Tag: CNES

French startup Latitude to spend $9.3 million on building its French Guiana launch facility

9:52 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad.)

The French rocket startup Latitude has announced it will spend $9.3 million to build its own launchpad at the spaceport in French Guiana, where hopes to launch its Zephyr rocket in 2026.

In a 23 June update, Latitude confirmed the Guiana Space Centre as the launch site for the inaugural flight of its 19-metre-tall, two-stage Zephyr rocket, which is designed to deliver payloads of up to 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The site was one of two under consideration, with the company also having committed to developing launch infrastructure at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland. When that partnership was announced in March 2022, Latitude, then known as Venture Orbital Systems, aimed to carry out its first launch from SaxaVord in 2024.

Construction of the ELM-Diamant shared launch facility began in 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2026. According to Latitude’s 23 June update, the company will work with CNES and the European Space Agency in the coming months to implement its dedicated launch infrastructure at the site. This will be followed by the inaugural launch of its Zephyr rocket in 2026.

It is not clear exactly how that ELM-Diamant launch site will be shared. France’s space agency CNES (which operates French Guiana) had previously said it wanted all the new European rocket startups that wanted to launch from there to use a common launch infrastructure, thus requiring them to share technology as well as redesign their rockets to fit CNES’s requirements. The rocket startups objected, but it now appears two startups, Latitude and PLD, and come to an agreement of some sort.

This deal also suggests that Latitude is shifting away from using the Saxavord spaceport in the United Kingdom, possibly because it has seen the difficult regulatory hurdles required there and has decided French Guiana is a better option.

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France’s space agency awards ArianeGroup contract to build methane-fueled engine

10:12 am

France’s space agency CNES this week awarded ArianeGroup, the rocket partnership between Airbus and Safran that builds the Ariane-6 rocket a contract to develop a more powerful methane-fueled rocket engine.

Aiming to reach between 200 and 300 tons of thrust, the new engine will be twice as powerful as the current Vulcain 2.1 main stage engine that propels Ariane 6.

No details about cost or time schedule were released.

The significance of this deal isn’t the engine, but that it was issued directly to ArianeGroup by France’s space agency, instead of through the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Arianespace commercial arm, as has been routine for the past three decades. The deal illustrates how the ESA is essentially beginning to break up. Rather than go through it, its individual nations are now going it alone, each providing support and funding to their own commercial private space startups. Germany began this process, encouraging the development of three new rocket companies (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, and Hyimpulse). Spain and Italy soon followed with their own new rocket companies, (PLD and Avio respectively). France, which until recently lobbied to keep the old government model alive in ESA, has in the past year shifted strongly to the capitalism model.

This contract only underscores this shift.

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Monaco-based startup unveils its proposed European-built lunar rover

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Capitalism in space: The Monaco-based startup Venturi Space, this week unveiled its own proposed European-built lunar rover, dubbed Mona Luna. and offered it to both the European Space Agency (ESA) and France’s CNES space agency.

Venturi has received some support from ESA for key technologies needed for the rover. The company is hoping to win support for a rover development project at ESA’s ministerial conference in late November, when member states will decide on funding for agency programs for the next three years. Antonio Delfino, Venturi’s director of space affairs] argued a rover like Mona Luna fit a gap in Europe’s exploration plans. Mona Lisa is designed to be delivered to the lunar surface on ESA’s Argonaut lander, which would launch on an Ariane 64.

The company has said it is willing to commit some of its own investment capital to develop the rover, should either ESA or CNES decide to buy it. Whether ESA or CNES agree to build this rover however will likely depend on whether either has a program to land on the Moon. At the moment the status of NASA’s Artemis program is unclear, and it was that program that Europe was relying on to get to the Moon.

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France’s space agency agrees to let Spanish rocket startup PLD establish its own launch site at French Guiana

12:38 pm

Though France’s space agency CNES had initially attempted to place many rules and restrictions on the commercial operations of new independent private rocket companies at its spaceport in French Guiana, it has now backed off those demands in agreeing to let the Spanish rocket startup PLD establish its own launch site there at the decommissioned launchpad used by France’s Diament rocket in the 1970s.

This new contract greenlights the implementation of the infrastructure project designed by PLD Space with technical support from CNES and grants legal use of land in the ELM-Diamant area, where the MIURA 5 Preparation Zone and Launch Zone will be located. Construction will begin with the start of the dry season in French Guiana, expected in the summer months of 2025.

In September 2024 CNES said it wished to standardize the launch site for the seven different European rocket startups (Avio, HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude) it had approved to use it. At the time I sensed there was opposition from these companies to this policy, since each rocket was different and would not function with this standardized design.

At a minimum that policy apparently delayed PLD’s plans, as it originally hoped to start its launchpad construction in October 2024 and launch in 2025. That schedule went by the wayside.

It now appears PLD will proceed with development as it wishes, for its rocket, and the others will have to figure out how fit their rockets to that design. Or maybe CNES is going to open up further sites at French Guiana to avoid this conflict.

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After a decade of development, ESA finally starts testing a part of its Callisto grasshopper

9:12 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

My heart be still! First proposed in 2015 as Europe’s answer to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the European Space Agency, in partnership with Japan, has finally begun acoustical testing of just one part of its Callisto grasshopper-type reusable test prototype, as shown on the right.

Callisto consists of five main sections: the Aft Bay, which includes the engine and landing legs, the LH2 Tank, the LOx Tank, the VEB, and the Fairing. The VEB houses much of the demonstrator’s electronics, including its onboard computer, avionics, and a reaction control system that uses H2O2 propellant. Its distinctive features include a pair of control fins.

In addition to confirming that the VEB had been transported to the CNES facilities in Toulouse, the 4 March Institute of Space Systems update also revealed that the acoustic test campaign for the key Callisto module had commenced last week. The acoustic test campaign simulates the intense sound vibrations the demonstrator will experience during flight to ensure structural integrity and component reliability.

The whole project has a budget of $100 million. The first test hop won’t occur until 2026, eleven years after the project began, and six years behind its original launch date. In that same time, SpaceX has completed several hundred commercial landings of its Falcon 9 first stage, reusing those stages up to two dozen times.

Nor is Callisto part of any program to develop a similar reusable rocket. It is a typical dead-end government project, with ESA having no clear goal to apply it commercially. The best Europe can hope for is that the engineering lessons from its tests will be given freely to the new European commercial rocket startups, so that they can use it someday.

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France opens public comment period for adapting old French Guiana launchpad for commercial rockets

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CNES, France’s space agency that now runs the French Guiana spaceport, is now running public meetings for the public to comment on its plans for adapting the old, long-abandoned Diamant rocket pad there for use by a number of commercial rocket startups.

On 17 February, the first of four public consultation sessions into the construction of the new Multi-Launcher Launch Complex (ELM1) at the Guiana Space Centre was held at Kourou Town Hall. This process allows local residents, stakeholders, and organizations to review the project and provide feedback before construction begins. A second session was completed on 23 February, with the remaining two sessions set for 10 and 18 March.

The construction of ELM1 will include common structures like the nodal building, guard post, offices, and storage areas, as well as more specific structures like assembly and preparation buildings, roads, and fences. The project is subject to a building permit, a unique environmental authorization under the regulations for Classified Installations for Environmental Protection, the Water Law, and a request for exemption from the prohibition on the destruction of protected species.

CNES in 2024 approved seven rocket startups to use the site. It later announced its plan to standardize the launchpad so that all users will have to arrive with identical engineering, something that these startups did not like. This comment period will allow them to voice those objections, and likely get the standardization minimized to only those places where it really matters. For example, the impression initially given was that the assembly and preparation buildings would require matching systems from all companies, something that makes no sense.

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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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JAXA confirms first hop of Callisto delayed until ’26

9:32 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

Japan’s space agency JAXA has now confirmed what France’s space agency CNES had revealed in August, that the first 100-meter-high hop of the government-proposed Callisto engineering Grasshopper-type test rocket will not take place any earlier than 2026.

This joint project of JAXA, CNES, and Germany’s space agency DLR was first proposed in 2015, and by 2018 was aiming for a 2020 launch. Four years past that target date and they are still not ready to launch. Remember too that even after it completes its test hop program an operational orbital rocket would have to be created. It does not appear this can easily be scaled up to fit Ariane-6.

SpaceX meanwhile conceived its Grasshopper vertical test prototype in 2011, began flying that year, and resulted in an actual Falcon 9 first stage landing in 2015. It has subsequently completed well over 300 actual commercial flights, reusing first stages up to 23 times.

The contrast between these government agencies and that private company is quite illustrative.

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France’s space agency aims to standardize its French Guiana commercial launchpad

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France’s space agency CNES has announced a project to standardize its French Guiana commercial launchpad, which France owns and CNES now manages, for many different customers.

Launch facilities and launch pads in particular are generally specifically built for a single rocket. This will, however, not be the case with the Guiana Space Centre’s new commercial launch facility. As a result, a set of standardized ground systems will be utilized to ensure that the facility can manage a number of different rockets.

At the moment, those rockets include seven different European rocket startups — Avio, HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude — none of which has yet launched a rocket. CNES is telling them all that if wish to use French Guiana, they must design their rocket to fit its facilities.

This project will accomplish two things. First, it will limit use of the pad to these European companies. CNES is essentially establishing French Guiana as a European-only facility. Second, like China’s commercial launchpads — run by that government so that all its pseudo-companies are dependent on it for launches — CNES (and France) is attempting to establish some control and power over these new independent and competing rocket companies, most of which have no facilities or operations in France. Three are German (Hyimpulse, Isar, and Rocket Factory), one is Spanish (PLD), and one is Italian (Avio). Only two are French-based (Latitude and MaiaSpace), with MaiaSpace a subsidiary of ArianeGroup which means it has facilities in many places in Europe. This project will force all these companies to cater their designs to the demands of France.

The American approach I think is far better. Government spaceports lease specific launchpads to specific companies, which then build the facilities to their needs, not the government’s. They can then each work fast and efficiently without consultation with others. CNES’s effort here will likely slow development in Europe, as all these companies will have to meet with CNES and work out some common engineering.

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PLD targets October to begin construction of launch facilities in French Guiana

10:10 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD is now targeting October to begin construction of its launch facilities in French Guiana, using the long abandoned launch site of France’s first rocket.

PLD Space plans to start building launch facilities for its Miura 5 rocket in October from the Diamant site at Guiana Space Centre, cofounder and chief business development officer Raúl Verdú told SpaceNews. Diamant has been dormant for decades after once being used for the French rocket of the same name, and “in the area where we are there is nothing,” Verdú said, “we have to do everything from scratch.”

The company hopes to do its first orbital launch in 2025.

Control of the French Guiana spaceport reverted back from Arianespace to the French space agency CNES (which has always owned it) in 2022, and since then CNES has signed deals with seven European rocket startups. PLD appears to be moving the fastest towards the first private commerical launch there.

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First flight of government-built hopper to test vertical landings delayed two years

10:12 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

This story about a first stage government-built Grasshopper-type rocket designed to demonstrate and test vertical landing has instead become a perfect demonstration of why governments should not design, build, and own anything.

It appears the first test flight of the Callisto test rocket, first proposed in 2015 and being built by a joint partnership of the German (DLR), French (CNES), and Japanese (JAXA) space agencies, has now slipped from 2024 to 2026.

Earlier this month, CNES deployed a refreshed website. Prior to that deployment, the agency’s Callisto project page had stated that the rocket’s first flight would occur in 2024. The new Callisto project page has a more detailed timeline, stating that the detailed design phase will be completed by the end of 2024. Vehicle integration in Japan is then expected in 2025, followed by a first launch from the Guiana Space Centre between 2025 and 2026. This revision outlines an approximate two-year slip in the project’s timeline. [emphasis mine]

These three agencies took almost a decade to simply conceive and design the project. Apparently they not yet even built anything. This despite a budget of slightly less than $100 million carved out of the entire budget for creating the Ariane-6 expendable. Compare that with SpaceX, which conceived its Grasshopper vertical test prototype in 2011, began flying that year, and resulted in an actual Falcon 9 first stage landing in 2015.

Will Callisto ever fly? Maybe, but don’t expect it to produce a rocket that is financially competitive with SpaceX. Instead, expect these three government agencies to subsidize its cost in order to make its price competitive on the open market. More likely Callisto will fly a few times, but will likely result in no new orbital rocket. Instead it will be superseded by the private rocket startups worldwide that are now building actual orbital rockets and will likely make them reuseable before Callisto even leaves the ground.

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More delays for first test hops of Europe’s Themis reusable first stage

9:17 am

Par for the course: The first test hops of Europe’s Themis demonstrator reusable first stage, first proposed in 2018, have now been delayed until 2025.

In a May 2024 presentation given at the International Civil Aviation Organization offices in Paris, the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) announced that initial Themis hop tests would only begin next year. SSC is in charge of the operation of Esrange Space Centre in Sweden, where these initial tests of an integrated Themis demonstrator will begin. Once ArianeGroup moves onto higher altitude flights, the testing will be moved to the Guiana Space Centre.

The demonstrator itself is being built by a partnership of the private company ArianeGroup (Airbus and Safran) and the French space agency CNES, and was originallly supposed to begin test hops in 2022. These delays are typical of European government-run space operations. Note too that this is not a usable first stage, merely a demonstrator. For it to become operational it will have to be rebuilt.

None of this should be a surprise, since the man who runs Arianespace and is likely a key player in all this work, Stephan Israel, said in 2023 this stage would not become operational until the 2030s. Israel has been hostile to reusability from day one, and apparently is having some influence in slowing or blocking this development.

By the time this reusable first stage flies, it will be entirely obsolete and an utter waste of money, at least from a business and profit point of view. It will however have served these bankrupt companies and space agencies well as an empty jobs program, accomplishing little but make-work.

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France awards contract to French startup to launch two robotic satellite servicing missions

10:03 am

Capitalism in space: France has awarded the French startup Infinite Orbits a contract to launch two robotic satellite servicing missions, one to attach itself to a still-unnamed satellite to extend its life, and a second to test rendezvous and proximity maneuvers near a defunct and thought-to-be tumbling weather satellite.

The key tidbit however is that the contract award is part of a French government program to encourage commercial space:

The France 2030 initiative is a €54 billion investment programme that aims to transform sectors of the French economy with technological innovation.

I was unaware of this French government program. It appears it signals a shift in financial support from the European Space Agency’s commercial entity Arianespace to new competitive French companies. If so, this is a very good sign for its aerospace industry.

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France’s CNES space agency begins work adapting commercial launchpad at French Guiana for specific startup rocket companies

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: France’s CNES space agency, which has taken back ownership of its French Guiana spaceport from Arianespace, has now begun adapting its new commercial launchpad there for a number of specific startup rocket companies.

In early 2021, the French space agency CNES announced plans to open up the Guiana Space Centre to commercial micro and mini-launch operators. The agency explained that it would be developing a multi-user launch pad on the grounds of the old Diamant launch complex. In July 2022, CNES announced that it had pre-selected Avio, HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude to utilize the new launch complex.

During a media briefing following ESA’s 327th council meeting, Tolker-Nielsen explained that “general work” on the complex had already started and that work on “specific adaptations” was about to begin. These specific adaptations will be completed by the companies that will utilize the launch complex to ensure it fulfills the specific needs of their launch systems.

Of the seven rocket startups listed above, Tolker-Nielson said PLD was the ahead of the others in adapting the pad for its use, though no launch date is set. Avio meanwhile will likely not have to use this pad, as it owns the Vega family of rockets, which have already launched from French Guiana using another launchpad.
» Read more

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France’s space agency puts out calls for rocket companies to lease the French Guiana launchpad formerly used by Russia’s Soyuz rocket

10:51 am

Capitalism in space: France’s space agency CNES has now issued a request for commercial rocket companies to bid on leasing the launchpad formerly used by Russia to launch its Soyuz rocket from French Guiana.

The launchpad became available after the European Space Agency (ESA) broke off its partnerships with Russia in February 2022.

Following the cessation of Soyuz launches, it was agreed that ESA would transfer ownership of the site back to CNES under the provision that it would host two new launch systems. The first will be selected by CNES as part of its recently published call. The second will be selected by ESA as part of the agency’s launcher challenge, which was publically announced in late 2023.

According to the CNES call, prospective candidate vehicles will be required to be capable of deploying payloads of at least 1.5 tonnes into low Earth orbit. Additionally, a maiden flight from the launch site will need to be completed no later than 2027. This will drastically limit the potential bidders.

The article at the link lists three potential bidders, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Maiaspace, and Avio. The first two are rocket startups, having not yet launched a rocket. Avio is the lead contractor for Arianespace’s Vega family of rockets, so it already has experience with an operational rocket, though that rocket is presently grounded due to recent launch failures.

There are a number of other rocket startups in Europe, including PLD in Spain and Hyimpulse and Isar in Germany. The incentive to bid for this launchpad might encourage them to upgrade their rocket to meet the bidding requirements.

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Two new European rocket startups sign deal with France to launch from French Guiana

11:28 am

The French space agency CNES today signed agreements with two different European smallsat rocket startups, Spain’s PLD Space and Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), allowing each to launch from France’s old launchpad in French Guiana that was used in the 1970s by its long abandoned Diamant rocket.

From the RFA press release:

Until now, the launch pad in Kourou has only been used by CNES for its Diamant rocket in the 1970s. Now the launch complex is to be given a new purpose, in the tradition of opening access to space through innovative and groundbreaking ventures. As such, RFA is one of the first NewSpace companies to be given the opportunity to use it. The new launch pad will be upgraded and equipped in the coming years with the aim of being used for launches from 2025.

These agreements are part of a slew that have come out of Europe in the past year or so that all indicate that the European Space Agency (ESA) and its partners have finally abandoned any attempts to build rockets, and are instead looking to private enterprise to do it for them. First Germany encouraged private rocket startups, independent of Arianespace and ESA. Then Spain followed with PLD Space. Then Arianespace, the commercial arm of ESA that for decades built all rockets for ESA, announced it was making agreements with these startups to have them launch payloads instead.

These new deals today indicate that France has now joined the rush to private enterprise, which is a very significant development as France as always been the leader in having ESA build its own rockets through Arianespace. It appears it is now looking away from government-run space.

All these actions are also suggest a dim future for ArianeGoup’s Ariane-6 rocket, built under the old system but with an attempt to give private enterprise more power, with ArianeGroup, not Arianespace, owning and controlling it. Its design however was dictated largely by ESA, thus resulting in a rocket that is too expensive and therefore not competitive.

The long term result will be greater competition, both in Europe and worldwide, which in turn is going to fuel a renaissance in rocket development, which in turn is going to speed the exploration and colonization of the rest of the solar system.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Isar Aerospace signs deal to launch from French Guiana

9:37 am

Capitalism in space: The German smallsat rocket startup Isar Aerospace has now signed a deal with the French space agency CNES to use one of its launchpads in French Guiana for launches of its new Spectrum rocket.

The Diamant pad was built more than a half-century ago for the French rocket of the same name, but has been dormant for decades. CNES is now working to convert the facility into a multi-user site for small launch vehicles, and Isar is the first company the agency selected in an open competition to use the site.

Isar also has a deal to launch from Norway. As recently as seven months ago the company was claiming its first test launch would occur there before the end of ’22. All told, Isar has three different launch contracts and has raised almost $200 million in investment capital.

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Europe reconsiders reusability in its rockets

8:45 am

The competition heats up: Pressured by SpaceX, Europe has restarted a research program into developing a reusable first stage to its rockets.

The headline is actually an overstatement. The European managers quoted in the article actually spend most of their time explaining why trying to reuse a rocket’s first stage makes no sense, but they feel forced to reluctantly look into it anyway because of what SpaceX is doing with its Falcon 9.

This story makes me think of two blacksmiths around 1900. One poo-poos cars, saying that the repair cost is so high no one will ever buy them. He goes back to pounding horseshoes. The other decides that if he learns how to fix cars, he can turn his shop from fixing horseshoes to fixing cars, and make more money. Europe is the first blacksmith, while SpaceX is the second.

Which do you think is going to succeed?

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