Tag: competition

South Korea’s space bureaucracy attempts to encourage private sector development

9:38 am

South Korea’s space agency, the Korea Aerospace Administration, has announced a new effort to encourage that country’s private sector in developing rockets and satellites.

[A] plan will be established to link the National Space Council, the highest policy decision-making body overseeing government space policy, with the Aerospace Development Policy Review Committee. Systems will also be established for workforce training in aerospace and the designation of a space development mission center.

To establish an aerospace economic ecosystem, the participation of the private sector in the development and utilization of launch vehicles and satellites will be expanded. In the aviation sector, future aircraft technologies, including urban air mobility (UAM), will be secured, and localization of aircraft materials and components will be supported. To encourage smooth research and development (R&D) investments in aerospace corporations, the aerospace fund will be revitalized with improvements to regulations and support for overseas expansion.

Overall, a lot of this sounds like meaningless bureaucratic gobbledygook. The goal might be to expand the private sector, but the program still has the space agency running everything, from its new government-built Nuri rocket to its other satellite development programs.

Nonetheless, the desire to encourage the private sector is good. It could simply be that South Korea’s private sector is not mature enough yet to take the lead, and the agency by this announcement is working to push it forward.

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General Atomics successfully tests fuels to be used in an in-space nuclear propulsion system

9:16 am

The company General Atomics announced yesterday that it has successfully tested the fuels it wants to use in an in-space nuclear propulsion system for transporting ships to the Moon and beyond much faster and more efficiently than is presently possible with chemical engines.

[General Atomics] executed several high-impact tests at NASA’s MSFC in Huntsville, AL. The nuclear fuel was tested with hot hydrogen flow through the samples and subjected to six thermal cycles that rapidly ramped-up to a peak temperature of 2600 K (Kelvin) or 4220° Fahrenheit. Each cycle included a 20-minute hold at peak performance to demonstrate the effectiveness of shielding the fuel material from erosion and degradation by the hot hydrogen. Additional tests were performed with varying protective features to provide further data on how different material enhancements improve performance under reactor-like conditions.

It has been known since the 1960s the nuclear propulsion is more efficient that chemical engines. It can burn for longer time periods at higher levels, thus making it possible to get to other planets more quickly, in some cases bypassing the need to depend on orbital mechanics.

The problem however has been political. Getting these nuclear engines into orbit has been too much of a political hot potato. The fear of such engines and radioactivity, largely irrational, has made it impossible to get them built. NASA is now trying again.

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Japan’s government wants its private sector to do all its future space station work, not its space agency JAXA

9:05 am

In a major shift of power away from its government, the Japanese science and technology ministry is presently drafting a policy that would have that country’s private sector lead all work that Japan does on any of the future commercial private space stations being built, not its space agency JAXA as has been done now for decades.

The draft policy specifies how Japan will be involved with the next space station. According to the draft, “the private sector will have such responsibilities as managing [the new space station], and JAXA will support its use.”

JAXA is currently responsible to the management and maintenance of the ISS and serves as the point of contact for its commercial use. However, the government will select a Japanese private-sector company to be the point of contact for the next space station. When JAXA, research institutes or other companies plan to use the ISS, they will have to contact the next station’s point of contact.

While Japan wants to have one of its own modules on one of the commercial stations, as it presently has on ISS, it appears the government does not want JAXA to lead this project. Instead, it wants Japan’s private sector to run the show by working out its own deals with the private commercial stations. At present the Japanese company Mitsui is partnering with Axiom on its station, so this is likely the first station where a deal could be worked out.

It seems that Japan is trying to poke its private sector out of its doldrums. Right now that sector seems unable to take any action on its own. It sits and waits for guidance from the government before acting, and even then acts timidly, waiting to see if the government approves of each step. What the Japanese government now wants instead is some independent action, not linked to government policy.

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Trump picks Janet Petro of Kennedy to be acting NASA administrator, not Jim Free of headquarters

8:41 am

In a surprise move, the Trump administration announced yesterday that the expected person to take over as acting administrator of NASA until Jared Isaacman is approved by the Senate would not be Jim Free. the present associate administrator at NASA headquarters, but Janet Petro, who is presently director of the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA had so much assumed Free had the job that it had already listed him as acting administrator today on the NASA webpage.

There has of course been speculation as to why Trump made this unexpected choice. My guess is that Trump wants to reduce significantly the size of NASA headquarters, and thus wants someone from outside to run it for the present. Petro has been at Kennedy since 2007. Before that she was in the private sector.

Free has been a working out of DC for several years, and thus has stronger ties to the workforce there.

The decision also makes it clear to the NASA bureaucracy who is in charge. Decisions will no longer be made by that bureaucracy without strong input from Trump.

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Did a high altitude Grasshopper rocket test last week by China fail?

9:18 am

According to this report from Space News, a high altitude grasshopper-type vertical ascent-descent rocket test that China attempted on January 18, 2025 appears to possibly have been a failure.

Longxing-2 is thought to be a test article for the Long March 12A reusable launcher being developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). The rocket was designed to replicate the first stage of a reusable flight, reaching around 75 kilometers before performing a reentry burn and making a powered descent and splashdown into the Yellow Sea.

Amateur footage captured from near the launch area showed the rocket rise very slowly from the tower and perform an ascent phase with no apparent anomalies. The test was intended to build on a successful 12-kilometer-altitude vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) test performed in June 2024.

SAST published results and footage from the June test, but has so far remained silent on the 75-km attempt, being yet to publish any results or details of the flight more than 24 hours after liftoff. The lack of official updates raises questions about the success of the test, which could indicate challenges during reentry or landing phases.

It is also possible that the soft splashdown landing was a success and China is simply being its normal secretive self and refusing to release any information.

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Chinese pseudo-company completes launch

9:09 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today completed its first launch in 2025, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. It place five satellites in orbit, four for weather and one for Earth observation.

Meanwhile SpaceX yesterday had to scrub a Starlink launch from Vandenberg yesterday at T-11 seconds because an airplane had entered the launch range by mistake. It will try again in a few hours [UPDATE: Now scrubbed till tomorrow], and then follow up with another Starlink launch just after midnight tonight from Kennedy.

The 2025 launch race:

8 SpaceX
4 China
1 Blue Origin

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Has the tourist balloon company Space Perspective gone belly-up?

1:28 pm

Space Perspective's Neptune Capsule
Space Perspective’s Neptune balloon capsule

According to the local paper Florida Today, the high altitude tourist balloon company Space Perspective owes more than $90K rent on its facility at Florida’s Space Coast Regional Airport, and has apparently ceased activity in mid-December.

Activity appears to have largely ceased at Space Perspective’s “Mission Control” office building at the Titusville airport, where the facility has appeared largely unoccupied the past two weeks. Nobody answered the doorbell during a trio of FLORIDA TODAY visits since Jan. 6, and no vehicles were in the parking lot just before 1 p.m. Wednesday.

FLORIDA TODAY has left messages unsuccessfully attempting to contact Space Perspective executives. One vehicle was parked in the Mission Control lot Tuesday afternoon, and an employee answered the doorbell. A FLORIDA TODAY reporter passed along a written message seeking comment from company officials.

Another source notes that numerous former employees in recent weeks have been looking for new jobs in the Florida region.

The Florida Today article also documents several other cases where the company had had problems paying its bills.

It is possible the company is dead. There is also the possibility that it remains alive, but has decided to skip town because it is now setting up operations in the Middle East. In one of its last major announcements in November 2024 it revealed it is in negotiations with a number of Middle Eastern nations for flying balloon flights there.

All in all this story is very puzzling. The company had already built its Florida factory for making its balloons, and had done one test flight of a prototype manned capsule for tourist flights. It seemed poised to begin commercial operations. To shut down so suddenly now suggests a lot of things, some of which could indicate some very dishonest motives indeed.

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U.S and Norway sign deal to allow U.S. companies to launch from Andøya

10:18 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The U.S. and Norway have now signed an agreement that will make it possible for American rocket and satellite companies to launch from Norway’s Andøya Spaceport, easing State Department rules that up until now made such launches difficult if not impossible.

[The Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA)] will ensure the protection of U.S. technology, enabling the transfer of commercial launchers to Norway. Similar agreements have been established between the U.S. and other allied nations, including Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Right now Andoya has only two rocket customers, the German startup Isar Aerospace and a Polish suborbital startup, SpaceForest. Both hope to do launches sometime this year. Unlike the red tape that the United Kingdom has imposed on its new spaceports, Norway appears to be doing everything it can to grease the wheels so that launches can occur quickly and on schedule.

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Starship lost near end of its orbital burn; Superheavy successfully captured by chopsticks

4:06 pm

Superheavy captured for the second time
Superheavy captured for the second time

In today’s seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy large rocket, the results were decidedly mixed.

First the success: Superheavy once again performed perfectly, getting Starship up to speed and releasing it for its orbital flight. It then successfully returned to the tower at Boca Chica, where the chopsticks arms caught it. This was the second catch in three attempts. While we should all expect SpaceX to continue to refine Superheavy, right now it appears to be largely ready to go.

Next the failure: Shortly after stage separation Starship fired its own engines and proceeded upward towards orbit. At one point close to when it was suppose to shut off its engines to begin its orbital coast phase, something went wrong. Some engines cut off, but one did not, at least according to data projected on the screen. At that point all telemetry from the ship ended.

After another ten minutes of analysis flight controlers declared the ship lost. What happened remains unclear, but it is certain SpaceX engineers are digging hard to find out.

One unfortunate question remains that must be asked: Where is the ship, and is there a chance it will come down somewhere unexpected? Its orbit is such that it will naturally fall in the Indian Ocean, but the engine issues might have changed that orbit somewhat.

UPDATE: Locals in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean post videos on X (here and here) of Starship breaking up overhead. It appears that if any debris reaches the ground it will land in the Atlantic.

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Rocket Factory Augsburg gets conditional licence for launching at Saxavord

11:00 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

After years of delays and multiply approvals that in the end turned out to be meaningless, the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced today that it has finally issued a launch license to the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg to do an orbital test launch from the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The license however is not entirely without strings.

The licence is effective immediately, but a number of conditions need to be met before a launch can take place — including insurance arrangements and international agreements. The company is also required to give the CAA 60 days’ notice before launching.

Rocket Factory had hoped to launch last year, but it lost its RFA-1 rocket during a static fire test in August. It was planning a subsequent launch on the assumption the CAA would approve its licence in 2024. That assumption was wrong however. Even if the rocket had not been destroyed and was ready to go, the CAA was not, and continued to twiddle its thumbs until 2025. It is this twiddling that caused another German rocket startup, Hyimpulse, to abandon its plans to do launches from Saxavord, and switch to a new spaceport in Australia.

Rocket Factory now says it will attempt its first launch before the end of this year. Let’s see if the CAA lets that happen.

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