Tag: commercial

Orbex gives up on the Sutherland spaceport, switches to SaxaVord

9:27 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

In a very sudden decision, the rocket startup Orbex, based in Great Britain, has “paused” its long-delayed work to develop a launch facility at the Sutherland spaceport in northern Scotland and instead decided to launch its first rockets from the competing SaxaVord spaceport on the Shetland islands.

Orbex says it is halting construction work on the £20 million spaceport and instead is mothballing the project, which has received a £14.6 million public investment package. The space company, which was to have made the Sutherland Spaceport its home port, will now launch its rockets carrying commercial satellites from another north spaceport – SaxaVord on Unst, Shetland.

According to the company’s CEO, it will retain its 50-year lease at Sutherland to give it “flexibility to increase launch capacity in the future.”

The company had originally hoped to launch its Prime rocket from Sutherland in 2022, but has been faced with red tape from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which has still not issued a launch licence, even though the application was submitted almost three years ago. Orbex has also faced lawfare opposition from local activists as well as a major local landowner, billionaire Anders Povlsen, who is also a major investor in SaxaVord.

That last detail might help explain this decision. In private talks Orbex might have learned that the red tape and opposition would disappear if it switched to SaxaVord. The timing is also suggestive, as only a few days ago construction started on a new spaceport in Scotland, located on the island of North Uist.

All told, Orbex might have decided that the stars were aligned against it at Sutherland, and it was better to move. It now hopes to complete the first test launch of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord next year.

One comment

Two launches completed of the seven launches expected in the next 24 hours

9:04 am

Today will be one of the busiest ever at spaceports worldwide. Already we have had two launches, with five more expected by this time tomorrow.

First, China launched a radar satellite, its Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket lifting off from the Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed in China.

Next, SpaceX placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida in the early morning hours. The first stage completed a record 24th flight, the most flights of any Falcon 9 booster so far, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

And we are only getting started today. If all goes right, by this time tomorrow Russia will have done a military launch from its Plesetsk spaceport, Arianespace will have launched a Vega-C from French Guiana, SpaceX will have completed two more Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg and Kennedy, and India will have launched its PSLV rocket from its Sriharikota spaceport.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

125 SpaceX
58 China
15 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 144 to 86, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 125 to 105.

Leave a comment

SpaceX looking to raise more private investment capital

3:47 pm

According to a report yesterday by Bloomberg, SpaceX is now in talks to raise more private investment capital, based on a new and vastly increased valuation of the company, from $255 billion to $350 billion.

A so-called tender or secondary offering, through which employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in closely held companies such as SpaceX a way to generate liquidity.

The amount the company hopes to raise by this tender is at present not known. In the past decade the company has raised about $12 billion in private capital in order to fund development of both its Starship/Superheavy rocket as well as its Starlink internet constellation. The latter however is already generating about $9 billion in revenue annually in the past two years, more than enough to fund the projects.

7 comments

PLD obtains a new loan, this time for $11.6 million

11:45 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD yesterday announced it has obtained a new $11.6 million loan that it plans to use to build its launch facility at the French-owned French Guiana spaceport.

The loan was issued by the Spanish governmment finance agency COFIDES, which comes on top of an earlier $43.8 million Spanish government grant. In addition, the company has gotten a $2.4 million grant from the European Commission, as well as a $1.37 million grant from the European Space Agency.

The company has also obtained a loan of $34 million from banks in Spain.

All told, the company has raised about $164 million, more than $58 million came from government agencies, with another $34 million from loans.

For whatever reason, PLD has found favor with the various governments in Europe, fueling its work. None of the other European rocket startups from Germany or Great Britain have been as lucky.

2 comments

Varda wins $48 million Air Force contract

9:29 am

Varda's space capsule, on the ground in Utah
Varda’s first capsule on the ground in Utah.

The U.S. Air Force last week awarded the reusable orbiting capsule company Varda a four-year $48 million contract for placing experimental hypersonic payloads on the capsule for testing during its re-entry through the atmosphere.

The four-year deal with AFRL [Air Force Research Laboratory], announced on Nov. 26, leverages Varda’s W-Series reentry capsules as platforms to test payloads at hypersonic speeds. The spacecraft are built on Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus,

…Varda’s next mission, W-2, is scheduled for early 2025. This mission is designed to showcase the Varda Hypersonic Testbed vehicle. The capsule will carry an AFRL-developed spectrometer payload named OSPREE (Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the Reentry Environment) to collect critical data during atmospheric descent.

Up until now Varda’s customers have been entirely focused on using the capsule to produce pharmaceuticals in weightlessness for sale back on Earth. This new contract provides it another and initially unexpected way to make money on the capsule’s capabilities.

Leave a comment

Construction begins for 3rd spaceport in Scotland

8:04 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Construction of a third spaceport in Scotland has now begun, its location on the northwest coast of the island of North Uist (as shown on the map to the right), with its plans to serve suborbital launches initially.

The Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a Scottish government agency focused on regional development, has allocated £947,000 for the construction of the site’s enabling infrastructure. Additionally, the Comhairle is contributing £675,000 from its 2023-2028 capital programme. The total cost of the enabling works project is estimated to be £2.6 million.

After the construction of the enabling infrastructure is complete, which is expected to occur by Spring 2025, a private sector operator will take over to complete the second phase of construction and manage the spaceport.

According to the Wikipedia page for this area on North Uist, the project was first proposed in 2019, and was then hoping to attract orbital launches. Subsequent opposition by activists slowed development and likely reduced the project from orbital to suborbital, at least for now.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches for NRO

7:46 am

SpaceX early today successfully completed a launch for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The broadcast by SpaceX began after launch, had degraded visuals, and cut off immediately after the first stage, on its very first flight, touched down successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. Very little confirmed information was released about the payload, though according to this story that payload included 20 Starlink satellites as well as an additional payload for NRO. It is also possible the Starlink satellites were that NRO payload, being the Starshield military version of Starlink.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

124 SpaceX
55 China
15 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 143 to 83, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 124 to 102.

15 comments

SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites

12:35 am

SpaceX tonight successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

123 SpaceX
55 China
15 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 142 to 83, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 123 to 102.

One comment

Update on Astroscale’s mission to de-orbit a OneWeb satellite

9:34 am

Link here. Lots of details. The project is now targeting a ’26 launch, and if successful would be the first to capture a spacecraft in orbit and de-orbit it commercially — assuming some other orbital tug company doesn’t do it first.

One tidbit from the article that I had not known:

While the UK Space Agency and European Space Agency have provided around $35 million in funds, … Astroscale is financing “well over 50%” of the mission.

In other words, both the UK and ESA are following the capitalism model. They have left ownership and control of the de-orbit tug to Astroscale, which means they require it to obtain outside private investment capital on its own.

One comment

Aaron Copland – “The Promise of Living” from The Tender Land

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this for Thanksgiving in 2012 and 2015. Time to post again. As I wrote in 2015:

The hope of America will always live on, even when America is gone. Ordinary people want freedom, love, family, and the right to live their lives as they wish, without harming others, so they can bring in “the blessings of harvest,” whatever that harvest might be. It must be our goal to allow that to happen, and to stop those that wish to prevent it.

The promise of living
With hope and thanksgiving,,,

Leave a comment

American spaceplane startup signs deal with Australian spaceport startup

10:17 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The American spaceplane startup Titans Space, which hopes to develop a reusuable space plane based on designs developed in the 1970s by Rockwell, has now signed a deal with the Australian spaceport startup Space Port Australia to work together to find an Australian location for both building the spaceplane and launching it.

Titans Space, a company that is taking an innovative approach to the space industry, has ambitious plans to become the largest low-earth orbit and lunar space tourism company in the world, as well as the largest “real estate owner in space and the Moon”.

Space Port Australia, which is headquartered in the NSW regional town of Moree, is committed to creating an integrated space facility which fosters innovation, industry, education and helps grow Australia’s place in the space sector.

Though Titans has raised some investment capital, this project is right now in its aspirational phase. It is very possible none of this will happen. This announcement is mostly an attempt to generate interest in both projects.

As for Space Port Australia, if it finds a location for this project it would be the fourth spaceport in Australia, joining the three spaceports that already have completed or have planned launches, as shown on the map to the right.

6 comments

FCC approves use of Starlink for direct cell-to-satellite T-Mobile service

10:02 am

Despite objections from all of SpaceX’s competitors, the FCC has now approved the use of its Starlink constellation for direct cell-to-satellite service as part of T-Mobile’s cellular network.

The decision noted that many technical issues still must be cleared.

There are a few limitations on how this type of service (which the FCC calls “supplemental coverage from space,” or SCS) can work. Right now it officially has to operate as an extension of an existing terrestrial provider, in this case T-Mobile. That’s because the regulations on how you broadcast stuff in space are different from those for how you broadcast stuff to and from a phone (as opposed to a base station antenna). AT&T, for its part, is partnering with AST SpaceMobile.

SpaceX must also be sure that its service does not interfere with other services on the ground, while the ground services do not have to worry about whether they might interfere with the satellite signals.

Nonetheless, this approval likely means that soon users of T-Mobile (as well as AT&T) will no longer have any dead zones. When there are no cell towers available, their phones will simply access the orbiting constellations of either Starlink or AST SpaceMobile.

One comment

ESA flies suborbital rocket from Swedish spaceport

9:55 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday successfully flew a small suborbital rocket from the Esrange spaceport in Sweden, completing the sixteenth such flight since 1987.

The rocket reached an altitude of 256 km before falling back to Earth and providing approximately six minutes of microgravity to six scientific experiments onboard.

…All systems performed well during the flight and the valuable payloads were recovered by helicopter soon after landing. Flight samples of the experiments will now be returned for further analysis to science teams from Sweden, Germany and Finland, after more than two years of preparations.

This suborbital launch is only a preliminary of much bigger things to come. The rocket startup Firefly is building a launchpad at Esrange for orbital launches. Furthermore, the European startup MaiaSpace, a subsidary of ArianeGroup, plans to do tests of its partly reusable Maia rocket there in 2025.

Leave a comment

Judge dismisses lawsuit against SpaceX by activists

9:41 am

A federal judge has now thrown out a lawsuit that had been filed by anti-Musk activists in an attempt to halt all launches by SpaceX of its Starship/Superheavy rocket at Boca Chica.

U.S. District Judge Rolando Olvera issued his ruling last Thursday in response to the request filed by Save RGV on Oct. 9. The group has alleged that SpaceX’s water deluge system is releasing untreated industrial wastewater during launches and sought to halt the launches.

The water deluge system is designed to dampen the effects of Starship’s rocket engine blasts during liftoff and static fire engine testing.

“At the beginning of the Starship-Super Heavy Launch System’s development, it became evident that a deluge water system was necessary to protect the launch site and surrounding areas during launches,” Olvera wrote in the order. “A deluge water system sprays large quantities of potable water at the base of the spacecrafts during launch to prevent fires and reduce dispersal of dust and debris.

“Because of these dangers, Defendant cannot launch its spacecrafts without the deluge water system.”

SpaceX had argued that environmental reviews by both federal and state agencies had determined that the deluge system caused no harm. Olvera concurred, and also noted that to block launches would do significant harm to SpaceX and NASA’s entire lunar program.

This activist group, which represents almost no one in southern Texas, has no real interest in the environment. It filed this and other lawsuits simply as lawfare to try to stymie SpaceX for political reasons, knowing that we have more than seven decades of data at spaceports in Florida and California that prove rocket launches and deluge systems cause no environmental harm. In fact, they help wildlife by creating a large refuge where that wildlife can thrive.

Expect further similar lawsuits, all of which will be summarily dismissed afterward.

What I wonder is who is paying for this lawfare? SaveRGV likely doesn’t have the resources.

8 comments

Two launches early today

9:11 am

China and SpaceX successfully completed launches early today.

First, the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace launched a new version of its Zhuque-2 methane-fueled rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China. The mission placed two test satellites into orbit, but more important, the launch tested the rocket’s new fuel-loading systems that copies SpaceX’s, loading the fuel quickly and cooling it to a lower temperature to increase its density and thus allow more to be packed into its tanks.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage crashed inside China.

SpaceX then placed 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

122 SpaceX
55 China
14 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 141 to 82, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 122 to 101.

Leave a comment

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander now targeting mid-January launch window

10:08 am

Landing sites on Moon

According to a media update from NASA yesterday, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander now targeting mid-January launch window for its unmanned mission to the Moon.

A six-day launch window opens no earlier than mid-January 2025 for the first Firefly Aerospace launch to the lunar surface.

The Blue Ghost flight, carrying 10 NASA science and technology instruments, will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at NASA Kennedy.

The first quarter of 2025 will be a busy time for unmanned missions to the Moon. In addition to Firefly’s mission, the American startup Intuitive Machines also hopes to launch its Athena lander to the Moon’s south pole in February. Though it will launch after Blue Ghost, it will get to the Moon first, as it is taking a more direct week-long route compared to Blue Ghost’s 45-day journey. In addition, the Japanese company Ispace is targeting its own January launch for its Resilience lander.

If all three lift off as planned, there will be three landers heading for the Moon in early 2025.

Leave a comment

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.

4 comments

SpaceX wins launch contract for Dragonfly mission to Titan

8:58 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded the launch contract for sending its Dragonfly mission to Titan to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $256.6 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The Dragonfly mission currently has a targeted launch period from July 5, 2028, to July 25, 2028, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Dragonfly is a truly cutting edge mission. Though we have relatively limited information about Titan’s atmosphere and the environment on its surface, it will attempt to fly there like a helicopter, landing and taking off multiple times.

And though there are certainly additional costs required for such a mission, that quarter-billion dollar contract price probably triples what it normally costs SpaceX for a Falcon Heavy mission. Even if it requires the expending of all three first stages, the company is almost certainly getting a big windfall from this deal.

6 comments

Italy to resume use of its San Marco spaceport off the coast of Kenya

9:21 am

Italy's offshore San Marco spaceport
Click for full map.

Italy has now decided to re-open its long unused San Marco spaceport facility off the coast of Kenya, resuming launches from its off-shore launch platform.

During its active life beginning in 1967 a total of eight launches occurred from this site, with the last flight occurring in 1988.

In late 2023, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, first proposed reopening the facility for rocket launches. While unsubstantiated by other sources, local publication MalindiKenya.net reported at the time that the move would be used to create an “ideal launch base for the Italian Vega launcher, thus avoiding paying France for the use of the French Guiana base.”

In October 2024, during a presentation just before the 75th International Astronautical Congress kicked off, Minister Urso explained that the country had decided to move ahead with its plans to once again launch rockets from the Luigi Broglio Space Center.

The present plans will have the site managed by the Kenya Space Agency, established in 2017, with Italy providing the rockets and satellites, all of which are expected to be smallsats. It appears that the rocket company Avio, which builds the Vega-C rocket, might be aiming to use this site as an commercial launchpad, thus allowing it to bypass the French-run French Guiana spaceport. Located close to the equator and on the coast, this site would offer satellite companies a very wide range of orbits.

2 comments

Launches galore in the past twelve hours

8:49 am

The past twelve hours was quite busy at spaceports worldwide, with two American companies completing three different launches from three different spaceports, while China added one of its own.

First China launched two radar-mapping satellites, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. No word on where its lower stages, that use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. Though this launch was first, it actually took place in the early morning of November 25th, in China.

Next, Rocket Lab completed two launches, though one was not an orbital flight. First it completed its second of four planned launches of its HASTE suborbital version of its Electron rocket, lifting off from Wallops Island in Virgina. HASTE had been quickly improvised by the company when it realized there was a real market for hypersonic suborbital testing, and Electron could be refitted for that purpose. This launch actually occurred prior to the Chinese launch.

Then Rocket Lab launched five more satellites for the satellite company Kineis, the third of five, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

Finally, SpaceX in the early morning of November 25th launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

121 SpaceX
54 China
14 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 140 to 81, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 121 to 100.

4 comments

SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

11:54 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which had direct-to-cell capabilities, the Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. (Note that the live stream starts late, missing the launch itself).

The first stage completed its 15th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

120 SpaceX
53 China
14 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 138 to 80, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 120 to 98.

2 comments

New Glenn on the launchpad and vertical for the first time

9:10 am

The first completely assembled New Glenn, on the launchpad
The first completely assembled New Glenn,
on the launchpad

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket to be fully stacked and ready for launch was finally placed vertical on its Cape Canaveral launchpad late November 21, 2024.

For the first time, the company placed a fully integrated, flight-capable rocket on the launch pad Thursday evening. The company rolled the rocket out of the hangar at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) earlier. A static fire test with the full 98-meter-tall (320 ft) rocket is forthcoming, though a specific date hasn’t been announced.

…The upcoming integrated static fire test would be the first time that Blue Origin fuels a full-assembled. flight-ready New Glenn rocket. It previously conducted a static fire test of its upper stage, which saw a 15-second burn of the two BE-3U engines.

The picture to the right was released by the company that night.

No launch date has been announced. The present payload for this launch is the company’s own Blue Ring orbital tug on a Pentagon-supported test flight. The original payload, two smallsat NASA Mars orbiters built by Rocket Lab, had to be pulled when Blue Origin’s generally leisurely approach meant that it was unable to get the rocket ready in time to meet the October launch window.

That leisurely approach to business will have to end if Blue Origin really wants to compete in today’s modern aerospace industry.

4 comments

Starship gets contract to deliver Lunar Outpost’s rover to Moon

11:10 am

Capitalism in space: The lunar lander version of SpaceX’s Starship has won a contract from the startup Lunar Outpost to deliver its manned rover to the Moon.

The Colorado company announced Nov. 21 that it signed an agreement for SpaceX to use Starship to transport the company’s Lunar Outpost Eagle rover to the moon. The companies did not disclose a schedule for the launch or other terms of the deal.

This announcement is less a new deal for SpaceX and more an effort to convince NASA to award Lunar Outpost the full contract to build the rover. In April 2024 Lunar Outpost was one of three companies chosen by NASA to receive initial development grants to design their proposed manned lunar rovers. NASA expects to award the full contract, worth potentially up to $4.6 billion, to one of these three companies later this year, after seeing their preliminary designs. It wants to choose two, but at present says budget limitations make that impossible.

One comment
1 … 20 21 22 23 24 … 329