Tag: commercial

Proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia teams up with Voyager Space

9:54 am

The proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia that was first proposed by the company Maritime Launch Services in 2017 has now signed a partnership deal with the space station company Voyager Space.

Voyager, through its Exploration Segment, will provide comprehensive engineering, design and fabrication support to Maritime Launch, leveraging more than six decades of combined aerospace and defense technology experience. Voyager will bring its decades of commercial spaceflight engineering, manufacturing, and operations capabilities to provide engineering design and development and buildup of select portions of the launch site on behalf of Maritime Launch. Voyager will work alongside Maritime Launch to analyze launch client requirements and integrate them into the current site layout.

Maritime’s original plan had been to provide a launch location and rocket (produced by a Ukrainian company). Satellite companies would sign with both for launch services. The invasion of the Ukraine by Russia in 2022 killed that arrangement. So did red tape, as the Canadian government only passed a law allowing spaceports to make deals with international partners at the start of August.

It appears Maritime has realized that without that rocket partner, it needs another experienced partner to help build the spaceport itself and make sure launches by many different rocket companies are done safely. It has now hired Voyager to do this, since that company is leading the Starlab space station consortium that includes many very experienced companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Airbus, Mitsubishi, and the European Space Agency.

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Astroscale signs deal with JAXA to de-orbit old rocket upper stage

9:52 am

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug startup Astroscale has now signed the final deal with Japan’s space agency JAXA to de-orbit the old H2A rocket upper stage that the company is presently flying a demonstration rendezvous and proximity mission dubbed ADRAS-J.

The photo to the right was taken by ADRAS-J in the spring, shortly after it rendezvoused with the stage. The data from this demo mission has not only shown Astroscale’s spacecraft can autonomously rendezvous and fly in close formation to the stage, the stage itself is in excellent condition after fifteen years in space.

The ADRAS-J follow-on active debris removal spacecraft, ADRAS-J2, will similarly attempt to safely approach the same rocket body through [rendezvous and proximity operations], obtain further images, then remove and deorbit the rocket body using in-house robotic arm technologies.

If successful, Astroscale will have the capability to offer this surface to others, both governments and private concerns, thus making the removal of space junk a viable business. Until the past decade, most upper stages ended up in orbit where they remain for long periods. There are a lot of such older stages. Some end up burning up in the atmosphere harmlessly, while others break up in orbit and produce a lot of debris that is a threat to other spacecraft. Astroscale’s mission here will demonstrate the ability to remove such stages.

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NASA delays Starliner return decision to end of month

9:17 am

In a short FAQ posted by NASA today, the agency quietly revealed that the decision on whether to bring Starliner back with its astronauts on board has been delayed till the end of August.

NASA now plans to conduct two reviews – a Program Control Board and an Agency Flight Readiness Review – before deciding how it will safely return Wilmore and Williams from the station. NASA expects to decide on the path forward by the end of August.

It appears the agency has decided to bring more people into the decision-making process. In the briefing last week, it was then planning only one review, expected to be completed before the end of this week. It now sounds like a second review will occur after the first, pushing the decision back one more week.

All of NASA’s actions in the past three weeks have suggested an increasing involvement by upper management, possibly including White House officials. With an election coming up, the politicans who are supposed to be in charge have apparently inserted themselves into this process and are demanding greater review. I expect in the end the decision will fall to them, and might even be announced by NASA administrator Bill Nelson himself.

These actions have also suggested that upper management does not like the risks involved in returning the crew on Starliner. Politicians do not like to have bad things happen on their watch. We should therefore not be surprised if the decision is made to send Starliner home unmanned.

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SpaceX gets FCC okay for next Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:41 am

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Artist rendering of Superheavy being captured by
the tower chopsticks at landing. Click for video.

The FCC yesterday issued SpaceX a communications license for the fifth orbital test launch of its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket, with the license permitting Superheavy to “either return to the launch site or perform a controlled water landing.”

The license runs through February 15, 2025.

This does not mean a launch has been approved however. The FCC only gives approval for radio communications on such a flight. It is the FAA that must issue the actual launch license, and it as yet not done so.

SpaceX had announced on August 8, 2024 that it was ready to go. It is now almost two weks since then and the FAA has said nothing.

The only justifiable reason for this delay would be that SpaceX has requested permission to do the first chopstick landing of Superheavy at Boca Chica (as suggested by the FCC approval), and since this changes the already approved flight path from the previous four test launches, the FAA is reviewing it more closely, and taking its time to do so.

The simple fact is that it can’t learn anything by this review. It isn’t qualified to make any educated determination. Either it is willing to let SpaceX do that return, or not. If it is against it at this point, it should simply say so, demand SpaceX hold off a chopstick landing until later, and give it permission now to do another ocean landing. At least this way the company would have clarity and could proceed.

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Rocket Factory Augsburg’s rocket fails during 9-engine static fire test

9:21 am

Screen capture of test failure
Screen capture from video of test failure.
Note the flame shooting out sideways.

During a static test yesterday of Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA-1 rocket, the first using all nine first stage engines, the rocket experienced what the company called an “anomaly” early in the test, causing a major fire and explosion.

The company’s statement also said the launchpad was “saved” and no one was injured.

I have embedded below a clip from a BBC video of the event. A company official had said only yesterday that it hoped to launch in a matter of weeks, though that official had given no word on whether the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had issued a launch license. I suspect he hoped this test would be successful and the CAA would then issue the license. That won’t happen now.

The test took place at the new commercial Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, which has also struggled in the past two years to get full licensing from the CAA. It has obtained those licenses, but it would not be surprising if this failure will cause the CAA — which appears very risk adverse — to reconsider its approvals.

Until this failure, Rocket Factory appeared to be in the lead among the new European rocket startups to complete its first launch. That now changes. The Spanish startup PLD hopes to launch from French Guiana in 2025, and is presently building its launchpad there. The UK startup Orbex also hopes to launch in 2025, but it wants to launch from the Sutherland spaceport in Scotland, has faced significant regulatory delays over the past two years from the CAA, and will now likely face further delays because of this failure. Another German startup, Hyimpulse, has already completed a suborbital test launch from Australia, but has not set a date for an orbital test. It originally hoped to launch from Saxavord in 2025, but has been looking for alternatives recently. Finally, the German startup Isar Aerospace has a deal to launch from the Andoya spaceport in Norway, but has announced no launch date.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites using a new first stage

8:50 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage was new, having never flown before. It successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, and is now part of the company’s fleet of Falcon 9 first stages.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 52, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 67.

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Sierra Space in negotiations to buy ULA

10:26 pm

According to the Reuters news agency, Sierra Space is negotiating with the joint owners of ULA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to buy the rocket company.

The sources, which are all anonymous, said the sale price is in the range of $2 to $3 billion. Those same sources said no deal has yet been worked out, and might not happen at all.

For Sierra, the deal would give it its own launch vehicle, Vulcan, for placing its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles into orbit. It would also give it a profit stream from the many military and commercial launch contracts already on ULA’s manifest. The combined cababilities of ULA and Sierra will create a formidable new player in the aerospace launch market.

For Boeing, it would provide it some much needed cash that it will be able to use to both restructure and revitalize its presently questionable operations.

It is unclear what Lockheed Martin will gain from the sale, other than the cash and the removal of this Frankenstein-like partnership with Boeing, which in the long run has probably not done it a lot of good.

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SpaceX launches 116 payloads on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission

12:20 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 116 payloads, including 108 satellites, on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing back at Vandenberg. As of posting the satellites had not deployed.

The payloads included a wide variety of satellites and demonstration missions, including one orbital tug from the European tug company D-Orbit, its Ion tug deploying five satellites. In addition, five different companies will be using their own deployment equipment to release about fifty of the satellites from the Falcon 9.

These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

82 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 97 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 82 to 67.

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