SpaceX gets NASA contract to launch gamma-ray space telescope
NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a new gamma-ray space telescope, dubbed the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), using its Falcon 9 rocket and targeting an August 2027 launch date.
The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $69 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The COSI mission currently is targeted to launch August 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
This wide-field gamma-ray telescope will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. NASA’s COSI mission will probe the origins of the Milky Way’s galactic positrons, uncover the sites of nucleosynthesis in our galaxy, perform studies of gamma-ray polarization, and find counterparts to multi-messenger sources. The compact Compton telescope combines improved sensitivity, spectral resolution, angular resolution, and sky coverage to facilitate groundbreaking science.
The stated launch price gives us a sense of what SpaceX is charging these days for launches. The contract award also illustrates once again why the delays in developing ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets — caused by Blue Origin’s difficulties in manufacturing its BE-4 rocket engine — has ended up costing both companies a lot of money in sales. SpaceX keeps getting these launch contracts because Vulcan and New Glenn are not yet flying operationally. Vulcan has flown once, but it is probably isn’t capable of adding additional launches to is manifest. More important, the rocket is not yet reusable, and probably could not match SpaceX’s price.
As for New Glenn, it supposedly will make its first launch this fall, but we shall see. It remains four-plus years behind schedule, and though it is described as reusable, its first stage landing vertically like a Falcon 9, it is doubtful it will become doing this on its first launches. It needs to prove out its systems first.
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 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
NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a new gamma-ray space telescope, dubbed the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), using its Falcon 9 rocket and targeting an August 2027 launch date.
The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $69 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The COSI mission currently is targeted to launch August 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
This wide-field gamma-ray telescope will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. NASA’s COSI mission will probe the origins of the Milky Way’s galactic positrons, uncover the sites of nucleosynthesis in our galaxy, perform studies of gamma-ray polarization, and find counterparts to multi-messenger sources. The compact Compton telescope combines improved sensitivity, spectral resolution, angular resolution, and sky coverage to facilitate groundbreaking science.
The stated launch price gives us a sense of what SpaceX is charging these days for launches. The contract award also illustrates once again why the delays in developing ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets — caused by Blue Origin’s difficulties in manufacturing its BE-4 rocket engine — has ended up costing both companies a lot of money in sales. SpaceX keeps getting these launch contracts because Vulcan and New Glenn are not yet flying operationally. Vulcan has flown once, but it is probably isn’t capable of adding additional launches to is manifest. More important, the rocket is not yet reusable, and probably could not match SpaceX’s price.
As for New Glenn, it supposedly will make its first launch this fall, but we shall see. It remains four-plus years behind schedule, and though it is described as reusable, its first stage landing vertically like a Falcon 9, it is doubtful it will become doing this on its first launches. It needs to prove out its systems first.
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 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
Just by being available Space x is taking all the business.
By being cheaper than anyone else they are just standing there eating their lunch in front of them.
Still looking forward to the day when they put these things up on Starship and size/weight restrictions are no longer as crucial.
pzatchok wrote: “Just by being available Space x is taking all the business. By being cheaper than anyone else they are just standing there eating their lunch in front of them.”
By being cheaper, SpaceX is generating even more customers; there is more lunch to eat. The reduced launch cost means that many space companies that had previously missed being profitable can now be profitable and can attract investors; the recent enthusiasm for telecommunication constellations is an example. The availability allows those companies to get their hardware into space so that they can make those profits. It takes both the low price and the availability to make this happen. Reusability provides both. Because SpaceX is the low-cost provider, these new customers are largely dependent upon SpaceX for launches, but other lower-cost launchers are also becoming available.
The reduction in satellite size has had a similar effect. Companies that could never have existed before are now able to make a good living by making or buying smaller, lighter, cheaper satellites that do not cost as much to build and launch, making them even more profitable.
These factors also reduce the cost of doing space science, meaning that more science can be performed — more launches can be performed — for the same budget.
These reasons are why we see so many launches and why Rocket Lab is doing so very well in ramping up its launch cadence. There are plenty of customers for small launch vehicles, too.
Looking at Robert’s latest annual launch report, we can see that if we exclude China (which launches it own satellites for its own growing space industry) and SpaceX, the world’s launch market was fairly close to 50 launches per year for the past couple of decades, including the past three years.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-global-launch-industry-in-2023-a-record-third-year-in-a-row-of-growth-with-dark-clouds-lurking/
Some people say that SpaceX has taken launches away from the heritage companies, but it looks to me that SpaceX has created an additional demand that it is capable of fully supplying. The large number of Falcon launches may have made the relatively stagnant launch cadences of the other launchers seem to shrink. Arianespace’s launches are back down to the cadence of twenty years ago,* but United Launch Alliance (ULA) seems to have lost about half a dozen launches annually. That seems to be a little more than the number of Space Force (nee Air Force) launches assigned to SpaceX instead of ULA. This tells me that the new companies chose very few of the expensive — and now out of production — Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles.
Once these and other companies become competitive, they may begin taking launches away from SpaceX. There does seem to be plenty of lunch for everyone.
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* Arianespace’s major customers are companies sending communication satellites to geostationary orbit (GEO). Their launches fluctuate, depending upon this market, which has declined with the increase in communication constellations. The GEO companies are concerned that their future market will suffer, so they have launched fewer com-sats in the last few years. Twenty years ago was another lull in com-sats, but for a different reason.