Tag: commercial

SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

12:13 am

SpaceX this evening successfully placed 24 additional Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, moving it up into the top rankings for the most reuse by a rocket:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069

Sources here and here.

As for the 2025 launch race, this is the present leader board:

125 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 125 to 95.

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Elvis Presley – Burning Love

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Taken from the album Viva Elvis, which is the soundtrack remix of Presley’s Cirque du Soleil show. From the youtube webpage:

Viva Elvis features new backing instrumentation on each track in an attempt to modernize the arrangements. This has met with a mixed critical response, with some reviewers praising the production quality and others opining that Elvis’s music is best left untampered with.

Hat tip Cotour.

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Axiom hires Redwire to build the solar panels for its first station module

9:18 am

Axiom's new module assembly sequence
Axiom’s assembly sequence for its planned station, initially attached to ISS but subsequently detached

The space station startup Axiom today announced that it has signed an agreement with the space hardware company Redwire to build the solar panels for its first station module, now under construction.

The companies announced Sept. 25 that Redwire will provide a version of its Roll-Out Solar Array, or ROSA, to Axiom for use on Axiom Station’s Payload Power Thermal Module, known as AxPPTM. AxPPTM is the first module Axiom plans to launch for its commercial station. Under a revised assembly schedule announced last December, AxPPTM will berth with one of two ports on the International Space Station used by Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

It would remain there until Axiom launches a second module, called Hab1. At that point, AxPPTM would unberth from the ISS and dock with Hab1, forming the initial station that can support four-person crews. Axiom would later add more modules.

At present Axiom is targeting a 2026 launch of the AxPPTM module. The hull, built by Thales Alenia, is presently being tested in Europe, and is expected to shipped to Houston for integration later this year.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
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Starlab selects Vivace to build the primary structure of its proposed space station

8:25 am

The American space stations under construction
The American space stations under development

The Starlab consortium today announced that it has chosen the Louisiana space hardware company Vivace to build the primary structure of its proposed space station, designed to launch as one very large module inside SpaceX’s Starship.

The aluminum-based structure, one of the largest single spaceflight structures ever developed for launch, will be built at Vivace’s facility in New Orleans, La., with additional development and testing support from [NASA’s] Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in Louisiana.

…The program will use Vivace’s New Orleans facility at MAF for fabrication, with support from U.S. government partners for subject matter expertise, structural analysis and potential test infrastructure. MAF will also support specialized large-scale manufacturing and assembly operations.

It appears Starlab chose this subcontractor because of its extensive ties to NASA, likely in the hope this will increase the chances it will win the upcoming station construction contracts NASA is expected to issue in the next year or so.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
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NASA awards orbital servicing startup Katalyst contract to save the Gehrels Swift space telescope

8:04 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

NASA today announced that it has awarded the orbital servicing startup Katalyst a $30 million contract to use a robotic servicing satellite to rendezvous and attach itself to the Gehrels Swift space telescope and raise its orbit.

Right now the telescope’s orbit is decaying, and it will burn up sometime in 2029 if something isn’t done. As one of the most successful low-cost astronomy space telescopes ever launched — central to the study of gamma ray bursts — spending this small amount to save Gehrels seems a no-brainer. In mid-August NASA had awarded Katalyst and a second company small contracts to study whether they could do this mission. Today’s announcement means NASA liked Katalyst’s proposal.

Whether this startup can do it however remains unknown. It appears from its own press release today describing this contract award that the company decided to add Gehrels to its already planned first demo servicing mission planned for next year.

The schedule is also unprecedented: while satellite servicing typically takes years to plan, Katalyst must be ready to launch in eight months, with docking operations scheduled for mid-2026, to save Swift before it burns up.

…Katalyst was already on schedule for an in-space demonstration of its rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking technology for June 2026. The demonstration would buy down technical risk ahead of the planned launch of Katalyst’s multi-mission robotic spacecraft, NEXUS, in 2027. When NASA raised the alarm about Swift, Katalyst seized the opportunity to pivot to a live rescue operation which would demonstrate similar capabilities.

The mission is even further risky in that Swift has no grapple or docking port for Katalyst’s satellite to attach to. Instead, it “will rely on a custom-built robotic capture mechanism that will attach to a feature on the satellite’s main structure–without damaging sensitive instruments.”

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Starbase to take control of nearby beaches

12:33 pm

The new government of Starbase has reached an agreement with its local county to take control of the nearby beaches that will allow Starbase to not only maintain them but close them when it chooses.

Cameron County commissioners approved the agreement to hand over a portion of Boca Chica Beach on Tuesday. The deal outlines cleaning and maintenance obligations among other terms. Under the agreement, Starbase will be allowed to set requirements for beachfront construction and special events on the beach.

…The compact includes a plan to address beach erosion, which occurred at a rate of 10 to 20 feet per year from 1950 to 2012, Starbase Commissioner Jordan Buss told the county commissioners, citing a study conducted by the University of Texas at Arlington.

This agreement mirrors one Starbase had previously made with South Padre Island for other beach portions.

The article once again gives lots of column space to the fringe groups that oppose SpaceX and its operations at Boca Chica, even though the evidence suggests they have almost no support from the general public.

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Firefly’s stock sags due to poor revenue numbers in 1st quarter report

10:06 am

Firefly's stock price since IPO

Apparently Wall Street has lost faith in the rocket startup Firefly since that company went public last month. The stock zoomed initially, but has now sagged due to a poor 1st quarter report that showed revenues far below expectations.

The stock’s initial price had been predicted to range from $35 to $39, but quickly rose to $70.

Since then the price has steadily dropped, so that today it sits about about $41.

The news reports seem to think this indicates bad things for the company. I see this as simply a long term correction from the initial over-enthusiasm by buyers. The company had first offered a stock price close to this number. The price is now exactly where Firefly predicted.

If I was interested in buying stock, this might actually be a good time to buy. As a rocket startup, Firefly appears quite solid, being the only startup to successfully soft land on the Moon. Its Alpha rocket has also been cleared for further launches, and though it has had a mixed launch record, with several launches failing due to upper stage issues, it has likely solved these problems.

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Canadian rocket startup to try suborbital launch today after yesterday’s launch was scrubbed due to a fire on the launchpad

9:30 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

UPDATE: The launch attempt today has also been scrubbed due to another small pad fire due to leaking fuel. The company is now aiming for another launch attempt tomorrow.

Original post:
———————
The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace was forced yesterday to cancel its first launch attempt of its Taiga suborbital rocket when flames and smoke appeared on the launchpad.

An update posted to the company’s website said it had to delay the launch “due to an anomaly on the launch pad. … Rocket, pad, and personnel are safe. We are working to resolve the issue and return to launch,” the update said. Later, in a comment on its livestream, the company said it would reschedule the launch to Wednesday morning.

I have embedded a live stream of today’s launch attempt below, set for lift off a little past noon today (Pacific).

With this launch, the company will not only complete the first Canadian launch of any kind from Canada by a private company, it will initiate operations at its own spaceport in Newfoundland, dubbed the Atlantic Spaceport. This achievement would also leapfrog Canada’s other proposed spaceport in Nova Scotia, which has been promising launches since 2016 without success.
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Two launches by China and SpaceX

9:10 am

Both China and SpaceX completed launches today. First, China launched another 11 satellites for its Geely internet-of-things constellation, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket lifting off from a ocean platform off the nation’s eastern coast.

This was the sixth launch for this constellation, bringing the number of satellites in orbit to 64, out of a planned 240. The constellation is designed to provide positioning and communications for trucking and other ground-based businesses.

Next, SpaceX successfully placed three government science satellites into orbit (two for NASA and one for NOAA), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings both completed their first flight.

The two NASA satellites were the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) to study the Sun’s heliosphere at the edge of the solar system and the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory to study the exosphere, the outermost layer of the atmosphere. The NOAA probe, Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), will observe the Sun from one million miles from Earth, providing advance knowledge of strong solar flares and eruptions so that utility companies can shield the electric grid appropriately.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

123 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 123 to 94.

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Australian satellite startup to fly an instrument on private mission to Apophis

8:59 am

In March 2024 the orbital tug startup Exlab’s announced that it will use its orbital tug to deliver three cubesats to the asteroid Apophis when that object makes its next close fly-by of the Earth on April 13, 2029.

The California-based Exlab has now signed its first customer for that mission. An Australian satellite startup, Fleet Space Technologies, has agreed to fly an instrument on this private commercial mission.

Under the ApophisExL mission, Fleet will provide geophysical sensing technologies for ExLabs’ mothership to collect targeted data and characterize the asteroid. The datasets should enable new avenues for data sharing and commercial use, set criteria for prioritizing asteroids for prospecting and feed critical intelligence into planetary‑defence planning.

Fleet already has a contract to fly another instrument, a seismometer, on Firefly’s second Blue Ghost lander mission to the Moon. It has also developed and flown satellite instruments used to detect minerals on Earth.

Both companies are clearly aiming to enhance their brand name with this mission, set to launch in 2028.

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Universities in Taiwan and the United Kingdom sign partnership deal

8:42 am

The University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, a decades-long pioneer in cubesat technology, has now signed a partnership deal with the National Central University in Taiwan to work together.

Both universities began their work with cubesats to simply as a low-cost way to teach students about satellite design, but quickly found there was money to be made selling this technology commercially. This deal attempts to make two plus two equal six.

The collaborative plans follow multiple successful engagements between the Universities, from NCU professor Loren Chang joining a Taiwanese delegation to Guildford in March to partnership working between students from each university earlier this summer when Surrey and NCU worked with launch provider Stellar Kinetics at Etlaq Spaceport in Oman. The students worked together to integrate the Jovian-O and SIGHT space payloads that they had developed onto the KEA-1 rocket.

The universities also share research interests. The Surrey Space Centre has built space-based radiation detectors and, as part of the UK’s SWIMMR programme to improve resilience to space weather, developed miniature detectors to measure radiation at different altitudes and created a model for the UK Met Office to predict radiation levels experienced by aircraft.

NCU has developed multiple scientific payloads and small satellite science missions, including the Deep Space Radiation Probe (DSRP), which flew aboard the commercial lunar payload service provider, ispace, Inc.’s Resilience lunar lander, launched in January 2025. DSRP was operational for more than 97% of the five-month mission, providing measurements of the radiation belts, several solar radiation storms and radiation in lunar orbit. It was the first Taiwanese payload to fly and operate beyond Low Earth Orbit.

This deal now enhances both universities and the products both sell (educating students and developing new satellite technologies).

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SpaceX launches classified reconnaissance payload

10:46 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its 18th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairing halves completed their 27th and 28th flights respectively. As of posting the payload had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

122 SpaceX
54 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 122 to 93.

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South Korean rocket startup Innospace wins launch and marketing contract with German broadcast company

9:31 am

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace announced last week that it has signed a $5.8 million launch with the German broadcast company Media Broadcast Satellites (MBS) to not only launch two MBS satellites in 2026 and 2028 using its Hanbit rocket, but to have MBS market the rocket in Germany.

Under the agreement, INNOSPACE will carry out two HANBIT launch missions to deploy MBS satellites into Low Earth orbit (LEO), with one launch in 2026 and the other planned by 2028. In both launch missions, MBS satellites will serve as the primary payloads, with priority in launch scheduling and orbit determination.

INNOSPACE also signed a separate contract on the same day, officially appointing MBS as its exclusive agent for launch service sales and marketing within Germany, marking the company’s entry into the European space launch market. Following the contract, MBS will exclusively distribute launch services based on the HANBIT series to satellite customers in Germany.

Innospace has not yet launched Hanbit. It had hoped to attempt the first launch in July, but in May it delayed it to the end of 2025 due to issues found in a first stage pump. The launch itself will take place at Brazil’s long abandoned Alcântara spaceport on that nation’s northeast coast.

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Avio wins U.S. launch contract for its Vega-C rocket

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: In what I think is a first, the Italian rocket company Avio has won a Vega-C launch contract without any participation from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial division Arianespace.

The contract is also with an American company, SpaceLaunch, to put an “institutional Earth observation satellite” in orbit in 2027.

The significance of the deal is that Avio is now successfully marketing and selling its Vega-C rocket, without the middleman Arianespace taking a cut. As part of the shift of ESA and Europe to the capitalism model, whereby it no longer runs things but acts merely as a customer, it also freed Avio from the clutches of Arianespace. Previously, Avio built the rocket for that government agency, which then marketed and sold it to satellite companies. Avio had no control over profit or price. In fact, it didn’t really own its own rocket.

This absurd situation is now ending. There are still a handful of Vega-C launches that were contracted for under Arianespace, but after these Avio will be completely in charge. This deal, announced yesterday, is the beginning of that process.

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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites

9:08 am

The beat goes on. SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

121 SpaceX
54 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 121 to 93.

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Blue Origin wins contract to bring NASA’s Viper rover to the Moon

9:12 am

NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin a contract to use its Blue Moon lunar lander to transport the agency’s troubled Viper rover to the Moon’s south pole region.

The CLPS task order has a total potential value of $190 million. This is the second CLPS lunar delivery awarded to Blue Origin. Their first delivery – using their Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lander – is targeted for launch later this year to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies and Laser Retroreflective Array payloads to the Moon’s South Pole region.

With this new award, Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface in late 2027, using a second Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is in production. NASA previously canceled the VIPER project and has since explored alternative approaches to achieve the agency’s goals of mapping potential off-planet resources, like water.

The contract does not guarantee this mission. NASA has several options along the way to shut things down, depending on the milestones Blue Origin achieves. The first of course is the success of that first lunar lander.

The announcement does not make clear how NASA is going to pay for the work needed to finish Viper. VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch. Moreover, after getting eleven proposals from the private sector companies to finish and launch Viper, in May 2025 NASA canceled that solicitation.

It is very likely Blue Origin is picking up the tab, but if so the press release does not say so.

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FAA releases proposed revisions to environmental assessment at Boca Chica to accomodate full orbital testing and return of both Superheavy and Starship

12:33 pm

The planned return trajectories for both Superheavy and Starship
The planned return trajectories for both
Superheavy and Starship

The FAA today released [pdf] a new draft of the environmental assessment of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship operations at Boca Chica that will allow for full orbital flights as well as for both to return to that launchpad.

The two maps to the right show the two planned return paths for Superheavy (top) and Starship (bottom) as it comes back from orbit. In both cases the ships will return to Boca Chica to be caught by tower chopsticks. The reassessment analyzed the impacts of these trajectories, including its impact on aviation traffic, and concluded the proposal was acceptable. From its conclusion:

The 2022 PEA [Programmatic Environmental Assessment] and April 2025 Tiered EA [environmental assessment] examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship-Super Heavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship-Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this Tiered EA include aviation emissions and air quality; noise and noise-compatible land use; hazardous materials; and socioeconomics. In each of these areas, the FAA has concluded that no significant impacts would occur as a result of the Proposed Action. [emphasis mine]

This approval is still only a draft. It must go through a public comment period, ending October 20, 2025. There will also be a virtual public meeting on October 7, 2025. Information about submitting comments or participating in that virtual meeting can be found here.

Such meetings are likely to see the leftist anti-Musk crowd come out in droves, screeching how we are all gonna die if these launches are allowed. The FAA will nod its head, and then ignore the Chicken Littles and approve this plan.

The plan itself tells us that SpaceX is definitely gearing up the first orbital flights of Starship next year, along with the first attempts to catch it with the tower chopsticks.

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Luxembourg cargo capsule startup Space Cargo raises $32 million in private investment capital

9:14 am

The Luxembourg cargo capsule startup Space Cargo has now raised $32 million in private investment capital in a new funding round focused on developing its BentoBox platform for in-space manufacturing and experimentation.

On 15 September, the company announced that it had closed a €27.5 million Series A funding round led by Expansion Ventures and supported by Eurazeo. The round included participation from the European Innovation Council, the European Investment Bank, and the Luxembourg Future Fund II, which is managed by Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement and the European Investment Fund. It also included contributions from numerous private investors who participated through the crowd-equity platform Tudigo.

Unlike Varda’s returnable capsule, BentoBox is smaller and not designed to return to Earth. Instead it gets launched incorporated on orbital spacecraft built by others, such as Thales Alenia’s REV-1 tug and Atmos’s Phoenix returnable capsule.

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Astra is now targeting mid-’26 for first launch of its new Rocket-4 rocket

9:00 am

According to a presentation by Astra officials this week, the company now plans the first launch of its larger Rocket-4 rocket in the summer of 2026, followed by a second launch in the fall for the Pentagon.

The summer 2026 inaugural launch will be a test flight, Kemp said, followed by one in October or November for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program. Astra plans quarterly launches of Rocket 4 in 2027, with long-term goals for much higher launch rates. Astra has maintained plans to make Rocket 4 a transportable launch system using standard shipping containers, allowing it to operate from sites with little more than a concrete pad.

This company has had a checkered history. It built and launched its smaller Rocket-3 rocket several times back in 2021 and 2022, with mixed results. After those launch failures it then decided to retire that smaller rocket for Rocket-4, only to run out of cash in 2023-2024. In 2024 its founders put together the cash to buy up the company’s stock to go private, and since then it has made most of its money from that one military test contract as well as selling its electrical propulsion systems to satellite companies.

If it gets Rocket-4 off the ground and begins regularly launches it will be an amazing recovery.

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NASA and Northrop Grumman work out rendezvous plan to get Cygnus to ISS

11:08 pm

UPDATE: The plan worked and Cygnus is safely berthed at ISS.

According to a press release tonight, NASA and Northrop Grumman have figured out a new rendezvous plan to get Cygnus to ISS after its previous engine burns yesterday cut off prematurely and left it in the wrong orbit.

NASA and Northrop Grumman are targeting the safe arrival of the company’s Cygnus XL at approximately 7:18 a.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 18, to the International Space Station. The Cygnus XL now will conduct a series of burns to bring the spacecraft to the space station for its robotic capture and installation.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is scheduled to capture Cygnus XL using the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm with backup support from NASA astronaut Zena Cardman. After capture, the spacecraft will be installed on the Unity module’s Earth-facing port and will remain at the space station until March 2026.

The release also added this detail about why that engine burn ended too soon:

Data shared by the spacecraft confirmed that Cygnus XL operated as intended during two planned maneuvers when an early warning system initiated a shutdown command and ended the main engine burn because of a conservative safeguard in the software settings.

Apparently this cause has reassured them that the engine is in good shape for the final rendezvous burns.

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Premature engine cutoff forces postponement of Cygnus berthing to ISS

11:16 pm

During the second of two engine burns today, designed to raise the orbit of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter to match ISS’s, the burn ended prematurely, placing the capsule in the wrong orbit.

Early Tuesday morning, Cygnus XL’s main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA. All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally.

The berthing, using one of the robot arms on ISS, had been planned for early tomorrow, Wednesday, but will not occur until both NASA and Northrop Grumman engineers have analyzed the issues and come up with “an alternate burn plan”.

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