Tag: commercial

ULA’s Vulcan rocket fully stacked for the first time

9:39 am

Peregrine landing site
The landing site for Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander

In preparation for its targeted January 8, 2024 launch, ULA’s Vulcan rocket has now been fully stacked for first time in its assembly building at Cape Canaveral.

ULA’s new rocket has rolled between its vertical hangar and the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station several times for countdown rehearsals and fueling tests. But ULA only needed the Vulcan rocket’s first stage and upper stage to complete those tests. The addition of the payload shroud Wednesday marked the first time ULA has fully stacked a Vulcan rocket, standing some 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall, still surrounded by scaffolding and work platforms inside its assembly building.

It will next be rolled to the launchpad for some final checks prior to launch on January 8, 2023. Unlike most first launches, it carries a real payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, which hopes to softly place several NASA and commercial payloads near the Gruithuisen Domes in the northwest quadrant of the Moon’s visible hemisphere, as shown on the map above.

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White House issues “policy framework” to lobby for its space regulatory proposal

9:28 am

Faced with stiff opposition from industry and politicians from both parties in Congress to its regulatory proposal issued in mid-November, the White House yesterday released what it called a “policy framework” for implementing that proposal.

You can read this policy framework here [pdf]. It is filled with high-sounding claims about its goal is to encourage private development and reduce red tape, but in the end it only adds more government entities to the entire bureaucracy that regulates commercial space. From the framework itself:

The Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation will co-lead a Private Sector Space Activities Interagency Steering Group in consultation with the Chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), comprising representation from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, and State, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and any other Federal entities with expertise or equities pertaining to private sector novel space activities, including relevant stakeholders from the Executive Office of the President. The Steering Group serves as a coordinating body to ensure that the U.S. Government oversight system is prepared to meet U.S. priorities while taking into consideration the competitiveness of U.S. industry now and into the future.

One of the criticisms of the White House proposal from mid-November was that it would split regulation between Commerce and Transportation, thus increasing the complexity for commerical companies. This steering group is clearly an effort to answer those complaints, but based on this proposal, it simply adds one more bureaucratic layer to the mix, making things even more complicated.

The framework also calls for the expansion of the government’s regulatory footprint on several fronts, such as controlling orbital debris, and achieved through “expanding existing, or establish new, federal advisory committees to account for all expanded space authorities in furtherance of this Framework and related legislative proposals.”

From the viewpoint of freedom, this entire proposal reads like a zombie end-of-the-world horror film, with bureaucratic zombies appearing endlessly from all directions, aimed at consuming any independent private company as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

The original commercial space act proposal from Congress, that the Biden administration (and most Democrats) oppose but carries the endorsement of the private commercial space industry, was passed by its House committee, but still needs to be voted on by the full House, as well as the Senate. Because it remains in limbo, the White House has issued this framework, in the hope it can give its side the ammunition needed to defeat that bill and replace it with the White House’s.

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Starship prototype #28 completes full duration static fire test

8:49 pm

Gearing up for Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight #3: Starship prototype #28 today successfully completed a full duration static fire test, with all six engines firing for about five seconds.

The link goes to SpaceX’s X feed, and shows that test.

This is more evidence that SpaceX intends to be ready in all ways to do that third orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship by mid-January, at the latest. It also suggests the company is getting close to finishing its investigation into the previous test flight in mid-November.

Of course, none of this means it will launch in mid-January. I predict SpaceX will be stuck twiddling its thumbs waiting for a launch license from the FAA, which will also be waiting for an okay from Fish & Wildlife. Both will likely be forced to work as slowly as possible, likely because of interference from the White House.

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The Biden war against Musk is a war against America

1:33 pm

How the modern Democratic Party has evolved madly to the left, according to Elon Musk
How the modern Democratic Party has evolved
madly to the left, according to Elon Musk

In 2022 Elon Musk essentially completed the long process of going from what he described as a moderate who had previously voted overwhelming for Democrats to a Republican voter strongly hostile to the present Democratic Party.

He announced this shift in a tweet on May 18, 2022, in which he said the following:

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party.

But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.

Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold. [emphasis mine]

In the almost twenty months since Musk made that statement, his prediction of a “dirty tricks campaign” by the Democrats has become quite evident and true. Numerous federal agencies under the control of President Joe Biden began taking strong actions to stymie Musk’s companies, sometimes abusing the law in what appear to be legitimate ways, and sometimes abusing power in ways that are absurd. Below is a short list, many of which have been repeatedly reported here at Behind the Black:
» Read more

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Congress passes short term extension of commercial space regulatory “learning period”

9:19 am

The Senate yesterday passed a short term extension of the regulatory “learning period” at the FAA that limits its ability to regulate commercial space.

[The Senate] quickly passed an extension of the FAA’s authorization, a final piece of “must pass” legislation before the end of the year. The bill (H.R. 6503) passed the House on December 11. Among other things, it extends the “learning period” for commercial human spaceflight until March 9, 2024 that otherwise would have expired on January 1. The learning period, or “moratorium,” prohibits the FAA from promulgating new regulations on commercial human spaceflight while the industry is in its infancy.

The president still needs to sign this bill, but that is expected.

Originally passed in 2004 as an eight-year period, this “learning period” has been extended several times since. The industry wants a longer extension, as it still considers itself quite rightly to be in an experimental test phase, not operational in the sense of airplane manufacture.

Not that this extension matters. It appears in the past two years that the regulators at the FAA have decided to ignore the law and make believe this learning period really doesn’t exist, based on how that agency has treated test launches by SpaceX and others. Rather than let their launches proceed quickly as tests, the FAA has begun to treat each test as an operational flight that requires a long investigation before further launch approvals are given.

Unless there is a major change in leadership in the White House, we should expect a major slow-down of the American launch industry in the coming years, regardless of whether this “learning period” is extended or not.

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Launch of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander delayed until February

8:45 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

Because of scheduling conflicts impacting other SpaceX launches now, SpaceX and Intuitive Machines have delayed the launch of the latter’s Nova-C lunar lander from a mid-January to a mid-February launch window.

The conflict involves the use of the launchpad, that the Falcon Heavy also uses. Technical issues had forced SpaceX to reschedule its next launch to December 28, 2023, leaving little time afterward to reconfigure the pad for the Falcon 9 Nova-C mid-January launch window. Any Falcon Heavy launch delays due to weather would likely make that mid-January window impossible, so the companies have decided better to reschedule now.

Nova-C is targeting a crater rim near the Moon’s south pole, as shown on the map to the right. The floor of that crater is thought to be permanently shadowed, but Nova-C does not have the capability to enter it. This mission is mostly an engineering test mission, to prove Intuitive Machine’s design. If it works, it will operate on the Moon surface for one lunar day, about two weeks. The company then has two more lunar missions contracted with NASA, with the next mission aiming to fly in 2024 as well.

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Spain’s new space agency

9:32 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed description of the history leading up to the formation in March 2023 of Spain’s new space agency, Agencia Espacial Española (AEE) (the Spanish Space Agency in English).

It appears the goal was to consolidate Spain’s government space operations from eleven different agencies so as to better coordinate that government’s work with the nation’s burgeoning new commercial space sector.

By law, Spain has created the AEE without any increase in public spending. The new agency has been allocated an initial budget of 700 million euros per year, which was primarily drawn from funding for ESA [European Space Agency] participation, the CDTI, and INTA [two other Spanish agencies]. However, it is expected that the AEE will receive higher budgets in the future for the development of its own programs outside those directly linked to the ESA. The task of financing space activity public and private alike is of utmost importance, and one of the agency’s roles should be to create mechanisms for making investment attractive and effective, either directly or through public-private partnerships — a model that is producing excellent results in several countries around the world, like the United States. [emphasis mine]

It appears the goal is to emulate the policies followed by NASA in the past few years, buy services and products from the private sector rather than build these things within the government. If so, AEE will likely help jumpstart that new space industry. Whether it can stay focused on this goal, or shift into a typical government empire-building operation that sucks the life out of everything, will be its real fundamental test.

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Firefly schedules second launch in 2023

9:19 am

Firefly has now scheduled the second launch of its Alpha rocket in 2023, with a launch window of about 20 minutes on the morning of Decmeber 20, 2023.

The payload is a smallsat from Lockheed Martin testing new antenna technology, but the launch is for the Space Force. Like the previous September 15, 2023 launch, it is designed to test the ability of Firefly to get a payload into orbit quickly, from assembly to launch.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

9:10 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

92 SpaceX
61 China
17 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 105 to 61, and the entire world combined 105 to 96. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 92 to 96.

This was the 201st launch this year, the first time ever that the global launch industry has exceeded 200 launches. Before 2021, annual global launch totals were generally less than 100. It now looks like there is a good chance they will never again be as low as that. (I should have noted this at the 200th launch, but missed it.)

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UK finally gives Saxavord spaceport a license

11:33 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the United Kingdom finally issued a spaceport license today to the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, thirteen months after the application was submitted.

This license however does not mean that launches will take place anytime soon. First, Saxavord will have to resume construction of its facilities, which ceased earlier this year because of the CAA hadn’t issued the permit. Moreover, this license does not allow launches. As noted by the CAA:

Spaceport licences allow a person or organisation to operate a spaceport, they are granted in the UK under the Space Industry Act 2018 (SIA). For a launch to happen an operator will need to have developed and proven their technology, be operationally ready, and have a launch licence from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted language is especially crushing, because it literally forbids the launch of any new untested rocket. Since every single rocket so far being developed for these two spaceports is new and untested, none will be allowed to launch unless they move operations elsewhere. This requirement explains for example why the startup ABL shifted its next launch from the Sutherland spaceport — it had hoped to launch this year — to Kodiak, Alaska. Orbex will have even more problems, as it has signed a fifty year lease to launch its new Prime rocket from Sutherland, with its rocket factory close by. If it can’t test fly Prime from Sutherland the company will be very badly hampered.

Even if these companies eventually get launch licenses for their untried rockets, expect such approvals to take a very long time, based on the CAA’s past and present history. It took the CAA almost a year to approve Virgin Orbit’s launch license, essentially bankrupting the company.

Nor are my conclusions here — which I have been stating now for more than a year — simply opinions. They have now been confirmed by a new report issued only a few days ago by the UK Space Agency, which admitted the following:
» Read more

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Environmental groups file another complaint attempting to stop SpaceX launches at Boca Chica

3:45 pm

In what is now becoming a routine process of harassment, several environmental groups have filed another complaint against the FAA and Fish & Wildlife for eventually issuing a second launch license to SpaceX, permitting it to do its mid-November second orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket from Boca Chica, Texas.

In the supplemental complaint, the groups — Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc., Save RGV and Surfrider Foundation — allege the FAA failed to properly analyze the environmental impacts of the first Starship launch before issuing a revised license for the second launch that took place Nov. 18.

That new licensing process included an environmental review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regarding a pad deluge system that SpaceX installed on the pad to prevent damage like that the pad suffered during the first launch. The FWS concluded that the deluge system would produce no significant environmental changes.

The environmental groups argue that both FAA and FWS fell short of what was required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to review the environmental impacts of Starship launches. The FAA, it stated in the complaint, “once again failed to take the requisite ‘hard look’ at the impacts of the Starship/Superheavy launch program through a supplemental NEPA analysis.”

Let me translate what this complaint really says, and I can do it only a few words: “Your review didn’t come to the conclusions we want — which is to block all work by SpaceX — so that we can do what we want!” Both the American Bird Conservancy and the Surfrider Foundation simply want unlimited access to the region for their own recreation, while the Center of Biological Diversity is only interested in stopping all human development anywhere — until it can settle its frequent lawsuits against the government and pocket its payoff.

As for Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas and Save RGV, both are bogus organizations. The first is for a almost non-existent Indian tribe that never even lived in this area (they were based in Mexico), and the second claims it represents the people of the south Texas region who want SpaceX’s work stopped. Since almost everyone in Brownsville and throughout the region is celebrating the new prosperity brought to them by SpaceX, it is essentially a front group for the Marxist environmental movement that hates all prosperity. It doesn’t represent anyone really in south Texas.

As before, this complaint will have to be fought, wasting time and money.

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Chevrolet – A Holiday to Remember

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Yes, I know it is a commercial, but it is right for the season. And it reminds us of the never-ending human desire — not often possible — to always believe all things can be made better. Such a belief enriches us. We should never lose it, no matter how bad things become.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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NASA: The flight plan for Dream Chaser Tenacity’s first demo mission to ISS

9:30 am

NASA today provided a detailed description of the flight plan for the first demo ISS mission of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reuseable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, now targeting some unspecified date in 2024.

It will carefully approach ISS, testing its maneuvering and rendezvous capibilities, and then be grabbed by the station’s robot arm to be berthed to the station.

On its first flight to the International Space Station, Dream Chaser is scheduled to deliver over 7,800 pounds of cargo. On future missions, Dream Chaser is being designed to stay attached to the station for up to 75 days and deliver as much as 11,500 pounds of cargo. Cargo can be loaded onto the spacecraft as late as 24 hours prior to launch. Dream Chaser can return over 3,500 pounds of cargo and experiment samples to Earth, while over 8,700 pounds of trash can be disposed of during reentry using its cargo module.

On this first demo flight it will remain docked for 45 days, and then land on the shuttle runway at Cape Canaveral.

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Rocket Lab returns to flight, successfully launching a Japanese commercial radar satellite

9:17 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully launched a Japanese commercial radar satellite, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two New Zealand launchpads.

This was the company’s first launch since September, when its Electron rocket experiened a failure in its upper stage.

No attempt was made to recover the first stage, likely because it was decided to keep this return to flight as simple as possible.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

91 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 104 to 59, and the entire world combined 104 to 93. SpaceX still trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 93.

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Ofra Haza – Jerusalem of Gold

6:01 pm

An evening pause: On this, the last day of Hanukkah, we finish with a moving song that celebrates the city of Jerusalem, first published just days before the 1967 Six-Day war, and then revised slightly by its author, Naomi Shermer, after the eastern half of the city was recaptured by Israeli troops and made available to both Jews and Muslims for the first time since the 1948 war. Before then Jordan had barred Jews from entering, and had allowed many Jewish religious sites to be desecrated. When Israel took over that ended, and all sites were opened to all. (In subsequent years Muslim intransigence has slowly once again closed to Jewish Israelis the areas under Muslim control.)

The song is also sad, because it recognizes the thousands of years of conflict by many over this small spot on Earth. Most of those conflicts were caused by those who wished to kick the Jews from this place, even though they probably have more right to it than anyone else on Earth.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Musk fires back at FCC decision to cancel its $886 million Starlink grant award

9:45 am

In a tweet late on December 12, 2024, Elon Musk fired back at the FCC for its decision to cancel its $886 million Starlink grant award first awarded to SpaceX in 2020 under the FCC program to encourage companies to provide broadband internet services to rural areas. As Musk noted quite accurately:

Doesn’t make sense. Starlink is the only company actually solving rural broadband at scale!

They should arguably dissolve the program and return funds to taxpayers, but definitely not send it those who aren’t getting the job done.

What actually happened is that the companies that lobbied for this massive earmark (not us) thought they would win, but instead were outperformed by Starlink, so now they’re changing the rules to prevent SpaceX from competing.

In September Musk had also endorced a Wall Street Journal editoral that suggested the Biden administration was attempting to cancel this grant because “it has it in for Elon Musk.” Musk response: “Sure seems that way.”

It seems that way even more so now. I wonder if Musk will now sue. Above all however he is right when he argues the entire program should be dissolved and the money returned to the taxpayer. There is no justification for the FCC to hand out this cash, especially when multiple private companies, not just SpaceX, are getting the job done and making profits at the same time.

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The scrub of this week’s Falcon Heavy launch of X-37B

9:31 am

In what has become quite rare, SpaceX was forced to scrub its December 11, 2023 launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying one of the Space Force’s X-37B spacecraft, due to technical problems.

Initially, the cause of the scrub was linked to a problem with the company’s ground systems, not the rocket itself. This in itself is significant, because of the almost hundred launches SpaceX has done this year, almost none have been scrubbed, and the few that have been scrubbed were almost always because of weather conditions. The company has gotten its launch ground systems and rockets working like clockwork, so to have a problem with the ground systems on this Falcon Heavy launch was quite unusual.

SpaceX officials initially thought they would be able to fix the problem and launch after only one or two days delay. However, shortly thereafter unstated additional problems were identified that required the company to roll the rocket back to its assembly building for more work.

As a result, the launch date is now to be determined, and could even be delayed to early next year. The article at the link focuses on how this rescheduling could impact two other launches that carry commercial lunar landers. This I think is unlikely, since both work under much more restrictive launch windows, for this reason are almost certain to get priority in scheduling.

More important is the question as to what caused the initial scrub and then the need to roll the rocket back for more checkouts. Are the problems with the Falcon Heavy or with the X-37B spacecraft, or with some issue involving both? Neither SpaceX nor the Space Force would release any details. The fact that SpaceX now so rarely has technical issues at launch suggests some problem with the X-37B, but that conclusion is pure speculation.

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Amazon files to have shareholder lawsuit dismissed

9:15 am

On December 11, 2023 Amazon requested dismissal of a shareholder lawsuit against it for acting in bad faith by excluding SpaceX in its initial launch contracts with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin to put its Kuiper constellation of satellites into orbit.

The lawsuit claimed that the board performed little diligence on the proposed contracts to launch the 3,236-satellite constellation with the Ariane 6, New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur rockets. The combined contracts were, it stated, the second largest capital expenditure in Amazon’s history at the time, trailing only its $13.7 billion acquisition of grocer Whole Foods.

The lawsuit stated that the board and its audit committee spent “barely an hour” reviewing those contracts, including those that would go to Blue Origin and ULA. Blue Origin is owned by Amazon founder and former chief executive Jeff Bezos, while ULA has a contract with Blue Origin to use BE-4 engines on its Vulcan rocket. The suit estimated that nearly 45% of the value of the contracts goes to Blue Origin either directly or through the BE-4 engine contract with ULA.

Amazon’s call for dismissal disputes these claims, stating that the board spent far more time on the issue, and then documents this. Interestingly, it makes no mention of the recent additional launch contract Amazon signed with SpaceX on December 3, 2023, but it is obvious that this filing was timed to occur afterward in order to strengthen Amazon’s case.

Amazon’s response (available at the link above) is heavily redacted, so some of the company’s claims are difficult to assess. For example, if the board did consider the issue of launch contractors properly, the subject of using SpaceX should have come up and been discussed at length. The redactions make it impossible to determine if this was so. If anything, what can be read suggests SpaceX was dismissed as an option far too quickly.

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FCC denies Starlink $886 million grant

9:48 am

Despite the fact that SpaceX Starlink constellation is presently providing internet access to more rural customers than any company worldwide, the FCC yesterday announced that it will not award the company a $886 million subsidy under its program for expanding broadband service to rural areas.

The FCC announced today that it won’t award Elon Musk’s Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund for expanding broadband service in rural areas. The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”

That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal. SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.

This decision can only be explained by utterly political reasons. SpaceX right now is experiencing a booming business, with its traffic up two and a half times from last year,almost all of which is in rural areas. That number is from a news report today, the same day the FCC claims Starlink can’t provide such service. As noted by one SpaceX lawyer:

“Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”

The initial award was made in December 2020, when Trump was still president. It was first canceled in August 2022, after Biden took over. SpaceX appealed, but today’s announcement says the FCC rejected that appeal.

While there is absolutely no justification to give any company this money — SpaceX is proving private companies don’t need it to provide this service to rural areas — this decision is clearly political, driven by the hate of Elon Musk among Democrats and the Biden administration. They don’t care that SpaceX is a successeful private company providing tens of thousands of jobs as well as good products to Americans. Musk does not support them, and so he must be squashed.

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NASA updates status of three private space stations

8:58 am

NASA today posted a short update of the development status for the three private space stations for which it has signed contracts.

Not surprisingly, Axiom’s station appears to be the most advanced.

Axiom Space, which holds a firm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with NASA, is on schedule to launch and attach its first module, named Axiom Hab One, to the International Space Station in 2026. A total of four modules are planned for the Axiom Commercial Segment attached to the station. After the space station’s retirement, the Axiom Commercial Segment will separate and become a free-flying commercial destination named Axiom Station.

With the remaining two stations, Starlab and Orbital Reef, the update provided no schedule information. While both Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, and Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin, appear to be making progess, the former appears to be accomplishing more than the latter, though that impression could simply be what NASA decided to report. For example, in describing the work being done on Orbital Reef, NASA chose for some reason to say nothing about the testing Sierra Space has been doing to test the inflatible module planned for the station. By leaving that out it makes it appear as if less has been done in developing that station.

These are not the only private space stations being proposed, only the ones that have contracts with NASA. A fourth station, Vast, is being built using funding from private sources, and is partnering with SpaceX.

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A tour of Blue Origin’s Huntsville Machine Shop & Manufacturing Facility

9:36 pm

Video below, which is heavily focused on machining and machine shop work. The facility, the Machine Shop & Manufacturing Facility in Huntsville, appears to build the BE-3U engine (to be used for the New Glenn upper stage), though I thought some of the engines shown could be BE-4’s. I hope my readers can help clarify this.

While this video actually reveals very little solid information, one important fact was disclosed near the end, when the tour reached the final engine assembly point. There the Blue Origin employee mentioned that they are assembling three engines at this facility. Considering facility’s size and the number of engines that will be needed once New Glenn begins flying, I was not impressed. Does it really take this much space and equipment to only build three rocket engines? Am I wrong?

Hat tip to reader John Harman, who is himself the owner of an aerospace manufacturing company.

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Hila Ben David – Avinu Malkeinu

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Though the prayer is recited every fall during services during the Ten Days of Repentance, from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, this music is modern, originally sung by Barbara Streisand. It is fitting now both for Hanukkah and the events in Israel. Activate closed captions to read the English translation. It is a prayer asking God for forgiveness for past sins as well as renewal and mercy in the coming year.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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The Polaris Dawn private space mission now targeting an April ’24 launch

9:14 am

The Polaris Dawn private space mission, the first of a three-mission private manned program being financed by billionaire Jared Isaacman, is now targeting an April 2024 launch.

In social media posts Dec. 9, Jared Isaacman, the billionaire backing the Polaris program and who is commanding the initial mission, said the launch of Polaris Dawn is now scheduled for April 2024. “April is the goal to launch & the pace of training is accelerating,” he wrote, stating that he was at SpaceX that day for testing of extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits that will be used on the mission.

Conducting a spacewalk is one of the major goals of Polaris Dawn, requiring both development of an EVA suit as well as modifications to the Crew Dragon, which lacks an airlock. Both of those have been challenges, he suggested in a subsequent post. There is a “big difference,” he wrote, between the pressure suits worn by Crew Dragon astronauts and an EVA suit “engineered from the start to be exposed to vacuum outside the spaceship.” The lack of an airlock also requires changes to Crew Dragon software and hardware to enable depressurization of the cabin before the start of the spacewalk and repressurization afterwards.

The mission’s launch has been delayed several times from its first launch target in 2022. This first flight of Isaacman’s Polaris program will, as noted, attempt the first spacewalk by a private citizen. The second would also fly on a Dragon capsule, but its mission remains unclear. Both NASA and Isaacman’s Polaris team have been studying the possibility of a repair mission to Hubble. The third mission would be on Starship, once it begins flying operationally.

Isaacman previously paid for and flew on SpaceX’s first commercial manned flight, Inspiration4, in September 2021.

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ULA likely to delay first Vulcan launch to January launch window

8:31 am

According to a tweet yesterday by ULA’s CEO, Tory Bruno, the final dress rehearsal countdown of its new Vulcan rocket had some “routine” issues that will require a redo and thus prevent the planned launch on December 24, 2023.

WDR [wet dress rehearsal] update: Vehicle performed well. Ground system had a couple of (routine) issues, (being corrected). Ran the timeline long so we didn’t quite finish. I’d like a FULL WDR before our first flight, so XMAS eve is likely out. Next Peregrine window is 8 Jan.

Peregrine is Astrobotic’s lunar lander, which must launch within certain time frames to get to the Moon as planned.

As many news sites are noting (almost certainly because they read my launch race reports), ULA will likely complete 2023 with only three launches, its lowest total since it was formed in 2007 from a merger of the launch divisions of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Prior to 2017 the company had averaged about one launch per month. In 2017 however SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket finally reached full operations, hitting 18 launches and steadily since then increasing that total. Its success (and lower prices) shifted the business from ULA, causing its annual launch totals to drop significantly, as shown in my 2022 global report.

Once Vulcan begins launching finally ULA should recover, especially because of its large contract with Amazon to launch the Kuiper constellation totalling almost fifty launches. A large percentage of those launches must be completed before 2026 for Amazon to meet the requirements of its FCC license.

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Momentus fails to deploy three satellites on SpaceX’s multi-smallsat launch

10:06 am

The orbital tug company Momentus failed to deploy the satellites of three of its customers following November’s SpaceX multi-smallsat Transporter launch.

Momentus announced Dec. 5 that three of the five satellites that it flew on the Transporter-9 launch Nov. 11 did not appear to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage. The company used a third-party deployer, rather than its own Vigoride tug, on that mission, and said that it was able to confirm that the Hello Test 1 and 2 satellites from Turkish company Hello Space were released.

The Momentus deployer remained attached to SpaceX’s upper stage, which as planned fired a de-orbit burn after completing the deployment schedule of its 90 satellites. All the satellites that used SpaceX’s deployment system apparently deployed properly.

In 2022 Momentus’s own orbital tug, Vigoride, had problems deploying some satellites on its first test launch, though its second flight in July 2023 was completely successful.

The failure here will not only pose problems for that third-party deployment company as well as Momentus, it will do serious harm to the startups that launched the three lost satellites. One was American, while the other two were South Korean and Polish. The American company, Lunasonde, has been trying to develop a constellation of satellites designed to look for underground resources.

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