COVID-19 Related Propellant Supply Issues Delay Landsat 9 Launch, Impact SpaceX Missions
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
NASA says that a surge in COVID-19 cases has caused supply issues that have delayed the planned launch of the Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base by one week to no earlier than Sept. 23.
“Current pandemic demands for medical liquid oxygen [LOX] have impacted the delivery of the needed liquid nitrogen supply to Vandenberg by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and its supplier Airgas,” the space agency said in a blog post. “Airgas converts the liquid nitrogen to gaseous nitrogen needed for launch vehicle testing and countdown sequences. DLA and Airgas now have implemented efforts to increase the supply of liquid nitrogen to Vandenberg.”
An United Launch Alliance Atlas V booster will launch the satellite from Space Launch Complex 3 at the California Space Force base.
Landsat 9 is the latest in a series of Earth observation satellites dating back to 1972. Landsat spacecraft have provided continuous monitoring of Earth’s land and costal regions.
During the annual Space Symposium last week, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said that COVID-19 related shortage of LOX is impacting the schedule of launches of the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship and Super Heavy boosters.
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters are already operational. SpaceX plans to launch the first Super Heavy/Starship rocket on its first flight test later this year.
43 responses to “COVID-19 Related Propellant Supply Issues Delay Landsat 9 Launch, Impact SpaceX Missions”
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* No mask wearing.
* No social distancing.
* No vaccinations.
* No problems right? It’s all an illusion. The LOX shortage is just another Chinese hoax.
Also the folks who are vaccinated not continuing to wear masks, not continuing to social distance, not continuing to work remotely and not continuing to learn remotely.
A Football coach here that was fully vaccinated died from Covid this Summer because they thought they could just start doing sports again because the team was vaccinated.
Vaccination only reduces the probability of transmission, it doesn’t stop it. Folks need to recognize that their old pre-Covid lifestyle is gone, Covid has now become endemic, and stop trying to return to it.
Vaccination also improves the outcome if you still manage to be infected. Very few deaths among the vaccinated, even if they comorbidities like being overweight, having diabetes, elderly etc.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Even with the vaccine you will get infected just as if you were not, the difference with the vaccine is how early your body turns off the geometric growth curve of the virus. Or not. Meanwhile in the early stage you can still pass it on.
It will be interesting to see how the vaccines hold up to the new variant that is emerging from South Africa that appears to be more easily transmitted than the Delta Variant. It is insane that international non-essential travel is still being allowed, not to mention conferences like the Space Symposium…
Time to bring back the old WWII slogan – “is this trip necessary?”
I am looking forward to the booster shot for it.
Well you understand the power of industry. We are looking down the barrel of mass failure in the civil aviation sector. For real. A lot of money will be lost and industries brought to a crawl if we really have to do that. And I’m afraid we really might have to do that.
Yes, it will be a game changer for commercial aviation, but aviation needs to change anyway in response to climate change, so it is just accelerating it.
https://www.bbc.com/future/…
Should we give up flying for the sake of the climate?
By Jocelyn Timperley18th February 2020
But it is good to remember that the lost of one industry creates new ones. Blacksmith shops were replaced by gas stations. Horse ranches by auto factories, and cities became cleaner as a result (no streets full of horse manure and flies).
In terms of travel the substitute will likely be virtual travel along with business meetings and conferences using VR. Already firms are looking to satisfy the need. I expect that progress will produce a holodeck long before a future Zefram Cochrane produces Warp Drive starships.
https://www2.learnbrite.com/
I also expect that remote work will make slow travel attractive again, modern sail ships and green energy trains, not high speed rail.
One change I made for The Plague, is remote operation of our telescopes from my home. It’s is surreal running scopes I had grown to know like the back of my hand being run thru what seems like a soda straw. The virtual nature of the exercise felt like the ‘uncanny valley’ sociologists predict we will have with AI. We also pipe all the sounds to our homes as esp with the 100 year old 0.9m telescope, all the pops, bangs, and groans are a part of operating the system correctly. We’re in a very powerful monsoon this year,
so we have to be on site. But having my ‘mind’ on Kitt Peak and inside my domes while I make a pot roast in my kitchen while I process images and
observations reports is surreal. One really nice thing to do is go outside at 3 AM and hear how quiet Tucson is while it sleeps. Not to mention missing
the walk from the domes to the dorm. Now I just shuffle from my
electronics room to my bed. That is the strangest part of remote operations.
Interesting. I would have thought you were doing remote ops much earlier. We’ve been running three telescopes remotely, one in a mix of remote and automated observing, and two totally automated for around 16 years now. That’s a 32, an 18, a 17, a 14, and a 6-inch at the research observatory and a
16 (on campus). They all are capable of running via scripts to observe without human intervention. The 32 can additionally do spectroscopy in an unattended mode. The only times folks are at our research observatory are when there is an open house (once a month), when there is a time critical event like an occultation, or when I’m out here working on stuff. The on-campus 16″ only has people there when I’m teaching Observational Lab.
We have dewars with fixed hold times, so even when remote we have to send up a human to fill the LN2. Neither telescope can go long without human intervention. Not to mention, we help other programs with their scopes as well.
I remember NM Tech running a telescope remotely in the Magdalena Mountains from campus in the early 1980’s. It used a microwave link since the mountains could be seen from the campus. If I recall it’s main function was to search galaxies for Supernova. I remember Dr. Colgate showing it to me when I was working for him.
Welcome to the world of remote work! Now you are ready to think about operating telescopes on the Moon or one of the Starship telescopes Elon Musk is talking about building.
I think Lee is ahead of me on that front. 🙂 I’m very much a human in the loop kind of person. I’m very 20th cen that way. Without shame.
All of our CCDs are Peltier cooled. For what we do, that’s good enough. No need to refill dewars. However, I remember a paper from the 90s that talked about a autofill dock for refilling a dewer. I think it was at U of Iowa. Since then I’ve seen a couple of other autofill systems.
I’m also very much in the loop. With as many systems as we have, the convolved MTBF is approximately 0 days. So I’m always fixing stuff lol.
That MTBF matters when you’re 50 miles from your equipment. Weather becomes very constraining.
We operate at -140 C. LN2 is wonderful stuff.
I hear that a lot from advocates of the 1,000-Year Covid Reich. But I’m aware of no reputable scientific evidence to support the idea. There is certainly no other disease for which an immunization vaccine is available that works like that.
Weak and dumb. The covid death wards filled with right wing anti vaxers is all the proof you need.
“Covid death wards?” Apparently you’re under the impression Andrew Cuomo is still Governor of NY. The anti-vaxxer population is pretty various, politically. Out here in CA, it’s mostly lefties, especially blacks and New Age-y “natural”-everything freaks from west of Sepulveda.
The rest of the US is not Califoronia. Look to Dixie. If the right does not stop the likes of Gov’s DeSantis and Abbot come Octomer 12,000 a week are going to passing away, most of them firm GOP anti masker, anti hand washing, anti social distancers, and anti-vaxers. If that rate is reached and maintained thru to Jan, the GOP is going to be down a lot of voters. Donny already tried to start turning it around to his credit, but the ‘tards won’t even listen to him. Come October we’re going to see if you guys can turn off your own self destruction.
I live in Florida and strongly prefer DeSantis methods compared to more restrictive states on average. Not 100%, but then I never am in 100% agreement with anyone. Vaccinated and reasonable distancing, plus I work in 80+ temperatures most of the time. If I’m not safe, I’ll deal with the consequences. I know a few anti-vaxers as well as a few that want vaccines mandatory. Both frequently off base. I’m done, y’all can go back to your regularly scheduled left-right bashing.
You know I don’t like the idea of mandated vaccinations either. But if your gov would go as far as Trump and say “Get the shot, I got the shot, and it works.” I think that would go a long way to turning off this build death wave. And the wave is going to hit DeSantis’ own base. Hard. Think about all the loved ones of the GOP faithful who will die painful deaths left to reflect on why their loved one was led to their death, and what kind of person would do that. The needlessness of it will have almost a full year to develop before next November. What the heck is it with the GOP faithful, they’ve become a death cult. Upset at 16 soldiers killed in a bombing in Kabul, but look the other way at the face that hospitals in Dixie are filled to capacity their people like them who refuse to to get vaccinated. The GOP is nuts, and nature is about to show it how crazy it has become. This won’t be like global warming, it’s going to be right in your face.
I can respect your position, it may have to stop short of agreement for fear of being labeled a lefty.? seriously I do agree with your points. I was sick the day after the second shot and I know several others personally with the same reaction. One I know personally was hospitalized with a vaccine reaction. Second hand stories of reaction deaths. So I can understand caution both directions
Edit an hour later. I agree with Desantos policies of last year but disagree with his policies of telling businesses they cannot mandate vaccines for their people this year. I say let the businesses run their business, and pay the price if they choose wrong.
Yeah federalism and freedom of enterprise end when it goes against GOP talking points. 🙂
Stay healthy, keep up your vaccinations, and those of your friends and family.
Yes, it does prepares the antibodies to attack it. But that also means you may still be transmitting it to others even if you are not showing symptoms.
Horseshit.
Spot on. It’s a real shortcoming of the CDC that they don’t put out educational blurbs that explain what a vaccine really does and does not do. Because both sides of this silly divide really don’t get that.
Yes, and the CDC needs to remind folks that even with a highly effective vaccine as was develop for Polio it will take many years to eradicate Covid even if we stay ahead of the mutation rate.
We are not returning to normal anything time soon. The best will be to adopt strategies that allow a co-existence with it.
It wouldn’t matter if the CDC did that now or not. The CDC has pretty consistently said whatever the left-wing talking points of the day were and no one would now trust them even if they started telling the truth. Their role in making Covid tests effectively unavailable early in the pandemic is also pretty widely known now so, to many people, the CDC is just another self-serving government agency, not a promulgator of Holy Writ.
Dumb and weak that you have to reach that far back. I expected better from you. But maybe I shouldn’t.
“Dumb and weak” is not an argument – except maybe on Twitter. The CDC screwed up pretty nearly everything anent Covid from the get-go and has been doing so ever since. Or do you deny that, too?
I’m not going to waste a bunch of typing time re arguing all the carp and excuses your side has built up since day one of this pandemic that have been proven wrong by reality. You’re just being stupid at this point. It’s as if you’re arguing the sky is pink, because it appeared that way in the morning. I’m not going to waste my time.
As with a great deal else, anent Covid you seem to have a seriously defective grasp of what you are pleased to call “reality.”
Yeah, whatever.
The death rates are starting to climb to very high levels again, and with the overwhelming majority of the anti-mask-distance-vax crowd falling in the GOP category, if this process does not stop, there could be some real results with who’s able to make it to the polls next Nov. Last year’s wave hit the whole population across the board, this new one generated and focused square on the GOP. They’re killing themselves and continue to pump this kind of malfunction.
It’s really strange to see a nation that coddled it’s military over the past 20 years trying to keep the death rate low in the GWOT, throw away 100’s of thousands of civilians when trying to make a political point while fighting a virus. Look at the whacky levels our leaders have guided the citizenry to.
Sorry to intrude into your lefty alt-universe bubble here, but no, the deaths are not climbing to very high levels again. And the two most vax-skeptical demographics in the U.S. are heavily Dem-tilting voting blocs – those with advanced college degrees and blacks.
Not sure about the left coast where you live, but here in tiny Boone, NC (and elsewhere here in the South), deaths are spiking. The hospital here has three “Covid tent wards” because the main hospital is full. 25% of the hospitalized cases here were fully vaccinated. 50% of the intubated patients have died. Guess who here refuse to wear masks, social distance, and get vaccinated? Trump supporters. I have never voted Democrat , but I also understand science. I wear a mask. I don’t go places like concerts.
All you have to do is look at the Bing covid map to see that deaths are climbing. Covid is worse this fall than last fall.
You compare this with flu. When was the last time you heard of people being intubated because of flu? Or hospitals having to open up *tent wards* to deal with flu? NEVER, that’s when.
Oh, and I don’t know where you come up with the idea that those with advanced degrees don’t get vaccines. Everyone I know in my department is vaccinated. Yet several have gotten covid regardless.
It’s not impossible, by any means, for someone vaccinated against Alpha Covid to catch another strain – typically Delta. But the lethality of Delta Covid among the Alpha-vaxxed population is miniscule. Recent deaths are almost entirely among the unvaccinated.
I don’t know what the history of coercive anti-Covid measures has been in NC, but it is interesting that Sweden, a nation with about the same population as NC, and with similar totals of Covid cases and deaths, is not experiencing any current spike in either cases or deaths. This in spite of the fact that Sweden has implemented no coercive anti-Covid measures at all during the entire pandemic – no mask mandates, no social distancing mandates, no lockdowns, no mass business closures. The percentages of each population that is fully or partly vaccinated are similar too – 55% for NC and 59% for Sweden. Pretty obviously, all the coercive Covid Reich theater we’ve been subjected to in this country for the past 18 months has had, on net, no real effect except to leave us a lot more poorly off, economically, than a nation which has taken no such measures.
So you’ve bought into the 1,000-Year Covid Reich nonsense too? The vaccines protect very well against the Alpha strain and provide quite a bit of protection against the Delta strain too. The Delta strain, in any case, is far less lethal than the Alpha strain. Covid has already done its worst. From here on, it will be an endemic illness like flu and no more deadly. We’ll get our annual shots like we do for flu – a combined shot very possibly – and a certain low level of mortality will simply become part of the medical background noise, as flu has been for decades. Masks and the rest of the appurtenances of Covid theatrics will fade as it becomes increasingly apparent that we have not got Ebola or the Black Death going on here.
Huh. I am sure that it does not help the situation that our small autoclave is broken and they are using a 15’x40′ clave to cook patches here. That is a heck of a lot of LN for a tiny piece of composite.
Long term it will be essential to shortened the electronic chip supply chain to make it robust which includes mandating production in the USA for those bought for military and critical civilian applications. Wonder if anyone thought to including loans/subsidies for that in the infrastructure bill.
In terms of shortages of Oxygen, Elon Musk probably should be looking at producing it onsite, good practice for producing it on Mars for refueling.
There’s a lot of need for LOX in the SW Texas coast, watch this. SX builds a LOX plant knowing that in between launches they’ll be able to sell to the refineries no problem. Heck if they make it solar/wind/battery powered it would be practice of a sort for Mars. Not the same cycle to LOX, but much of a ISRU exercise on Earth would be practice for Mars.
Yes! It will supply all of his needs for Starship/Super Heavy while being easy to ship to Florida for Falcon 9/FH. He could even sell some of it to NASA for SLS or to ULA if they are nice.?
In business, nice means that their checks clear in a timely manner. One of our company expressions, “No such thing as bad jobs, just bad prices.” Bad jobs are mostly from arrogant/incompetent customers, which are often turned into good jobs with modifications of price.
Translation for those that don’t get it, being a horses ass gets expensive.