Oklahoma Space Alliance

OKLAHOMA SPACE ALLIANCE

A Chapter of the National Space Society

Who We Are:

        Oklahoma Space Alliance is the central Oklahoma Chapter of the National Space Society, one of the largest space advocacy groups in the country, and has existed for more than 20 years. Our purposes include promoting the exploration and development of space, educating the public to current events in space and the usefulness of an active space program, all with the intent of promoting a space-faring civilization.
        Oklahoma Space Alliance hosted the 23^rd Annual International Space Development Conference on May 27-31, 2004. We previously hosted three Regional Space Development Conferences, assisted with earlier ISDCs, put displays in malls, hosted lectures, sponsored television interviews, hosted viewing nights, worked with other space-oriented groups and maintained local contact with the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority.
        Oklahoma Space Alliance helped out with the 2007 International Space Development Conference which was hosted by the National Space Society of North Texas in Dallas Texas from May 24 - 28, 2007, and put together a commemorative exhibit for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. This exhibit ran through July of 2009. (See below for details.)
        We do a bimonthly newsletter called Outreach and a monthly e-mail newsletterUpdate to keep our members informed of current developments in space and upcoming events they might be interested in. Editor of Outreach is Syd Henderson and editor of Update is David Sheely. David also does an Update most months when Outreach is published.

Oklahoma Space Alliance is now on Facebook at Oklahoma Space Alliance

March 2025 Update (pdf format) (Information to be presented at February meeting)

March 2025 Outreach (pdf format)

Space Priorities (pdf format)

March Meeting

Oklahoma Space Alliance will meet at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 8, at the location next to Norman Computers on West Main in Norman. Prospective members are welcome.
The meeting room is in the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge next to Norman Computers. Please enter through the Cyber Hall door. The Cyber Hall is at 914 W Main St, opposite Norman High School. The phone number is (405) 292-9501. To get to the meeting space from points north, take Highway 77 exit off I-35, and continue south until you reach Main Street. Norman Computers is about a block and a half west of this on the south (left) side of a small mall.

Saturday, March 8, 2:00 p.m. (tentative)

Introductions and review of Space events this past month
What’s Happening in Space, News, Pictures, and Videos approximately one hour. See http://osa.nss.org before the meeting for items to be discussed.
Break
Oklahoma Space Alliance Chapter Business Discussion

Review OSA treasurer’s report.
Minutes of February Meeting
Posters
Membership Business

Video (to be announced)
Chat

Minutes of February 8 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting

        Oklahoma Space Alliance met February 8, 2024, at the McMurrays’ house in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending in person were Clifford and Claire McMurray, Adam Hemphill, Dave Sheely, and Syd Henderson. Robin Scott attended by Zoom. OSA President Clifford McMurray presided over the meeting He and Clifford did an Update discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online at https://osa.nss.org/Update2502.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
        Bezos’s landing ship that they use for New Glenn booster landings is named Jacklyn after his mother. The lost payload was the
        The payload of the first New Glenn launch was a test version of Blue Ring Pathfinder. From the article https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-massive-new-glenn-rocket-into-orbit-on-1st-flight-video:‘Blue Ring is being developed as part of the Defense Innovation Unit's (DIU) Orbital Logistics Program. … Blue Origin is developing Blue Ring to fulfill DIU's need for a "heavy utility multi-orbit logistics vehicle," or m-OLV.’ The next flight of New Glenn will be sometime this spring.
        SpaceX lost contact with the Starship second stage after seven minutes and forty seconds. All debris (which resulted from an on-board self-destruct mechanism to prevent it from falling out of control) fell within the designated area but there was some property damage. But it did produce a spectacular artificial meteor shower.
        The next flight of Starship will feature an attempt to catch the second stage since they are making a bunch of changes. [This may have to wait since the last second stage self-destructed. In any case, the launch will be late at night on March 3, so it may not make Outreach but will make Update.]
        Bill Nelson has resigned as NASA Administrator with the incoming administration (similar to Jim Bridenstine four years ago). We went through some news of Jared Isaacman’s appointment. He has some conflict of interest because he was issued SpaceX stock.
        The first Argonaut mission has been scheduled for 2031. This is the ESA’s cargo lander that will support lunar colonies and perhaps someday Mars expeditions.
        Artemis 2 is now scheduled to launch in May of 2026. [This has caused a cascade of reschedulings for the later Artemis missions from September launches to May launches.]
        We inspected an article on the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft which supplies the Tiangong space station, and the commercial spacecraft that will supplement or replace it.
        Yutu-2 (“Jade Rabbit 2”) was still transmitting last September, which made it the longest-lived lunar rover. However, it stopped transmitting last month. Still, January 3 was the sixth anniversary of its landing, and five years and nine months is pretty spectacular.
        The Pentagon needs to put together a plan for the Iron Dome space defense system within sixty days,
        Sunita Williams is now fourth overall for total EVA time, and first for women.
        We watched a livestream of Earth via Sen from SpaceTV, but weren’t able to figure out what part of Earth it was showing. You can watch it too at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO9e9jnhYK8.
        The new Varda spacecraft was just one of 121 payloads carried on a SpaceX rideshare mission.
        India’s successful test docking was at eleven millimeters per second, which is extremely soft (and also indicates to me how precise they were.)
        One of Blue Origin’s test experiments is to show how fire would propagate in Zero-G.
        Vast is going through qualification work. Currently they don’t have a contract with NASA. In fact, they are getting no outside funding at all. They will be launching modules in 2029 and 2030.
        We had a look at the proposed Vast-2 space station. This features eight modules, two each on an arm of a cross, plus a core module. It can be complete by 2032. If they can get the first module up before the ISS is decommissioned, they will be doing well.
        We looked at a video about the Blue Ghost and Resilience moon landers. The latter is part of Hakuto-R Mission 2.
        With the flyby return of Elon Musk’s Tesla Cruiser, we looked at other manmade objects that returned and were mistaken for natural objects. One of these was the Rosetta spacecraft which was doing an Earth flyby in 2007 on its way to a comet. Between 2020 and 2022, mistaken for asteroids were Lucy, BepiColombo, both doing flybys, the SpectR X-ray observatory at the Earth-Sun L2 point, and, most famously, an upper stage from what appears to be the launch of the Surveyor 2 lunar probe which failed in 1966. We also got a link to https://www.whereisroadster.com.
        We watched a video of SpaceDeX mission and docking.
        The first module of India’s space station will go up in 2028.

--Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson

Outreach & Update

Outreach and Update are the newsletters of Oklahoma Space Alliance. Outreach is published in odd-numbered months and is sent both by post and by e-mail.Update is published in even-number months and is sent by e-mail. The December Update is often replaced by a meeting announcement election ballot, in which case the November minutes will be published in the January Outreach. You must be a member of Oklahoma Space Alliance to receive Outreach by post unless you are on our courtesy list. To receive newsletters by e-mail, contact Syd Henderson at the address at the bottom of the page. The newsletters listed below are slightly edited to turn them into web pages.
Outreach is edited by Syd Henderson, and Update by Clifford McMurray (except the June 2024 was by Adam Hemphill)

--Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson

March 2025 Update (pdf format) (Information to be presented at February meeting)

March 2025 Outreach (pdf format)

Minutes of January 2024 Meeting
Minutes of February 2024 Meeting
Minutes of March 2024 Meeting
Minutes of April 2024 Meeting
Minutes of May 2024 Meeting
Minutes of June 2024 Meeting
Minutes of July 2024 Meeting
Minutes of August 2024 Meeting
Minutes of September 2024 Meeting
Minutes of October 2024 Meeting
Minutes of November 2024 Meeting
Notes on December 2024 Christmas Party

Minutes of January 2025 Meeting
Minutes of Februuary 2025 Meeting

Minutes of previous meetings

Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Copyright 2025 Oklahoma Space Alliance.