Category: Behind The Black

January 16, 2025 Quick space links

5:34 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.

  • Hubble faces budget cuts
    To translate: Give us more money! I’d be more sympathetic if NASA was more willing to consider a rescue mission. If not, then there is every reason in the world to begin winding down operations.
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Starship lost near end of its orbital burn; Superheavy successfully captured by chopsticks

4:06 pm

Superheavy captured for the second time
Superheavy captured for the second time

In today’s seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy large rocket, the results were decidedly mixed.

First the success: Superheavy once again performed perfectly, getting Starship up to speed and releasing it for its orbital flight. It then successfully returned to the tower at Boca Chica, where the chopsticks arms caught it. This was the second catch in three attempts. While we should all expect SpaceX to continue to refine Superheavy, right now it appears to be largely ready to go.

Next the failure: Shortly after stage separation Starship fired its own engines and proceeded upward towards orbit. At one point close to when it was suppose to shut off its engines to begin its orbital coast phase, something went wrong. Some engines cut off, but one did not, at least according to data projected on the screen. At that point all telemetry from the ship ended.

After another ten minutes of analysis flight controlers declared the ship lost. What happened remains unclear, but it is certain SpaceX engineers are digging hard to find out.

One unfortunate question remains that must be asked: Where is the ship, and is there a chance it will come down somewhere unexpected? Its orbit is such that it will naturally fall in the Indian Ocean, but the engine issues might have changed that orbit somewhat.

UPDATE: Locals in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean post videos on X (here and here) of Starship breaking up overhead. It appears that if any debris reaches the ground it will land in the Atlantic.

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Live stream of the 7th test orbital flight of Starship/Superheavy

1:50 pm

I have embedded below the live stream of today’s attempt by SpaceX to complete the 7th orbital flight of its giant rocket Starship/Superheavy. The stream goes live at around 3:15 pm (Central), 45 minutes before the start of the one hour launch window beginning at 4 pm (Central).

For embed purposes I am using the youtube version provided by Space Affairs. Once SpaceX’s feed goes live on X you can then switch to it, found here.

The flight’s goals:

Superheavy: Complete the second catch of the booster at the launch tower using the chopsticks. The booster will also be reusing an engine from the fifth test flight to confirm its viability for reuse.

Starship: Test new avionics, a new fuel feed system, and new heat shield tiles as well as the ablative material used underneath the tiles. Test a different placement and configuration of the flaps. The ship will also test engineering that will eventually lead to it being captured by the chopstick tower on return.

There will be an engine restart during Starship’s orbital cruise phase to further confirm the Raptor-2 engines can work reliably when needed during a full orbit de-orbit burn.

Finally, the ship will test its Starlink deployment system, releasing 10 dummy Starlink satellites.
» Read more

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One Martian ridge among many

1:34 pm

One Martian ridge among many
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 30, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is labeled as a “terrain sample,” so it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule.

The subject this time was a series of parallel ridges. I have cropped the image to focus on the most distinct, which stands at its highest about 600 feet below the dune-filled hollows to the north and south. The streaks on its flanks are likely slope streaks, a phenomenon unique to Mars that is presently not entirely understood. Streaks appear like avalanches, but they do not change the topography at all, and in fact in some cases go up and over rises. It is believed they are related to dust events, but this is not yet confirmed.

Why focus on this ridge however? It isn’t as if this is the most stunning geology on Mars.
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Rocket Factory Augsburg gets conditional licence for launching at Saxavord

11:00 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

After years of delays and multiply approvals that in the end turned out to be meaningless, the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced today that it has finally issued a launch license to the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg to do an orbital test launch from the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The license however is not entirely without strings.

The licence is effective immediately, but a number of conditions need to be met before a launch can take place — including insurance arrangements and international agreements. The company is also required to give the CAA 60 days’ notice before launching.

Rocket Factory had hoped to launch last year, but it lost its RFA-1 rocket during a static fire test in August. It was planning a subsequent launch on the assumption the CAA would approve its licence in 2024. That assumption was wrong however. Even if the rocket had not been destroyed and was ready to go, the CAA was not, and continued to twiddle its thumbs until 2025. It is this twiddling that caused another German rocket startup, Hyimpulse, to abandon its plans to do launches from Saxavord, and switch to a new spaceport in Australia.

Rocket Factory now says it will attempt its first launch before the end of this year. Let’s see if the CAA lets that happen.

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Blue Ghost operating as expected on its way to the Moon

10:45 am

Blue Ghost selfie
Blue Ghost selfie. Click for original.

Firefly has announced that all is well with its Blue Ghost lunar lander, now in an ever expanding Earth orbit on its way to the Moon. Engineers have acquired signal and completed its on-orbit commissioning.

With a target landing date of March 2, 2025, Firefly’s 60-day mission is now underway, including approximately 45 days on-orbit and 14 days of lunar surface operations with 10 instruments as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

…Firefly’s Blue Ghost will spend approximately 25 days in Earth orbit, four days in lunar transit, and 16 days in lunar orbit, enabling the team to conduct robust health checks on each subsystem, calibrate the propulsion system in preparation for critical maneuvers, and begin payload science operations.

NASA today released the first picture downloaded from the spacecraft, shown to the right. The view looks across the top deck of the lander, with two NASA science instruments on the horizon.

Once it lands it is designed to operate for about two weeks, during the lunar day. It will attempt to further gather some data during the long two-week long lunar night, but is not expected to survive to the next day.

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Stoke Space raises another $260 million, more than doubling its private capital

10:22 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket

The rocket startup Stoke Space, which is attempting to develop its own fully reusable two stage rocket, announced yesterday that it has successfully raised $260 million of private investment capital in its most recent funding round, more that doubling what it had raised previously and bringing the total raised by the company to $480 million.

The funding round involves new and existing investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Industrious Ventures, Leitmotif, Point72 Ventures, Seven Seven Six, the University of Michigan, Woven Capital, and Y Combinator, among others.

The company’s Nova rocket will use what has become the standard for first stage re-use, a vertical take-off and landing. Its second stage however will also be reusable, something no one has yet succeeded in doing, and Stoke intends to do it in a radical manner. Rather than use a single nozzle on its upper stage, it has instead gone with a new design whereby thrust is released through a string small nozzles placed in a ring on the bottom outside of the stage. The base of the stage can thus get a heat shield. The plan is to have the stage return much like many returnable capsules, with the small nozzles then used to provide control and thrust during landing.

This new influx of cash indicates renewed confidence in the company among the investor class. Its recent successful test of its Zenith first stage engines probably help fuel that confidence.

It had hoped to do its first test launch this year from Cape Canaveral, but has recently been burdened with new environmental red tape that might impact those plans.

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India’s Spadex mission completes docking

10:07 am

India’s space agency ISRO today announced that its engineers had successfully completed the autonomous docking of its two Spadex satellites, the chase vehicle making proper contact with the target vehicle and then linking together.

Manoeuvre from 15m to 3m hold point completed. Docking initiated with precision, leading to successful spacecraft capture. Retraction completed smoothly, followed by rigidisation for stability. Docking successfully completed

The docking needed to be completed before January 20th or the lighting conditions would have caused a delay until March.

Next engineers will demonstrate the spacecraft have linked electronically. Eventually they will then undock and spend up to two more years in orbit operating separately.

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Blue Origin successfully launches New Glenn

12:35 am

New Glenn 18 seconds after liftoff
New Glenn 18 seconds after liftoff

Better late than never! After almost a decade of development and five years behind schedule, Blue Origin tonight successfully launched its massive New Glenn orbital rocket, placing its second stage into orbit carrying a demo version of the company’s Blue Ring orbital tug.

It appears the first stage had a problem during what Blue Origin calls its “booster reentry burn”, which appears somewhat equivalent to SpaceX’s entry burn. Unfortunately no camera views were made available. From that point no further telemetry came down from the first stage, suggesting something had gone wrong enough to require initiation of the flight termination system so the stage would not crash on the landing barge.

The second stage will operate in orbit for six hours, testing Blue Ring.

For Blue Origin this success, though late, is a grand achievement. The company has a full launch manifest, with a 27-launch contract with Amazon for its Kuiper internet constellation. It also has a deal with the Space Force to get the rocket certified for military launches, once it completes two successful launches. Once certified the Space Force very much wants to use it, a lot.

America now has three major rocket companies, SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin. It also has Rocket Lab, which has a smaller rocket but intends to introduce its own larger version in 2025.

The 2025 launch race:

8 SpaceX
2 China
1 Blue Origin

Nor is the launch action over. Tomorrow SpaceX will attempt the seventh orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, the one-hour launch window opening at 4 pm Central.

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Live stream of first New Glenn launch

6:42 pm

I have once again embedded below Blue Origin’s live stream of its attempt tonight to complete the maiden launch of its orbital New Glenn rocket.

The launch window of three hours opens at 1 am (Eastern). It would be nice if Blue Origin’s announcers showed some improvement in their delivery tonight but I have doubts. Expect as always lots of “This is so exciting!” and “Aren’t you excited?” and “Isn’t this the most exciting evening yet!” Blah.

As I’ve said, their audience doesn’t want emotion, it wants detailed information provided coolly. If they do that, they will do more to sell their rocket than anything.

UPDATE: It appears Blue Origin management might have seen the blistering criticisms of its launch coverage yesterday. Instead of starting the live stream an hour before, they are now going to start it at T-20 minutes, but have also placed the count on hold at T-20:50. This avoids blather, especially if mission control is not going to provide the announcers any concrete information, as they did yesterday.

The change from simply recycling the count to an actual hold is also a positive change. Simply recycling the count (by adding 20-30 minutes periodically while they work out issues) puts pressure on the launch team unnecessarily. Better to work under a hold.

The count now has been recycled to 30 minutes and is rolling. We shall see if the podcast goes live at 20 minutes.
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January 15, 2025 Quick space links

3:27 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.

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Bursting ice sheets on Mars

12:46 pm

Ice sheets on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 31, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample” by the camera team, it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper operating temperature.

In this case the camera team picked a spot in the northern lowland plains at 39 degrees north latitude. What they got was another great piece of evidence of the existence of a lot of near surface ice on Mars, so much so at this location that the craters have become distorted and blobby. The ice in the ground is unstable enough that nothing here can really hold its shape from season to season and from decade to decade.

As I have noted repeatedly in the past six years, MRO data is proving that Mars is not a dry desert like the Sahara, but an icy desert like Antarctica. Except for the planet’s dry tropics below 30 degrees latitude, Mars appears to have a lot of frozen water available relatively near the surface.
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7th Starship/Superheavy test launch delayed one day

11:50 am

SpaceX has delayed its planned seventh test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket one day, from today to tomorrow, with the one-hour launch window now beginning at 4 pm (Central) on January 16, 2025.

It appears high winds and rain today were the main factor in the delay. Tomorrow will be better, with the weather continuing to improve over the next few days. We should not be surprised thus if the launch gets delayed one more time for weather.

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Spadex’s unmanned docking faces possible two month delay

9:51 am

India’s Spadex mission, launched to test autonomous unmanned docking procedures necessary for many of that country’s future space plans, now faces a possible two month delay in orbit before the final docking can take place.

On January 11, 2025 the chase vehicle completed its closest proximity maneuver, getting within three meters of the target vehicle, after which it backed away as planned. ISRO engineers are presently analyzing the data before proceeding with the actual docking.

The problem is that this docking must occur by January 20, 2025. After that the lighting conditions will not allow another attempt until March.

It seems ISRO is not concerned about this situation, and would rather get things right, even if it means that delay.

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JPL survives LA fires

9:42 am

Though nothing is certain yet as the fires still rage, it appears that the facilities of JPL, including its Deep Space Network mission control that manages communications with all of America’s interplanetary probes have survived the Los Angeles fires that have destroy large swaths of that city.

The fires required a full evacuation of the facility, leaving that mission control unoccupied for the first time in sixty years. It appears however that the organization used work-arounds to maintain contact and operations with those probes.

How long the facility will remain in this state remains unclear. Some of the fires remain uncontrolled, and until that happens, there can be no return to any sense of normalcy in LA.

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Varda flying its second returnable capsule

9:29 am

The startup Varda, which specializes in flying a returnable orbiting capsule for customers, is now flying its second mission, this time for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) testing hypersonic technologies.

The payload is known as OSPREE (Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the Reentry Environment), a spectrometer designed to collect atmospheric data during the capsule’s high-speed descent. The information will help refine thermal protection systems, sensor designs, and aerodynamics for hypersonic vehicles.

Unlike Varda’s first mission, the goal is not to stay in orbit to manufacture pharmaceuticals in weightlessness. Instead, the goal is to use Varda’s capsule during re-entry to do this research. Thus, the capsule will only stay in orbit for a few weeks before returning to Earth, this time at the Southern Launch commercial spaceport site in southern Australia.

The capsule was launched yesterday morning on SpaceX’s Transporter mission, which placed 131 different payloads in orbit.

Overall this entire mission illustrates the advantage of private ownership and competition. Varda has discovered an entirely unexpected income source and customer for its capsules, and it is eager to take advantage of that. Similarly, the Air Force is getting its hypersonic research done now for a fraction of the cost, using Varda as well as Rocket Lab’s HASTE improvisation, using its Electron rocket’s first stage to conduct suborbital hypersonic tests.

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SpaceX successfully launches two commercial lunar landers

11:26 pm

Map of lunar landing sites
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience

SpaceX tonight successfully launched two different private commercial lunar landers, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The prime payload was Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, flying ten science payloads to the Moon for NASA. It will take about six weeks to get to lunar orbit. The second payload was Resilience or Hakuto-R2, built by the Japanese startup Ispace on that company’s second attempt to land on the Moon. It is taking a longer route to the Moon, 4 to 5 months. The map to the right shows the landing locations for both landers. It also shows the first landing zone for Ispace’s first lander, Hakuto-R1, inside Atlas Crater. In that case the software misread the spacecraft’s altitude. It was still three kilometers above the ground when that software thought it was just off the surface and shut down its engines. The spacecraft thus crashed.

For context, the map also shows the landing sites of three Apollo missions.

Both spacecraft were correctly deployed into their planned orbits.

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

The 2025 launch race:

8 SpaceX
2 China

Right now SpaceX’s launch pace exceeds once every two days. If it can even come close to maintaining that pace, it will easily match its goal of 180 launches in 2025.

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Live stream of SpaceX launch of two lunar landers

9:27 pm

I have embedded below the live stream of tonight’s launch by SpaceX of its Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy, carrying a dual lunar lander payload, Firefly’s Blue Ghost and Ispace’s Resilience, scheduled for 1:11 am (Eastern).

Blue Ghost will take 45 days to reach the Moon, when it will land in Mare Crisium on the eastern edge of the Moon’s visible hemisphere.

Resilience will take a much longer route, not arriving at the Moon for four to five months. It will then attempt to land in Mare Frigoris in the high northern latitudes of the visible hemisphere. If successful it will also deploy its own mini-rover dubbed Tenacious.
» Read more

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January 14, 2025 Quick space links

3:25 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.

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Is China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover dead?

12:58 pm

According to monthly images taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover on the far side of the Moon, it has not moved since March 2024, suggesting it is no longer functioning.

“Up to about February 2023 the rover was moving about 7 or 8 metres every drive and typically about 40 m per lunar day. Suddenly the drives dropped to about 3 or 4 m each and only about 8 or 10 m per lunar day,” Stooke said in an email.

“That lasted until about October 2023, and then drives dropped to only 1 or 2 m each. In March 2024 Yutu 2 was resting just southwest of a 10 m diameter crater, and it’s been there ever since, as revealed by LRO images,” Stooke added.

It is possible the rover is not entirely dead, but there is no way to be sure. China is not generally forthcoming when things fail. For example, it has never acknowledged the shut down of its Zhurong Mars rover, which it had hoped would survive its first Martian winter. When that winter ended however no reports from Zhurong were released by China, which suggested it was no longer functioning. China however did not report this. It simply made believe the rover no longer existed.

It could be China is now doing the same with Yutu-2.

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Launches galore!

12:44 pm

Map of lunar landing sites
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience

The next two days will be another example of the resurgent American launch industry, with a wide range of rocket launches running the gamut from the maiden flight of the New Glenn rocket, another dramatic test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, and a launch by SpaceX of two (not one!) lunar landers.

We begin however now with another successful launch by SpaceX’s of its Transporter commercial program, designed to place in orbit as many smallsats as possible at once. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off today from Vandenberg in California, carrying 131 payloads, from cubesats to microsats to orbital tugs.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing on back at Vandenberg. The fairings completed their 18th and 19th flights respectively. As of posting the payloads have not been deployed.

The 2025 launch race:

7 SpaceX
2 China

SpaceX continues its relentless goal of completing in 2025 one launch almost every other day. For example, the launch above is only the first launch planned by SpaceX today. Tonight it will launch another Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying both Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander as well as Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander. The map to the right shows the landing targets of both.

Tomorrow the launch pace will continue. First SpaceX will attempt the seventh orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica, with a launch window beginning at 4 pm (Central).

Blue Origin will later that evening once again attempt the maiden launch of its New Glenn rocket. The three hour launch window opens at 1 am (Eastern).

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Mars geology at its strangest

11:22 am

Strange Martian geology
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 29, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northeast quadrant of a weirdly distorted unnamed 3-mile-wide crater in the northern lowland plains of Mars. The crater rim is the ridgeline that enters from picture’s left edge to curve down to exit at bottom right.

The geological feature of interest however is the strange mound to the left of that rim, inside the crater. It certainly appears, based on shadows, that the top of this mound popped off at some time in the past, leaving behind that sharp-edged hollow.

Note however that there is no eruption debris. When a volcano erupts, the debris covers the nearby mountainside. Here we see no evidence of anything that was flung out from this small eruption.
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Boom about to go supersonic

9:29 am

The commercial supersonic airplane company Boom is on the verge of flying its XB-1 test vehicle faster than the speed of sound.

The company has been doing a regular test flight program, each time increasing the plane’s speed.

During the latest 44-minute flight at an altitude of 29,481 ft (8,986 m) with Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg at the controls, the prototype aircraft reached transonic speed. That is, flight so close to Mach 1 that some areas of airflow over the airframe exceed the speed of sound.

It’s also the point where the XB-1 was subjected to a maximum dynamic pressure of 383 Knots Equivalent Air Speed (KEAS), which is a pressure on the fuselage and wings greater than what it would experience when flying supersonic at Mach 1.1.

In short, XB-1 pushed what was once called the Sound Barrier.

Next step: break the sound barrier.

At the completion of this testing the company will then begin manufacture of its full scale supersonic passenger plane, dubbed Overture, that will carry up to 80 passengers and will sell to airlines. It already has contracts and financial support from a number of major airlines, including United and Japan Airlines.

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Ridges from fractures at the head of a 300+mile-long Martian drainage channel

2:28 pm

Ridges from fractures on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “Exhumed Fracture Network,” referring to the criss-crossing ridges on the eroded mesa at the picture’s center. That mesa only rises about sixty feet from the east-west channel at the top of the picture, but the location is actually on the outside northern rim of an unnamed 70-mile-wide very eroded ancient crater. The rim itself rises another 500 feet to the south before descending 10,000 feet to the crater floor.

I am assuming by the title that the geologists believe this ridges were originally cracks that got filled with more resistant material, probably lava. The fracture network then got covered over. More recent erosion removed the material around the cracks, but the material in the cracks resisted that erosion.

The most intriguing feature in this picture however might actually be that nondescript channel.
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After more than two years, Australian rocket startup thinks its launch approval is about to finally arrive

12:39 pm

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

The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space originally expected to complete its first test launch of its three-stage Eris rocket off the east coast of Australia in April 2022.

At that time it thought the approvals for the licenses for its rocket, its Bowen spaceport, and the launch were just weeks away.

Hah! It is now two years later, and the company is still awaiting that launch license. According to the company’s head Adam Gilmour he is now hopeful the license is only weeks away.

“There is a lot of goodwill at CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority], and we recognise that they have been working very hard to get it done,” Mr Gilmour said. “We know they have been working towards it. It’s just that this is the first time for everyone involved, and it is quite complex. To give you an idea, we have had Zoom calls with literally 30 people on the call.”

Based on wait periods, if the CASA permit is approved (which comes with regulatory input from Airservices Australia), the earliest Gilmour could conduct the Eris Testflight One mission would be the middle of February. It is possible the permit will be granted as early as this week.

Gilmour however has been making the same exact statements about CASA now for two years. They are great! They are working hard! They want to approve!

Yet nothing happens.

I suspect that approval is close, but this long delay suggests other rocket startups in Australia are going to face the same governmental head winds. The government there seems uninterested in allowing freedom and competition to function. Instead, it sees itself as god, deciding who can do what when, and heaven forbid you challenge it in any way. (Which by the way explains Gilmour’s kow-towing in all his statements.)

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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