Tag: competition

Aerojet Rocketdyne satellite power units are chronically failing

9:53 am

According to space insurers, problems on power units built by Aerojet Rocketdyne on four different satellites are going to cost the industry about $50 million in claims this year.

According to multiple insurance sources, Yahsat’s Al Yah 3, Avanti Communications’ Hylas 4, and Northrop Grumman’s two Mission Extension Vehicles (MEV-1 and MEV-2) are operating with reduced power to their thrusters following a problem with onboard Power Processing Units (PPUs).

The PPUs from Aerojet Rocketdyne provide the electrical power their thrusters need for station-keeping in geostationary orbit (GEO). One of the sources said Al Yah 3, Hylas 4, and MEV-2 have each lost one of two onboard PPUs since the issue emerged in 2022. The youngest of these spacecraft, MEV-2, launched in 2020.

While the article at the link focuses on the impact to space insurers for these additional claims, what I see are serious quality control problems at Aerojet Rocketdyne, now part of the company L3Harris after a summer acquisition. The new management of L3Harris better aggressively address this, or else it will find its $4.7 billion acquisition a big waste of money.

0 comments

Spanish rocket startup successfully completes first suborbital test launch

10:05 pm

The Spanish rocket startup PLD today successfully completed its first suborbital test launch, a short flight of its Miura-1 prototype rocket, lifting off from its spaceport in Spain.

I have embedded video of the launch below, cued to just before launch. Though the plan had been to recover the first stage using parachutes, it is unclear if this occurred or was even attempted. The launch was at night, making recovery difficult or much slower, and because the broadcast was in Spanish there was no translation,

Regardless, the data from this launch will be used by the company to build its orbital rocket, Miura-5.

» Read more

10 comments

ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket launches first two Kuiper satellites

11:16 am

ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket today successfully launched the first two prototype satellites of Amazon’s proposed 3,200-satellite constellation to provide broadband globally in competition with Starlink and OneWeb.

As of posting, the satellites had not yet deployed, with the rocket’s upper stage still firing its engines to bring the rocket to its proper orbit. The live stream unfortunately ended early at this point.

Though the Atlas-5 is being retired, to be replaced by ULA’s still unlaunched Vulcan rocket, about seventeen rockets remain in the company’s launch manifest. All have payloads, so any additional ULA launch contracts must rely on Vulcan.

This was ULA’s third launch in 2023, so it does not change the leader board for the 2023 launch race. The company predicted it would complete ten launches in 2023, a prediction that with less than three months left in the year seems unlikely for it to achieve.

70 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 82 to 45, and leads the entire world combined 82 to 72. SpaceX by itself still trails the rest of the world, excluding American companies, 70 to 72.

8 comments

Italy’s biggest bank will invest in SpaceX

10:02 am

Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, announced today that is joining in SpaceX as a private investment partner.

No details of the investment deal were released, but it likely adds a significant amount to the almost $11 billion in investment capital SpaceX has already gotten from the private sector, most of which is being used to develop Starship, Superheavy, and Starlink.

Very clearly, the investment community sees value and large future profits from SpaceX and Elon Musk, and wants to support it. Contrast this with the attitude of the Biden administration and the left, which apparently prefers to squelch this progress for the sake of power.

5 comments

India’s government confirms its policy to transition to private enterprise in space

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Baku yesterday, one high official from India confirmed the Modi’s government’s new policy to shift is space industry from government-controlled to privately-run.

“A transition is happening in India. We are moving from ISRO [India’s space agency] being the sole player in the space sector to the private sector taking on a more meaningful role,” Pawan Goenka, chairman of the Indian National Space Promotion Authorization Center (IN-SPACe), said at a forum at the 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Oct. 5.

The Indian government approved the Indian Space Policy 2023 in April this year, which follows a number of developments in recent years. “What the Indian Space Policy did was take everything to do with space — satellite communication, remote sensing, space operations, transportation, navigation, everything — and put it into one comprehensive document only 12 pages long,” Goenka said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words will sound very familiar to regular readers of this webpage. It describes what NASA has been doing for the past decade, and sums up precisely the recommendations put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space.

IN-SPACe, the agency Goenka heads, has been tasked with fulfilling this task, and is thus in a direct turf war with ISRO, the space agency that has controlled all of India’s space effort for a half century. How that turf war will play out remains uncertain, though at present IN-SPACe and the Modi government appear to be winning.

It would likely help India’s private industry if the Modi government would make public that 12-page policy statement. So far it has either not released the text, or if it has it has made it impossible for me to find it.

2 comments

Stoke Space raises $100 million in private investment capital

9:12 am

The rocket startup Stoke Space, which is developing a radically new engine concept for its rockets, has now successfully raised $100 million in private investment capital.

This investment more than doubles the company’s total funding, which now sits at $175 million. The company also announced the official name of its first rocket: Nova.

The funding round was led by Industrious Ventures with participation from the University of Michigan, Sparta Group, Long Journey, and others. Existing investors Breakthrough Energy, YCombinator, Point72 Ventures, NFX, MaC Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and In-Q-Tel also participated. This latest funding round is evidence of strong demand for Stoke’s services, its growing success, and the confidence of investors in its future. As part of this round of fundraising Steve Angel, Chairman of the Board, Linde plc, will join Stoke’s Board of Directors. Angel is also the former CEO of Linde and a member of the Board of Directors of GE.

The company says it will use this money to develop the rocket’s first stage engines, which will follow the same ring nozzle design of its upper stage, a prototype of which it successfully test flew on a short hop last month. Under that design, the engine doesn’t have one central nozzle, but instead the thrust is funnelled out of a ring of tiny nozzles that circle the stage’s outer perimeter. The company believes this design will allow it to return its upper stage safely from orbit for re-use.

2 comments

October 5, 2023 Quick space links

3:21 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

7 comments

Northrop Grumman abandons its own proposed space station; partners with Voyager’s Starlab

9:25 am

Northrop Grumman today officially confirmed rumors from earlier this week: It is abandoning construction of its own proposed space station and will instead join Voyager Space’s Starlab station project, using an upgraded version of its Cygnus freighter to be the station’s cargo ferry.

As part of this new partnership, Northrop will provide cargo services to Starlab for up to five years. The upgrades will allow Cygnus to dock directly to a station port, rather than rendezvous and get berthed using a robot arm. This upgrade will also make Cygnus a more saleable product for providing cargo to other stations as well, as they come on line.

Northrop Grumman was one of four proposed private space stations projects that won NASA contracts, Axiom in 2020 and the other three in December 2021, with its award fixed at $125.6 million, of which $36.6 million has been paid to the company for meeting specific development milestones. NASA is now going to distribute the rest of that award among the remaining projects after some renegotiations.

0 comments

China to expand Tiangong space station

9:10 am

Tiangong-2 station after expansion

The new colonial movement: At the 47th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Chinese officials yesterday revealed that they intend to expand their Tiangong space station, almost doubling it in size.

The graphic to the right illustrates this, with the proposed new modules in magenta at the top.

“We will build a 180 tons, six-module assembly in the future,” Zhang said. Tiangong currently has three modules, each with a mass of around 22 tons.

A multi-functional expansion module with six docking ports will first be launched in the coming years to allow this expansion. This will dock at the forward port of the Tianhe core module. Full size modules can then be added to Tiangong. SpaceNews understands that the timeline for such launches is around four years from now. An expanded Tiangong would be just over a third of the mass of the roughly 450-metric-ton International Space Station (ISS).

The officials also said that they plan to add additional inflatable modules to the existing part of the station, as well as attachment points allowing for external experiments exposed to the environment of space.

1 comment

China launches classified remote sensing satellite

8:57 pm

Using its Long March 2D rocket, fueled by toxic hypergolic fuels, China today launched another classified remote sensing satellite from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

No word where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China, or whether they landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

69 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 80 to 45, and the entire world combined 80 to 72. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) by only 69 to 72.

SpaceX however has another Starlink launch scheduled to lift off shortly. The good live stream can be found here, using no distracting announcers while also using SpaceX’s own X feed.

0 comments

Axiom partners with clothing fashion company Prada on its spacesuit design

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: The commercial space station company Axiom is now partnering with the Italian fashion company Prada to create its lunar spacesuits, being developed under a $228.5 million NASA contract.

Prada will assist Axiom in working on the outer layer of its spacesuit, which has to protect the suit’s inner layers from the space environment, including lunar dust, without hindering its mobility. “When it comes to the design side of that piece of it makes a lot of sense because Prada has a lot of experience in the design, the look and feel,” Suffredini said. “More importantly, there’s these technological challenges to try to overcome as well.”

The article at the first link emphasizes Prada’s experience with high tech fabrics, including composites, but this deal is inspired as much by good public relations. Both companies get some good publicity by this deal.

2 comments

NASA awards small study contract to orbital tug company Starfish Space

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded a small three-month study contract to the U.S. orbital tug company Starfish Space, to consider using its Otter orbital tug to rendezvous and inspect defunct orbital debris.

The award amount was not released, suggesting this is a very small contract designed simply to see if the company’s technology warrants a larger contract.

Some of those features — including Starfish’s Cetacean relative navigation software and its Cephalopod autonomous guidance software — could be tested sometime in the next few months on the company’s Otter Pup prototype spacecraft, which was sent into orbit in June but was forced into an unfortunate spin during deployment. Starfish stabilized the spin in August and is currently making sure that all of Otter Pup’s systems are in working order for future tests.

NASA’s follow-up contract, awarded through the space agency’s Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR, calls for Starfish to assess the feasibility of using its full-scale Otter satellite servicing vehicle to rendezvous with large pieces of space debris and inspect them.

This contract is comparable in goals to the one NASA issued to Astroscale earlier this week, though much smaller.

0 comments
1 … 200 201 202 203 204 … 784