaire hotel magnate Robert Bigelow hopes will someday be used for space stations in low Earth orbit and habitats on the Moon or other locations in space.  NASA was developing an expandable module called Transhab in the 1990s that was to be used as a habitation module on ISS, but it was cancelled due to budget issues.  Bigelow picked up the program and continued its development, launching two test modules, Genesis I and II, using Russian rockets in 2006 and 2007 respectively.  He was a participant in one of the two NASA press conferences today about the SpX-8 mission.

Such technology is often referred to an “inflatable” rather than “expandable.”   NASA’s Jason Crusan explained the distinction today using balloons and tents as examples.  Balloons inflate when air is introduced, but when the air is removed, collapse.  They have no structure.  Expandables are like tents, which are compact for transportation, but once assembled retain their structure even if windows are opened or people enter or leave.

BEAM is 5.7 feet long and 7.5 feet in diameter when packed; 12 feet long and 10.5 feet in diameter when expanded, with 565 cubic feet of interior volume.  It is made of a soft fabric (Bigelow Aerospace declines to say exactly what) rather than metal like the other ISS modules and therefore can be launched in a compact form.  Mass and volume constrain what can be launched with a given rocket, so expandable modules could be an important evolution for crewed spacecraft.

This is the first time a crew will be able to interact with such a module.  The primary goals are basic, such as learning exactly how it expands.  The robotic Canadarm2 will move BEAM from the Dragon’s trunk to a port on the ISS Tranquility module.  (Interestingly, Tranquillity is the name for “Node 3,” which at one time was to be the connection point between the rest of the ISS and Transhab.)  BEAM then will be slowly expanded to see what happens.  Crusan explained that NASA has done a lot of modeling, but models are just models.  There is no substitute for experience.  Bigelow said BEAM was packaged a year ago and they are not entirely certain of its behavior, while ISS program manager Kirk Shireman asserted that “the devil’s in the details” and that is the “beauty” of this test  flight, to learn what will happen in expanding and using it.  

NASA plans to keep BEAM attached to ISS for two years, with crews entering it occasionally to emplace instruments to monitor temperature, radiation and other parameters.  Otherwise it is empty.  When asked today if the crew could use it more often — perhaps to get away from the noise in the ISS (caused by air circulation fans in particular) — Crusan said there are no restrictions, but since air exchange with the ISS is involved, it is not entirely quiet.  

Bigelow’s interest in expandable modules is from a business standpoint.  In the near-term, he hopes to launch two of his larger, self-sufficient B330 modules in 2020.  Docked together they could function as a small space station.   BEAM has no life support or other environmental systems — it relies on ISS for that — while the B330s can operate independently.  He hopes to attract foreign companies and nations that do not have their own space stations, but want to do research in space or just have their own astronauts for national prestige reasons.  

As for BEAM itself, Bigelow said two companies and two countries have expressed interest in using it for commercial activities and “maybe” NASA will grant permission. 

NASA plans to keep BEAM attached to ISS for two years.  Then it will be detached and burn up on reentry.   NASA is, however, trying to facilitate a transition to commercial space stations in low Earth orbit after use of the ISS ends.  U.S. policy is to support ISS through 2024, though NASA officials often talk about 2028 — when the first ISS modules will be 30 years old — as a potential end point, though recently they stress that they do not want to set a firm date, but to ascertain when the work of ISS is done.   Bigelow modules are one possibility for future commercial space stations to succeed ISS where NASA may be one customer, but not the developer, owner or operator.

All of this depends on a successful SpX-8 launch.   The weather forecast for the 4:43 pm ET launch tomorrow is excellent, with only a 10 percent chance of a weather violation due to winds.  NASA and SpaceX will both provide live coverage.  If all goes according to plan, Dragon will arrive at the ISS on Sunday and remain there until May 11.   It is the first time that SpaceX’s Dragon and Orbital ATK’s Cygnus will be docked at the ISS simultaneously.  

Dragon is designed to survive reentry and land in the ocean, so will bring back the results of scientific experiments and failed equipment NASA wants to analyze.  

This is the first launch of Dragon to the ISS since a failed attempt on June 28, 2015.  In that case, the Falcon 9’s second stage failed and there was speculation that the Dragon spacecraft might have been able to survive a fall even from that altitude if its parachutes had deployed, but the software was not programmed to activate the parachutes during launch.  That has changed, Koenigsman said, and Dragon could land softly in the water in a similar situation this time, saving the cargo.  Shireman added that Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval was needed since it regulates commercial launches and reentries, and two of three phases had been approved, while a third “further downrange” is still being worked.  He added that the logistical issue of getting out to the Dragon to retrieve it remains, but NASA welcomes the possibility.