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Not for profit website/blog on astronomy, space and my writing

Episode 85 – Russia’s Space programme with Brian Harvey

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Brian Harvey

Brian Harvey is a Dublin based writer who has authored more than 14 books on space. His books have covered the space programmes of USSR/Russia, USA, India, Japan and China. He has a deep understanding of the motivations and politics as well as the space technology that has emerged since the space age. In this episode, we speak about Russia/USSR’s space programme what it was at the outset and its status today.

Some of the topics we discuss include

  • Russian rocket engines still the best in the world.
  • The first factory to build rocket engines for spacecraft was established in Leningrad in 1927.
  • Age profile in Russian space programme – not enough younger people. Compared to the programme in China which is largely less than 40.
  • In 1935 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky invited as a guest of honour at the mayday speech “I believe the first person in space is alive today”. This was in 1935 when Yuri Gagarin was one year old.
  • There were several reasons for the failure for the USSR not get a crewed mission to the Moon. The main one was the lack of programme management.
  • With 39 launches in 2018, China was the leader. Until a few years ago Russia was the world leader of launches. Russia’s planned 45 launches in 2019 is not realistic.
  • China, India and Japan were on par about a decade ago but China has now emerged with a “superpower” status. India has made progress in the number of annual launches, science missions and recently announced its plans to initiate a human space program.
    We discussed the movie Salyut 7 the movie. This is the space station that Rakesh Sharma had visited in 1984.
    Russia space programme, minimal new investment, an ageing workforce, reliability and quality control on a decline.

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Episode 84: NASA after the Shuttle. SLS and The Gateway

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David Baker

David Baker has been involved with the USA since childhood. First attending a US school in England and then studying in the US under a scholarship program sponsored by Senator Clinton P Anderson. He returned to the USA and worked for NASA on various programs from Gemini to the SpaceShuttle. He was present in mission control in 1970 and witnessed the drama of Apollo 13 first hand.

He joined the British Interplanetary Society in 1965, published his first article in the society’s journal Spaceflight in 1969 and since 2011 has been the editor of that very journal -Spaceflight. To date, he has published a remarkable 110 books by the close of 2018 with a few more in the pipeline for 2019 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11.

(Note – following questions on the veracity of his Phd, David Baker resigned from the BIS as the editor of Spaceflight on 25th March 2021.)

In this episode, we talk about the current status of the space programme in the US and the changing role of NASA.

  • The USA has not been able to launch US astronauts from the USA since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. NASA found itself in a similar position between 1975 (Apollo Soyuz Test programme) and the first Space Shuttle in 1981.
  • Why NASA dropped the Ares programme and why its replacement, the Space Launch System (SLS) schedule remains unclear. The first SLS mission, uncrewed – Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) by 2020 and the second crewed mission, Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) by 2023.
  • The successor to the ISS, the “Gateway” is an international project for a space station in lunar orbit. Only about a third of the size of the ISS and it will have fewer international partners.
  • The gateway is seen by Russia as an American lead programme. Will Russia participate with the gateway or consider a joint Russia/China human spaceflight programme?
  • China/USA cooperation in space has been prohibited ny US law. What prospects that this will change?

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Episode 83: India’s Human Spaceflight Programme with R Umamaheswaran

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R. Umamaheshwaren. Credit: Author

R Umamaheswaren was born in 1963, the same year that India initiated its space programme with the first-ever launch of a rocket into space from Indian soil. He is currently serving as the Scientific Secretary to the chairman. This was recorded at the IAC2018 (so a little noisy background). Audio and video available below.

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He first joined ISRO in 1987 as an avionics and communications engineer at the VSSC and has held several posts including

  • Deputy director for the GSLV launch vehicle
  • Mission director for 3 GSLV launches
  • GSLV Mk3 to launch in November 2018 with high throughput satellites GSAT-29 to support the Digital India programme. A total of 100GBPS will be available from space once the other two satellites  are launched.
  • Dr. Lalitambika. Directeor of ISRO Human Spaceflight Programe. Credit TEDX
  • Pad Abort Test. Credit ISRO
  • Pad Abort Test. Credit ISRO
  • Pad Abort Test. Credit ISRO

Fundamental system and engineering challenges have been addressed and  India is ready for human spaceflight. ISRO conducted a Pad Abort Test on 5th July 2018 – Youtube video here. Currently, the roadmap looks like this

  • Crew selection – discussion underway.
  • Two uncrewed missions will take place – no animals required. Sensors and instruments will be sufficient.
  • Astronaut training – under discussion. Astronaut training support will be required from a third country – yet to be announced. 
  • Not necessary for potential applicants to be test pilots.
  • Prospect for a female to be part of the first crew is “very high”.
  • First uncrewed flight start in late 2020.
  • A longer vision for Human Spaceflight –  priorities not yet defined.

Episode 82: Jaxa and International Collaboration with Professor Fujimoto Masaki

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Prof. Fujimoto Masaki
Prof. Fujimoto Masaki. Credit author

 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was founded in 2003 by the merger of three existing organisations and has an annual budget of around two billion USD. It has a remit for research and development of technology, space exploration and supporting human spaceflight aboard the ISS through collaboration with the European Space Agency. This episode is available in audio and video below.

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In 2003 JAXA launched Hayabusa-1 to explore the asteroid Itokawa. It arrived at Itokawa in 2005 and returned to the Earth with a tiny sample in 2010.  In 2014, Jaxa launched Hayabusa-2 to explore asteroid Ryugu.  Hayabusa2 arrived ta Ryugu on 27 June 2018 and will remain in Ryugu orbit until 2019. It will collect 3 discrete samples (between 0.1g and 1g in each case), store them in separate sealed containers on board for return to Earth in December 2020 in the Woomera test range in Australia.

  • All four rovers. Credit ESA
  • Hayabusu 2 and Ryugu. Credit ESA
  • silhouette of Hayabusa2 on Ryugu. Credit JAXA

Hyabusa2 has four rovers.

  • MINERVA-II-1 contains two rovers, Rover-1A and Rover-1B was deployed on 21 September 2018.
  • Mascot – a rover developed by the German and French space agencies. Deployed on 3rd October 2018.
  • The MINERVA-II-2 contains ROVER-2, a payload developed by several universities in Japan. Planned for deployment in July 2019.

JAXA is also considering

  1. 1 The launch of the world’s smallest lunar lander  intended to be launched on NASA’s Space Launch Systems in the 2020s.
  2. Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) will demonstrate the technology of precision landing. 
  3. Selene-R – a tentative joint JAXA/ISRO Moon mission to soft-land a rover on the Moon. Jaxa would supply the rover and ISRO the lander.
  4. MMX – Martian Moons Exploration. A martian sample return mission. Only possible with international collaboration (US, France, Germany). To be launched around the 2024 timeline. Following a period of 3-years at Mars, it will return to Earth with a sample from Phobos in 2029. 
Prof. Fujimoto Masaki. Credit Author