Tag: commercial

UK’s CAA gives Saxavord on Shetland Islands its range license

9:15 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has now issued the range license for the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, following up issuing it a spaceport license in December.

A range licence is a legal requirement ahead of a space launch, but is not in itself permission to launch. This licence grants the broad approval to provide ‘range control services.’ Specifics will depend on the launch vehicle and will be outlined as part of relevant launch licences.

Work by the Civil Aviation Authority continues in assessing potential launch operators from SaxaVord.

Sounds good, eh? Not so fast. It took the CAA about two years to issue these two spaceport licenses, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to launch from Saxavord. The CAA must still issue launch licenses to the specific rocket companies wishing to launch. Though the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg wants to do the first orbital test flight this year from Saxavord, it still must get that launch license. Do not be surprised if it takes the CAA more than a year to issue it.

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Astroscale wins contract to complete removal of large piece of space junk

8:39 am

Capitalism in space: Japan’s space agency JAXA has now awarded the orbital tug startup Astroscale a contract to complete the removal of an abandoned upper stage from a previously launched rocket.

Astroscale has already flown the first phase of this project, with its ADRAS-J tug flying in March and April a demo rendezvous mission with the rocket stage, getting to within several hundred meters of the stage. The second phase, now approved, will grab the stage with a robot arm and then de-orbit it. No date for the launch of that second phase was announced.

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Several new missions to the asteroid Apophis proposed by commercial and governments

9:39 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon showing Apophis’s path in 2029

At a conference this week several new missions to the asteroid Apophis during its close Earth fly-by in 2029 were proposed by both private companies and government entities.

  • Blue Origin is considering sending its Blue Ring orbital tug, launched in 2027 on a Falcon 9.
  • JPL proposes sending two cubesats on the orbital tug mission previously announced by the startup ExLabs.
  • NASA continues to study sending the two Janus spacecraft, since its original asteroid mission was lost when the Psyche asteroid mission was delayed.
  • The European Space Agency has two different missions under study.

With all of these missions, the big obstacle is funding. Most are either only partly funded, or not at all.

At the moment the only mission actually on its way to Apophis is OSIRIS-APEX, which having completed its sample return mission to Bennu was then sent to Apophis.

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SpaceX and Rocket Lab complete launches

10:12 pm

Both SpaceX and Rocket Lab successfully completed launches today. First SpaceX launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Shortly thereafter, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifted off from one of its launchpads in New Zealand, placing two technology demonstration satellites in orbit, one testing a solar sail from NASA and the other from South Korea testing a cubesat doing optical observations of Earth. Though the first stage had the markings of a stage designed for resuse, there was no indication in the company’s live stream of any attempt to recover it.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

42 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 28, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 35.

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Jonathan Scott – Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed on the organ of Rochdale Town Hall, Rochdale, UK.

Hat tip Judd Clark. To all: I could use suggestions from others. Right now Judd is doing the lion’s share of work, suggesting a lot of great evening pauses. I want more variety, however, including suggestions from many others. If you have suggested something before you know the routine. If you haven’t and want to, post a comment here, but DON’T post the link in your comment. I will contact you for it.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse’s first suborbital rocket arrives in Australia

9:32 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse today announced that its first suborbital rocket, the SR75, had arrived in Australia for its planned first test launch.

On 28 February, Southern Launch, the commercial outfit that manages the Koonibba Test Range, revealed that a launch attempt of the suborbital SR75 rocket would occur between late April and early May. This likely gives the team little room for the unexpected as it prepares for launch.

Those launch dates depend on whether Australia’s government will issue the launch licenses on time. So far its ability to do so in a timely manner has been difficult if not impossible. For example, the rocket startup Gilmour, which wants to launch from Bowen at about the same time, has been waiting more than two years to get its approval, delaying its first orbital test launch by more than a year.

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PLD Space announces its upcoming plans

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Having received in late January a $43.5 million grant, bringing its total funding to more than $120 million, the Spanish rocket startup PLD Space today announced its upcoming plans.

[T]he company intends to inaugurate the first serial space rocket factory in Spain in mid-2024. The facilities will also enable vertical integration of the launchers. The industrial site, whose building work is already underway, will house the factory for the first MIURA 5 units [the company’s orbital rocket] as well as the company’s head offices. In total, PLD Space will be able to count on 18,400 square metres of industrial facilities in Elche (Alicante).

…Also scheduled for 2024, construction work is to begin on the launch base at the European CSG spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana), which belongs to CNES [France’s space agency]. This site, covering over 15,700 square metres, will host MIURA 5’s first launches.

That France is now leasing launch facilities to private companies illustrates starkly how Europe is steadily abandoning Arianespace, the European Space Agency’s government-run commercial company. Instead, Europe is now choosing competition and private enterprise as its model. Expect these new companies, including PLD, to achieve big things in the coming years.

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Slovenia signs Artemis Accords

10:58 am

NASA announced yesterday that Slovenia has become the 39th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance for exploring the Moon and the solar system.

The alliance now includes these nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

As with all the recent announcements, the NASA press release now insists that the accords are designed to “reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,” the exact opposite of the original goals of the accords. Rather than overvcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restriction on private property in space, the Biden administration is now using the accords to strengthen that restriction. To quote someone (Mussolini) whose policies the modern globalist world clearly admires, “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

This could all change with different leadership in Washington, but whether the administrative state, led by the Democratic Party, will allow such a thing at this point in history is very questionable. And they appear aided in this totalitarian effort by a meek and largely ignorant American public.

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Blue Origin completes delivery of the two BE-4 engines for ULA’s second Vulcan launch

10:04 am

Blue Origin this week completed delivery of the two BE-4 engines needed for the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for sometime this fall.

That launch was originally targeting an April launch, but according to official announcements has been delayed until the fall because final ground testing of its payload, Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle, is not complete. It appears that Blue Origin also contributed to that delay, as it is now obvious that its engines were not available as planned in time for that April launch.

This delay also raises questions about Blue Origin’s ability to ramp up BE-4 engine production to meet the needs of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Both have large launch contracts with Amazon to launch its Kuiper constellation, while ULA also has almost as many contracts with the U.S. military. To meet those contracts, Blue Origin will have to produce several hundred BE-4 engines yearly in the very near future. Right now it appears it can only produce about one per year.

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Boeing to reduce staffing for SLS due to overall delays in Artemis

9:53 am

Boeing announced yesterday that it is going to reduce the staffing for its SLS rocket, caused by delays in other parts of the program that force it to stretch out operations.

When Boeing cites “external factors,” it is referring to the slipping timelines for NASA’s Artemis Program. In January officials with the space agency announced approximately one-year delays for both the Artemis II mission, a crewed lunar flyby, to September 2025; and Artemis III, a lunar landing, to September 2026. Neither of these schedules are set in stone, either. Further delays are possible for Artemis II, and likely for Artemis III if NASA sticks to the current mission plans.

Although the SLS rocket will be ready for the current schedule, barring a catastrophe, the other elements are in doubt. For Artemis II, NASA still has not cleared a heat shield issue with the Orion spacecraft. That must be resolved before the mission gets a green light to proceed next year. The challenges are even greater for Artemis III. For that mission NASA needs to have a lunar lander—which is being provided by SpaceX with its Starship vehicle—in addition to spacesuits provided by Axiom Space for the lunar surface. Both of these elements remain solidly in the development phase.

What Boeing is telling us indirectly is that, though NASA has not yet announced any further delays in those launch dates for Artemis-2 and Artemis-3, those dates are going to be delayed, quite possibly by one or more years.

None of this is a surprise. I have long been predicting that the first manned lunar landing in the Artemis program will not take place before 2030. In fact, that date was obvious the moment NASA announced its plan to make the Lunar Gateway space station an integral part of the program, back in 2018, when it was called LOP-G.

Now that SLS development is complete and NASA considers it “operational”, Boeing is merely reducing the staffing to maintain its assembly line, reducing it accordingly because of expected delays when additional rockets will be needed.

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FAA to now require that reentry spacecraft get landing license before launch

4:05 pm

We’re here to help you! The FAA is now going to require that any company planning to launch a payload or spacecraft into orbit to get both its launch and landing licenses before launch, in order to avoid the situation that occurred last year when Varda launched its capsule and then had difficulties getting its landing license approved due to red-tape confusion between government agencies.

In a notice published in the Federal Register April 17, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation announced it will no longer approve the launch of spacecraft designed to reenter unless they already have a reentry license. The office said that it will, going forward, check that a spacecraft designed to return to Earth has a reentry license as part of the standard payload review process.

In the notice, the FAA said that decision was linked to safety concerns of allowing spacecraft to launch without approvals to return. “Unlike typical payloads designed to operate in outer space, a reentry vehicle has primary components that are designed to withstand reentry substantially intact and therefore have a near-guaranteed ground impact as a result of either a controlled reentry or a random reentry,” it states.

While this seems to fall directly under the FAA’s basic authority, to make sure launches and landings pose no risk to the general public, I guarantee it is also going to slow the growth of the new space manufacture industry. I fear that with time approvals will be delayed, some so much that companies will go bankrupt waiting for approval. The FAA will never be able to guarantee perfection in this matter, and as bureaucrats tend to be cautious, expect it to increasingly oppose re-entries by new companies.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

3:48 pm

Bunny march on! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

41 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 47 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 33.

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Rocket startup Orbex raises another $16.7 million in private investment capital

9:28 am

The British rocket startup Orbex has raised another $16.7 million in private investment capital, bringing the total it has raised now to over $100 million.

It remains unclear when the company’s Prime rocket will complete its first launch. It now says it will have its rocket and launch facility at the Sutherland spaceport ready by the end of this year, but it had previously hoped to launch the rocket in 2023. It appears that goal failed because the spaceport could not get either the spaceport license or its own launch license approved by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Those licenses have still not been issued, even though the applications had been submitted in Feburary 2022, more than two years ago.

Those delays by the CAA probably explains why the company has had four different CEO’s in the past year. Though the fault of the delays lies with the government, others have had to take the blame. Meanwhile, company officials now state that it is now exploring using other launch sites, including its own near the equator.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites; but with streaming issues

2:43 pm

SpaceX today succeeded in launching another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. However, after stage separation and the ignition of the upper stage, with the rocket operating normally, the live stream from X suddenly went down. The problem was not with the rocket, as all feeds from both stages disappeared, with the entire live stream going blank.

The first stage was on its twelfth launch. SpaceX has now confirmed that it landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has also confirmed as successful orbital insertion.

This was SpaceX’s 40th launch so far in 2024, all successful. To get some perspective on the company’s continuing and spectacular success, the entire United States could not achieve that many launches in any year from 1969 through 2019, and in 2020 it merely matched this number (because SpaceX that year launched 25 times). And SpaceX has done it this in only three and a half months. Based on this pace, its goal of 150 launches in 2024 appears increasingly possible.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

40 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 46 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 40 to 33.

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Sweden signs Artemis Accords

9:55 am

Sweden yesterday became the 38th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, one day after Switzerland had officially signed.

The alliance now includes the following nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The press release once again focuses on “reinforcing” the Outer Space Treaty, rather than using the accords to get around that treaty’s limitations of private property. More and more it appears the Biden administration and the global community wants to use this alliance not to encourage the establishment of a legal framework for private ownership, but to retain that power within the governments involved.

As I said last week, “Under these circumstances, I wonder why China and Russia haven’t signed on as well.”

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Salomé’s Dance

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Music by Charles Barber. This comes from the 1913 silent film, Salomé, based on an Oscar Wilde play. Rarely seen, the movie represents a very early attempt to do something “edgy”. It succeeds about as well as modern “edgy” films, showing us a very shallow representation of human existence. But the visuals give us a glimpse into that early film world, when sets and costume were usually the only way to show something strange and striking.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites with 1st stage on record-setting 20th flight

7:44 pm

The bunny flies again! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage, landing successfully on a droneship in the Atlantic. At this moment SpaceX is beginning to collect a fleet of Falcon 9 first stage boosters that have flown almost as much as NASA’s space shuttle fleet, which flew as follows:

Discovery 39 flights
Atlantis 33 flights
Columbia: 28 flights
Endeavour 25 flights
Challenger: 10 flights

At present SpaceX has one booster with 20 flights, and two with 19, and I think one with 18. It will take a lot more launches to catch up, but it certainly appears possible for at least a few of these Falcon 9 stages to exceed the shuttle numbers.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

39 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 45 to 26, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 39 to 32.

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Amazon: First operational launch of Kuiper satellites delayed

9:38 am

Though Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, in his annual letter to shareholders yesterday, touted the Kuiper internet constellation’s profit potential, he also implied that the planned first launch of operational satellites has been delayed.

When Project Kuiper’s first two prototype satellites were launched last October for testing, Amazon said that its first production-grade satellites were on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and that it expected broadband service to be in beta testing with selected customers by the end of the year.

Today, Jassy put a slightly different spin on that schedule. “We’re on track to launch our first production satellites in 2024,” he wrote in his letter. “We’ve still got a long way to go, but are encouraged by our progress.”

Later in a television interview Jassy was more blunt, stating that the first operational satellites will not be ready until “the second half of ’24”, with the service becoming available “in the next year or so.”

The company’s incredibly slow roll-out of this constellation puts it at a significant disadvantage. Both it and Starlink were announced at about the same time, but Starlink already has several thousand satellites in orbit, has been operational for several years, and has almost three million customers signed on. It has gotten all the low-hanging fruit. Amazon will either have to convince those customers to switch — generally a difficult thing to do — or find new customers that have so far been less inclined to buy such satellite services.

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Swiss company tests three-legged hopper for asteroid exploration on zero-G airplane

9:26 am

SpaceHopper in flight
SpaceHopper in flight

A Swiss company, ETH Zurich, has successfully tested the ability of an unmanned three-legged hopper, designed to explore asteroids by hoping in the light gravity, to orient itself using its legs by flying on a zero-G airplane.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from the video embedded below.

All nine leg motors [three per leg] work together to launch the SpaceHopper high off the asteroid’s surface when jumping. As the robot is subsequently in flight, it maintains its upright orientation by selectively extending or withdrawing its legs to shift its center of mass as needed. Upon landing, its legs flex to absorb impact and to keep the bot from falling over.

During zero-G on the airplane flights the hopper successfully jumped, then used its legs to correctly orient itself afterward.

Developing this hopper was initially a student project, and its success has gotten it upgraded, still led by those students.
» Read more

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Rocket startup Relativity foregoes bidding on present round of military launch contracts

10:01 am

The rocket startup Relativity has decided not to bid on the present round of National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contracts, saying the first launch of its new Terran-R rocket will not occur until 2026, well after those contracts are going to be awarded and flown.

Relativity was initially aiming to compete for the first round of NSSL Phase 3 contracts expected to be awarded later this year. However, the California-based company’s new Terran R rocket won’t fly until 2026 at the earliest, which falls outside the timeframe for this year’s NSSL Phase 3 awards. “We’ve been fairly transparent with our schedule over the last year and have continued to hit our milestones,” Joshua Brost, chief revenue officer at Relativity Space, told SpaceNews. “We’re very comfortable about on-ramping to NSSL in the future, likely next year as we approach that 12 months from initial launch.”

Relativity, after completing one partly successful launch of its smaller Terran-1 rocket in 2023, abandoned further development on that rocket in order to focus on its larger Terran-R. That decision however put it out of the launch market for years. I have always wondered if that decision was partly influenced by the increased launch regulation of the FAA in the past two years, which has caused the launches of new American rockets to almost cease. It might have realized getting Terran-1 launched again would be difficult and waste valuable company time and resources. Better to take a break on the hope that by 2026, the regulatory atmosphere might have improved.

Furthermore, Relativity uses very sophisticated 3D technology to build its rockets, an asset whose value on the market is maybe much greater than its rockets. It could be that Relativity is exploring this avenue at the moment, and we might find it never resumes launches.

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Russia and SpaceX complete launches

9:08 am

Early today both Russia and SpaceX completed rocket launches.

First, Russia after several scrubs for technical reasons successfully completed a test launch of the largest configuration of its Angara rocket, the Angara-A5. It was the first launch of Angara-A5 from its far east spaceport Vostochny, and the first test launch of this rocket confiruration since 2014. Development had stalled for many years due to a major design issue revealed in 2019.

This launch establishes several important benchmarks for Russia’s space program. This rocket is essential for its goal of building a new space station, and the launch from Vostochny gives Russia as stronger backup to Baikonur in Kazakhstan, where long-term access is becoming problematic.

SpaceX then followed, with a launch of a military weather satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its third flight, landing successfully back at Vandenberg.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

38 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined 44 to 26, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 38 to 32.

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