Tag: commercial

China’s Long March 4C launches weather satellite; SpaceX launches communications satellite

10:09 pm

Two launches this evening. First China used its Long March 4C rocket to put a weather satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. No word on where the lower stages crashed within China.

SpaceX then used its Falcon 9 rocket to put an Intelsat commercial communications satellite into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage successfully completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their eighth and tenth flights respectively.

As of posting the satellites from both launches had not deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

52 SpaceX
31 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 60 to 31, and the entire world combined 60 to 51, while SpaceX by itself leads the world (excluding American companies) 52 to 51.

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Rosie Hodgson & Rowan Piggott – Dancing At Whitsun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I was listening to a different recording of this song by Gordon Bok, Ann Muir, and Ed Trickett from 1978 and thought it gives us a window into a gentle culture that is now dead. As the youtube webpage for the performance below states, the song was written as “a tribute to the women who took up morris dancing during the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent.”

It is the gentle quality of this song, its words and its sound, that is generally dead in today’s culture. Almost all modern music must be loud — shouted more than sung — with a rock beat that while energetic and enthusiastic is also somewhat harsh. Curse words are normal. It is rare to hear new popular music dedicated to expressing gentle soft love.

I post this as a memorial to that lost civilization.

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Voyager Space partners with Airbus to build its Starlab space station

12:00 pm

Voyager Space, one of the three companies with a contract from NASA to develop a commercial private space station, has now signed a partnership agreement with the European aerospace company Airbus to work together to build its Starlab space station.

The companies announced Aug. 2 the creation of a joint venture, also called Starlab, that will be responsible for the development and operation of the station. The joint venture builds upon an agreement announced in January where Voyager selected Airbus to provide technical support for the proposed station.

“This transatlantic venture with footprints on both sides of the ocean aligns the interests of both ourselves and Voyager and our respective space agencies,” said Jean-Marc Nasr, head of space systems at Airbus, in a statement. “Together our teams are focused on creating an unmatched space destination both technologically and as a business operation.”

Though no specifics of the deal were released, Voyager will continue to retain 51% control. It appears that Voyager’s goal with this deal is to get its foot in the door of Europe. With ESA no longer considering doing any work on the space stations of either China or Russia, it needs a place to go after ISS is retired. By signing up Airbus as a partner Voyager makes Starlab the most likely go-to station for these European companies and governments.

Isn’t private enterprise and freedom wonderful? Without even trying Europe is going to get a space station of its own, and it will do it by hiring this private consortium of American and European companies.

Hat tip to Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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Satellite startup Planet lays off 10% of its workforce, most located in San Francisco

9:00 am

According to a filing to the SEC yesterday, the smallsat startup Planet has laid off 10% of its workforce, 117 employees of which 85 are located in San Francisco, in order “to prioritize our attention on the highest ROI [return on investment] opportunities for our business and mission,” as expressed by the company’s CEO to his employees.

The company presently operates a constellation of more than 200 small satellites designed to provide high resolution imagery of the Earth. In late 2021 it went public through a merger with a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), and has since seen its stock price drop from $11.35 to $3.75 yesterday.

The layoffs this week are likely simply the company recognizing that its main office in San Francisco had become bloated and it needed to economize. It is even possible the company is now considering a move from San Fran and California, though this is not mentioned in any of its announcements.

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Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket successfully places Cygnus freighter into orbit

5:44 pm

Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket tonight successfully launched a Cygnus freighter into orbit to ISS, flying for the last time with a first stage built in the Ukraine with engines from Russia.

Until Firefly can provide Northrop Grumman with a new American-made first stage, for the next three Cygnus cargo missions to ISS the company has purchased SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

This was Northrop Grumman’s first launch in 2023, so there is no change to the leader board in the 2023 launch race:

51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 59 to 30, and the entire world combined 59 to 50, with SpaceX by itself still leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 50.

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Momentus completes deployment of all payloads launched on board its Vigoride-6 tug

9:14 am

Momentus yesterday announced that it has successfully completed deployment of all the payloads that were launched in April on its Vigoride-6 orbital tug.

So far, in three demonstration missions in fourteen months, the company has deployed fifteen customer satellites using its Vigoride tug, though two were sent into an incorrect orbit because of a “human error in the mapping of a software command.”

The company next two missions are presently scheduled to be launched in November 2023 and February 2024.

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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches the heaviest geosynchronous communications satellite ever

8:15 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon Heavy rocket to place a Hughes geosynchronous communications satellite into orbit, the heaviest ever, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The two side boosters successfully completed their third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral only a few seconds apart. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights. The center core stage was not recovered as planned.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 49.

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NASA changes have cost Northrop Grumman $36 million on its Lunar Gateway module

9:47 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday revealed that unexpected requirement changes to the specifications of its HALO module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station has raised its cost for this fixed price contract by $36 million.

In the company’s fiscal second quarter financial results released July 27, the company announced an unfavorable estimate-at-completion adjustment of $36 million for its work on the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, one of the first elements of the Gateway. The company blamed the charge on “evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges” that caused cost growth on the program.

…“We think that is best applied for commercial items or production programs with stable requirements and mature designs,” [the company’s CEO] said of fixed-price contracts. “As it’s turning out on the HALO program, the requirements are not as stable as we or the government anticipated, and we’re working with them to address that change management as we go forward.”

The HALO module was an upgrade of the company’s Cygnus cargo freighter, with its original fixed-price contract for $935 million.

On a fixed-price contract, NASA is not supposed to change its specifications. The company gets somewhat general requirements from NASA, and then builds the product to its own specifications. It appears that either NASA managers don’t seem to understand this and are causing the company problems, or the company itself had not anticipated some design and construction issues before bidding and are struggling to address them now. In the latter case Northrop Grumman managers might have themselves not understood the nature of fixed-price contracts, and had assumed NASA would simply pick up any increase in the project’s budget, as it does in cost-plus contracts. It apparently is not, and thus this old big space company is now suddenly forced to face reality.

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Rocket Lab revises design of its new Neutron rocket

9:35 am

Rocket Lab has revised the design of its new Neutron rocket, reducing the number of fairing shells from four to two, and shifting the location of the first stages fins.

One of the major changes shown is how the payload fairing operates. In prior concepts, the fairing was comprised of 4 quarters that opened outward to allow second stage and payload separation. The new design shows two halves of the fairing opening. Moving from four to two fairings will provide more reliability for the rocket and fewer moving parts.

Another change is a slight design to the forward strakes (fins) that help steer the rocket back to its landing site. Unlike SpaceX, which uses grid fins, the Neutron rocket will use fins that provide more lift and can return to the launch site from further downrange. The forward fins also appear to have moved further up on the rocket, and the fairing halves size made a bit smaller.

The landing legs have also been redesigned, apparently to more closely match the design used on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

These are all relatively minor changes, none of which change the fundamental design that calls for the rocket to be almost entirely reusable.

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launches another 22 Starlink satellites

9:13 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully put another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their second flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

50 SpaceX
29 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 57 to 29, and the entire world combined 57 to 48, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 50 to 48.

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FTC will not block the purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris

10:03 am

How nice of them! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday that it will not block the planned purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris, which the company expects to now complete in mere days.

The deal, if finalized, would place L3Harris on a solid footing to achieve Kubasik’s long-stated goal of positioning the company as the sixth major defense prime.

The forthcoming acquisition has also garnered support from an unlikely source: RTX, the parent company of missiles giant Raytheon. Executives from the company, which rely on Aerojet to deliver crucial parts, have been open in recent weeks that while they don’t love strengthening a competitor, they feel Aerojet is in desperate need of new leadership. “We’ve obviously always been concerned about Aerojet. But I would say some of these things have been magnified by all these external inputs,” Wes Kremer, Raytheon president, told Breaking Defense during last month’s Paris Air Show.

Aerojet has had problems for years, especially because the rocket engines it makes are very expensive. It has failed to garner any market share in the new emerging rocket industry, remaining dependent entirely on very generous government contracts and the older big space contractors. But even here, it lost out to Blue Origin when ULA was looking for engines for its new Vulcan rocket.

It is likely that after this merger, the name Aerojet Rocketdyne will vanish, a sad end to a company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the space age.

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Boeing’s total losses due to Starliner now equal $1.5 billion

9:44 am

According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.

Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.

The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.

At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.

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A Dragon cargo capsule had a valve issue at ISS in June

10:30 am

The Dragon cargo capsule that had been docked to ISS in June apparently had a faulty valve that impacted no operations but has required SpaceX to review similar valves on all manned and cargo Dragon capsules.

The valve — known as an isolation valve — is designed to come on in case of a thruster leak, Reed said during the press conference. Since no leak was happening at the time it was stuck open, the valve “didn’t have to serve any purpose.”

The affected spacecraft, known as CRS-28, otherwise returned to Earth normally on June 30 after 25 days in space. After checking into the valve on CRS-28, SpaceX looked at its entire spacecraft line. They found “corrosion among certain units,” Reed said, which SpaceX is looking into identifying and addressing.

Knowing SpaceX, it will now not only find out the root cause, but fix it so that the corrosion never appears again, thus making its Dragon spacecraft even more reliable.

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A third spaceport approved in Scotland

10:18 am

Despite some local opposition, a third spaceport has been approved in Scotland, allowing up to ten suborbital launches per year.

During launches, a 155m (250km) exclusion zone will be placed on the seas around St Kilda, the world-heritage site and archipelago north west of the site. It will be the third of its kind in Scotland, after spaceports were launched in Sutherland and Shetland.

The project, spearheaded by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar – Western Isles Council – has been met with opposition from locals with more than 1,000 people signing a petition rejecting the plans.

…Comhairle nan Eilean Siar had previously bought Scolpaig Farm for £1m and is developing it with private military contractor QinetiQ alongside space industry firms Rhea Group and Commercial Space Technologies.

It is unclear if the spaceport will eventually upgrade to providing orbital launch facilities. It will also have to compete with the two other spaceports in Scotland, as well as get launch approvals from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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NASA awards 11 small development contracts to a variety of companies

9:01 am

Capitalism in space: NASA today announced that it has awarded small contracts to eleven different companies, ranging from big established companies like ULA and Lockheed Martin to small startups like Varda and Zeno, for developing a range of new technologies, from power production on the Moon to making building materials from lunar soil.

Five of the technologies will help humanity explore the Moon. For astronauts to spend extended periods of time on the lunar surface, they will need habitats, power, transportation, and other infrastructure. Two of the selected projects will use the Moon’s own surface material to create such infrastructure – a practice called in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU. Redwire will develop technologies that would allow use of lunar regolith to build infrastructure like roads, foundations for habitats, and landing pads.

Blue Origin’s technology could also make use of local resources by extracting elements from lunar regolith to produce solar cells and wire that could then be used to power work on the Moon.

Astrobotic’s selected proposal will advance technology to distribute power on the Moon’s surface, planned to be tested on a future lunar mission. The company’s CubeRover would unreel more than half a mile (one kilometer) of high-voltage power line that could be used to transfer power from a production system to a habitat or work area on the Moon.

The contracts range in price from $1.6 to $34.7 million, with Blue Origin getting that largest award.

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Rocket Lab delays its private mission to Venus two years to ’25

8:51 am

In order to focus at this time on its commercial customers, Rocket Lab has decided to reschedule its private mission to Venus, delaying its two years to the next launch window in 2025.

The mission appeared to still be on in May, before Rocket Lab quietly put it on the back-burner last month. Spokesperson Morgan Bailey said it had decided to delay the mission so it could concentrate on its commercial launches. “The decision was a business one and we look forward to delivering the Venus mission in 2025,” she said.

It also appears that the mission could be pushed back further if customer demand requires it.

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Indian company Skyroot conducts rocket engine test

11:24 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian rocket startup Skyroot successfully conducted a ten-second static fire test of a new engine, using a test facility of India’s space agency ISRO.

The Modi government has established a policy that ISRO must provide its facilities for private companies to develop their rockets, and this test was another demonstration that this policy is taking hold. It also indicates that Skyroot is getting closer to launching its first orbital rocket, Vikram-1.

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Viking cemetery found at new Saxavord spaceport in Scotland

8:43 am

Archeologists have discovered a Viking “ritual cremation cemetery” about 4,000 years old near the launch site at the new Saxavord spaceport in Scotland.

The burnt bones were found inside an arc of large granite boulders set into pits in the ground. A small platform of white quartz pebbles was also discovered which may have once been linked to a burial. Quartz is often associated with burial tombs in the prehistoric, and covered the entire outside wall of Newgrange in Ireland.

Test launches at Saxavord are expected to begin in the fall, with the first orbital launch next year. This schedule of course assumes launch licenses can be obtained from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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NOAA pays smallsat company PlanetiQ $60 million for its weather data

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: NOAA today awarded the smallsat company PlanetiQ a $60 million contract to provide the agency weather data from the company’s planned constellation of 20 satellites.

At present two satellites are in orbit, with more scheduled for launch in 2024. The satellites use data obtained in orbit from the different GPS-type satellite constellations to determine the atmosphere’s temperature, pressure, humidity and electron density.

In 2018 NOAA had awarded PlanetiQ and two other commercial companies, Spire and GeoOptics, small developmental contracts. This appears to be the first full contract, and continues NOAA’s very slow shift from building its own weather satellites to buying data from commercial satellites built by private companies. The agency has resisted this change, but since it can’t get its own satellites built and launched on budget or on time, it is increasingly being forced to do so.

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SpaceX launches 15 more Starlink satellites into orbit

9:20 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched fifteen more Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairings successfully completed their sixth flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

48 SpaceX
26 China (with a launch also planned for tonight)
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 55 to 26, and the entire world combined 55 to 45, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world combined (excluding other American companies) 48 to 45.

An additional note: This was the 100th successful orbital launch in 2023. In the history of space rocketry, reaching 100 launches in a year was generally considered an indication of an active launch year. Now the global rocket industry accomplishes it in just over half the year. Last year set a record with 179 launches. There is now an outside chance of breaking that, topping 200 launches in 2023.

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