Vivaldi – Spring
An evening pause: Seems the perfect piece of music to herald in the first weekend of spring. This is first movement of Vivaldi’s The Seasons. Performed here by Alana Youssefian and the Voices of Music.
Tag: commercial
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – Tijuana Brass Medley
An evening pause: Performed live on television 1975.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
SpaceX launches a cargo Dragon to ISS
SpaceX today successfully launched a Dragon freighter to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The cargo Dragon was flying for the fourth time. It will dock with ISS on March 23, 2024. The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing back at one of SpaceX’s landing pads at Cape Canaveral.
This was also the first Dragon launch from this particular SpaceX launchpad in four years. The company only recently reconfigured it for Dragon flights, both manned and unmanned, so that it has two options for launching NASA manned missions. NASA had demanded this before it would give SpaceX permission to launch Superheavy/Starship from that rocket’s new launchpad in Florida. The agency thought it was too close to SpaceX’s first manned launchpad, and wanted an option in case a Superheavy launch failure damaged the Dragon launchsite. With this success SpaceX is one step closer to flying operational Superheavy/Starship flights out of Cape Canaveral.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
28 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 33 to 21, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 28 to 26.
Six launch companies give updates on the status of their rockets
Link here. The event was a panel at a conference where officials from SpaceX, ULA, Mitsubishi, Arianespace, Relativity, and Rocket Lab gave presentations.
Based on what is reported at the link, the Mitsubishi update was the most significant:
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) successfully launched its H3 rocket Feb. 16 after the rocket’s inaugural launch failed nearly a year earlier, a setback that Iwao Igarashi, vice president and general manager at MHI, called a “nightmare.” “There were no major problems with the rocket” on its second flight, he said.
We will have to see. Though everything worked as planned on the second flight, the true test on whether Mitsubishi has overcome the issues from the first launch will be the rocket’s third launch, presently scheduled for sometime next year.
A Relativity official said their Terran-R rocket is still targeting a first launch in 2026, while Rocket Lab was hopeful that the first launch of its larger Neutron rocket would occur by the end of this year.
Rocket Lab launches classified smallsat for National Reconnaissance Office
Rocket Lab in the early morning hours of March 21, 2024 successfully launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, its Electron rocket lifting off from Wallops Island in Virgina.
For this launch Rocket Lab made no attempt to recover its first stage. As of posting the payloads had not yet been deployed.
A Chinese Long March 2D launch was also scheduled to occur just prior to the Rocket Lab launch, but as of posting there was no word on whether that launch had taken place.
The leaders in the 2024 space race:
27 SpaceX
11 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia
American private enterprise presently leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 32 to 20, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 25.
Seasick Steve – Walkin’ Man
An evening pause: Performed live 2010.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Spanish high-altitude balloon company to fly fullsize prototype capsule from Saudi Arabia
The Spanish high-altitude balloon startup Halo is now planning to fly from Saudi Arabia the second test flight of its fullsize prototype tourist capsule.
Headquartered in Madrid, the company, which specialises in stratospheric commercial flights, will embark on its sixth test flight from the kingdom in June, the company said in a release, with conditional approval from the Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST), the Saudi Arabia authority responsible for space regulation.
Halo Space CEO Carlos Mira said in a statement that this test will validate the integrated operation of all critical systems, “bringing us one step closer to our goal,” which includes plans to begin commercial flights in 2026.
The company plans to set up bases for flights in Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Australia, and Spain, where it hopes to do high altitude tourist balloon flights to about 20 miles elevation. We should also not be surprised if it does classified reconnaissance flights for Saudi Arabia as well.
Whether it will do what it says however still depends on the final outcome of a lawsuit against it by another Spanish company, Zero 2 Infinity, which claims Halo stole its technology. The courts have ruled in Zero 2’s favor, but whether a final settlement has occurred is unclear.
SpaceX’s next Superheavy/Starship launch, according to SpaceX
According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, the company hopes to be ready to fly its fourth orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship in about six weeks, and will not attempt to deploy any Starlink satellites, as I speculated earlier this week.
“We’ll figure out what happened on both stages,” she said, not discussing what may have gone wrong with either, “and get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks,” or early May. She added that the company doesn’t expect to deploy Starlink satellites on the next Starship launch, as some had speculated. “Things are still in trade, but I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them.”
The story however provided one very important tidbit of information about the launch license process from the FAA. Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted that after the second test flight in November 2023 “the company completed that report in several weeks.”
That statement confirms my conclusion in late December that SpaceX had been ready to launch in early January, but couldn’t do it because the FAA had to spend another two months rewriting SpaceX’s investigation report.
We should therefore not be surprised if the same thing happens on the next test flight. Shotwell says SpaceX hopes to be ready to launch in early May. That means it will likely submit its report to the FAA around then. Expect the agency to then spend at least one to two months retyping the report, as it has done now after both the first and second flights.
Based on this information, we should now expect the fourth flight to occur sometime in the June-July timeframe, with July more likely.
I am sure that the people at the FAA want to move as quickly as possible. I am also sure their bosses in the White House are demanding they dot every “i” and cross every “t”, with meticulous care, so that things cannot move as fast as desired. That has been the pattern since Joe Biden took office, and I have seen no evidence of that changing now.
Orbit Fab announces price tag for installing its refuelling port on satellites
Orbit Fab has now set a price of $30,000 for its satellite refuelling port, should companies decide to install one on their satellites.
Orbit Fab on March 19 … unveiled pricing for the RAFTI refueling ports, setting the price tag at $30,000 per unit. Executives said the number was based on market research into the pricing of fill and drain valves widely used across the satellite industry. “With a qualified port design, satellite manufacturers can now incorporate RAFTI with more confidence, knowing it has passed rigorous testing,” said Adam Harris,Orbit Fab’s chief commercial officer.
Clearing these tests paves the way for Orbit Fab to deliver the first 100 RAFTI units to U.S. government and commercial customers over the next year, Harris said.
Once in orbit, an Orbit Fab refueling tanker will rendezvous with the satellite, dock at the port, and pump new fuel into the satellite.
While no actual refueling missions are presently scheduled, the company is negotiating with both the Air Force and Space Force to fly such a mission to satellites they have already outfitted with this port.
Indian rocket startup to attempt suborbital test launch this week
India’s spaceports
Agnikul, one of the two rocket startups in India attempting to enter the launch market, is targeting March 22, 2024 for the first suborbital test launch of its Agnibaan rocket, lifting off from its own private launch site off the eastern coast of India.
Agnikul Cosmos is all set to conduct the maiden launch of the Agnibaan launch vehicle on Friday. The maiden test is aimed at validating the working of the first stage of the rocket that will power the vehicle in future missions.
Dubbed Agnibaan SOrTeD, the Sub Orbital Technology Demonstrator mission will see the maiden launch from India’s first private launchpad which has been developed with assistance from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The map shows the location of Agnikul’s launch site, south of ISRO’s long established spaceport at Sriharikota. The third spaceport at India’s southern tip is a new facility being built by ISRO.
If this launch is successful, Agnikul will have caught up with the other Indian rocket startup Skyroot, which conducted its own suborbital test launch in November 2022.
Celtic Thunder – Whiskey In The Jar
An evening pause: Performed live 2011.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
SpaceX yesterday evening successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 space race:
27 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 31 to 19, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 23.