This week in SF history

— 2004 February 26. First ISS EVA with no one inside (wikipedia.org)

Spaceflight news

— Beresheet prepares to land on the Moon (planetary.org)

— PS this booster will be the one used for the in-flight abort (americaspace.com)

Short & Sweet

— Despite issues, Soyuz successfully deploys EgyptSat-A (nasaspaceflight.com) (twitter.com/RussianSpaceWeb/)

— Another successful test flight for Virgin Galactic. (spaceflightnow.com)

— Hayabusa2’s first sampling! (engadget.com)

Questions, comments, corrections

— Fantastic Starman sweatshirt (etsy.com)

— RPG night on the 8th! (patreon.com)

Data Relay: Hypergols

— Thanks to Arin Cross for researching and presenting this topic! (linkedin.com)

— BFRCs - produced when launches with NTO go wrong (youtube.com)

— Early hypergolic testing history: Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, by John Drury Clark (google.com/books)

— Video showing a drop of RFNA into a pool of MMH (purdue.edu)

— See also

— Investigation into the hypergolic ignition process initiated by low weber number collisions. (aiaa.org)

— Advances in hypergolic propellants: ignition, hydrazine, and hydrogen peroxide research. (hindawi.com)

— Flame structure, a la Arin Cross (proquest.com)

— Space Shuttle OMS engines used hydrazine and NTO (books.google.com)

— JWST has hypergolic and monopropellant thrusters (jwst-docs.stsci.edu) (PDF: nasa.gov)

— More info on JWST momentum dumps (jwst-docs.stsci.edu)

— Ariane 5 ECA purges with helium before and after burns (books.google.com) (esa.int)

— GSLV and PSLV use Vikas engine (isro.gov.in)

— High-thrust Vikas Engine (HTVE) is now used on GSLV Mk III (spacetechasia.com)

— Named after Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai. Recommended reading: From Fishing Hamlet to Red Planet: India’s Space Journey (isro.gov.in)

— ISRO sent a team of ~50 scientists to France in 1974 to participate in Viking/Ariane development. (indiatimes.com)

— Side note: a rag left in a water coolant pipe during installation destroyed a Viking engine in flight (wikipedia.org)

— Viking uses transpiration cooling (airandspace.si.edu)

— Lots of work is happening in “green” hypergolics (harvard.edu)

— A mixture of furfuryl alcohol, ethanolamine and copper (II) chloride (fuel) and 70% hydrogen peroxide was tested at one point (PDF: researchgate.net)

— Gelled hypergolics are also an option (docs.lib.purdue.edu)

— Hydrazine in a solid fuel for hybrid application (doi.org)

— Further reading

— Humble, Ronald. Space Propulsion Analysis and Design. United Kingdom: McGraw-Hill Companies,Incorporated, 1995.