Tag: capitalism

SpaceX launches another 56 Starlink satellites

1:19 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

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

Russia was also launching at almost the exact same time a classified military satellite, using its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia, but at the moment there is no word on whether that launch was a success.

For the moment then the leaders in the 2023 launch race are as follows:

21 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia (with a planned launch today)
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 24 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 24 to 20. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world, including other American companies, 21 to 23.

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Hakuto-R1 snaps first picture of Moon from lunar orbit

9:18 am

Hakuto-R1's first released image from lunar orbit
Click for original image.

The science team for Ispace’s Hakuto-R1 privately-built lunar orbiter/lander earlier this week released the spacecraft’s first picture of the Moon since entering lunar orbit on March 20, 2023.

That image is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. The photo resolution is quite good. It also demonstrates that the spacecraft’s attitude control systems for pointing the camera are working correctly.

Launched on December 11, 2022 by a Falcon 9 rocket, Hakuto-R1 will land in Atlas Crater on the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s visible hemisphere sometime in April, making it the first successful private commercial planetary lander to reach another world. If successful, it will then release the United Arab Emirates Rashid rover, that nation’s first planetary lander but its second planetary mission, following the Mars orbiter, Al-Amal, now circling Mars.

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Virgin Orbit extends pause in operations, having failed to get new financing

9:11 am

Virgin Orbit has extended its worker furlough and pause in operations now that a $200 million deal with a Texas investor has fallen through.

Reuters reported last week that Texas-based Matthew Brown had been in talks to invest $200 million in the company. Those talks have collapsed, said two people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified. Brown declined to comment on Monday.

Virgin Orbit, teetering on bankruptcy after a January rocket failure and struggles to raise funds, furloughed nearly all its 750 employees on March 15 while it sought a financial lifeline that would allow it to focus on upgrading its launch business.

This is very bad news for the company, because it indicates that there might not be a financial savior for it.

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German rocket startup raises $168 million in private investment capital

9:02 am

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has raised $168 million in new private investment capital, bringing the total it has raised to $310 million.

At present the company is targeting the second half of this year for the first launch of its Spectrum rocket, lifting off from a new spaceport in Norway.

Isar is one of three German rocket startups, with the other two Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse Technologies. Both Isar and Rocket Factory are getting close to launch.

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Are launch prices up, or is the demand continuing to be high?

8:58 am

According to a Space News yesterday, high demand and inflation have resulted in an overall increase in launch prices in recent months.

At the recent Satellite 2023 conference, industry officials said they saw evidence of growing prices in the last year. Growing demand along with a constrained near-term supply that some have dubbed a “global shortage” is a factor, they say, along with inflation that has remained historically high for more than a year.

The only evidence of this increase that the article presents however is a 10% increase in SpaceX’s launch price, which the company claims is almost entirely due to inflation, not demand. Furthermore, this increase still leaves SpaceX’s launch prices well below the lowest prices that other launch companies can yet offer, which means the competition can’t really raise its prices significantly.

The important take-away from the article is not that the cost of rockets has gone up, but that the demand remains very high, which bodes well for the new startups trying to enter the market. For example, the article notes that the next SpaceX smallsat launch opportunity is 2025. There thus remains plenty of business for the many new rocket companies trying to enter the market in the next two years.

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Momentus reports successful use of its new water-based thrusters on its orbiting Vigoride-5 tug

8:55 pm

The orbital tug startup Momentus on March 23, 2023 reported the successful use of its new water-based thrusters on its orbiting Vigoride-5 prototype tug, proving the design works.

The Reaction Control System operates using the same propellant and tank with water as the Vigoride spacecraft’s primary MET propulsion system. The MET is designed to use water as a propellant and produce thrust by expelling extremely hot gases through a rocket nozzle. Unlike a conventional chemical rocket engine, which creates thrust through a chemical reaction, the MET is designed to create a plasma and thrust using microwave energy. When operational, the MET will be used to raise the orbital altitude and inclination of Vigoride-5.

Essentially this is a variation of an ion engine. The thrust will be low, but very efficient. The thrusters can therefore fire for a very long time, building up accelerations infeasible for chemical engines, and thus allowing the tug to significantly change the orbits of satellites in ways that was previously impossible.

This release came out the day before NASDAQ announced that Momentus has six months to raise the price of its stock above one dollar or be delisted from the stock exchange. Since its release, the stock price rose from $0.54 to $0.63, still below a dollar but going in the right direction, despite the NASDAQ announcement.

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NASDAQ gives two more space companies delisting warning

10:25 pm

NASDAQ yesterday told the space companies Momentus and Spire they have six months to get their stock price over $1 or the stock exchange will delist each.

Small satellite builder and data specialist Spire Global received a notice from the New York Stock Exchange, while spacecraft delivery company Momentus received a notice from the Nasdaq. Under the respective exchanges’ compliance rules, the companies have 180 days, or about six months, to get their stock prices back above $1 a share.

Spire’s stock closed at 69 cents a share on Friday, having first slipped below $1 a share on Mar. 7. Momentus’ stock closed at 63 cents a share, slipping below $1 a share on Feb. 7.

Both companies now join Astra under the same threat. Both also have indicated they will consider a reverse-stock split, combining stocks to reduce the total number in order to bring the price above one dollar.

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India launches 36 OneWeb satellites

9:09 pm

India’s space agency ISRO tonight successfully launched 36 OneWeb satellites using its LVM-M3 rocket, the largest version of its GSLV family of rockets.

This launch completes OneWeb’s constellation, with 618 satellites now in orbit, allowing them to now offer internet access worldwide in competition with Starlink. After Russia broke its contract and confiscated 36 OneWeb satellites, the company contracted SpaceX and ISRO to launch the satellites necessary to complete the constellation, with SpaceX doing three launches and ISRO two.

This was India’s second launch in 2023. The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

20 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 23 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 23 to 19. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including other American companies, 20 to 22.

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Blue Origin releases results of investigation into New Shepard flight failure

11:04 am

Blue Origin today released by email its results of its investigation into the New Shepard flight failure that occurred in September 2022, when the launch abort system activated soon after launch and released the capsule early so that it could return safely to Earth.

[T]he MIT [investigation team] determined the direct cause of the mishap to be a structural fatigue failure of the BE-3PM engine nozzle during powered flight. The structural fatigue was caused by operational temperatures that exceeded the expected and analyzed values of the nozzle material. Testing of the BE-3PM engine began immediately following the mishap and established that the flight configuration of the nozzle operated at hotter temperatures than previous design configurations. Forensic evaluation of the recovered nozzle fragments also showed clear evidence of thermal damage and hot streaks resulting from increased operating temperatures. The fatigue location on the flight nozzle is aligned with a persistent hot streak identified during the investigation.

The MIT determined that design changes made to the engine’s boundary layer cooling system accounted for an increase in nozzle heating and explained the hot streaks present. Blue Origin is implementing corrective actions, including design changes to the combustion chamber and operating parameters, which have reduced engine nozzle bulk and hot-streak temperatures. Additional design changes to the nozzle have improved structural performance under thermal and dynamic loads.

In other words, the company had made some design changes to the engine prior to launch, and these caused the hot spots that destroyed the nozzle.

The company’s email says it is fixing this issue and plans to launch “soon”, but issued no date.

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Sierra Space pops another inflatable test space station module

9:56 am

Proposed Orbital Reef space station
Proposed Orbital Reef space station

Sierra Space announced yesterday that it had successfully completed its fourth test to failure of a one-third scale prototype inflatable space station module, dubbed LIFE, with work on the full scale module expected to begin next year and leading to the launch of its private commercial space station sometime later this decade.

In February, Sierra Space performed a month-long Accelerated Systematic Creep (ASC) test on LIFE – the first milestone in its 2023 testing campaign. Engineers loaded a one-third-scale version of the inflatable habitat with a sustained amount of pressure over an extended period until it failed. Per NASA’s recommended guidelines for inflatable softgoods certification, the test reached its goal of generating an additional data point – pressure and time to burst – which can be used to estimate the life of the primary pressure shell structure.

“Our testing campaign has demonstrated that our LIFE habitat pressure shell design has a predicted life of far greater than 60 years – or 525,600 hours – based on Sierra Space’s 15-year on-orbit life requirement and the applied 4x safety factor,” said Sierra Space Chief Engineer for LIFE, Shawn Buckley. “We are obviously simulating pressures well in excess of the norm.”

You can view video of the test here. The failure was so intense that it also blew up the test shack.

Sierra Space is part of a partnership with Blue Origin and others to build the Orbital Reef space station, one of four such stations with contracts with NASA. Sierra Space is building the station’s modules, while Boeing is providing the Starliner capsule for transportation. Blue Origin is supposed be providing larger modules and the New Glenn rocket for transportation, but the development of both continues to lag.

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Starliner’s first manned mission to ISS delayed again

9:36 am

According to a tweet by a NASA official, the first manned mission to ISS of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two NASA astronauts, has been delayed again, from the planned late April launch to sometime during the summer.

No reasons for the delay were given, as yet. The second link notes however that a schedule conflict at ULA, which is launching Starliner on its Atlas-5 rocket, might be part of the reason.

A launch in late April [of Starliner on the Atlas-5] would have put it in conflict with the inaugural launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, currently scheduled for as soon as May 4. Vulcan and Atlas use the same launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and ULA has been conducting tests of the Vulcan rocket on that pad. It has not shared updates on the status of the Atlas 5 used for Starliner.

This conflict might also explain why Starliner itself has not yet been fueled, since Boeing officials have said they want to do this within 60 days of launch to avoid the same kind of valve leaks that delayed the second unmanned demo mission for almost a year.

Starliner itself is years behind schedule, a long delay that has cost Boeing an enormous amount of income. First, the problems during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 forced the company to do a second unmanned demo flight, on its own dime costing about $400 million. That second flight was then delayed because of those valve issues. All the delays next cost Boeing income from NASA, as the agency was forced to purchase many manned flights from SpaceX that it had intended to buy from Boeing.

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