Tag: commercial

Next manned mission to ISS to launch tomorrow

10:12 am

The next manned mission to ISS, a private mission by the company Axiom carrying three European astronauts and commanded by an Axiom astronaut, is presently scheduled to launch tomorrow, January 18, 2024, at 4:49 pm (Eastern).

This is a private mission by Axiom, launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and flying the astronauts in its Freedom Dragon manned capsule. This will be Freedom’s third flight to ISS. The launch was originally scheduled for today, but SpaceX scrubbed the mission today in order to give it “additional time allows teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.” It appears during normal prelaunch checkouts engineers found the joints between the upper stage and the capsule were not tightened the proper amount. The company decided to replace the joints, which caused this one day delay.

The crew will spend up to fourteen days at ISS.

I have embedded a live stream of the launch below.
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Military awards satellite contracts worth $2.5 billion to three companies

9:25 am

The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency (SDA) today announced the award of contracts to Sierra Space, Lockheed Martin, and L3Harris for the construction of 54 reconnaissance satellites, with a total value of $2.5 billion.

The 54 satellites will form part of the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a massive missile detection and tracking constellation in low Earth orbit that’s being built and launched in “tranches.” The trio of contracts announced today is for 18 satellites each in the Tranche 2 Tracking Layer: L3Harris’s award is worth $919 million; Lockheed Martin, $890 million; and Sierra Space, $740 million.

Last week SDA had awarded Rocket Lab its own 18-satellite contract for this constellation, worth $515 million.

The contract awards signal several major changes in the Pentagon’s space strategy. First, it is farming the work out to multiple companies, two of which (Rocket Lab and Sierra Space) are new. In the past the military relied on a very limited number of companies, all well established, with most contracts going to only one vender. New companies had great difficulties getting in the door.

Second, it is building a constellation of smallsats rather than single large satellites. Smallsats are cheaper to build and replace, and are much harder military targets to hit.

Third, though it appears the military is designing these satellites, it appears it is still shifting much of the work from it to the private sector. In other words, the Pentagon is becoming a customer instead of a builder. The result will be a healthy space industry capable of doing more for itself and the military.

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Indian satellite startup opens new satellite factory

9:04 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian satellite startup Pixxel has opened a new factory in Bengaluru in southern India, where it expects to ramp up satellite production in the coming years.

Bengaluru-based space data company Pixxel inaugurated its first spacecraft manufacturing facility in Bengaluru on Monday. The new facility holds significance as it targets to launch six satellites this year and 18 more by 2025, further advancing its mission of building a “health monitor” for the planet.
Spread across 30,000 square feet, the facility, at its full capacity, is equipped to handle more than 20 satellites simultaneously that can be turned around within a timeframe of six months, making possible a total of 40 large satellites per year.

The company says that its “…total customer base is divided into three divisions as of now – 40 per cent agriculture, 30 per cent resource companies, and 30 per cent government. Pixxel expects 85 per cent of the revenue to be generated from its commercial side and the rest from the government’s side by 2025.”

For India’s government and its space agency ISRO, Pixxel’s existence signals the sea-change in its policies, similar to what has been happening in the U.S. with NASA. In the past ISRO would have built the satellites. Now it is buying them from the private sector in India. That shift bodes well for India’s space industry, and will likely make it a major player in space in the coming years.

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SpaceX’s Starlink: More satellites in orbit but fewer close encounters

8:56 am

According to a recent filing with the FCC, SpaceX has found its Starlink constellation had to do fewer collision avoidance maneuvers in the past six months, despite having more satellites in orbit.

In that period, Starlink satellites had to perform 24,410 collision avoidance maneuvers, equivalent to six maneuvers per spacecraft. In the previous reporting period that accounted for the six months leading up to May 31, 2023, the constellation’s satellites had to move 25,299 times. The data suggests that even though the Starlink constellation has grown by about 1,000 spacecraft in the last six months, its satellites made fewer avoidance maneuvers in that period than in the prior half year.

At the moment it is not clear why the number dropped, especially as it had been doubling every six months previously as more satellites were launched. This might signal improved more precise orbital operations, or it could simply be a normal fluctuation. It will require additional reports to get a better sense.

These numbers however should rise as more larger satellites constellations (from Amazon and China) start launching as expected.

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Yamma Ensemble – Kondja mia

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This song is an example of what the group calls the tribal music of Sephardic Jews. The title of the song means “My rose.” Leave the closed captions on to see an English translation of the lyrics, which are quite beautiful. It is all very Middle Eastern, and something the Palestinians would recognize and like, until you told them it was by their fellow Semites, the Jews.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Elon Musk’s employee update released January 12th

10:19 am

I have embedded below an employee update of the status of all of SpaceX’s projects, given by Elon Musk and released publicly on January 12, 2023. The video has been edited only to remove the many enthusiastic applauses by Musk’s audience of co-workers in order to shorten it.

Though Musk provided a lot of general information about the company’s long term goals with Starlink, Starship, Mars, the Moon, and other topics, these are the most important take-aways relating to its ongoing efforts now:

  • Falcon 9: The company is now upgrading its first stage so that it will be able to fly reused forty times, not twenty. Musk also noted that they have now reused the rocket’s fairings more than 300 times.
  • They are now aiming for about 150 launches in 2024. (It appears now that the biggest obstacle to this goal will be weather, as seen by the weather delays that have stalled Falcon 9 launches this very week.)
  • The Dragon fleet has now spent more days at and flights to ISS than the NASA’s entire shuttle fleet.
  • Starlink: It is a supplement to present phone and internet service, not a replacement, serving remote areas. Its biggest obstacle now however to providing that service is government approvals. The company is blocked by regulators in many places where the service is operational.

On Starship/Superheavy, he revealed these facts:

  • They are planning to double its payload capacity to 200 tons to orbit, twice the Saturn-5.
  • Starship would have made orbit on the second orbital test if it had had a payload. To simulate the weight of payload it had carried extraoxidizer, and when it vented these as it approached orbit it caused problems that activated the self-destruct system.
  • The third orbital test flight will thus almost certainly reach orbit, and will then test engine burns, some refueling technology, payload deployment, and de-orbit procedures.

Musk emphasized that they must be able to fly these tests frequently to get Starship/Superheavy functioning, not just for SpaceX but for NASA’s Artemis program. As he said, “Time is the one true currency.” With each launch they refine the system to make it more reliable and operational. Without those launches they can’t.

He did not mention why launches might not happen frequently, probably because the last thing he needs to do is antagonize the regulators who are slowing him down. I (and other journalists) however are not under that restriction. The biggest obstacle to SpaceX’s success is the red-tape being wound around it by the Biden administration and its love of strict regulation, possibly instigated by its political hostility to Elon Musk as a person.

This government action to stymie freedom must end, and the sooner the better.
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Peregrine still operational but expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere

9:23 am

Peregrine flight path as of January 13, 2024
Click for original image.

According to an update yesterday from Astrobotic’s engineering team, the damaged lunar lander is likely to enter the atmosphere burn up when its orbit brings it back to Earth in about a week.

In an update the day before, the company released a graph of the spacecraft’s position in relation to the Earth and Moon, shown to the right. From that update:

Peregrine remains operational at about 238,000 miles from Earth, which means that we have reached lunar distance! As we posted in Update #10, the Moon is not where the spacecraft is now (see graphic). Our original trajectory had us arriving at the Moon on day 15 post launch. Our propellant estimates currently have us running out of fuel before this 15-day mark

The plan had apparently been to circle the Earth twice in this elongated orbit, with the second orbit (after some mid-course corrections) bringing Peregrine close enough to the Moon (after it had moved further in its orbit) to be captured by its sphere of influence. With the loss of fuel due to the leak, the spacecraft doesn’t have the fuel to do any of the required engine burns, including one that would avoid the Earth’s atmosphere upon return.

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Momentus delays next orbital tug mission due to lack of funds

3:24 pm

The orbital tug startup Momentus has now delayed its next orbital tug mission, scheduled to launch in March on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, due to shortage of cash in the bank.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Jan. 12, Momentus announced it did not plan to fly its next tug, Vigoride-7, on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare launch in March. The company said it called off the flight because of its “inability to support continuing operations for the expected launch date as a result of the Company’s limited liquidity and cash balance.”

The company said in November that it has signed up seven customers who planned to deploy satellites on Vigoride-7 and two other customers who would operate hosted payloads on the vehicle, but did not identify then. Momentus also intended to fly a rendezvous and proximity operations demonstration on the vehicle as part of its long-term plans for reusable tugs.

Momentus also announced the layoff of 20% of its full-time workforce, on top of the 30% layoffs which occurred in the third quarter in 2023. It appears from the SEC filing that these layoffs are a result of not winning the military contract to build its Tranche-2 constellation, won by Rocket Lab earlier this week.

The company is presently seeking new investment capital.

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Another look at the increasing regulatory burden impacting commerical space

1:10 pm

Link here. The author does a nice job summarizing the problems now becoming evident as the administration state strives to expand its power and control. Though he gives space to both sides, allowing the defenders of that administrative state to explain why strong regulations are good, he doesn’t bow to those defenders, as do too many modern journalists.

That he quotes me extensively (and has has told me personally that he is a regular reader of Behind the Black), might have something to do with this. He isn’t parroting my positions, however, in this essay, but giving his own perspective.

Definitely worth reading.

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Boeing completes Starliner parachute drop test

9:13 am

Boeing on January 9, 2023 successfully completed a parachute drop test of its Starliner capsule, testing whether the redesigned connection between the chutes and the capsule was now meeting proper safety specifications.

The drop test, which used a Starliner parachute system attached to a dart-shaped sled the same weight as a Starliner, was performed to confirm the functioning of a redesigned and strengthened soft link joint that is part of the network of lines connecting the parachutes to the spacecraft. The test also validated a change to strengthen one textile joint in the parachute, increasing overall parachute robustness. As with other capsules, Starliner relies on parachutes to land safely when it returns to Earth.

Engineers are still analyzing the results, though the parachutes worked as planned. The first manned mission of Boeing’s commercial capsule is now scheduled for April 2024, only four years late as well as four years after SpaceX accomplished the same thing. It still remains staggering that the company did not find out about that soft link joint when it was designing the capsule, instead of only months before the first manned mission last year. It is not as if the use of parachutes to land capsules is cutting edge technology.

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Dave Brubeck Quartet – Golden Brown

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This video is not what it seems. The sax player, Lawrence Mason, has created a cover of this Dave Brubeck song by editing and playing over the Dave Brubeck quartet playing another song in 1965. As he notes on the youtube page, he did it as a tribute to “Paul Desmond (saxophonist with the Dave Brubeck quartet – the anniversary of his death is at the end of this month) [May 2020].”

Hat tip Alton Blevins.

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Blue Origin moves first stage of its New Glenn rocket from factory to launchpad hanger

10:08 am

In what might be the first step in assemblying Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket for the first time (followed by a launch), the company yesterday transported the rocket’s first stage from its factory to its launchpad hanger.

Transported by a series of multiwheeled carriages and an arching structure, the 189-foot-tall first stage for what will be a 320-foot-tall rocket when fully assembled traveled horizontally on a 22-mile trip from the New Glenn factory in Merritt Island through Kennedy Space Center over to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station where Blue Origin has a hangar and launch pad at Launch Complex 36.

Jeff Bezos has said the company plans that first launch before the end of this year, though the company has been making this same promise now for the last three years, and is years behind schedule. What makes this promise different however is that this time we are seeing actual hardware moving towards the launchpad.

The article also gives a rough update on the company’s effort to manufacture the many BE-4 rocket engines needed for New Glenn (7) and ULA’s Vulcan rocket (2). The two engines for the next Vulcan launch in April are presently undergoing final testing at Blue Origin’s test facility in Texas, and the company says it is about to ramp up production. It thus appears that getting enough engines built is still the main obstacle to launch. We shall finally know later this year if Blue Origin has solved this problem.

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Update on Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander

9:56 am

The expected flight path of Peregrine
Click for original image.

The company Astrobotic has released several more updates on the status of its Peregrine lunar lander, which will no longer attempt a lunar landing because of a major fuel leak.

The map to the right shows its expected path in the coming days. While sent in a very elongated Earth orbit by ULA’s Vulcan rocket, the spacecraft was unable to do the additional engine burns that would have put it on the correct path to reach the Moon. Instead, it will fall back towards Earth, though its fate beyond that is unclear at this time.

Meanwhile, engineers have succeeded in getting data from all payloads designed to communicate back to Earth.

We have successfully received data from all 9 payloads designed to communicate with the lander. All 10 payloads requiring power have received it, while the remaining 10 payloads aboard the spacecraft are passive. These payloads have now been able to prove operational capability in space and payload teams are analyzing the impact of this development now.

Engineers have also been able to get the spacecraft to send back a number of images. These successes help the company prove out some of the spacecraft’s systems, though it is unable to test the mission’s prime goal, landing on the Moon.

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Secretariat – Triple Crown Races

6:01 pm

An evening pause: If you have never seen the Triple Crown victories by Secretariat in 1973, you need to watch this video. It will take your breath away. In the first two races jockey Ron Turcotte appears to let the pack take the lead at the start because he knows Secretariat can’t stand being behind. In the last, it is as if the horse wanted to prove to everyone that there was no horse now or ever that was faster. From the youtube webpage:

Secretariat (March 30, 1970 – October 4, 1989), also known as Big Red, was a champion American Thoroughbred racehorse who is the ninth winner of the American Triple Crown, setting and still holding the fastest time record in all three races. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest racehorses of all time. He became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and his record-breaking victory in the Belmont Stakes, which he won by 31 lengths, is widely regarded as one of the greatest races in history.

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NASA awards more money to two private space station proposals

10:34 am

Because Northrop Grumman has dropped its plans to build its own private space station, joining instead the Starlab station consortium led by Voyager Space, NASA has been able to shift the funding planned for Northrop Grumman’s station to two other two private space station projects.

Voyager Space’s Starlab station development will receive an additional $57.5 million from NASA, which brings NASA’s total funding for Starlab so far to $217.5 million, the space agency said.

…The Orbital Reef space station of Blue Origin and Sierra Space is receiving an additional $42 million, bringing that project’s total NASA funding so far to $172 million.

NASA says the extra money will help both consortiums meet their schedules.

A third private station, Axiom, also under development in partnership with NASA, plans to dock its initial modules to ISS, and then undock when completed to fly free.

A fourth American private space station is also being built, but independent of NASA entirely. The company, VAST, has teamed up with SpaceX to launch its first modules on Starship/Superheavy, followed by at least two manned missions.

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Private spaceport proposed on coast of Oman

10:25 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport

A private commercial company has proposed building a new spaceport on the coast of Oman near the town of Duqm, as shown on the map to the right.

The commercial spaceport, called Etlaq, is designed to host all sizes of launch vehicles in the port town of Duqm, and would meet US Federal Aviation Administration standards to attract international launch companies.

The National Aerospace Services Company (Nascom), which is overseeing the spaceport, unveiled its plans at the Middle East Space Conference in Muscat, more than a year after initially announcing the project. Nascom chairman Azzan Al Said told The National that the Etlaq Space Launch Complex was in the planning phase and development would start by 2025, with the spaceport set to become fully operational by 2030.

Nascom is apparently Oman’s space agency, and appears tasked to remove barriers to this private project. It is trying to ease the State Department ITAR restrictions that make it impossible for American rocket companies to launch from countries such as Oman. It has also contracted with a UK company that speciallizes in building spaceports.

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Peregrine only has hours left, its fuel leaking away

10:02 am

According to a number of recent updates by Astrobotic, its Peregrine lunar lander only only a few more hours of life left, its fuel leaking away due to the failure of a valve to close inside its oxygen tank.

Astrobotic’s current hypothesis about the Peregrine spacecraft’s propulsion anomaly is that a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer failed to reseal after actuation during initialization. This led to a rush of high pressure helium that spiked the pressure in the oxidizer tank beyond its operating limit and subsequently ruptured the tank.

The company also noted that the Vulcan rocket did no harm to the spacecraft during launch, placing it in the correct orbit. The tank rupture however means it will not land on the Moon, and in fact is likely not going to escape Earth orbit. Sometime in the next day or so the spacecraft will run out of fuel, and at that point it will be fly out of control, its batteries draining because the solar panels will no longer point to the Sun.

How this failure will impact Astrobotic’s next and larger lander, Griffin, remains unknown. It is presently scheduled to land on the Moon in November 2024.

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SpaceX: Ready to launch Starship/Superheavy by end of January but it won’t

9:28 am

Surprise! During the NASA press update yesterday making official the new delays in its entire Artemis lunar program, a SpaceX official revealed that the company will be ready to launch the third orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket by end of January, but it also does not expect to get a launch approval from the FAA for at least another month.

Speaking during the press conference, SpaceX Vice President of Customer Operations & Integration Jensen said Starship hopes to be ready to test Starship once more by the end of January and to receive the necessary license from federal authorities to do so by the end of February.

During the conference Jensen made it repeatedly clear that it will require numerous further launch tests to get ready ready for its lunar landing mission for NASA — about ten — and that the company hopes to have this task completed by 2025 so that the agency’s new delayed schedule can go forward as now planned.

Yet how will SpaceX do this if the FAA is going to delay each launch because of red-tape by at least one month? SpaceX might be confident the FAA will give the okay for a launch in late February, but no one should be sanguine about this belief. Bureaucrats when required to dot every “i” and cross every “t”, as it appears the Biden administration is demanding, can be infuriatingly slow in doing so, even if they wish to hurry.

This news confirms my prediction from November that the launch will happen in the February to April time frame. It also leaves me entirely confident that my refined December prediction of a launch no earlier than March will be right.

SpaceX wants to do about six test launches per year. I don’t know how it can do so with the FAA holding it back.

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UK spaceports to UK government: There’s too much red-tape!

9:58 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

At a hearing this week before the Scottish Affairs Committee of the United Kingdom’s parliement, the heads of the two spaceports being built in Scotland demanded that a single senior minister be assigned to handle all regulation for space launches, because the present system involves too many different agencies from too many different UK governments.

The result has been endless delays, and no launches.

“For me, there’s almost too many cooks involved,” [according to Scott Hammond, deputy CEO of SaxaVord Spaceport.] “I think what we need to look at is having a senior politician directly responsible for space and space launch and I would suggest that at cabinet level.” Despite the UK Government space portfolio, he said it is still “difficult to know who’s actually running launch in the UK”.

He gave the example of seeking permissions from Scottish Government’s marine directorate, something he said was taking six months rather than 14 weeks as promised.

The CEO of the company Orbex, which has a fifty-year lease to launch from the other spaceport in Sutherland, admitted that the spaceport “had appeared to be in a ‘better place’ in 2018 but acknowledged circumstances had changed since then.” In other words, regulation was now threatening the company’s operations at Sutherland, and it is beginning to look elsewhere for future launches.

Saxavord had hoped to do its first launch this year, but now is looking to the summer, all because of the long delays experienced in getting government approvals.

The map shows other space ports being developed in Europe. These, as well as new spaceports elsewhere, might end up getting all of this UK business because of the continuing red tape issues in Great Britain.

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Rocket Lab gets contract to build 18-satellite constellation for U.S. military

9:36 am

Rocket Lab was yesterday awarded a half billion dollar contract to build the next set of eighteen satellites of the U.S. military’s Tranche communications satellite constellation.

Rocket Lab will act as prime contractor for the $515 million USD firm-fixed price agreement, leading the design, development, production, test, and operations of the satellites, including procurement and integration of the payload subsystems. The contract establishes Rocket Lab’s position as a leading satellite prime contractor, providing supply chain diversity to the Department of Defense (DoD) through vertical integration. The contract comprises $489 million base plus $26 million of incentives and options and will be carried out by Rocket Lab National Security (RLNS), the Company’s wholly owned subsidiary created to serve the unique needs of the U.S. defense and intelligence community and its allies.

The plan is for these satellites to launch in 2027. It does not appear that the contract includes the launches itself. Rocket Lab can do some, but it is likely the military will award some to SpaceX and others.

This deal continues the military’s shift from designing and building its own satellites that usually cost too much and are years behind schedule to buying the product from the private sector. It also continues the shift from large unwieldly and very exposed single satellites to constellations of many small satellites that are difficult to destroy..

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Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander suffers major failure

12:10 pm

According to updates by the engineering team running Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, launched early today by ULA’s Vulcan rocket, the lander’s propulsion system suffered a major failure shortly after activation.

After successfully separating from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander began receiving telemetry via the NASA Deep Space Network. Astrobotic-built avionics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit, as well as the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, all powered on and performed as expected. After successful propulsion systems activation, Peregrine entered a safe operational state. Unfortunately, an anomaly then occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation.

The company later released an update, stating that the failure caused “a critical loss of propellant” that will make the mission impossible as planned. They are reassessing to see if they can come up with an alternate plan, but without sufficient fuel no lunar landing will be possible under any mission profile.

Peregrine is a smaller test version of Astrobotic’s larger Griffin lunar lander, which has contracts with NASA and ESA for later missions. This failure will likely impact those missions, forcing either delays or redesigns.

This mission was always an engineering test mission designed to prove out Astrobotic’s landing design, so experiencing a failure was not a surprise. The problem is that this failure occurred so soon after launch that it prevents the company from testing that landing design, at all.

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ULA’s Vulcan rocket successfully places payload in orbit on first launch

1:10 am

Vulcan at liftoff.
Vulcan at liftoff.

After four years of delay, mostly caused by delays at Blue Origin in delivering the two BE-4 engines used in the first stage, ULA’s Vulcan rocket finally completed its first launch early on January 8, 2024, lifting off from Cape Canaveral and successfully placing Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander into orbit.

As of posting the upper stage had just deployed Peregrine, which will leave Earth orbit in about four days using its own engines. The upper stage has one more burn to send it into solar orbit, carrying the ashes of numerous people for the company Celestis.

The 2024 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 India
1 China
1 ULA

For ULA, this launch is a very big deal. It is the first of two required in order for the Space Force to certify the rocket for future military launches. It also positions the company to begin the many launches that Amazon has awarded it to place into orbit a large percentage of that company’s Kuiper internet satellite constellation, assuming of course Blue Origin can deliver on schedule the many BE-4 engines that ULA will require.

This launch will also likely lead to the sale of ULA. » Read more

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