Tag: competition

ULA successfully completes second test launch of its new Vulcan rocket

8:36 am

ULA this morning successfully completed the second test launch of its new Vulcan rocket, lifting off from Cape Canaveral from Florida.

It placed a dummy test payload into orbit in order to obtain from the Space Force certification that will allow the company to begin operational military launches and actually make money from the rocket. ULA hopes to launch two such Vulcan launches before the end of the year, and then hopes to do ten more Vulcan launches in 2025, along with ten Atlas-5 launches as it closes out that rocket’s inventory before retiring it.

UPDATE: An explosion on of Vulcun’s two solid-fueled strap-on boosters during the launch today might prevent a quick certification from the military. Though the rocket successfully put the payload into its correct orbit, it appears the nozzle failed on that booster, throwing it out sideways, fortunately away from the rocket. The video here shows this clearly. I was startled by this explosion during the launch, but then forgot about it (until my readers reminded me) when the payload reached orbit as planned.

The strap-on boosters are manufactured by Northrop Grumman. Before using them again ULA needs to get clarity on this issue. We also must wonder if the FAA will step in as it has for SpaceX to ground ULA. At the moment it has decided not to do so.

This was ULA’s fifth launch in 2024, so there is no change in the 2024 launch race leader board.

95 SpaceX
44 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 112 to 67, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 95 to 84.

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ULA’s big plans for 2025

12:31 pm

As ULA prepares for the second launch of its new Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for launch tomorrow at 6 am (Eastern), it held a press briefing on October 2, 2024 to provide an update on the rocket’s present and future status.

The key takeaways, assuming this launch succeeds as planned, as noted in a tweet by reporter Jeff Foust from Space News:

  • ULA still plans on completing two national security Vulcan flights before the end of the year
  • It is targeting 20 launches in 2025, half with Vulcan and half with Atlas-5
  • The first Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites won’t happen until 2025
  • When Sierra Space says Dream Chaser is ready, ULA will launch it

Completing three Vulcan launches in the next three months will almost match the four launches the company has so far completed in the first nine months of the year. Furthermore, considering that ULA’s previous record for launches in a single year is 16, set in 2009, and that the company has not completed more than ten launches in a year since 2016, these plans are very ambitious indeed.

If it succeeds however in just getting close to these numbers, ULA will be doing very well indeed.

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European phone companies demand the FCC stop SpaceX’s cell-to-satellite Starlink plans

10:22 am

Several European phone companies have now submitted a request to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block a waiver that would allow SpaceX to operate its new cell-to-satellite Starlink satellites at radio frequencies normally not permitted.

This request follows similar requests by Verizon and AT&T to the FCC. The fear is that the use of these frequencies in the low orbit of Starlink satellites will interfere with satellites in the much higher geosynchronous orbits that these phone companies presently use.

While those concerns might be valid (SpaceX says no), these companies also fear the competition of Starlink itself, as its low orbit means it can provide better service, and are clearly hoping the FCC will act to protect them from that competition.

In a more sane world, the FCC would decide this issue on purely technical grounds. It was formed expressly to police the frequencies so that users would not interfere or pirate each others licenses, and had done that job quite well for decades.

Sadly, the FCC no longer confines itself to this one job. For the past four years the FCC has arbitrarily decided its job should include many other things not listed in its statutory authority, such as policing the de-orbiting of satellites and determining the acceptable lifespans of orbiting spacecraft, while also making many decisions based entirely on political factors, sometimes even favoring some companies over others for partisan reasons.

Thus we should have no confidence that the FCC will make this decision on purely technical grounds, especially since it has shown a clear hostility to SpaceX in its recent decisions.

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Mid-October date for the 5th Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch?

10:01 am

A US Coast Guard announcement issued today includes a notice to mariners of a rocket launch window at Boca Chica from October 12th to October 19th, suggesting that SpaceX has gotten an update from the FAA that a launch license will be issued for those dates, more than a month earlier than previously predicted by the FAA.

It must be emphasized that this notice is from the Coast Guard, not the FAA. The FAA has said nothing new about SpaceX’s launch license application. This notice suggests several possiblilites, all or none of which may be true:

1. The FAA has told SpaceX privately that it expects to issue that license in time for a launch in two weeks, and SpaceX then moved quickly to get the Coast Guard in line.

2. SpaceX and the Coast Guard are working together to increase the pressure on the FAA to get out of the way.

3. The public condemnations of the FAA by SpaceX in the past few weeks have worked to force that agency to back off its hardnosed regulatory over-reach.

All of this is wild speculation. For all we know, this Coast Guard notice is something it always issues prior to major static fire tests at Boca Chica. We shall have to wait to get a better sense of what is happening.

Hat tip to reader Steve Richter.

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ESA awards Polish rocket startup โ‚ฌ2.4 million contract

9:33 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a Polish rocket startup, dubbed SpaceForest, โ‚ฌ2.4 million to upgrade its suborbital Perun rocket that the company has test launched twice in last year.

Perun runs on modified paraffin, commonly used as candle wax, and so its propellant is non-toxic. The rocket can be launched on a mobile launch pad, allowing for easy deployment at launch facilities around Europe. Last year, SpaceForest launched two full-scale models of its Perun rocket that flew to 22 km and 13 km altitude from the coastal town of Ustka, Poland, on the Baltic Sea.

This company is now the second Polish rocket startup to have successfully tested its rocket. The ลukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has completed suborbital test flights of its ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket, and has a deal to fly its next test from Norway’s commercial Andoya spaceport.

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ISRO reveals design of its Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample return mission

9:23 am

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday unveiled its design concept for its Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample return mission, requiring two launches and five modules that will dock in Earth orbit before traveling to the Moon.

โ€œAfter two launches, the stacks will be docked together in elliptical Earth orbit to form an integrated stack. Subsequent to docking, the Integrated Stack will perform the first set of Earth-bound manoeuvres with the PM propulsion system. Once the PM is depleted, it gets jettisoned from the Integrated stack,โ€ Isro said Tuesday.

The integrated stack then performs all the manoeuvres to achieve the lunar orbit, such that the orbit plane has the pre-determined landing site. In the final lunar orbit, the descender module and ascender module get separated from the transfer module and re-entry module. The descender and ascender modules then undergo powered descent to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.

Both a robot arm and a drill will then grab samples, deposit them separately in the ascender, which will then launch and redock with the stack. It will then take the re-entry module back toward Earth, where it will be released prior to its return.

This plan is essentially the same as the first proposal last year, but with many more added details.

A landing site has apparently not yet been chosen.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space raises $150 million

9:12 am

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced yesterday that it has raised $150 million in private investment capital, money it will use to develop its planned two tugs, dubbed Mira and Helios.

So far the company, founded by former SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has only flown one mission, a demo mission of Mira last year that had some communications and software problems but was still declared a success.

Both Mira and Helios use chemical propulsion systems that offer large amounts of delta-v, or change in velocity, that can be provided quickly. Impulse said when it announced Helios that the vehicle could take a five-ton satellite from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit in less than a day.

It hopes to fly an upgraded version of Mira late next year, and the first Helios mission in 2026.

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Gogo buys competitor Satcom Direct

9:53 am

Gogo, which provides internet access for business jets, has now purchased its main competitor Satcom Direct, in order to provide a service that can better compete with Starlink.

Satcom Direct would get $375 million in cash and five million shares from Gogo under a deal announced Sept. 30, subject to regulatory approvals, and up to $225 million in extra payments tied to performance targets over the next four years, suggesting around $636 million in maximum total proceeds.

Gogo has historically dominated the small and midsize part of the business aviation market and connects about 7,000 planes, according to William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma, while Satcom Direct has a commanding market share for long-haul.

Combined, William Blair estimates the companies are providing Wi-Fi to around 8,200 of the 9,200 business jets that currently have connectivity โ€” or nearly 90% of the market.

Gogo’s share price has dropped 70% since 2022 in the face of Starlink’s recent signing of numerous airline companies. The stock market obviously thinks Starlink is eventually going to capture the business jet customer as well. This deal will possibly allow Gogo to compete more effectively.

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FAA grounds SpaceX again

9:10 am

According to a report in Reuters, the FAA yesterday announced that it has grounded SpaceX from any further launches, two days after SpaceX had already paused launches, the action triggered when the second stage of Saturday’s Falcon 9 launch to ISS failed to fire its de-orbit burn properly, thus causing the stage to splashdown outside its target zone in the Pacific.

This action is a perfect example of the FAA’s extraneous interference. SpaceX was already on the case. It doesn’t need the FAA to kibbitz it, since no one at the FAA has any qualifications for providing any useful advice. All the FAA accomplishes here is get in the way.

The FAA’s action also likely falls outside its statutory authority. The stage landed in the ocean, causing no damage or threat to public safety, the only areas the FAA’s authority resides. And if the agency now deems returning equipment part of its licensing requirements, why did it didn’t say anything about the uncertain nature of the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which targeted a landing on land and could have easily ended up crashing in the wrong spot because its own thrusters were untrustworthy?

The FAA is playing favorites here, and needs to be reined in, badly.

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Proposed commercial spaceport in Azores launches two suborbital demonstration rockets

8:38 am

Santa Maria spaceport

A spaceport startup, the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC), has successfully launched two small suborbital demonstration rockets from the island of Santa Maria in the Azores of Portugal, where it hopes to eventually establish a spaceport.

The first of the two flights was launched from a mobile platform at 13:04 UTC on 27 September. The rocket reached an altitude of 5,596 metres. The second was launched at 11:49 UTC on 28 September 2024. According to the company, the second launch โ€˜was not perfect,โ€™ but it did not provide any further details on what occurred during the flight.

The rocket was developed and built by ASC, and was intended to demonstrate its own rocket capabilities as well as provide information to the Portuguese government for establishing its own regulatory guidelines, as per an agreement signed in August.

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China unveils proposed spacesuit for its planned manned lunar landings

11:24 am

China's proposed moonsuit
Click for original image.

China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) yesterday unveiled its proposed spacesuit for the planned manned lunar landings it hopes to achieve by 2030.

As shown on the left, the suit draws its design from the Russian Orlan suit. The large backpack-like unit is also a hatch. The astronaut opens it, drops into the suit, and then a partner closes the unit, locking it shut. The rest of the suit is a single piece, with the central body unit rigid and the arms and legs flexible.

The Russian’s Orlan suit has been upgraded a number of times over the years, but the basic design has proved to be practical, efficient, and reliable, generally the oppose of the unwieldy and complex American suits NASA has been using since the start of the shuttle era.

The announcement was made to initiate a contest for the public to pick a name for the suit. Like all such contests, the real goal is to provide bread-and-circuses to the public so that they can think they have some say in what is happening. In the end the government will pick the name, and find someone who made the same suggestion to “award” for the idea.

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SpaceX pauses launches after de-orbit of Falcon 9’s second stage misfires

10:37 am

SpaceX today announced that, after its Falcon 9 rocket had successfully placed two astronauts in orbit in its Freedom capsule, the engine burn designed to de-orbit the rocket’s upper stage in a safe zone in the ocean misfired, and for this reason the company was scrubbing a planned launch today until the root cause was found.

After todayโ€™s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9โ€™s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.

We will resume launching after we better understand root cause

The company provided no further details on exactly what happened. We know the engine fired, and the stage was successfully de-orbited safely over the ocean, but we do not know how far outside its target zone. Nor do we know the extent of the “off-nominal deorbit burn.”

At present today’s scrubbed launch, placing three satellites of Starlink’s competitor OneWeb into orbit, is scheduled for tomorrow, but that is likely a contigency scheduling. SpaceX’s launch teams have gotten very good at rescheduling launches day-to-day, so that as soon as it gets the go-ahead it can go ahead.

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