NASA has lifted a restriction on spacewalks at the International Space Station. Spacewalks using NASA spacesuits have been limited to contingencies only while engineers investigated a third incident when water built up in an astronaut’s helmet during a spacewalk earlier this year. Russian spacewalks have continued since they have their own suits with a completely different design.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of October 16-23, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.
The U.S.-European Crew-4 mission splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Jacksonville, FL this afternoon, two days later than planned due to bad weather in the landing area. NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti spent 170 days on the International Space Station.
NASA will make its next attempt to launch the Artemis I uncrewed test flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft on November 14 Eastern Standard Time. The clock will just have turned to that day on the U.S. East Coast — the launch is at 12:07 am. The two backup launch dates, November 16 and 19, also are in the wee hours EST, which could provide a spectacular view of the huge rocket blasting off against the black backdrop of night.
Dennis Tito, the first “space tourist” to visit the International Space Station, and his wife have purchased seats on SpaceX’s second circumlunar crewed Starship flight. Unlike the first two commercial crewed Starship missions, this time they are purchasing just two seats, not all of them. SpaceX says it ushers in an era of airline-like operations where people purchase only the number of seats they want. When they will launch and how much they paid were not disclosed.
NASA’s DART spacecraft did better than expected altering Dimorphos’s orbit around its parent asteroid Didymos. Calling it a “bullseye,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced today the orbit changed by 32 minutes, demonstrating that humans can alter an asteroid’s course. To use this method to actually deflect an asteroid that threatens Earth, the course change would have to happen years in advance. That’s why the most important next step in planetary defense is to find and catalogue hazardous asteroids. For that, the NEO Surveyor space telescope is needed.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 9-15, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate will be in session briefly on Tuesday and two committee meetings are scheduled, but otherwise the House and Senate are in recess until November 14 except for pro forma sessions.
The CAPSTONE cubesat on its way to the Moon to scout a new orbit for NASA is returning to normal operations. Built, operated and owned by the private sector, the spacecraft suffered an anomaly on September 8 that caused it to spin out of control. Operators now have stopped the spinning and regained 3-axis attitude control allowing CAPSTONE to point its solar arrays towards the Sun to restore power and its antenna toward Earth to improve communications. It still will reach lunar orbit on November 13 as planned.
In July, Russia summarily terminated Dmitry Rogozin’s tenure as the head of its space agency, Roscosmos. His successor, Yuri Borisov, is sounding a much more reasonable tone than the bombastic Rogozin. Today the head of Roscosmos’s human spaceflight program, Sergei Krikalev, told U.S. reporters they are trying to repair Rogozin’s damage to international space relationships. A veteran cosmonaut well known to NASA and the international space community, Krikalev was at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the launch of Crew-5, which includes the first Russian on a U.S. spacecraft in 20 years.
The United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea joined the U.S. pledge not to conduct destructive antisatellite tests today. In April, Vice President Harris announced the United States will forgo debris-creating direct-ascent ASAT tests and is hoping other countries will follow suit. Russia’s ASAT test in November 2021 imperiled the International Space Station among many other satellites and more than a thousand hazardous pieces of debris remain.