Tag: competition

SpaceX launches two commercial Earth imaging satellites

3:10 pm

The bunny rolls on. SpaceX today successfully launched two commercial Earth imaging Worldview Legion satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage successfully completed its 20th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. This is the third Falcon 9 booster to fly twenty times. SpaceX now has two such boosters in its fleet, and is now working to upgrade its whole booster fleet to capable of flying forty times. The two fairings on this mission also completed their thirteenth and sixteenth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 52 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 36.

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The EU’s government-owned satellite constellation is faltering in its attempt to compete with Starlink and OneWeb

9:22 am

In a pattern that should surprise no one, the government-owned internet satellite constellation proposed by the European Union to compete with private constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb is now in trouble and faces significant delays, partly because its budget has already doubled, even before anything has been built, and partly because there is friction between the various European countries tasked with building it.

A new report in a German publication, Handelsblatt, provides information on some likely causes of the delay. The report indicates that the cost estimate for the Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) constellation has doubled from an initial estimate of 6 billion euros to 12 billion. Additionally, the project is exposing long-running fault lines between Germany and France when it comes to European space policy.

…Germany, which alongside France is likely to be the main financial backer of IRIS², is not happy that most of the prime contractors are based in France or linked to the nation. … And finally, it appears the operations for the constellation will be based primarily in Italy.

In other words, this government project is not being run to make a profit, but to distribute contracts to various countries in the European Union. Under these conditions, it is guaranteed to fall behind scheduled, cost a fortune, ald lose gigantic amounts of money.

These European countries are already shifting away from this failed model, abandoning its government-run rocket company Arianespace to instead encourage competing private rocket companies. It is therefore no surprise that many member countries in the EU are now having second thoughts about building this government-run satellite constellation.

Nonetheless, EU officials want Europe to have its own internet satellite constellation. Getting it however is problematic. There presently are no continent-based companies capable of building and launching it. And a government built and owned constellation is guaranteed to fail in any attempt to compete on the open market.

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Private Nova Scotia spaceport company opens spaceport to all rocket companies

9:00 am

The company Maritime Launch, which has been building a new spaceport in Nova Scotia since 2016, has abandoned its original concept of providing both the launch facilities and rocket for satellite companies, and will instead make its launch facilities available to all rocket companies.

In an interview with The Journal last week, Matier – who started the spaceport project in 2016 to launch satellites with Cyclone-4M rockets it intended to buy from a Ukrainian manufacturer – said geopolitical realities in Eastern Europe now makes that approach unworkable. “We can’t get the rockets out of Ukraine,” he said. “So, we’ve pivoted away from a customer-supplier relationship with [them] … There’s such huge demand for satellites going into orbit that there’s all these [other] rockets in development that don’t have a home. The bottleneck is really the spaceport, and that’s what we’re addressing.”

According to the article at the link, the spaceport is already negotiating with an unnamed European rocket company to do an orbital launch by 2025. Matier also said there will a suborbital launch at the spaceport this summer, but offered no details about the rocket or payload.

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Astroscale to go public

8:51 am

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug start-up Astroscale announced yesterday that it is becoming a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock market, beginning June 5, 2024.

The company plans to offer 20.8 million shares in the initial public offering, but has not announced a share price. According to filings with the exchange, Astroscale will set that price May 27.

Astroscale has raised more than $375 million through a series of private rounds, most recently a $76 million Series G round in February 2023. That funding has primarily come from Japanese investors, including a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Electric in that Series G round.

The company has also won two major contracts with Japan’s space agency JAXA, building its two ADRAS-J missions to first rendezvous and survey an abandoned upper stage (as shown to the right) and then fly a grapple mission to de-orbit that stage sometime in the future.

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NASA announces launch coverage for the first Starliner manned capsule launch on May 6, 2024

10:23 am

NASA today released the details for its public media coverage of the first manned launch at 10:34 pm (Eastern) on May 6, 2024 of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, which will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the International Space Station.

Launch of the ULA (United Launch Alliance) Atlas V rocket and Boeing Starliner spacecraft is targeted for 10:34 p.m. EDT Monday, May 6, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight test will carry Wilmore and Williams to the space station for about a week to test the Starliner spacecraft and its subsystems before NASA certifies the transportation system for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Starliner will dock to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 12:48 a.m., Wednesday, May 8.

Though that coverage includes several prelaunch and post launch press conferences, the key coverage of the launch itself will begin at 6:30 pm (Eastern) on May 6th, about four hours before the launch itself. It will also include the capsule’s docking with ISS on May 8th.

I will embed NASA’s Youtube live stream here on Behind the Black on both dates, though as always I sugggest waiting until just before launch and docking to tune in. The four hours of streaming prior to launch is mostly going to be NASA propaganda, touting the agency and often misconstruing the facts to overstate its importance. This launch will be just like SpaceX’s Dragon launches, in that almost everything will be run by the two private companies involved, Boeing and ULA, and not NASA. NASA’s real involvement will only begin at the docking to ISS.

This first manned flight of Starliner is long past due. It was supposed to occur about four years ago, but numerous technological and management problems at Boeing forced many delays. Getting that capsule operational will finally give NASA two American companies capable of putting humans in space. It will also offer some competition to SpaceX, though this competition will be weak until Boeing can demonstrate Starliner’s reliability.

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NASA wants to know the important technology the commercial space industry needs

10:10 am

Capitalism in space: NASA is now asking the commercial space industry to tell it which of 187 “technology shortfalls” it should give priority to for funding.

The agency has released a list of 187 “technology shortfalls,” or topics where current technology requires additional development to meet NASA’s future needs. The shortfalls are in 20 areas ranging from space transportation and life support to power and thermal management.

Through a website, the agency is inviting people to review the listed technologies and rate their importance through May 13. NASA will use that input to help prioritize those technologies for future investment to bridge the shortfalls.

This decision illustrates well NASA’s effort in the past decade to shift from being the boss which tells the space industry what to do to becoming a servant of that industry. In the past NASA would focus solely on what it considered its needs in deciding what new technology to fund. Often that would result in projects that NASA considered cool, but were dead-ends commercially, never used by anyone.

Now NASA wants to function more like it used to prior to 1957, when it was called the NACA. Then it worked to provide the engineering data that the aviation industry requested. This change is great news, because it means that NASA’s many small technology development contracts will better serve the needs of the industry and its need to make profits, rather the government’s wish list of projects, some of which serve no one’s real need.

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SES to buy Intelsat for $3.1 billion

9:57 am

Two of the world’s largest and oldest satellite companies of merging. The Luxembourg satellite company SES today announced that it is buying outright the American-based satellite company Intelsat for $3.1 billion in cash.

The companies announced April 30 that they had agreed on the deal, subject to regulatory approvals. SES will pay $3.1 billion in cash along with certain contingent value rights for 100% of Intelsat. The transaction is not expected to close until the second half of 2025.

SES said it will fund the deal through existing cash on hand, which it estimates to be $2.6 billion at the end of March, along with debt. The combined company would have about $4.1 billion in annual revenues and estimated adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $1.9 billion this year. The combined company will remain headquartered in Luxembourg, where SES is based, but will maintain a “significant presence” at Intelsat’s home in the Washington, D.C., area.

These companies had tried to put together a merger deal in early 2023 but those negotiations failed.

This merger continues the consolidation of the older satellite companies that have for decades been focused on building larger high-orbit geosynchronous satellites and are now feeling great competitive pressure from the low-orbit constellations of Starlink and OneWeb.

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ESA is taking the Vega rockets away from Arianespace and giving it to the company that builds it

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) is in the process of taking control of the Vega family of rockets away from its commercial arm, Arianespace, and returning that ownership to the Italian company, Avio, that builds those rockets.

In late 2023, ESA member states agreed to allow Avio to market and manage the launch of Vega C flights independent of Arianespace. When the deal was initially struck, 17 flights were contracted through Arianespace to be launched aboard Vega vehicles. While these missions are still managed by Arianespace, Avio is working with the launch provider to strike a deal that would allow the Italian rocket builder to assume the management of all Vega flights.

The article’s focus is on a new contract that ESA has just awarded to Vega through Arianespace. noting that this contract will likely be shifted to Avio before launch in 2025.

This decision continues the process of slowly killing off Arianespace. Instead of relying on this government entity to build and market its launch operations, ESA is instead going to become a customer only, relying on competing commercial rocket companies for its launch services. When Avio completes its takeover of Vega, Arianespace will only be responsible for the Ariane-6 rocket, which is built by ArianeGroup and essentially owns it as well. Expect that rocket to be shifted completely to ArianeGroup. At that point Arianespace will no longer have any reason for existing, and will be shut down.

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Why the release of the EU’s own space law has been delayed

10:47 am

In the fall of 2023 officials of the European Union (EU) announced that they expected to release the Union’s own space law, that would regulate the individual space laws of all member nations. Since then the release of that law has been put back several times, and in early April its release was delayed until the summer, after the EU elections in June.

This article published today provides the likely reasons why it has been delayed. Apparently, individual members of the EU have objected to the law as interfering with their own space laws as well as imposing regulations they don’t want or need.

The EU Space Law will need to overcome several obstacles to become a functional and beneficial piece of legislation. Several EU Member States already have national space legislation and are actively engaged in space activities, while an increasing number are adopting domestic frameworks and expanding their presence in the space sector. In a heavily regulated environment, where countries have long established and enforced national laws, the practical implementation of a space law at the EU level may be contested.

The article then lists three reasons for these objections. First, the EU has no experience or stake in this matter. It launches nothing and thus can only pose an additional obstacle to the growing commercial space industries in member countries. Second, an EU space law is certainly going to conflict with the space laws of member countries. Third, this law’s implementation could significantly interfere with the legal timelines established by individual member countries.

The article also lists three reasons why the EU law might be good, but these reasons really can be summed up as attempting to justify the EU’s power grab over the space efforts of the member countries.

In the end, this analysis tells us that the EU’s power grab has been met by significant opposition behind the scenes, and could very well die because of that opposition. Germany, Italy, Spain, and more recently even France have begun to encourage the development of independent competing rocket companies, and all likely fear this EU space law will only get in the way.

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The plan for SpaceX’s first demo in-orbit refueling mission of Starship

10:23 am

Link here The details come from a presentation at a public meeting by Amit Kshatriya, Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars program, with this the key takeaway:

Kshatriya then expanded the discussion beyond the next few Starship flights and talked about the required technologies for a fuel depot in orbit and the in-orbit capabilities needed to transfer fuel. “We need an instance of the ship that is essentially long, has the endurance to stay in orbit long enough for the sequence to work.

“So, we need a ship that has at least three to four weeks of endurance in orbit. That endurance is gained through augmented power system capability, augmented battery capacity, full insulation of the cryogenic systems, vacuum jacketing of all the lines, et cetera, to make sure that the cryogens that are being stored or are meant to be stored don’t boil off.”

The challenges of a cryogenic ship in orbit include the need to prevent boil-off from the stack. To facilitate the journey to the Moon’s surface, Starship will have to be refueled. For this, the company plans to refuel a depot in low-Earth orbit (LEO), which would be resupplied by several tanker Starships. The HLS Starship would then dock with this depot before departing for the Moon.

To prove this system will require a Starship test flight that lasts several weeks in orbit, to prove the capability needed for a lunar mission. It will also require a refueling mission that will require several Starship/Superheavy launches, one to put the fuel depot into orbit, several more to fuel that depot, and a final launch of Starship for its refueling and endurance test.

According to the update, SpaceX is still aiming to be ready of the upcoming fourth Superheavy/Starship demo orbital flight in the first two weeks. The NASA official claimed it would occur no later than the end of May. I see that as a confirmation that NASA really doesn’t expect the FAA to issue a launch permit when SpaceX is ready, and that the permit might not arrive in time for a May launch. This statement is meant to soften the blow when the launch finally gets delayed into June, or later.

Whether the many required later Starship launches as described above can get FAA approval quick enough to prove out this system soon enough to meet NASA’s 2026 present target date for its manned lunar landing seems very unlikely. Moreover, even if it does it will be a major challenge for SpaceX to meet this schedule.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

3:17 pm

March on bunny! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

44 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 51 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 44 to 36.

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SpaceX launches two Galileo satellites, part of Europe’s GPS-type satellite constellation

7:50 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched two satellites of Europe’s Galileo GPS-type satellite constellation, the first of a two-launch contract awarded to SpaceX when the Soyuz rocket was no longer available because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket was not yet operational.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, tying the record set by another booster only a few weeks ago. Because of the high orbit required by both satellites, that stage was not recovered, the first time SpaceX has expended a first stage since November 2022. SpaceX however also announced that the company is now working to upgrade its Falcon 9 first stages and fairings to fly as many as 40 missions. The two fairings also completed their fourth flight, which brought the total of fairings SpaceX has recovered to 200.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

43 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 50 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 43 to 36.

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ESA shuffles the management and structure of its ClearSpace-1 space junk removal mission

12:59 pm

The European Space Agency (ESA) this week did a major shake-up in the management and structure of its ClearSpace-1 space junk removal mission that had previously been awarded to the Swiss orbital tug startup Clearspace.

Moving forward OHB SE will take over the responsibility of leading the ClearSpace-1 consortium. The Bremen-based company will provide the satellite bus and will be in charge of system integration and launch. ClearSpace will be responsible for the close proximity and capture operations once the vehicle is in orbit.

In addition to the change in leadership, the mission’s target has also been adjusted, with ClearSpace-1 now expected to rendezvous and capture PROBA-1. The 94-kilogram ESA technology demonstrator was launched aboard an ISRO PSLV rocket in October 2001.

The original target, a payload adaptor from a 2013 Vega launch, had been hit by another piece of junk, damaging it and making it a much more difficult target to grab, using the four grapple arms of the Clearspace spacecraft. No timeline for when this revised mission will fly was announced.

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Scientists: computer modeling suggests one lunar crater is the origin of a nearby asteroid

11:02 am

The uncertainty of science: Using computer modeling some scientists now suggest that the nearby asteroid 2016 HO3, also known as Kamo’oalewa, that has a solar orbit that periodically flips around the Earth, came from an impact a million years ago that created the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon’s far side.

According to the simulations, it would have required an impactor of at least 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter to launch a large fragment like Kamo’oalewa beyond the moon’s gravitational pull. According to the group’s model, the impact would have dug up Kamo’oalewa from deep beneath the moon’s surface, leaving behind an impact crater larger than 10 to 20 kilometers (6-12 miles) in diameter. Additionally, the crater would have to be younger than the average lifetime for near-Earth objects, which spans about 10 million to 100 million years, a very short and recent period in the history of the solar system.

While the lunar surface is riddled with thousands of craters from impacts spanning the moon’s 4.5 billion year-history, only Giordano Bruno with its 14-mile diameter and estimated 4 million years of age fits the bill in terms of size and age, making it the most probable source of Kamo’oalewa’s origin. The team also showed that this scenario is feasible from an impact dynamics perspective.

To say that this conclusion is uncertain is an understatement of monumental proportions. However, the possibility is real. A Chinese asteroid mission, dubbed Tianwen-2, will likely found out, as it is planning to bring samples back from this asteroid by 2027.

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France’s space agency puts out calls for rocket companies to lease the French Guiana launchpad formerly used by Russia’s Soyuz rocket

10:51 am

Capitalism in space: France’s space agency CNES has now issued a request for commercial rocket companies to bid on leasing the launchpad formerly used by Russia to launch its Soyuz rocket from French Guiana.

The launchpad became available after the European Space Agency (ESA) broke off its partnerships with Russia in February 2022.

Following the cessation of Soyuz launches, it was agreed that ESA would transfer ownership of the site back to CNES under the provision that it would host two new launch systems. The first will be selected by CNES as part of its recently published call. The second will be selected by ESA as part of the agency’s launcher challenge, which was publically announced in late 2023.

According to the CNES call, prospective candidate vehicles will be required to be capable of deploying payloads of at least 1.5 tonnes into low Earth orbit. Additionally, a maiden flight from the launch site will need to be completed no later than 2027. This will drastically limit the potential bidders.

The article at the link lists three potential bidders, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Maiaspace, and Avio. The first two are rocket startups, having not yet launched a rocket. Avio is the lead contractor for Arianespace’s Vega family of rockets, so it already has experience with an operational rocket, though that rocket is presently grounded due to recent launch failures.

There are a number of other rocket startups in Europe, including PLD in Spain and Hyimpulse and Isar in Germany. The incentive to bid for this launchpad might encourage them to upgrade their rocket to meet the bidding requirements.

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NASA: first launch of New Glenn is targeting a September 29, 2024 launch date

10:23 am

According to a presentation given by a NASA official at a conference in London yesterday, the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is now targeting a September 29, 2024 launch.

In a presentation at a meeting of a planetary protection committee of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in London April 24, Nick Benardini, NASA’s planetary protection officer, listed a Sept. 29 date for the launch of Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, a pair of smallsats that will go into orbit around Mars to measure the interaction of the planet’s magnetosphere with the solar wind.

NASA selected Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket to launch ESCAPADE, awarding the company a $20 million task order through the agency’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare contract in February 2023 for the mission. The award at the time mentioned only a late 2024 launch, with the expectation that ESCAPADE would be on one of the first, if not the first, flight of the rocket.

Benardini mentioned ESCAPADE in his COSPAR presentation to discuss how the mission was complying with planetary protection requirements, intended to prevent any contamination of Mars, during the assembly of the spacecraft and launch preparations at Cape Canaveral. “They’re slated to be launching Sept. 29 with Blue Origin,” he said.

This is the first time any source at NASA or Blue Origin has revealed a specific launch date. The rocket was originally supposed to fly its first orbital test flight four years ago, but numerous delays, mostly related to the BE-4 engine used by the rocket’s first stage as well as decisions by the company’s former CEO, Bob Smith, to slow all development, pushed that launch back repeatedly. With Smith leaving late last year, the company has suddenly come back to life, with many indications that it was pushing for a launch this year.

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China launches three astronauts to its space station

4:23 pm

Earlier today China successfully launched a three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No word on where the four strap-on boosters, the payload fairing, the core stages, and the upper stage crashed inside China, using very toxic hypergolic fuels. This new crew will replace the present crew, who are completing a six-month tour. The new crew will complete a similar-length mission.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

42 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 36.

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China reveals its rough plans for building its manned moon base.

9:35 am

At a conference in China this week, the chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, Wu Weiren, outlined roughly the plans for building China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) on the Moon.

According to Wu, the first phase of the ILRS construction project will see a basic station built by 2035 in the lunar south pole region. This basic station will have comprehensive scientific facilities with complete basic functions and supporting elements to carry out regular scientific experiments, and develop and utilize resources on a limited scale.

The second phase will see expansion of the station, set for completion by 2045, with a moon-orbiting space station as the hub and facilities featuring complete functions, considerable scale and stable operation. It will carry out comprehensive lunar-based scientific research and resource development and utilization, and conduct technical verification as well as scientific experiments and research for a manned landing on Mars.

This schedule contradicts other recent government statements that suggested the first phrase would be completed by 2030. Either way, we now have a rough timeline which, based on China’s past announcements, should be a reasonably accurate measure of what it now plans to do.

The timeline however is very long, and many other events outside of this program, such as war with Taiwan or sudden changes in the leadership of the ruling communist party, could change it drastically.

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UK’s CAA gives Saxavord on Shetland Islands its range license

9:15 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has now issued the range license for the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, following up issuing it a spaceport license in December.

A range licence is a legal requirement ahead of a space launch, but is not in itself permission to launch. This licence grants the broad approval to provide ‘range control services.’ Specifics will depend on the launch vehicle and will be outlined as part of relevant launch licences.

Work by the Civil Aviation Authority continues in assessing potential launch operators from SaxaVord.

Sounds good, eh? Not so fast. It took the CAA about two years to issue these two spaceport licenses, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to launch from Saxavord. The CAA must still issue launch licenses to the specific rocket companies wishing to launch. Though the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg wants to do the first orbital test flight this year from Saxavord, it still must get that launch license. Do not be surprised if it takes the CAA more than a year to issue it.

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Astroscale wins contract to complete removal of large piece of space junk

8:39 am

Capitalism in space: Japan’s space agency JAXA has now awarded the orbital tug startup Astroscale a contract to complete the removal of an abandoned upper stage from a previously launched rocket.

Astroscale has already flown the first phase of this project, with its ADRAS-J tug flying in March and April a demo rendezvous mission with the rocket stage, getting to within several hundred meters of the stage. The second phase, now approved, will grab the stage with a robot arm and then de-orbit it. No date for the launch of that second phase was announced.

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Several new missions to the asteroid Apophis proposed by commercial and governments

9:39 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon showing Apophis’s path in 2029

At a conference this week several new missions to the asteroid Apophis during its close Earth fly-by in 2029 were proposed by both private companies and government entities.

  • Blue Origin is considering sending its Blue Ring orbital tug, launched in 2027 on a Falcon 9.
  • JPL proposes sending two cubesats on the orbital tug mission previously announced by the startup ExLabs.
  • NASA continues to study sending the two Janus spacecraft, since its original asteroid mission was lost when the Psyche asteroid mission was delayed.
  • The European Space Agency has two different missions under study.

With all of these missions, the big obstacle is funding. Most are either only partly funded, or not at all.

At the moment the only mission actually on its way to Apophis is OSIRIS-APEX, which having completed its sample return mission to Bennu was then sent to Apophis.

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More partners join China’s International Lunar Research Station

9:18 am

China today announced the addition of three more international partners in its project to build a permanent base on the Moon, dubbed the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).

The new partners of the ILRS include Nicaragua, the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization and the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences. China will collaborate with these three parties on various issues concerning the ILRS, including its demonstration, engineering implementation, operation and application, according to the CNSA.

China’s project now has ten partner nations (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela) and eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies.

If all goes as planned, China hopes to have the basic station established by 2030, which it will periodcially and intermittently send astronauts.

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SpaceX and Rocket Lab complete launches

10:12 pm

Both SpaceX and Rocket Lab successfully completed launches today. First SpaceX launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Shortly thereafter, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifted off from one of its launchpads in New Zealand, placing two technology demonstration satellites in orbit, one testing a solar sail from NASA and the other from South Korea testing a cubesat doing optical observations of Earth. Though the first stage had the markings of a stage designed for resuse, there was no indication in the company’s live stream of any attempt to recover it.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

42 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 28, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 35.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse’s first suborbital rocket arrives in Australia

9:32 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse today announced that its first suborbital rocket, the SR75, had arrived in Australia for its planned first test launch.

On 28 February, Southern Launch, the commercial outfit that manages the Koonibba Test Range, revealed that a launch attempt of the suborbital SR75 rocket would occur between late April and early May. This likely gives the team little room for the unexpected as it prepares for launch.

Those launch dates depend on whether Australia’s government will issue the launch licenses on time. So far its ability to do so in a timely manner has been difficult if not impossible. For example, the rocket startup Gilmour, which wants to launch from Bowen at about the same time, has been waiting more than two years to get its approval, delaying its first orbital test launch by more than a year.

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PLD Space announces its upcoming plans

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Having received in late January a $43.5 million grant, bringing its total funding to more than $120 million, the Spanish rocket startup PLD Space today announced its upcoming plans.

[T]he company intends to inaugurate the first serial space rocket factory in Spain in mid-2024. The facilities will also enable vertical integration of the launchers. The industrial site, whose building work is already underway, will house the factory for the first MIURA 5 units [the company’s orbital rocket] as well as the company’s head offices. In total, PLD Space will be able to count on 18,400 square metres of industrial facilities in Elche (Alicante).

…Also scheduled for 2024, construction work is to begin on the launch base at the European CSG spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana), which belongs to CNES [France’s space agency]. This site, covering over 15,700 square metres, will host MIURA 5’s first launches.

That France is now leasing launch facilities to private companies illustrates starkly how Europe is steadily abandoning Arianespace, the European Space Agency’s government-run commercial company. Instead, Europe is now choosing competition and private enterprise as its model. Expect these new companies, including PLD, to achieve big things in the coming years.

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China launches “remote-sensing” satellite

10:41 am

China today successfully launched what its state-run press stated was “a remote-sensing” satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No other information about the satellite was released. The state-run press also provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, which carry very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

41 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 47 to 28, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 34.

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Update on SpaceX’s preparations for the 4th test flight of Superheavy/Starship

11:10 am

Link here. The article is definitely worth reading, as it tells us that SpaceX is pushing hard to be ready to launch in early May, as Musk has promised. The article also thinks SpaceX will be able to ramp up later launches to one every two months.

The article however is I think being naively optimistic about this timeline, because it naively assumes the FAA will quickly approve the launch licenses to meet that schedule. I guarantee the FAA won’t, as it has taken it one to four months after SpaceX was ready to launch to approve the licenses for the previous launches. The length of that approval process has shrunk each time, but FAA still made Space X wait each time, for no reason.

Making that schedule even more unlikely is SpaceX’s desire to do as many as nine test launches per year at Boca Chica. While the company could certainly do this, the environment reassessment issued in 2022 limits it to only five launches per year. It needs a waiver from the FAA and the Biden administration,
a waiver no one should expect considering the Biden administrations hostility to Musk.

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Slovenia signs Artemis Accords

10:58 am

NASA announced yesterday that Slovenia has become the 39th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance for exploring the Moon and the solar system.

The alliance now includes these nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

As with all the recent announcements, the NASA press release now insists that the accords are designed to “reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,” the exact opposite of the original goals of the accords. Rather than overvcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restriction on private property in space, the Biden administration is now using the accords to strengthen that restriction. To quote someone (Mussolini) whose policies the modern globalist world clearly admires, “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

This could all change with different leadership in Washington, but whether the administrative state, led by the Democratic Party, will allow such a thing at this point in history is very questionable. And they appear aided in this totalitarian effort by a meek and largely ignorant American public.

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Blue Origin completes delivery of the two BE-4 engines for ULA’s second Vulcan launch

10:04 am

Blue Origin this week completed delivery of the two BE-4 engines needed for the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for sometime this fall.

That launch was originally targeting an April launch, but according to official announcements has been delayed until the fall because final ground testing of its payload, Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle, is not complete. It appears that Blue Origin also contributed to that delay, as it is now obvious that its engines were not available as planned in time for that April launch.

This delay also raises questions about Blue Origin’s ability to ramp up BE-4 engine production to meet the needs of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Both have large launch contracts with Amazon to launch its Kuiper constellation, while ULA also has almost as many contracts with the U.S. military. To meet those contracts, Blue Origin will have to produce several hundred BE-4 engines yearly in the very near future. Right now it appears it can only produce about one per year.

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Boeing to reduce staffing for SLS due to overall delays in Artemis

9:53 am

Boeing announced yesterday that it is going to reduce the staffing for its SLS rocket, caused by delays in other parts of the program that force it to stretch out operations.

When Boeing cites “external factors,” it is referring to the slipping timelines for NASA’s Artemis Program. In January officials with the space agency announced approximately one-year delays for both the Artemis II mission, a crewed lunar flyby, to September 2025; and Artemis III, a lunar landing, to September 2026. Neither of these schedules are set in stone, either. Further delays are possible for Artemis II, and likely for Artemis III if NASA sticks to the current mission plans.

Although the SLS rocket will be ready for the current schedule, barring a catastrophe, the other elements are in doubt. For Artemis II, NASA still has not cleared a heat shield issue with the Orion spacecraft. That must be resolved before the mission gets a green light to proceed next year. The challenges are even greater for Artemis III. For that mission NASA needs to have a lunar lander—which is being provided by SpaceX with its Starship vehicle—in addition to spacesuits provided by Axiom Space for the lunar surface. Both of these elements remain solidly in the development phase.

What Boeing is telling us indirectly is that, though NASA has not yet announced any further delays in those launch dates for Artemis-2 and Artemis-3, those dates are going to be delayed, quite possibly by one or more years.

None of this is a surprise. I have long been predicting that the first manned lunar landing in the Artemis program will not take place before 2030. In fact, that date was obvious the moment NASA announced its plan to make the Lunar Gateway space station an integral part of the program, back in 2018, when it was called LOP-G.

Now that SLS development is complete and NASA considers it “operational”, Boeing is merely reducing the staffing to maintain its assembly line, reducing it accordingly because of expected delays when additional rockets will be needed.

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