AFRL Puts New Technologies into Space Aboard World’s Most Powerful Launch Vehicle
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying 24 satellites as part of the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission launches from Launch Complex 39A, Tuesday, June 25, 2019 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Credit: NASA)
by Bryan Ripple
88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) — The Air Force Research Laboratory successfully put new technologies into space, June 25, as part of the Department of Defense Space Test Program (STP-2) mission, managed by the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle in the world, blasted off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida at 2:30 a.m. EDT. It was the Falcon Heavy’s first night flight and just its third launch overall. It was also the first Falcon Heavy to fly using reused boosters.
The rocket carried 24 experimental satellites into space, including the Green Propellant Infusion Mission spacecraft, which enables the first ever on-orbit demonstration of the AFRL developed Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-toxic Propellant.
Space demonstration of this new propellant, ASCENT, formerly known as AF-M315E, marks a major milestone in a national effort to develop new energetic propellants to replace hydrazine, the current established chemical propellant of choice for nearly all current satellite propulsion. Not only is ASCENT 50% higher performing than hydrazine, it is also a vastly safer alternative, allowing for streamlined ground operations relative to legacy propellants. While hydrazine is flammable, toxic and requires the use of Self Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble suits for handling operations, ASCENT propellant requires minimal Personal Protective Equipment such as a lab coat and a splash guard for the face.
“The demonstration of a revolutionary green propellant for spacecraft propulsion is critical as we move toward space operations being the new normal,” said Dr. Shawn Phillips, chief of AFRL’s Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Also part of the STP-2 mission was AFRL’s Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) spacecraft. The first of its kind globally, the DSX flight experiment will conduct new research to advance DOD’s understanding of the processes governing the Van Allen radiation belts and the effect they have on spacecraft components. DSX’s elliptical path in medium Earth orbit will increase understanding of this orbital regime, and advance understanding of the interplay between waves and particles that underlie radiation belt dynamics, enabling better specification, forecasting and mitigation. This will ultimately enhance the nation’s capability to field resilient space systems, AFRL officials say.
DSX’s mission is different from most other Air Force flight experiments as it is a purely scientific mission. The spacecraft is equipped with a unique suite of technologies such as space weather sensors and graphite antenna booms used to conduct experiments with very-low frequency radio waves. DSX has two sets of immense deployable booms due to the large antenna requirements of these experiments. One set extends 80 meters tip-to-tip and the other extends 16 meters tip-to-tip, making the DSX spacecraft one of the largest deployable structures in orbit.
“The space domain has never been more important to our nation than it is today,” said Maj. Gen. William Cooley, AFRL commander. “The DSX satellite experiment will greatly increase our understanding of the environment spacecraft operate in and will give us the knowledge to build even better satellites to protect and defend our space assets. I am immensely proud of the AFRL scientists, engineers, and technicians that conceived and built the DSX satellite.”
The DSX program is led by the AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, with key team members from the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. DSX will conduct on-orbit experiments for at least a year.
70 responses to “AFRL Puts New Technologies into Space Aboard World’s Most Powerful Launch Vehicle”
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“-World’s Most Powerful Launch Vehicle.”
Not for long.
27 engines is just not right. These billionaire hobbyists want to play but they don’t want to pay.
F-1B needs to go into production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
It is the largest until the SLS flies, if it ever does. And by the time SLS flies it may still be only a distant second to the Starship/Super Heavy that has over 12.5 million lbs of thrust at launch. NASA has been left in the dust – deal with it. ?
More shiny starship hilarity.
Your NASA-bashing is such toxic garbage the only reason you get away with it is because you and your gang of thugs long ago harassed into silence anyone throwing the B.S. flag on you.
NASA created spacex from the dust you fool.
NASA HSF used to be great, before twenty years of failed ventures placed it on the path to mediocrity with Orion, SLS and ARM. Now its like a washed up silent film star bragging about tests like yesterday’s joke that would have embrassed the NASA of Project Apollo.
It is sad how this generation of NASA HSF managers have turned the agency into a bloated bureaucracy. Just compared the number that turned out to see the Orion Abort “Test” yesterday to the huge crowds that turned out to see this launch of the Falcon Heavy.
BTW here is a link showing what a real abort test looks like. One where the capsule is actually returned safe to Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
You have obviously taken the oath: I pledge allegiance to Musk and SpaceX, and the Ayn-Rand-in-space-libertarians which I am united with, one ideology, corrosive and ruinous, based on treason and placing the company above country and above all.
Sorry, but it is the Old Space NASA contractors that have put the good of their shareholders above the interests of America. That is the only reason the Shuttle based SLS exists, and why it has taken so long to build it.
The proponents of your rotten ideology have blocked all progress toward a SHLV and a lunar return for the last decade. The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.
You mean President Obama? So you are a supporter of Project Constellation and the Ares I?
You are a supporter of….like I said….a rotten traitorous ideology and the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. That is the answer to your questions.
Well, it is an answer, just not to Dr. Tom’s questions.
For most of the last decade, the main impediment to a lunar return was your “Lightworker” President. It took Donald of Orange to turn that around. Now, with utter typicality, you are pissed off at him for trying to make up for lost time.
The SHLV – or what purports to be an SHLV, anyway – has, during that whole time, been progressing about as fast as its Congressional “fathers” want it to, i.e., barely at all. SpaceX has done a great deal over the past decade, but slowing down SLS isn’t on the list. It’s “friends” have handled that entirely on their own.
Your Muskrat Trumpanzeeness is showing.
Good. That was the general idea.
Be proud!
The cult meetings, frankly, are always disappointing. We’re supposed to sacrifice a leftist female virgin each time, but, except for lesbians, there don’t seem to be any. Leftist virginity seems to be an entirely male phenomemon these days and the demons get very angry if we try fobbing one of those off on them.
I comment LOL all the time but it is actually tragicomedy. Any comment that throws the B.S. flag on the Musk Mob generates the same old it-is-all-just-good-fun-guffawing.
Actually, they are a creepy toxic bunch of ideologues pushing a bizarre and quite radical agenda.
Very similar to what General Billy Mitchell fell victim to when he called out other officers for pursuing their own interests instead of defending the nation. He called them just another kind of traitor. Exactly what the NewSpace fans are.
Among other things Billy Mitchell was tried for was his criticism of superior officers over the deaths of pilots caused by, in his view, those officers’ indifference to the decrepitude of the equipment said pilots were forced to fly. SpaceX hasn’t killed anyone, but NASA has. Furthermore, NASA still seems intent on continuing to have NASA, ESA and JAXA astronauts continue to ride the increasingly problematical Soyuz rockets/capsules through the end of the ISS program. You and NASA are not Billy Mitchell. You’re far closer to being the U.S. Army ca. 1925.
NASA has killed people but spacex has not? You are seriously f-d up and just plain disgusting.
There’s an old saying about someone shouting from the rooftops that he’s being silenced.
As for “the dust,” NASA tried “creating” Rocketplane-Kistler at the same time. That didn’t work out so well. I think the difference in outcomes is not primarily due to NASA.
Not convincing. Mislead, misstate, obfuscate….but the fact is NASA paid for spacex.
The fact is, Elon Musk and a few other investors paid for SpaceX. NASA offered SpaceX a big contract at a very critical time, to do something it badly needed done. SpaceX performed under that contract while RpK, which had also existed for awhile, and also got a NASA contract it needed just as badly at the time, failed to perform and went broke. My points were two:
(1) a contract is not a gift. Work needs to be done and done satisfactorily or one doesn’t get paid.
(2) Merely getting a big contract from NASA doesn’t guarantee anything in the way of results. SpaceX stepped up to the plate and put one over the fence. RpK, in it’s turn at bat, whiffed. NASA money wasn’t the determining factor, corporate competence was.
The fact is NASA dollars built spacex almost from the ground up. And the spacex fan club NASA-bashes and wants the space agency dismantled and handed over to Musk. Disgusting.
cheerleading did the June 20 update happen or did I miss it while learning that Washington took the airports during the revolutionary war
Yes, the acceptance speech that Elon Musk made for Starmus where he received the Stephen Hawking Award? I think it’s on YouTube some where. But basically he will be using Pad39a for Starship test flights later this year using the Florida spacecraft.
well I can hardly wait
Hopper flights shortly, SN6 engine passed testing at McGregor for the LOX turbine vibration resulting in stator failure. Next stop, Boca.
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
sure and off to mars in 2020…lol
What’s ‘just not right’about 27 engines if they do the job?
Seems to me that there is a bias against the number of engines on a launch vehicle for no logical reason but if you have reasons then please share.
Cheers
Neil
No spacex fanboy will ever admit 27 engines is a bad idea.
You just want to blather some adverts for Elon,
So far it’s worked on three successful Falcon Heavy flights. 3/3 is not a bad record.
27 engines profoundly violates the K.I.S.S. principle. That is a fact. How long it goes without failing is about all those engines and the tremendous amount of wasted effort involved in making such a monstrosity work.
P.R. and endlessly repeating that it is great does not change the fact it is a bad design…just like the toxic dragon. Junk.
And yet the FH, after three flights, has a better reliability record than the Saturn V after three flights. All 81 Merlin 1-D sea-level engines and all three Merlin 1-D MVac engines performed flawlessly, including four separate ignitions of an MVac on the most recent flight.
Apollo 6, the second unmanned Saturn V test flight, had major problems with all three of its launch vehicle stages.
Late in its burn, the S-1C 1st stage started pogo-ing badly. It was later determined that two of its F-1 engines had been inadvertently “tuned” to the same fundamental oscillation frequency. That was an assembly error on either NASA’s or the contractor’s part.
The S-II second stage lost two of its five J-2 engines early. The first failed because of a break in its LH2 plumbing – a design error. The second failed because part of its wiring was incorrectly cross-wired with the first engine that failed – another contractor assembly error.
Finally, the S-IVB third stage failed to restart for its simulated TLI burn. This also turned out to be a case of a leak in the same LH2 engine plumbing that also bit the first failed S-II engine. The leaked LH2 froze the engine controls needed to do the relight.
As a result of the serial screw-ups on Apollo 6, the flight hardware for the next mission – Apollo 8 – was returned to the contractors for complete teardown, inspection and reassembly. Retrospectively, that looks like a very good call.
Later, the Apollo 13 mission – the 8th Saturn V to be flown – was also famously snakebit by a Service Module LOX tank explosion. Less well-known is that it also suffered severe pogo of the center J-2 engine of its S-II 2nd stage on ascent which resulted in a premature shutdown of that engine.
So, even during NASA’s glory days, both it and its contractors were capable of committing some fairly egregious errors in both design and construction. None of SpaceX’s failures to-date have been due to incorrect vehicle assembly.
Saturn V flew a total of 13 times. There were significant problems on two of those missions, both of which were severely compromised as a result. It will be interesting to see what FH’s record looks like when it has also reached the 13 mission mark a few years hence.
Comparing the hobby rocket to the Saturn V is something nobody can take as anything but a joke.
And yet I have done so. And you aren’t laughing.
A bad joke is what you have always been.
Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here all week.
Speaking of monstrosities, I’m now promoting the NEW GARY for you.
Engineering graphics don’t come cheap, I’ll send you a bill.
https://iceonthemoon.wordpr…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
The arch-troll shows up finally. The most disgusting creep of all. The perkins creature will show up next. Doug Messier is going to tolerate your vicious harassment of me? Maybe…maybe not.
Baiting me by posting a link inviting others to insult the dead shows exactly what you are. As low as anyone could possibly go.
Why would we “admit” something that isn’t true?
You know this Gary guy never stepped within 50 feet of an engineering school when his analysis revolves around K.I.S.S the band rather than a multi-variable analysis. Trying to design a door stop, let alone a launch vehicle, through single variable analysis (engine count i this case) is pretty much the definition of (bad) armchair engineering.
You know this guy Snarky is a coward that would pee his pants if he ever stepped within 50 feet of this Gary guy. That is the absolute truth.
Like all anonymous armchair keyboard thugs- a gutless coward.
No spacex fanboy would admit anything that does not promote the company. Not about true.
Better get used to it, billionaires are the only entities in the US who are developing new high thrust liquid fuel rocket engines.
The critical need for Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit is Super Heavy Lift Vehicles and of course the Saturn V with the F-1 first stage and J-2 upper stages is the benchmark. After half a century nothing has changed.
The billionaires are not building anything comparable because they want to be able to also use their engines to make money launching satellites with faux-heavy lift. Not the most efficient thrust range for true SHLV’s used for HSF-BEO.
Too many engines violates the K.I.S.S. principle. Fanboys like to argue this but any idiot can see things like 27 engines and a ton and a half of hypergolic propellants wrapped around a small capsule is cheap and nasty.
So, like I said, they want to play but they don’t want to pay. It is the standard NewSpace tactic to justify this self-defeating practice in various ways. But the reasoning is faulty and simply a ruse to excuse a poor design philosophy.
After half a century quite a bit has changed and you don’t seem to approve of any of it. Falcon Heavy is a heavy-lift vehicle – no “faux” about it. KISS is an engineering principle, but it’s not the only engineering principle nor is it The One Ring to Rule Them All. There are other valid engineering principles that can outrank KISS and one of those is fault-tolerance – call it the RAID principle. You can reject this all you like, but that doesn’t diminish either the truth of the proposition or the demonstrated usefulness of the concept.
Sorry but it is definitely faux heavy. The original heavy lift brand was over 100 tons and that was the Saturn V. It changed due to spacex P.R.
SLS Block 1 can’t push much more uphill than Falcon Heavy even should it ever manage to launch at all. And SLS Block 1B and Block 2 are never going to be built. By your definition, the only heavy lift rocket soon to enter service is the SpaceX SHS. It may get some company a few years further down the road from Blue Origin’s New Armstrong, depending upon what its specs eventually turn out to be.
But it can push more. You are lying like a Muskrat blathering about “my definition.”
SLS is a Super Heavy Lift Vehicle and I have always said so. The 28 engine monstrosity is not.
SLS Block 1 can put 70 metric tons in LEO – if it ever flies. A Falcon Heavy Block 5 – which has flown twice this year – can, in completely expendable mode, do the same. Of course the SLS costs about $2 billion and the FH costs $150 million so the $/kg-to-LEO number will be about 13 or 14 times better for FH.
The way I see it, if two guys can bench the same weight, they’re equally strong.
SLS will never be able to lift anywhere near 100 tons – Imperial or metric – to LEO without, at a minimum, getting an EUS upper stage. Boeing has been making the same dog’s breakfast of designing EUS it has long since made of designing and building the SLS core stage. EUS is a minimum of five years away from first flight – most likely quite a bit more.
EUS is not, therefore, likely to be much of a factor in SLS’s limited future. If, as SpaceX’s VP Mr. Hofeller said at the Asia-Pacific Satellite conference recently, SHS is ready to begin commercial service in about 24 months, that will pretty much write finis for SLS. That will be essentially certain if SLS, as I predict will prove to be the case, has not yet flown even once by mid-2021.
Advert.
BTW speaking of the Starship/Super Heavy it looks like SpaceX is hiring engineers to start preparing Pad39a for its flight tests in the near future. It will be fun to watch as a stacked Starship/Super Heavy is taller, heavier and over 50% more powerful than the SLS. It also looks like a real rocket should look like. It will be an amazing sight to watch both the Super Heavy and Starship landing once the test flights start.
Expect buildings to be shaking and the windows to be rattling?
Flying from Pad39a means it will soon be very very hard for the Congress Critters and NASA to keep ignoring the 150 ton monster on the launch pad.?
Too many engines violates the K.I.S.S. principle, unless it’s the NEW GARY.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Might as well replace the SLS core with another New Glenn booster, and the SLS upper stage with the New Glenn upper stage. Call it New Glenn Heavy.
Hey, Gary’s the boss, take it up with him.?
And there you are….
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Douglas Messier
The comments section on parabolic arc used to be a surprisingly civil place despite some deep trenches (political/ideological) in the spaceflight enthusiast group. Unfortunately every now and then a troll appears out of nowhere and fires direct, personal insults at other users to disrupt any meaningful discussion.
I would prefer such individuals to be excluded from the comments section, as they do not contribute in any constructive way.
Doug tends to ban him under his various aliases as soon as his entertainment value drops.
So it really is Gary after all?
That’s one of his personas I have reason to believe that is also a screen name that jr uses.
oh yeah.
Gary climbed back out of his bog and is adjure on a number of sites, and he never changes.
I have his known aliases blocked elsewhere and it’s blocked here too, so yes.
On the disqus profile of each user there’s an ellipsis. Press that to select the ‘Block User’ option. When you see ‘This user is blocked’ on the page it means that: a) you’re now free from reading polemics and b) you won’t be tempted to reply.
There are spaceflight enthusiasts and then there are spacex fans and one group has posed as the other for a decade when they are actually not about space at all.
The Ayn-Rand-in-Space-Libertarian cult that has chosen spacex as best representing their bizarre ideology is not about space exploration….it is about state-hate and NASA-bashing.
This 4th of July America is in the process of going back to the Moon to stay with a Super Heavy Lift Vehicle more powerful than Apollo. The cult that has hijacked all public discourse on these forums and harassed anyone not playing in their crap infomercial is against America, free speech, and a nation united in a goal that benefits all humankind. They despise the state, anything that does not result in profit for the individual, and could not care less about humankind.
NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. That Doug
Messier allows me to express my views speaks well of him….and the intolerance and harassment of the spacex fan club exposes exactly what they are; traitors and trolls.
I can’t imagine why one would get pushback when saying: “NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration” on a forum which is….checks notes…..”Interested in reaching a large audience of movers and shakers in the NewSpace industry”
As you are a coward looking to get that anonymous stab in the back in I can’t imagine you being anything but gutless and snippy. It is why you are here…you could never say anything of the sort to another man face to face without getting slapped. It is terrifying to you.
In regards to this “spaceflight enthusiast group” that is “pushing back” I can only say that from the very beginning “NewSpace” has been an ideology working against human spaceflight. Wannabe space clowns fantasizing about financing a space station vacation with Elon with a second mortgage and pinning on their faux astronaut wings. Their hatred of anything they cannot ridicule and trivialize is sick…morally, ethically, and psychologically. That shiny starship to Musktown is far away and magically paying for it by strip mining Earth orbit is bizarre and over the top. Of course they cannot tolerate someone exposing this.
They live in a fantasy world.
For NewSpace to be anything but a scam it must first renounce the rabid fanboys that vomit state-hate and NASA-bash. And that means most of those squatting here will have to find another venue to exhibit their mental disorders.
Funny how actual accomplishments and objective milestones won’t change your mind but Soviet style “renouncement” are NewSpace’s savior. And even the casual observer would conclude you are no position to lob mental illness claims at others….
Funny how you babble nonsense and play the red card. Any casual observer can tell you are the classic internet cowardly thug.
In regards to “accomplishment”, it is a satellite launch company paid for by NASA. They have undercut other companies by swindling the taxpayer promising a cheap astronaut taxi. No taxi. Besides a legion of rabid ideologues that promote their scam that is all they are.
Doug .. just when does it end? Or go to far?
“Ayn-Rand-in-Space-Libertarian cult
bizarre ideology
state-hate
NASA-bashing
The cult
harassed anyone
crap infomercial is against America
They despise the state
fanboy
arch-troll
disgusting creep
NASA-bashing
toxic garbage
gang of thugs
B.S.
one ideology,
corrosive and ruinous,
Musk Mob”
No one, NO ONE else consistently talks like this. The only one spewing “toxic garbage” & “B.S.” Is Gary….
There is no reason to promote this kind of debate.
You dog-whistle “Gary” and then wag your finger at me you troll?
If it is all true, which it absolutely is, then what you are doing is completely in character with your bunch of “space enthusiasts.”
Complaining that someone is telling it like it is.
se jones and the rest of you maliciously troll me for interrupting your spacex infomercial and don’t get banned yet all of you cry like the spoiled rotten little brats you are to have me kicked off “your” playground. Pathetic.
se jones posted a link to a page expressing sorrow over the death of lunar geologist Paul Spudis. He did this to mock and bait me. And he also went to the trouble of dog-whistling “Gary” with a graphic mocking a comment I made.
Doug Messier should understand what this creep is and ban him.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…