Helene Fischer – Feliz Navidad
An evening pause: A Spanish Christmas song, with some English lyrics, sung in Germany. Makes for a good start to this Christmas week.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Tag: commercial
Weather forces Rocket Lab to scrub first launch from Wallops
High altitude winds yesterday forced Rocket Lab to scrub its first Electron launch attempt from Wallops Island in Virginia yesterday.
The weather also forced the company to cancel a launch attempt today.
Teams are now evaluating the next possible launch window while coordinating with holiday travel airspace restrictions. The flight will lift off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-2 (LC-2) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
This could mean that Rocket Lab will not be able to launch before the end of the year. The company very much wishes to do this, however, as it would give it ten launches in 2022, as well as a launch pace of one per month for most of the year.
This first launch from Wallops is also important, as it would give Rocket Lab three launchpads, including one in the U.S. for launching classified military payloads. It had hoped to launch from Wallops two years ago, but red tape at NASA delayed the launch.
South Korean rocket startup to launch suborbital test rocket
Innospace, a South Korean rocket startup, hopes tomorrow to complete the first suborbital launch of its Hanbit-TLV test rocket from Brazil.
The Sejong-based company aims to develop Korea’s first private commercial satellite launcher, the Hanbit-Nano, with data collected from the test launch. Hanbit-Nano will be a two-stage rocket equipped with a 15-ton-thrust hybrid engine, powered by solid fuel and liquid oxidizer.
Originally scheduled for 6 a.m., Monday, the test launch of the Hanbit-TLV rocket was delayed by a day due to unexpected rain and inclement weather. Innospace said that the launch window is open until Wednesday.
The launch will also be a significant event for Brazil’s Alcântara Launch Center, which is trying to attract commercial rocket companies to use it.
L3Harris to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion.
The space and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies has announced a deal to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion.
L3Harris is buying Aerojet at $58 per share in an all-cash transaction. Aerojet shares traded at $54.89 on Dec. 16. The deal is expected to close in 2023, pending regulatory approvals.
Aerojet Rocketdyne, based in Sacramento, California, manufactures rocket engines and propulsion systems for space vehicles, ballistic missiles and military tactical weapons. The company generates approximately $2.3 billion in annual revenue. L3Harris, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, is a global defense and aerospace firm with $17 billion in annual revenue.
This deal could in the end save Aerojet, which in recent years has had problems both making and selling its rocket engines, while facing increasing competition from many new rocket engine startups. As an old space company, its engines have tended to be too expensive, and often produced behind schedule. L3Harris now has the opportunity to clean house and streamline operations there, thus making the engines it produces more competitive in the emerging new space market.
Former SpaceX manager quits UK startup Skyrora after only six months
Only six months after he took the job as chief operating officer at the British rocket startup Skyrora, former SpaceX manager of its mission and launch operations Lee Rosen has quit the company.
A Skyrora spokesman said Mr Rosen had left for “personal reasons” and planned to return to California.
It is the latest blow to the space venture that is hoping to use a rocket base on the Shetland islands to fire small satellites into space. The company’s first suborbital launch test of its Skylark L rocket from a pad in Iceland failed, with the rocket crashing into the Norwegian ocean about 500 metres from the coast. The company blamed the failure on a “software related anomaly”.
Rosen’s quick exit from the company could suggest something is not quite right there, or it could simply be the job was not right for him. We do not know. The article however also provides this tidbit about this British rocket startup:
Skyrora was founded by Ukranian entrepreneur Volodymyr Levykin, a former executive at now defunct dating empire Cupid PLC. Its investors include Ukrainian internet entrepreneur Max Polyakov, according to a report by Snopes. Mr Polyakov is a shareholder at Hong Kong-based Digitroom Holdings, which owns a stake in Skyrora.
Polyakov was the billionaire who bought Firefly when it was bankrupt, He resurrected it, and then was forced to sell out by the State Department.
SpaceX completes third launch in less than two days
SpaceX successfully launched another 54 Starlink satellites today, completing the company’s third launch in less than two days.
The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 15th flight, a record, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
60 China
59 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 83 to 60 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 92 to 83.
Big Rude Jake & The Jump City Diplomats – Song for Lilly Christine
An evening pause: Hat tip Judd Clark.
SpaceX launches two communications satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched two communications satellites for the satellite company SES, beginning SpaceX’s contract to launch more satellites in its constellation of medium-Earth orbit satellites, replacing the Russians.
The first stage successfully flew its eighth flight, and landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
This was also the company’s second launch today, with another launch scheduled for tomorrow.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
60 China
58 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 82 to 60 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 92 to 82.
SpaceX launches oceanography satellite
SpaceX early this morning used its Falcon 9 rocket to successfully launch an oceanography satellite, dubbed SWOT, for both NASA and France’s space agency CNES.
The satellite it designed to measure the height of water on 90% of the Earth’s surface.
The first stage was making its sixth flight, and successfully returned to Earth, touching down on its landing pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
59 China
57 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 81 to 59 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 91 to 81.
These numbers however should change again later today, as SpaceX has another launch scheduled.
Tom Jones & Helene Fischer – Sexbomb
An evening pause: Performed live 2020, probably early in the year before the Wuhan panic struck.
Hat tip Tom Wilson.
American Giants – Restoring a Paul Bunyan Giant
An evening pause: There are endless and wonderful ways to make a living. This is just another example.
Hat tip Cotour.
Hakuto-R sends first image back to Earth
Go here and here for original images.
The private Hakuto-R lunar lander, owned and built by the Japanese-based company Ispace, is operating as planned and has sent back its first images from two different cameras.
The larger image to the right was taken by a camera on one of Canada’s payloads. It shows the Earth two minutes after launch, with the rocket’s upper stage acting as a frame. The inset, reduced to insert here, was taken 19 hours after launch by the lander’s main camera, and shows the Earth at night. Both images demonstrate that the spacecraft is stable and functioning perfectly.
The goals of the mission remain mostly engineering. Its focus is demonstrating first that Ispace’s lander can do what it says so that future customers will be confident buying payload space. Similarly, the payloads, such as the UAE’s Rashid rover, are doing the same thing.