Tag: commercial

Japanese startup signs deal to provide its smallsat thrusters to South Korean university

9:20 am

Pale Blue, a Japanese startup which focuses on building water-vapor thrusters for cubesats, has signed a deal with Yonsei University in South Korea to provide that school smallsat thrusters for the satellites built by its students.

“Our mission aims for demonstrating cutting-edge laser communication, orbital maneuvering and formation-keeping,” Sang-Young Park, a Yonsei University astronomy professor, said in a statement. “These thrusters perfectly meet our requirements and offer the advantage of being not only environmentally friendly, but also free from regulatory constraints.”

Pale Blue proved its Resistojet thruster in orbit for the first time in March on a Sony Corp. Star Sphere satellite. Pale Blue plans to establish mass production of Resistojet thrusters to reduce the cost and lead time for potential customers in the United States, Europe and Asia, said Yuichi Nakagawa, Pale Blue co-founder and chief technology officer.

The company is also developing both an ion and hybrid thruster for satellites, and is another example of how the lowering of launch costs has encouraged the arrival of many new space companies doing many different things.

Leave a comment

Dish and Echostar to merge

9:15 am

The communications satellite company Echostar is now merging with the direct broadcast company Dish. From the press release:

The transaction combines DISH Network’s satellite technology, streaming services and nationwide 5G network with EchoStar’s premier satellite communications solutions, creating a global leader in terrestrial and non-terrestrial wireless connectivity. Both companies have strong momentum, highlighted by DISH’s 5G wireless network that now covers more than 70 percent of the U.S. with full commercialization underway and the successful launch of EchoStar’s JUPITER 3 satellite with significant available capacity for converged terrestrial and non-terrestrial services. The combined company will be well-positioned to deliver a broad set of communication and content distribution capabilities, accelerating the delivery of satellite and wireless connectivity solutions desired by customers.

This merger is I think part of the consolidation that is going on among the older players in the communications satellite industry as they struggle to deal with the competition from the new satellites constellations of Starlink and OneWeb.

Leave a comment

Momentus is now selling a version of its orbital tug simply as a service module for satellites

9:09 am

The orbital tug company Momentus has discovered that it can make money selling a version of its orbital tug simply as a service module, or bus, for commercial and military satellites.

The company announced Aug. 2 that it was now offering customers a bus called the M-1000. The bus is similar to the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle that Momentus has flown three times so far, but without the water-based propulsion system it uses for changing orbits.

The bus emerged from limitations flying hosted payloads on Vigoride, which remain attached to the tug rather than deployed as satellites. Rob Schwarz, chief technology officer at Momentus, said in an interview that the company started gauging interest a year ago in hosted payloads on Vigoride, including from U.S. government agencies. “What we’re finding is that a lot of government customers don’t really want to borrow the bus and lease it, but instead they want to own it,” he said. “Also, in some cases, because of the sensitivity of the payloads they don’t want to share it with other users.”

That led Momentus to instead consider a version of Vigoride that would be a satellite bus sold to customers instead of provided as a service. It uses many of the same subsystems, like avionics and power, as Vigoride. Changes include improved pointing and options for third-party chemical and electric propulsion systems.

This is just good and smart business practice. Momentus has a product that doesn’t appeal to some customers, in its designed iteration. Rather than trying to deny reality, the company quickly accepted the situation and revised its product in a somewhat easy way so it can be sold to those customers.

Leave a comment

Rocket Factory Augsburg raises $33 million in private investment capital

8:59 am

The German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg revealed today that it has raised $32.9 million in private investment capital at the same time it has shifted the launch date for the first rocket launch of its RFA-1 rocket from this year into next.

That launch was scheduled to occur at the Shetland spaceport, Saxavord, and as recently as April 2023 officials there were saying that this launch would occur this year. In June however Rocket Factory signed a deal with France’s space agency to use its long abandoned launchpad in French Guiana. That same month I predicted the launch at Saxavord would not happen this year, possibly because of regulatory hurdles in the United Kingdom.

It appears those hurdles might have been part of the reason for Rocket Factory’s deal with France. It needs a place to launch, and it appears the UK’s government is not presently conducive to allowing such things to happen easily.

2 comments

SpaceX successfully launches another 15 Starlink satellites

9:07 pm

I hope this doesn’t bore you: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to place another 15 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings each completed their sixth flight. As of posting the satellites have not yet deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

54 SpaceX
31 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 62 to 31, and the entire world combined 62 to 52, while SpaceX by itself leads the world (excluding American companies) 54 to 52.

7 comments

Boeing delays first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024

4:21 pm

Because of both parachute and wiring issues in its Starliner capsule, Boeing revealed today that it is delaying the first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024, so that it has time to change and test the parachutes as well as remove the flammable tape inside the capsule.

The company had been hoping to finally fly that first manned flight last month, but was forced to cancel when in June it discovered two shocking problems. First the connections between the parachutes and the capsule were too weak, and second, for some reason engineers had used tape to protect the capsule’s wiring that was too flammable and had to be replaced or covered somehow.

Boeing is taking the tape off in places where it’s easy and safe to do so and considering other remediation techniques, such as protective barriers or coatings over it, in trickier spots, Nappi said.

The parachute work is multifaceted as well. For example, Boeing has modified the soft link design to make it stronger, and the new version is being manufactured now, Nappi said. The company also decided to swap out Starliner’s parachute system, putting a new version slated for the first operational mission on board for [the crew flight test]. The new soft links will be incorporated into the new chutes, which will get to strut their stuff during a drop test soon. “We expect that the drop test will occur in mid to late November,” Nappi said. “That’s what the planning indicates at this point, and we’ll watch that closely.”

The seemingly endless number of mistakes and bad engineering that we have seen during the development of Starliner speaks very badly of Boeing in almost every way possible. These last two problems are especially egregious. Neither should have ever happened, and if so should never had been unnoticed until a mere month before launch and years into the project.

It must also be noted that March ’24 is merely a target date. Don’t bet the house on it happening then.

5 comments

Lockheed Martin opens factory to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis

10:41 am

Capitalism in space: As part of fulfilling a contract won from the Space Force, Lockheed Martin has now opened a new factory in Colorado expressly designed to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis.

Lockheed Martin’s 20,000-square-foot factory is located at the company’s Waterton campus near Denver, Colorado. It has six parallel assembly lines and capacity to manufacture 180 small satellites per year, Kevin Huttenhoff, Lockheed Martin’s senior manager for space data transport, told SpaceNews. The first satellites to be made at the facility are for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency. SDA plans to build a mesh network of hundreds of data transport and missile-detection sensor satellites in low Earth orbit.

Lockheed Martin in February 2022 won a $700 million contract to produce 42 communications satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer Tranche 1. The company in November 2020 also won a $187.5 million contract to manufacture 10 Transport Layer Tranche 0 satellites that are scheduled to launch later this month. The Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites — projected to launch in late 2024 — will be made at the new factory. The Tranche 0 satellites were assembled at a different facility where Lockheed Martin manufactures Global Positioning System (GPS) spacecraft.

The multiple assembly lines allows the company to configure each for a different customer and satellite, with one for example producing smallsats for a military contract while another produces smallsats for a commercial customer.

Of all the big space companies, Lockheed Martin has made the most moves quickly adapting to the new space market of new rockets and small satellites. Not only has it built this facility, it has been an major investor in several new smallsat rocket companies, including Rocket Lab and ABL. It also opened its first assembly-line smallsat factory in 2017.

2 comments

SpaceX conducts static fire test of Superheavy and its launchpad systems

10:32 am

SpaceX yesterday conducted a static fire test of Superheavy and its launchpad systems at Boca Chica.

After a couple of hours of chilling the fuel lines, filling of the liquid oxygen and liquid methane tanks aboard Booster 9 began at T-Minus 67 minutes. The liquid oxygen tank was fully filled with the liquid methane only partially filled with what was required for the test.

After a smooth countdown, Booster 9 lit all 33 Raptor engines, however, 4 shut down early during the 2.74-second duration test. The test was intended to last 5 seconds.

The new water deluge system seemed to work as intended, albeit with a very short firing of the engines. Instead of a giant dust cloud that is usually formed after a static fire test, this test created a steam cloud that dissipated fairly quickly following the test.

The premature shutdown and the even earlier shut down of four engines suggests SpaceX still has kinks it needs to work out. No surprise. It will now probably switch out those four engines, analyze the test, and do it again. It will do so partly because it needs to before the orbital test flight, and partly because it can’t do that test flight because the FAA has still not issued a launch license.

I have embedded the video of that test below the fold.
» Read more

3 comments

SpaceX tonight successfully launches another 22 Starlink satellites

7:50 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing softly on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their 8th and 10th flights respectively. As of posting the satellites have not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

53 SpaceX
31 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 61 to 31, and the entire world combined 61 to 51, while SpaceX by itself leads the world (excluding American companies) 53 to 51.

7 comments

Astra lays off 25% of workforce, mostly in its rocket departments

10:07 am

Astra revealed yesterday that it has laid off 25% of its workforce, with most of those jobs coming from those working of developing its rocket, in order to focus the company on its rocket engine business, the only area it at present has a chance of earning revenue.

The reallocation and layoffs are expected to delay testing of the under-development Rocket 4 and Launch System 2.0, Astra said. The affected employees worked in the company’s launch, sales and administration and “shared services” departments. Workforce reductions are expected to save the company more than $4 million per quarter beginning in the fourth quarter of this year.

Astra, which is facing dwindling cash reserves, is no doubt looking for a way to further reduce operating expenses while also bolstering its spacecraft engine business, the only business unit that currently has a near-term chance of generating revenue. The spacecraft engine technology is sourced from Astra’s acquisition of propulsion developer Apollo Fusion, which closed the day Astra went public in July 2021.

Indeed, Astra said that it had closed 278 committed orders of the Astra Spacecraft Engine product through the end of March, which totals around $77 million in contracts once the engines are delivered. A “substantial majority” of these orders will be delivered through the end of 2024, the company said.

What these actions mean is that Astra is no longer a rocket company. It might return eventually, but for now there is little chance it will resume launches for years.

It is interesting that this action was revealed only one day after a class-action lawsuit was dismissed by investors against the company for claiming that it would soon be launching 300 times per year.

6 comments

Proposed exclusion zone restrictions revealed for new Sutherland spaceport in Scotland

10:35 am

A map of the proposed 50-square-kilometer exclusion zone that will be required for launches at the new Sutherland spaceport in Scotland has now been obtained by the Northern Times, which appears to be a local newspaper.

The zone would cover much of Melness Crofters’ Estate, and ironically it would also include a significant part of the neighbouring Eriboll Estate, owned by Danish entrepreneur Anders Holch Polvsen, who launched a failed legal challenge against the spaceport. Highland Council is in the process of finalising the details of the proposed restrictions which will then be put out for a 12-week public consultation and go before Highland councillors for final approval.

Ramblers Scotland, which promotes access to the outdoors, has said it will “carefully study” the final proposals.

Only during the launches does it appear the zone would be this large. Between launches the zone would be limited to a radius of 1.8 kilometers around the launchpads.

With twelve launches planned per year, this zone could seriously impact local activities, though how much is not clear. Not many people live in the area, and the land inside the zone is mostly used as grazing land or for recreational activities, many apparently organized by Ramblers Scotland. We should therefore expect some opposition to this plan when this zone is discussed during that 12-week public consultation time period.

One comment

NASA agrees to let Axiom fly a fourth private manned mission to ISS

10:10 am

NASA and Axiom have now signed a new agreement allowing Axiom to fly a fourth private manned mission to ISS, tentatively scheduled for no earlier than August 2024.

Through the mission-specific order, Axiom Space is obtaining from NASA crew supplies, cargo delivery to space, storage, and in-orbit resources for daily use. The order also accommodates up to seven contingency days aboard the space station. This mission is subject to NASA’s pricing policy for the services that are above space station baseline capabilities.

The order also identifies capabilities NASA may obtain from Axiom Space, including the return of scientific samples that must be kept cold and other cargo, and the capability to use the private astronaut mission commander’s time to complete NASA science or perform tasks for the agency.

The company has already hired SpaceX to provide the transportation to and from ISS, using its Falcon 9 rocket and one of its fleet of four manned Dragon capsules.

One comment

Update on the technical progress at Boca Chica, preparing for the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test

9:59 am

Link here. Lots of progress had been made in getting the pad and the rocket ready for that next orbital test flight, with the first static fires tests of Superheavy using the launchpad’s new water deluge system are now expected in the coming week.

The company is also preparing additional prototypes of Superheavy and Starship for later orbital tests. even as it upgrades the assembly facilities, replacing temporary tents with actual buildings. More details, including videos, at the link.

Meanwhile, the only word from the FAA about SpaceX’s application for a launch permit has been a warning that it will not issue that permit until it is good and ready, suggesting the company should not expect to launch in August, as I have been predicting for months.

12 comments

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.

Leave a comment

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.

One comment

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.

Leave a comment

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.

2 comments

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.

2 comments

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.

Leave a comment

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.

7 comments

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.

One comment

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.

3 comments

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.

One comment
1 … 62 63 64 65 66 … 329