Rocket Lab gets launch contract for lunar cubesat
Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded Rocket Lab the contract to launch the privately-built, for NASA, lunar orbiting cubesat CAPSTONE, designed to test technologies and the orbital mechanics required to build its Gateway lunar space station.
This quote says it all:
The firm-fixed-price launch contract is valued at $9.95 million. In September, NASA awarded a $13.7 million contract to Advanced Space of Boulder, Colorado, to develop and operate the CubeSat.
Using two different private companies, one to build the satellite and the other to launch it, NASA will get a lunar orbiter for just over $23 million. That total equals the rounding error for almost all NASA-built projects.
The launch is set for early 2021.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded Rocket Lab the contract to launch the privately-built, for NASA, lunar orbiting cubesat CAPSTONE, designed to test technologies and the orbital mechanics required to build its Gateway lunar space station.
This quote says it all:
The firm-fixed-price launch contract is valued at $9.95 million. In September, NASA awarded a $13.7 million contract to Advanced Space of Boulder, Colorado, to develop and operate the CubeSat.
Using two different private companies, one to build the satellite and the other to launch it, NASA will get a lunar orbiter for just over $23 million. That total equals the rounding error for almost all NASA-built projects.
The launch is set for early 2021.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Isn’t 10 mil more than double what rocket lab charges for commercial launches?
Eric: I’d have to do some digging (can’t now, about to go out) but assuming you are right I think the reason for the higher price is need to get to lunar orbit. Requires an extra upper booster.
That’s very good news. Spacecraft and launches have been astronomically expense for far too long. It’s taken until 2020 (despite Falcon9 fly for the last 5 years) for prices to start to drop significant *for NASA projects*. IPXE and your example above is the evidence.
It’s time for NASA to structure it’s spacecraft acquisition and funding programs to utilize these price points and costs.
Rocket Lab’s website talks a little about an upper stage that is able to take payloads beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), which is what their previous launches did, to Lunar orbit.
https://www.rocketlabusa.com/news/updates/rocket-lab-to-deliver-payloads-to-the-moon-and-beyond-with-photon/
It would seem that this upper stage is at least part of the cost that is beyond the usual LEO launch price.
Fred,
As companies, countries, and national space programs, such as NASA, take lower launch costs into account, they realize that they are able to afford missions that they previously could not perform. BulgariaSat 1 is a good example.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/bulgaria-credits-spacexs-low-costs-for-making-its-satellite-possible/
SpaceX brought about a major change in the way people think about access to space. This is one reason why so many people are such fans of the company. SpaceX is bringing about a revolution that makes possible the dreams of the 1950s, the ideas of the 1960s, and the plans of the 1970s. When the Space Shuttle failed to make access to space cheap and easy, all those dreams, ideas, and plans crashed and burned.
This past decade, the reduced cost to launch, both by SpaceX and as proposed by Blue Origin, has turned those dreams into a different set of ideas, ideas that take the reduced costs into account. Plans are being made to turn those ideas into reality during the next decade or so.
So far, for manned exploration beyond LEO, NASA is still counting more on the future SLS than it is on the current Falcon rockets, the future BFR class of rockets, the future New Glenn rocket, or the future Vulcan rocket. I would say that NASA is wisely relying upon existing rockets over future rockets, but SLS is still under development, and it has been slipping badly over the past few years, so the wisdom of relying upon it is questionable.
Just curious when we’ll start talking about ‘boosters’ rather than ‘rockets’?
Blair Ivey,
There are times when I get more technical than when I wrote that post. Often the industry will specify a rocket that takes a payload to orbit as a launch vehicle, but that can be a little bit of a mouthful, even when reading, so the word “rocket” just came to my mind naturally. A booster would more accurately describe many first stages and all solid rocket strap-ons, because launching from Earth requires a lot of oomph to get off the pad, and Earth-launched boosters tend to have more thrust than efficiency. The word rocket is nice, short, and generic, but it can also describe an attitude control thruster.
On the other hand, I may have been thinking too technically, at the time I wrote that post. Notice that I did not call SLS a rocket. This is because it is a system rather than a rocket. I even pondered placing the BFR class of launch vehicles within the Falcon family, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles.
It is hard to imagine how I could have overthought and underthought a single paragraph, but it looks like I managed to do it.