Category: Behind The Black

Engine for Japan’s new Epsilon-S rocket explodes during static fire test

9:36 am

For the second time in a row an engine for Japan’s new Epsilon-S rocket has exploded during a static fire test.

The test was conducted inside of the restricted area at Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is investigating, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.

An Epsilon project manager, Takayuki Imoto, told an online press conference from Tanegashina that the explosion occurred 49 seconds into the planned two-minute test, causing fire and scattering broken parts of the engine and damaging the facility.

The Epsilon-S is being built by Japan’s space agency JAXA. It is intended to replace the solid-fueled Epsilon rocket that was initially conceived in 2013 to lower launch costs and provide JAXA with a rocket that could complete with the many new smallsat rocket startups worldwide. That rocket however only launched six times and never achieved its goals. JAXA had been targeting March for the first launch of Epsilon-S, but that is now unlikely, especially considering these two engine failures during tests.

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France to resume suborbital launches at French Guiana

9:14 am

Now that France’s space agency CNES has taken the management of its French Guiana spaceport back from the European Space Agency’s Arianespace government company, it has been moving to make the spaceport more attractive to multiple future launch customers. Previously it announced that it is offering launchpads to multiple new rocket startups. Now it has announced that has signed a contract with the French startup Optus Aerospace to reopen its closed suborbital launchpad for the first time in decades.

Officially inaugurated in 1968, the Ensemble de Lancement Fusées-Sondes (ELFS) launch complex hosted the Guiana Space Centre’s first launch on 9 April 1968, with a Véronique sounding rocket that reached an altitude of 113 kilometres. Between 1968 and 1992, more than 350 sounding rockets were launched from the facility.

On 25 November, CNES announced that it had signed a contract with Opus Aerospace to use the ELFS facility for the launch of its Mésange rocket.

In other words, under the control of a government entity, Arianespace, which also controlled all European launches for decades, the variety of launches declined. As soon as control was lifted from this government monopoly however the possibilities expanded quickly.

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SpaceX wins launch contract for Dragonfly mission to Titan

8:58 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded the launch contract for sending its Dragonfly mission to Titan to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $256.6 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The Dragonfly mission currently has a targeted launch period from July 5, 2028, to July 25, 2028, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Dragonfly is a truly cutting edge mission. Though we have relatively limited information about Titan’s atmosphere and the environment on its surface, it will attempt to fly there like a helicopter, landing and taking off multiple times.

And though there are certainly additional costs required for such a mission, that quarter-billion dollar contract price probably triples what it normally costs SpaceX for a Falcon Heavy mission. Even if it requires the expending of all three first stages, the company is almost certainly getting a big windfall from this deal.

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November 25, quick space links

3:21 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • Landspace touts upgrades it is planning for its Zhuque-3 rocket
    It hopes to do the first three launches in 2025 using the older version, and then upgrade. A comparison of its Zhuque-2 and Zhuque-3 rockets can be viewed here. Zhuque-2 has launched three times successfully, though nothing in the past year. Zhuque-3 will attempt to reuse its first stage.
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Martian mountains amidst a deep sea of sand

11:17 am

Overview

A Martian mountain surrounded by a sea of sand
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 9, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, inside the deep enclosed and very large 130-mile-wide depression dubbed Juventae Chasma.

The mountain in the picture raises above the sand sea that surrounds it from 1,000 to 2,300 feet, depending on direction, as the downhill grade of the sand sea is to the east. Thus, on the west the mountain rises less, while on the east the height is the greatest.

The inset illustrates the extent of the sand sea. It covers the ground for many miles in all directions. The way the sand surrounds these mountains suggests the prevailing winds blow from the west to the east. In fact, the facts suggest that this sand is volcanic ash that was blown into Juventae from many eruptions that occurred over time to the west, where it got trapped. The wind and gravity deposited the sand into the 20,000 to 25,000-foot-deep chasm, where the wind was insufficient to lift it out again.

One wonders how deep that sand sea might be. The lack of any surface features at all suggests it could be quite deep, burying everything but the highest peaks. In fact, if a geologist could drill a core through that sand I suspect he or she might be able to document the entire eruption history of much of Mars.

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Italy to resume use of its San Marco spaceport off the coast of Kenya

9:21 am

Italy's offshore San Marco spaceport
Click for full map.

Italy has now decided to re-open its long unused San Marco spaceport facility off the coast of Kenya, resuming launches from its off-shore launch platform.

During its active life beginning in 1967 a total of eight launches occurred from this site, with the last flight occurring in 1988.

In late 2023, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, first proposed reopening the facility for rocket launches. While unsubstantiated by other sources, local publication MalindiKenya.net reported at the time that the move would be used to create an “ideal launch base for the Italian Vega launcher, thus avoiding paying France for the use of the French Guiana base.”

In October 2024, during a presentation just before the 75th International Astronautical Congress kicked off, Minister Urso explained that the country had decided to move ahead with its plans to once again launch rockets from the Luigi Broglio Space Center.

The present plans will have the site managed by the Kenya Space Agency, established in 2017, with Italy providing the rockets and satellites, all of which are expected to be smallsats. It appears that the rocket company Avio, which builds the Vega-C rocket, might be aiming to use this site as an commercial launchpad, thus allowing it to bypass the French-run French Guiana spaceport. Located close to the equator and on the coast, this site would offer satellite companies a very wide range of orbits.

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Launches galore in the past twelve hours

8:49 am

The past twelve hours was quite busy at spaceports worldwide, with two American companies completing three different launches from three different spaceports, while China added one of its own.

First China launched two radar-mapping satellites, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. No word on where its lower stages, that use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. Though this launch was first, it actually took place in the early morning of November 25th, in China.

Next, Rocket Lab completed two launches, though one was not an orbital flight. First it completed its second of four planned launches of its HASTE suborbital version of its Electron rocket, lifting off from Wallops Island in Virgina. HASTE had been quickly improvised by the company when it realized there was a real market for hypersonic suborbital testing, and Electron could be refitted for that purpose. This launch actually occurred prior to the Chinese launch.

Then Rocket Lab launched five more satellites for the satellite company Kineis, the third of five, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

Finally, SpaceX in the early morning of November 25th launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

121 SpaceX
54 China
14 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 140 to 81, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 121 to 100.

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Unloading of new Progress docked to ISS delayed due to “toxic smell”

10:02 pm

The unloading of cargo from the new Progress freighter that docked to ISS on November 23, 2024 halted immediately after hatch opening because of a “toxic smell” detected by the Russian astronauts.

The crew then proceeded with air leak checks in the docking port, but after opening the hatch between Poisk and Progress, it had to be closed immediately due to toxic smell and possible contamination hazard in the form of droplets, according to communications between the US mission control in Houston and the ISS crew in late hours Moscow Time on November 23.

Various systems aboard the ISS were activated to scrub the station’s atmosphere from possible contamination, while the hatch of the Poisk module leading into the pressurized cargo compartment of the Progress M-29 spacecraft remained closed. In particular, the Trace Contaminant Control Sub-assembly, TCCS, was turned on aboard the US Segment. The Russian crew was also reported donning protective equipment and activating an extra air-scrubbing system aboard the Russian Segment, which operated up to a half an hour.

By the end of today mission controllers from both Russian and the U.S. declared the air cleared and normal, and have begun unloading operations.

The cause remains unexplained.

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SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

11:54 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which had direct-to-cell capabilities, the Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. (Note that the live stream starts late, missing the launch itself).

The first stage completed its 15th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

120 SpaceX
53 China
14 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 138 to 80, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 120 to 98.

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New Glenn on the launchpad and vertical for the first time

9:10 am

The first completely assembled New Glenn, on the launchpad
The first completely assembled New Glenn,
on the launchpad

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket to be fully stacked and ready for launch was finally placed vertical on its Cape Canaveral launchpad late November 21, 2024.

For the first time, the company placed a fully integrated, flight-capable rocket on the launch pad Thursday evening. The company rolled the rocket out of the hangar at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) earlier. A static fire test with the full 98-meter-tall (320 ft) rocket is forthcoming, though a specific date hasn’t been announced.

…The upcoming integrated static fire test would be the first time that Blue Origin fuels a full-assembled. flight-ready New Glenn rocket. It previously conducted a static fire test of its upper stage, which saw a 15-second burn of the two BE-3U engines.

The picture to the right was released by the company that night.

No launch date has been announced. The present payload for this launch is the company’s own Blue Ring orbital tug on a Pentagon-supported test flight. The original payload, two smallsat NASA Mars orbiters built by Rocket Lab, had to be pulled when Blue Origin’s generally leisurely approach meant that it was unable to get the rocket ready in time to meet the October launch window.

That leisurely approach to business will have to end if Blue Origin really wants to compete in today’s modern aerospace industry.

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Distinct gully draining the side of a Martian crater

12:51 pm

Distinct gully in crater on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 20, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labels the entire picture simply as “gully,” obviously referring to that distinct and somewhat deep hollow in the middle of the picture.

Most gullies that have been found on Mars tend to look more eroded and rougher than this hollow. Here, it appears almost as if the process that caused this gully occurred relatively recently, resulting in its sharp borders that have not had time to crumble into softer shapes.

The crater interior slope is about 1,500 feet high. Whatever flowed down it however did not do it in an entirely expected manner. As it flowed it curved to the west, so that the impingement into the glacial material that fills the crater floor is to the west of the gully itself. Either that, or that impingement was caused by a different event at a different earlier time.
» Read more

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Starship gets contract to deliver Lunar Outpost’s rover to Moon

11:10 am

Capitalism in space: The lunar lander version of SpaceX’s Starship has won a contract from the startup Lunar Outpost to deliver its manned rover to the Moon.

The Colorado company announced Nov. 21 that it signed an agreement for SpaceX to use Starship to transport the company’s Lunar Outpost Eagle rover to the moon. The companies did not disclose a schedule for the launch or other terms of the deal.

This announcement is less a new deal for SpaceX and more an effort to convince NASA to award Lunar Outpost the full contract to build the rover. In April 2024 Lunar Outpost was one of three companies chosen by NASA to receive initial development grants to design their proposed manned lunar rovers. NASA expects to award the full contract, worth potentially up to $4.6 billion, to one of these three companies later this year, after seeing their preliminary designs. It wants to choose two, but at present says budget limitations make that impossible.

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ESA and JAXA sign agreement to increase cooperation and accelerate development of Ramses mission to Apophis

10:18 am

The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan’s own space agency JAXA on November 20, 2024 signed a new cooperative agreement to increase their joint work on several missions, the most important of which is the proposed Ramses mission to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis during its 2029 close fly-by of Earth.

Two agencies agreed to accelerate to study potential cooperation for ESA’s Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (RAMSES) which aims to explore the asteroid Apophis that will pass close to our planet on 13 April 2029, including but not limited to provision of thermal infrared imager and solar array wings as well as possible launch opportunities.

The two countries are already working together on two different planetary missions, the BepiColombo mission to Mercury and the Hera mission to the asteroid Dymorphos. Both are on their way to their targets. This new agreement solidifies the commitment of both to make sure Ramses is funded, built, and launched in the relatively short time left before that 2029 Earth fly-by. At the moment the ESA has still not officially funded it fully.

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NASA once again gambling on the lives of its astronauts for political reasons

10:07 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

NASA this week began the stacking one of the two strap-on solid-fueled boosters that will help power SLS on the Artemis-3 mission, still officially scheduled for September 2025 and aiming to send four astronauts around the Moon.

A NASA spokesperson told Ars it should take around four months to fully stack the SLS rocket for Artemis II. First, teams will stack the two solid-fueled boosters piece by piece, then place the core stage in between the boosters. Then, technicians will install a cone-shaped adapter on top of the core stage and finally hoist the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, or upper stage, to complete the assembly.

At that point the rocket will be ready for the integration of the manned Orion capsule on top.

The article at the link sees this stacking as a good sign that NASA’s has solved the Orion capsule’s heat shield issue that occurred during the unmanned return from the Moon on the second Artemis mission. The image to the right shows that heat shield afterward, with large chunks missing. Though it landed safely, the damage was much much worse than expected. At the moment NASA officials have said it has found the root cause, but those officials also refuse to say what that root cause is, nor how the agency or Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin has fixed it.
» Read more

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China’s plan to land astronauts on the Moon

9:31 am

Mengzhou as of 2023
Click for source.

The new colonial movement: China’s state-run press yesterday revealed the basic flight plan its space program will use to land astronauts on the Moon in 2030.

China’s first manned lunar mission will begin with the launch of the Lanyue lunar lander aboard the country’s new heavy carrier rocket [the Long March 10], and Lanyue will then await the subsequent arrival of the Mengzhou manned spacecraft in space. Mengzhou will be poised for its rendezvous with Lanyue in lunar orbit, at which time the astronauts will transfer into the lander.

The lander will then separate and descend to the moon’s surface. Upon the completion of their lunar exploration, the astronauts will return to lunar orbit in the lander’s ascent stage. This stage will involve re-docking with the spacecraft, and will mark the beginning of the astronauts’ journey back to Earth.

This plan is a variation of the Apollo approach, but rather than sending the ascent/descent capsule and lunar lander on the same rocket, China will launch them separately and have them rendezvous in lunar orbit.

Mengzhou is intended to be a larger and reusable replacement for the Shenzhou capsules China is presently using to transport its astronauts to and from its Tiangong-3 space station. Unlike Shenzhou, which appears to be an upgrade of Russia’s Soyuz capsules, Mengzhou instead appears more conelike, as shown by the mockup image to the right, first revealed in 2023.

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The next two Vulcan launches for the Pentagon slip to 2025

9:14 am

Both the Space Force and ULA have now admitted that the next two Vulcan launches, which both had hoped to launch before the end of this year, have now been delayed until 2025, and that Vulcan remains uncertified as yet by the military for its launches.

The United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan will not be able to conduct two planned national security missions on its launch manifest for this year after delays with certifying the heavy-lift rocket. The comments came hours after a Space Force official cast doubt that the missions could be completed before the end of 2024.

ULA launched its second certification flight in October, roughly a month behind schedule, following a first flight in January that was nearly four years behind schedule. The Space Force is still assessing data from the October launch in partnership with ULA.

The military had said if ULA completed two Vulcan successful launches it would approve Vulcan for these launches. Though the second launch got its payload to its correct orbit, during launch the nozzle on one of its strap-on solid-fueled boosters fell off. Though officials keep saying they expect certification anyway, that certification has not happened. It appears right now that the military won’t do so until the investigation into the problem is completed and a fix is installed.

At the moment the only rocket company that can launch large payloads for the Pentagon is SpaceX. Though that company has not gouged the military in bidding (though it it could) this is not a good situation. The military wants options and redundancy, not simply to save money, but to give it flexibility. It needs ULA and Blue Origin to finally deliver their rockets.

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November 19-20, 2024 Zimmerman/Space Show podcast

5:13 pm

My long appearance on the Space Show with David Livingston on November 19, 2024 is now available here.

I list the show as extending into November 20th because we had a sound glitch an hour into the November 19th live stream, forcing us to prematurely end the broadcast. David got the technical problem fixed the next day and we then aired another thirty or so minutes to complete the topics we had been discussing the day before. He then pieced the two sections together to produce this podcast.

Enjoy. Of course the central topic was the Starship/Superheavy flight that day, but we also touched on the consequences of a new Trump administration on SpaceX, NASA, SLS, and Artemis. I also provided an overview of the space efforts in Europe, India, Russia, and China.

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If ordinary people don’t show up at those upcoming FAA Starship/Superheavy public meetings they WILL be screwed

1:24 pm

Starship splashing down vertically
Starship splashing down vertically in the
Gulf of Mexico on November 19, 2024

Yesterday radio host Robert Pratt sent me a news story from a Texas newspaper, the Texas Tribune, which attempted quite surprisingly to capture fairly the local response to the most recent Starship/Superheavy test launch out of Boca Chica on November 19, 2024.

The reporter, Bernice Garcia, clearly made it a point to talk to a lot of people, especially those who came out to see the launch. As a result, she showed that in general, no matter what people felt about Donald Trump or Elon Musk, the local population was almost entirely in favor of SpaceX’s efforts there. For example:

Sanchez was slightly concerned about [the rocket’s sonic booms] but believed the benefits of jobs created by SpaceX was worth the risk. “They know what they’re doing,” Sanchez said.

But his favorable opinion of Musk’s company did not extend to Trump. A naturalized citizen who gained amnesty under the Reagan administration, Sanchez didn’t view Trump’s immigration policies as logistically sound. “If you throw those people out, who’s going to work?” Sanchez said. “You don’t see a white man laboring out in the sun. On the other hand, Mexicans, foreigners, people from other countries –– that’s why they come here, to work.”

While the story found locals with a whole range of opinions about Trump, both positive and negative, it only quoted one person who was hostile to SpaceX, and that quote and person tells us a great deal about the bankrupt nature of that opposition:
» Read more

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Gophers dropped near Mt St. Helens for one day cause a gigantic bloom of plant life 40 years later

12:02 pm

In 1982, two years after the Mt. St. Helens volcanic eruption, scientists decided to do an experiment: They dropped six gophers into one meter square enclosures near the eruption with the hope the animals’ digging for one day would bring good soil close enough to the surface to encourage the return of plant life.

The results forty-plus years later:

Six years after their trip, there were over 40,000 plants thriving where the gophers had gotten to work, while the surrounding land remained, for the most part, barren. Studying the area over 40 years later, the team found they had left one hell of a legacy. “Plots with historic gopher activity harbored more diverse bacterial and fungal communities than the surrounding old-growth forests,” the team explained. “We also found more diverse fungal communities in these long-term lupine gopher plots than in forests that were historically clearcut, prior to the 1980 eruption, nearby at Bear Meadow.”

“In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction,” Allen added. “Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?”

You can read the published paper here. It appears the gophers’ action activated the microbiological life in the soil, which in turn made it easier for plant life to return.

The potential benefits of this research is gigantic, especially in areas that have been devastated by any number of natural and man made disasters.

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ESA gives its big space rocket company, ArianeGroup, a big subsidy

10:29 am

On November 19, 2024 I noted that in awarding four new rocket startups development contracts worth a total of 44 million euros, the European Space Agency (ESA) had not given any of that grant money to its biggest and most established rocket company, ArianeGroup, which not only owns and builds the Ariane-6 rocket but also has a subsidiary called MaiaSpace that is developing its own smallsat partly reusable rocket, in direct competition with those four small startups.

The exclusion of ArianeGroup in that announcement suggested to me that ESA had decided ArianeGroup’s smalsat rocket subsidary could manage without any additional aid, since its owner is a well-financed big space contractor.

I was wrong. Today the ESA awarded ArianeGroup a much big pile of cash, totaling 230 million Euros, to further finance the development of a reusable demonstration rocket, dubbed Themis, that also uses ArianeGroup’s Prometheus rocket engine. The Themis hopper project has been under development since 2018 initially under the management of Arianespace, has seen many delays in that time, and is now three years behind schedule.

Because of these delays, ESA pulled it from Arianespace in 2022 and gave full control of the project to the builder, ArianeGroup. This new contract award appears to be cementing this new arrangement, and is in addition to previous awards for this project exceeding 224 million euros.

The award also apparently includes funds for ArianeGroup’s MaiaSpace smallsat rocket startup, though the exact amount has not been specified.

The bottom line is that ESA is still dumping lots of cash to its older big space companies. Despite its clear shift to promoting independent rocket startups instead of a single government-controlled commercial entity (Arianespace), it is still favoring the big space contractors like ArianeGroup it has used for decades under that old Soviet-style system.

It will be interesting to see how this unbalanced system plays out in the coming years. Europe might get a competitive rocket industry of many companies, but then it might not, considering its space agency is putting its thumb on the scale to favor the already-established players.

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Musk: Starship will likely attempt a chopstick landing on the eighth test launch

9:57 am

UPDATE: The original post below is incorrect. I misread Musk’s tweet, not realizing he was refering exclusively to Starship when he wrote “ship.” He and his company now routinely use “ship” to refer to Starship and “booster” for Superheavy.

The real story behind this tweet is that SpaceX is working to attempt a chopstick catch of both Superheavy and Starship on the eighth test flight, after the as-yet unscheduled seventh flight. This means the eighth flight of Starship will be a full orbital flight, will use its Raptor engines to do a de-orbit burn to bring it back to Boca Chica, and that the company expects to have two launchpad towers ready to make the two catches.

Won’t that be an exciting event?

Original incorrect post:
———————————–
According to a tweet by Elon Musk on November 19, 2024, SpaceX will not attempt a chopstick landing of Superheavy on the seventh test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy.

We will do one more ocean landing of the ship. If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower.

According to an update on the SpaceX website, the decision to abort the chopstick landing during this week’s sixth test flight was made because of issues at the launch tower:

Following a nominal ascent and stage separation, the booster successfully transitioned to its boostback burn to begin the return to launch site. During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt. The booster then executed a pre-planned divert maneuver, performing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

At this moment SpaceX has not provided any additional information on what those issues at the tower were, and might never do so since this is proprietary information. Nonetheless, it could be that more work is necessary to make sure the tower is healthy after launch, which is why they won’t attempt a chopstick landing next time.

As for when that seventh test flight will occur, we as yet have no word. The timing is going to depend on many factors, including the need for upgrades, the final flight plan decision, any changes then required to SpaceX’s FAA launch license, and finally the impact the new Trump administration will have on that red tape.

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Space Perspective wants to launch its balloon from the Middle East

9:49 am

Space Perspective's Neptune Capsule
Space Perspective’s Neptune balloon capsule

The high altitude balloon company Space Perspective is presently in discussions with a number of Middle Eastern nations to find a location from which tourists can take tourist flights on its Neptune balloon capsule.

The Florida-based company is spending time in the Gulf to evaluate opportunities and expects to select a location in the first quarter of 2025, Michael Savage, its chief executive, told The National on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Skift Global Forum East in Dubai.

“We have interest from the UAE and entities from Abu Dhabi have come to visit mission control more than once. And we have interest from Qatar and from Saudi Arabia,” he said. “Our customer base likes to vacation in and visit this region, this has become a global hub for high-net worth vacationing … and because this is a luxury experience, it’s ideal for us to be as close as possible to that demographic.”

This the same approach that another American balloon company, World View, proposed in 2022. Since then however that company has not announced any updates of the tourist version of its high altitude balloons, which it has mostly been using to provide reconnaissance data for the Pentagon.

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A U.S. startup building a returnable capsule raised $44 million in investment capital

9:37 am

The new American company Inversion Space — which is developing an orbiting cargo capsule called Arc — has now raised $44 million in private investment capital.

The Los Angeles-based company announced Nov. 20 that it raised a Series A round led by Spark Capital and Adjacent, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Kindred Ventures and Y Combinator. The company has raised $54 million to date, with a $10 million seed round in 2021. It also won in September a Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) agreement with the Space Force’s SpaceWERX valued at $71 million, a combination of government and private funding to support work on reentry vehicles tailored for military customers.

Inversion will use the funds to further development of Arc, a reentry vehicle designed to provide what it called “precision delivery on-demand” from space to the Earth. The company is currently working on the design of Arc with a first flight planned for 2026.

The number of companies developing orbiting cargo capsules, either to provide supplies to the new space stations or to do manufacturing in orbit for return and sale on Earth, appears to be growing by leaps and bounds. First there was SpaceX’s Dragon, though the company has not yet flown any in-space manufacturing missions. Varda followed next, and has already flown and returned one capsule successfully. Sierra Nevada will follow next year with the first launch of its reusable Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle. Inversion will be the fourth.

In Europe there is The Exploration Company in France with its Nyx capsule, the German startup Atmos with its Phoenix capsule, and the Spanish startup PLD with its Lince capsule. There may be more.

All of these orbiting and returnable capsules have multiple profit opportunities, which explains why there has been a willingness of investors to provide them funds. They can either supply cargo to the four private stations presently under construction, or fly independent orbital missions where the capsule carries equipment to produce products of value that can only be manufactured in weightlessness.

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The space agencies of India and Australia agree to cooperate in recovering Gaganyaan

9:23 am

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday announced that it has signed an agreement with the Australian Space Agency (ASA) to work together in doing ocean recovery of India’s Gagayaan manned capsule.

The IA [Implementation Agreement] enables the Australian authorities to work with Indian authorities to ensure support for search and rescue of crew and recovery of crew module as part of contingency planning for ascent phase aborts near Australian waters.

Apparently ISRO anticipates the possible need for capsule ocean recovery near Australia should there be a launch abort shortly after liftoff.

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Russia and SpaceX complete launches

9:16 am

Both Russia and the American company SpaceX successfully completed launches this morning. First, Russia sent a new Progress freighter on its way to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. The cargo ship is planned to dock with ISS in two days.

Next SpaceX put another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

119 SpaceX
53 China
14 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 137 to 80, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 119 to 98.

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French rocket startup wins multi-launch contract

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: The French rocket startup Latitude yesterday announced that it has gotten a multi-launch contract from the German startup Atmos Space Cargo, which is developing its own returnable cargo capsule.

In a deal announced at Space Tech Expo Europe here Nov. 19, Atmos will buy a minimum of five launches a year of Latitude’s Zephyr rocket between 2028 and 2032. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Each launch will place a Phoenix spacecraft into very low Earth orbit, or VLEO. The spacecraft are designed to accommodate payloads for microgravity research in fields like pharmaceuticals and manufacturing, returning them to Earth.

Both companies have raised private investment capital, with Latitude raising $30 million and Atmos $1.4 million. Both are part of the sudden burst of new independent space companies that have emerged in Europe in only the last three years, even as many new American space startups have fallen by the wayside due to technical problems and government red tape.

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