cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31650505

An experimental reusable rocket developed by the research and development arm of Honda Motor Company flew to an altitude of nearly 900 feet Tuesday, then landed with pinpoint precision at the carmaker's test facility in northern Japan.

The accomplishment may not sound like much, but it's important to put it into perspective. Honda's hopper is the first prototype rocket outside of the United States and China to complete a flight of this kind, demonstrating vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology that could underpin the development of a reusable launch vehicle.

While Tuesday's announcement by Honda was unexpected, the company has talked about rockets before. In 2021, Honda officials revealed they had been working on a rocket engine for at least two years. At the time, officials said a small satellite launch vehicle was part of Honda's roadmap.

The rocket Honda talked about in 2021 could put a payload of up to 1 metric ton into low-Earth orbit. It's unclear whether Honda is still targeting this sector of the launch market. Company officials then committed to supporting internal development work until about 2025 or 2026, when it would make a "go" or "no go" decision on whether to finish the project and field an operational rocket.

Developed in-house by Honda R&D Company, the rocket climbed vertically from a pedestal at the company's test site in southeastern Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's main islands. The vehicle reached an altitude of about 890 feet (271 meters). The vehicle descended to a nearby landing target and settled on its four landing legs just 15 inches (37 centimeters) from its aim point, according to Honda.

What's more, the rocket stood on its four landing legs for liftoff, then retracted the landing gear as it climbed into the sky. At its highest point, the vehicle extended aerodynamic fins akin to those used on SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 and Super Heavy boosters. Moments before reaching the ground, the rocket folded the fins against its fuselage and deployed its four landing legs for touchdown. The flight lasted approximately 57 seconds.

The test rocket is small in stature, measuring less than 21 feet (6.3 meters) tall and about 2.8 feet (85 centimeters) in diameter. Fully fueled, the rocket weighed about 2,892 pounds (1,312 kilograms). Honda has been reticent about the rocket's engines, but the company's video of the test flight suggests the liquid-fueled engines consume cryogenic propellants, possibly a mixture of methane and liquid oxygen.

China carried out a successful pad abort test early Tuesday for its next-generation crew spacecraft for moon and low Earth orbit missions.

China conducted the zero-altitude, or pad abort, test June 17 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. An ignition command was issued at 12:30 a.m. Eastern (0430 UTC; 12:30 p.m. Beijing time), triggering the Mengzhou spacecraft’s launch escape system solid propellant engines, China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSEO, said in a statement.

Footage of the test shows the escape system rapidly boosting the spacecraft away from the ground. Around 20 seconds later, the vehicle reached a predetermined altitude. The return capsule separated from the escape tower and its parachutes deployed successfully.

The return capsule safely landed in the designated test zone using an airbag cushioning system at 12:32 a.m., marking the test a complete success, CMSEO stated.

The test was designed to verify systems needed to get astronauts in the crew module away from its rocket in an emergency situation. The test marks a milestone for the country’s plans to put astronauts on the moon by 2030.

The text of a budget reconciliation bill released by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last week calls for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, to begin charging licensing fees to space companies next year. The fees would phase in over eight years, after which the FAA would adjust them to keep pace with inflation. The money would go into a trust fund to help pay for the operating costs of the FAA's commercial space office.

While the FAA's commercial space office receives more federal funding today, the budget hasn't grown to keep up with the cadence of commercial spaceflight. SpaceX officials urged the FAA to double its licensing staff in 2023 after the company experienced delays in securing launch licenses.

Cruz's section of the Senate reconciliation bill calls for the FAA to charge commercial space companies per pound of payload mass, beginning with 25 cents per pound in 2026 and increasing to $1.50 per pound in 2033. Subsequent fee rates would change based on inflation. The overall fee per launch or entry would be capped at $30,000 in 2026, increasing to $200,000 in 2033, and then adjusted to keep pace with inflation.

A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 3:56 a.m. Eastern (0756 UTC) June 14 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Launch footage showed insulation tiles falling away from the rocket as it climbed into a clear blue sky above the spaceport, with hypergolic exhaust also visible.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success within 40 minutes of liftoff, revealing the mission to be carrying the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite-2 (CSES-2), also known as Zhangheng-2, named after a Han dynasty polymath.

Like CSES-1, the satellite will look for correlation between earthquakes and electron flux activity in the inner Van Allen belt.

“The satellite has a design life of six years and carries nine payloads, including an electric field detector developed by China and Italy and a high-energy particle detector developed by Italy,” according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). Austria is also involved in the mission, with the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IWF) providing a scalar magnetometer.

CSES-2 will monitor global electromagnetic fields, ionospheric and atmospheric conditions in near real-time, and detect electromagnetic anomalies linked to geological or human activities, as well as thunderstorm and lightning events. CSES-2 aims to enhance China’s early warning and risk assessment capabilities, and monitoring of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and severe storms.

There's another leak on the International Space Station, and NASA has already delayed one crew launch to the orbiting laboratory as a result.

Beyond that, the space agency is not offering much information about the unfolding situation in orbit. However, multiple sources have confirmed to Ars that the leak is a serious concern for the space agency as it deals with hardware that is approaching three decades in orbit.

Roscosmos recently confirmed that it completed its most recent repairs on the PrK module earlier this month, saying it had been "completely sealed." NASA has also said that repairs were recently wrapped up. After this, both Roscosmos and NASA said the leak rate inside the PrK module had halted.

This seems like good news. However, the overall air pressure in the space station at large continued to drop, according to two sources. So if the PrK module was not leaking, as it had been doing for half a decade, why was the space station still losing air pressure?

No one is certain. The best guess is that the seals on the hatch leading to the PrK module are, in some way, leaking. In this scenario, pressure from the station is feeding the leak inside the PrK module through these seals, leading to a stable pressure inside—making it appear as though the PrK module leaks are fully repaired.

At this point, NASA is monitoring the ongoing leak and preparing for any possibility. A senior industry source told Ars that the NASA leadership of the space station program is "worried" about the leak and its implications.

This is one reason the space agency delayed the launch of a commercial mission carrying four astronauts to the space station, Axiom-4, on Thursday.

CAS Space conducted the Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2) first stage hot fire test June 11, marking a big step towards the launch of the Qingzhou-1 prototype cargo spacecraft later in the year, the company said in a June 12 statement.

“The test duration covered the flight mission profile. It fully verified the coordination and compatibility of the booster’s pressurization and feed systems with the engine system, as well as the correctness of interfaces among propulsion, structure, avionics, and launch support systems,” the statement read.

Kinetica-2 follows on from the company’s established Kinetica-1 solid rocket. It is a 55-meter-long, 3.35m-diameter launcher using a kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant mix. Its core stage uses three YF‑102 engines developed by state-owned space giant CASC. It is designed to carry up to 12,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit or around 7,800 kg to a 500-kilometer-altitude sun-synchronous orbit.

One of his first steps would have been to attempt to accelerate the timeline for the Artemis II mission, which is scheduled to fly four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026. He planned to bring in "strike" teams of engineers to help move Artemis and other programs forward. Isaacman wanted to see the Artemis II vehicle on the pad later this summer, with the goal of launching in December of this year, echoing the historic launch of Apollo 8 in December 1968.

Isaacman also sought to reverse the space agency's decision to cut utilization of the International Space Station due to budget issues.

"Instead of the current thinking, three crew members every eight months to manage the budget, I wanted to go seven crew members every four months," he said. "I was even going to pay for one of the missions, if need be, to just get more people up there, more cracks at science, and try and figure out the orbital economy, or else life will be very hard on the commercial LEO destinations."

"I wanted to bring back the Payload Specialist program and open it up to the NASA workforce," he said. "Because things are pretty difficult right now, and I wanted to get people excited and reward the best."

Isaacman's signature issue was going to be a full-bore push into nuclear electric propulsion, which he views as essential for the sustainable exploration of the Solar System by humans. Nuclear electric propulsion converts heat from a fission reactor to electrical power, like a power plant on Earth, and then uses this energy to produce thrust by accelerating an ionized propellant, such as xenon. Nuclear propulsion requires significantly less fuel than chemical propulsion, and it opens up more launch windows to Mars and other destinations.

"We would have gone right to a 100-kilowatt test vehicle that we would send somewhere inspiring with some great cameras," he said. "Then we are going right to megawatt class, inside of four years, something you could dock a human-rated spaceship to, or drag a telescope to a Lagrange point and then return, big stuff like that. The goal was to get America underway in space on nuclear power."

"I'm sure a lot of supporters in the space community would love to hear me say that I’m done with politics, but I'm not sure that’s the case," he said. "I want to serve our country, give back, and make a difference. I don’t know what, but I will find something."

Toulouse-based startup Alpha Impulsion has completed a short test firing of an autophage rocket engine. The company plans to use the novel propulsion system to power its 25-metre Grenat rocket.

The Alpha Impulsion autophage engine features a solid fuel tube with a liquid oxidiser sealed in its core. Two pistons push the tube into the combustion chamber where a catalyst converts the oxidiser into hot gas. This gas then reacts with the solid fuel, generating thrust. Put simply, the engine consumes its own structure as it burns.

In late May, Alpha Impulsion conducted a six-day test campaign at Agen Airport in the south of France. On 27 May, the company carried out a 17-second static fire test of what it described as the “largest autophage rocket engine in the world.”

According to a press release published by the company following the test, all of its technical goals were achieved. These included stable ignition and controlled combustion, as well as confirmation that the structure remained intact under operational pressure. The test also validated the tightness of the engine’s dynamic seals and confirmed the correct functioning of the oxidiser filling procedure.