SpaceX Falcon 9 : TESS : April 18, 2018 : Discussion

[jebbo]

The TESS simulated data products have now been released.

Key quote:

Though the simulation was aimed at producing the most realistic synthetic science data from the standpoint of generating the pixel data, it relies on several assumptions and simplifications that may not reflect actual mission operations and instrumental and spacecraft behavior conditions. In addition, the simulation was geared towards verifying that the ground system software met its formal requirements, and therefore some aspects of the data are not realistic.

See http://archive.stsci.edu/tess/ete-6.html for details.

I'm now frantically updating my tools to cope, as the format is subtly different to Kepler, and this has pointed out flaws in my internal representation :-)

--- Tony

[jacqmans]

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has been uncreated from its shipping container for inspections and preflight processing. The satellite is NASA's next step in the search for planets outside of the solar system also known as "exoplanets." TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Orbital ATK, NASA’s Ames Research Center, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Space Telescope Science Institute. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission. NASA’s Launch Services Program is responsible for launch management. SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, is the provider of the Falcon 9 launch service. TESS is scheduled to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than April 16, 2018 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/963882459946520577

NASA's budget states that the #Falcon9 Full Thrust received Category 2 certification in January 2018. Category 2 certification allows Falcon 9 to launch medium risk NASA payloads. This certification is needed for the #SpaceX @NASA_TESS launch, which is currently NET March 20th.

Here’s Jeff Foust’s write-up:

NASA certifies Falcon 9 for science missions
by Jeff Foust — February 16, 2018

WASHINGTON — NASA has certified the current version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 to launch some categories of science missions, a milestone needed for the upcoming, but delayed, launch of an astronomy spacecraft.

NASA disclosed the certification in its full fiscal year 2019 budget proposal, released Feb. 14, in a section about NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP). “In January 2018, SpaceX successfully completed ‘Category 2’ certification of the SpaceX Falcon 9 ‘Full Thrust’ with LSP which supports the launch of the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission in March 2018,” it stated.

http://spacenews.com/nasa-certifies-falcon-9-for-science-missions/

[JBF]

Is FT just for block 4 or will it carry over to block 5?

[gongora]

Is FT just for block 4 or will it carry over to block 5?

They'll need to do some additional certification on the new Block design, but their next LSP flight isn't for a couple years so that shouldn't be a problem.

[scr00chy]

Is FT just for block 4 or will it carry over to block 5?

They'll need to do some additional certification on the new Block design, but their next LSP flight isn't for a couple years so that shouldn't be a problem.

Wouldn't they automatically get Category 3 certification once they get Block 5 certified for humans?

[gongora]

Is FT just for block 4 or will it carry over to block 5?

They'll need to do some additional certification on the new Block design, but their next LSP flight isn't for a couple years so that shouldn't be a problem.

Wouldn't they automatically get Category 3 certification once they get Block 5 certified for humans?

I think those are different organizations within NASA certifying them for different purposes?  LSP is consulting on the Commercial Crew certification but isn't the human rating certification done within HEOMD?

[scr00chy]

Is FT just for block 4 or will it carry over to block 5?

They'll need to do some additional certification on the new Block design, but their next LSP flight isn't for a couple years so that shouldn't be a problem.

Wouldn't they automatically get Category 3 certification once they get Block 5 certified for humans?

I think those are different organizations within NASA certifying them for different purposes?  LSP is consulting on the Commercial Crew certification but isn't the human rating certification done within HEOMD?

I have no idea. It just seems to me that F9 being human rated should be enough to whomever is in charge of the Cat 3 certification, and SpaceX shouldn't need to go through the whole process with them in order to get Cat 3 certified. But who knows how all this works.

[woods170]

I think those are different organizations within NASA certifying them for different purposes?  LSP is consulting on the Commercial Crew certification but isn't the human rating certification done within HEOMD?

I have no idea. It just seems to me that F9 being human rated should be enough to whomever is in charge of the Cat 3 certification, and SpaceX shouldn't need to go through the whole process with them in order to get Cat 3 certified. But who knows how all this works.

Never attribute to inefficiency what can be adequately explained by bureaucracy.

[joek]

Wouldn't they automatically get Category 3 certification once they get Block 5 certified for humans?

For the LV likely.  However, there is more to certification than the LV.  There are likely to be processes which are specific to human certification and which not be easily applicable to other types of payloads.

For example, minimizing LOC (loss of crew) is #1 priority over LOM (loss of mission) for human payloads; LOC does not apply to non-human payloads, where LOM is #1 priority.  The intersection of those and how one might apply to the other is unclear.

In short, "automatically get Category 3 certification" may be a stretch, but certainly some of the work on human certification should be applicable.

[Star One]

I think those are different organizations within NASA certifying them for different purposes?  LSP is consulting on the Commercial Crew certification but isn't the human rating certification done within HEOMD?

I have no idea. It just seems to me that F9 being human rated should be enough to whomever is in charge of the Cat 3 certification, and SpaceX shouldn't need to go through the whole process with them in order to get Cat 3 certified. But who knows how all this works.

Never attribute to inefficiency what can be adequately explained by bureaucracy.

No sometimes it just is inefficiency. Some people are a little to quick to blame bureaucracy for other issues, and that in my experience usually tells you more about their personal beliefs than anything else.

[vaporcobra]

Never attribute to inefficiency what can be adequately explained by bureaucracy.

No sometimes it just is inefficiency. Some people are a little to quick to blame bureaucracy for other issues, and that in my experience usually tells you more about their personal beliefs than anything else.

Take it from someone who has spent a considerable portion of the last 12 months studying US spaceflight history - NASA's bureaucracy is absolutely unparalleled for a public agency (the DoD is at least as bad, if not worse, but the military-industrial complex is a whole different animal). It would be a truly a titanic feat to underestimate the sheer level of chaos, redundancy, intra-agency competition, and baffling bureaucracy within NASA.

I've often been labeled cynical, and I was still floored by what I read in the primary and secondary source literature on NASA's organization...

[woods170]

Never attribute to inefficiency what can be adequately explained by bureaucracy.

No sometimes it just is inefficiency. Some people are a little to quick to blame bureaucracy for other issues, and that in my experience usually tells you more about their personal beliefs than anything else.

Take it from someone who has spent a considerable portion of the last 12 months studying US spaceflight history - NASA's bureaucracy is absolutely unparalleled for a public agency (the DoD is at least as bad, if not worse, but the military-industrial complex is a whole different animal). It would be a truly a titanic feat to underestimate the sheer level of chaos, redundancy, intra-agency competition, and baffling bureaucracy within NASA.

I've often been labeled cynical, and I was still floored by what I read in the primary and secondary source literature on NASA's organization...

All too familiar. From what I've heard from multiple industry sources, over the years, the bureaucracy at NASA is very bad indeed. And that isn't a recent development. It was already so in the late 1970's.

Here is an example from that period:
NASA contracted with the Dutch space agency NIVR to build the IRAS satellite. The NASA part of the job was assigned by NASA HQ to Ames Research Center. Ames subsequently contracted JPL and JPL subsequently contracted Ball Aerospace to do all the actual work, including DDT&E. The latter subsequently sub-contracted Perkin-Elmer for the telescope instrument.

So, every time a major decision had to be taken regarding the telescope instrument it went from Perkin to Ball to JPL to Ames to NASA HQ. When a decision had been reached by NASA and NIVR it went back to Perkin via NASA HQ, Ames, JPL and Ball.
Needless to say, this made for a very inefficient way of getting things done. The only three things that saved the entire NASA-side of the project from grinding to a halt were:

1. Nancy Roman and Nancy Bogess relentlessly pushing the NASA bureaucracy forward to keep some sort of momentum.
2. Project technologists Jim Houck and Frank Low bending all the NASA acquisition rules by buying superior material for Ge:Ga IR sensors for just $20 from Eagle Pitcher and paying for it out of their own wallets.
3. The fact that the contract between NASA and NIVR wasn't actually a contract but a MOU: a Memorandum Of Understanding. Which is far less restrictive in what is allowed and what isn't.

Nevertheless, the result of this bureaucratic mess, as well as how this same bureaucratic mess dealt with cryogenic development trouble, was IRAS launching three years late and the US contribution to IRAS going over budget by 200 percent.

Now, compare this to the Dutch part of IRAS. NIVR contracted directly to ICIRAS (Industrial Consortium IRAS) which did all the work (DDT&E).
The result was that the Dutch contribution was ready literally years before the US contribution was ready. The Dutch contribution also stayed well within the allocated budget. Approx. 10 percent of the budget was returned by ICANS to NIVR because it wasn't needed.


But I digress.

[jebbo]

Very interesting, and while I agree - this has long been my bugbear with NASA - it is not really TESS related

[vaporcobra]

Very interesting, and while I agree - this has long been my bugbear with NASA - it is not really TESS related

I had to sleep, but I was going to try to tie it back in, get us back on track The point of this history segue is that being certified by LSP to launch science payloads almost certainly means NOTHING to those boards tasked with certifying for crewed launches, and that is almost entirely an irrational result of nonsensically redundant bureaucracy, duplicative and competitive field centers, and a headquarters that is about as in touch with reality as Deepak Chopra.

Now, back to the scheduled program

[Roy_H]

NASA’s TESS Mission Will Provide Exciting Exoplanet Targets for Years to Come
...
Exoplanets aren’t the only science that will come out of the TESS all-sky survey, however. While scientists expect to spot a transit signal that could reveal exoplanets around only about one out of 100 stars, virtually every star in the sky will be monitored carefully and continuously for at least 27 days, resulting in a wide variety of variability to be explored.
...
Related Links

NASA's TESS website
TESS project website
By Elaine Hunt
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Last Updated: Oct. 5, 2016
Editor: Rob Garner

27 days? Doesn't this have to observe a star for 2 years to expect to catch at least one transit of an inner planet?

[speedevil]

27 days? Doesn't this have to observe a star for 2 years to expect to catch at least one transit of an inner planet?

'No'.
It will detect a fraction of planets - naively for earthlike orbit planets about a twelfth, on one pass - though there are areas of the sky it will stare at for one year at a time (the poles).
It will detect all planets with orbits under 27 days multiple times.
In the zones of more continuous observation, it will detect all planets with periods up to about a year.

If the mission is approved and works for another two year survey of the same design, then you have about the same chance of detecting slower transiting planets you only caught once transiting again.
It would take about twenty years or more of observation to get to most planets with earth-like orbits with two transits so you can make a stab at their orbit.

However, there are many, many other instruments out there with synergies with TESS that may help complete the survey and followup on observations.

Observation pattern shown at:

[jebbo]

27 days? Doesn't this have to observe a star for 2 years to expect to catch at least one transit of an inner planet?

No. For M dwarfs, the periods are often very short.  For example, TRAPPIST-1 has 7 planets with periods between 1.5 days and 18.8 days ... and some of these are in the "habitable zone" (all that really means is they could have liquid water)

For G & K dwarfs the period to be in the HZ is obviously longer, but we can play a numbers game - by looking at LOTS of stars, we'll see a few transits which can be followed up from the ground - which is the big advantage TESS has over Kepler.  It is deliberately designed to look at brighter stars which can be followed up, whereas Kepler was a population study to determine the frequency of planets.

Expect me to get excited as we start to get results 

Edit: weird! Didn't see the above post before I write my reply ... oh well 

--- Tony

[Greg Hullender]

Does anyone know if TESS is precise enough to measure the difference between "full transit" time (second contact to third contact) and "partial transit" time (first contact to fourth contact)? If it is, then it's possible to estimate the orbital period based on a single transit, assuming the mass and radius of the star are known. Even if that estimate is crude, it could be very helpful when observing subsequent transits if you want to know whether you missed any.

[speedevil]

Does anyone know if TESS is precise enough to measure the difference between "full transit" time (second contact to third contact) and "partial transit" time (first contact to fourth contact)? If it is, then it's possible to estimate the orbital period based on a single transit, assuming the mass and radius of the star are known. Even if that estimate is crude, it could be very helpful when observing subsequent transits if you want to know whether you missed any.

Transit shape is an inherent part of pretty much all planet-finding satellites are used.
Knowing the subtle shapes of the light change is required to tell you the way the planet crossed the star, if it has moons, if it was a microlensing event, if it has atmosphere, ...
The accuracy of the whole light-curve of the event sets how much data you can get out beyond just 'probably a planet', if you only have a binary event.

is a probably too technical presentation, but many of the graphs are interesting.