Tag: competition

NASA adds three orbital tug startups to its contract bid list

9:55 am

NASA yesterday added three orbital tug startups to its contract bid list, allowing these companies to bid on projects that require the deployment of NASA smallsats to different orbits after launch.

NASA announced Aug. 22 that it selected Arrow Science and Technology, Impulse Space and Momentus Space for its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract. That selection allows them to compete for task orders for launching specific missions, typically small satellites willing to accept higher levels of risk in exchange for lower launch costs.

Arrow provides small satellite companies the deployment equipment used to release the satellite after launch. Impulse and Momentus have orbital tugs that not only deploy smallsats, but move them to their preferred orbit after the tug’s release from its launch rocket.

This NASA announcement allows its smallsats to be launched on either a dedicated small rocket that puts the satellite in its desired orbit or as part of a larger rideshare launch with many satellites that then uses the tug to get the satellite where it needs to be.

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Amazon commits almost $20 million more to expanding its satellite production facility

9:46 am

Amazon yesterday revealed it is going to spend an addition $19.5 million to expand its satellite production facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in order to overcome the long multi-year delay in getting production started.

The company said Aug. 22 the investment will support a secondary, 3,900-square-meter support facility at the site, which would help accelerate launch cadence amid a looming regulatory deadline to deploy half the constellation by July 2026. The building would join a 9,300-square-meter satellite processing facility Amazon announced last year at Kennedy’s runway-equipped Launch and Landing Facility, bringing total investment in the site to nearly $140 million.

The company hopes to open this additional facility by next year. It will need it, because its FCC license for its Kuiper internet constellation — conceived to be similar to SpaceX’s Starlink — requires it to launch half of the constellation of 3,200+ satellites by 2026 and have the entire constellation in orbit by 2029. Meeting that first deadline will be challenging at this point, though the company hopes to be launching frequently in the next few years. It has contracts to launch satellites 46 times on ULA rockets (8 on Atlas-5 and 36 on Vulcan), 27 times on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 18 times on ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6, and 3 times on SpaceX’s Falcon-9. To provide payloads for those launches however it will need to be able to quickly build a lot of satellites, and that’s what this additional investment is for.

It must be noted again that the Kuiper constellation was first proposed by Amazon at almost the exact same time as Elon Musk proposed his Starlink constellation. SpaceX now has several thousand satellites in orbit and is earning several billion dollars per year from several million signed up customers. Amazon in comparison has only launched two test satellites and zero operational satellites in that same time frame.

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Norway approves spaceport license for Andoya

9:31 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The Norwegian government announced yesterday that the Andoya spaceport that has been used for decades for suborbital test launches, has been given a spaceport license to conduct orbital launches from the site.

According to a statement from the Norwegian ministry, the license allows the spaceport to conduct up to 30 launches a year, including four during overnight hours. Those launches, to be overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority of Norway, can take place on azimuths between 280 and 360 degrees, supporting missions primarily to polar and sun-synchronous orbits.

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace already has a 20-year lease to conduct orbital launches from Andoya, and hopes to do the first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket there. According to the Norway government, the first launch is planned for this year, but that likely will only be a suborbital test, not a full orbital launch. Of the three rocket startups from Germany, Isar is the only one that has not yet done any engine tests (as far as we know) or suborbital test launches of its rocket engine or design. Hyimpulse has done a suborbital test launch from an Australian spaceport, and Rocket Factory Augsburg have done numerous tests both in Germany and at the Saxaford spaceport. This license to Andoya will likely signal the start of those public tests by Isar.

A fourth European rocket startup, PLD from Spain, is presently prepping its own launchpad in French Guiana, and hopes to conduct its own first orbital test launch next year.

Until this week it appeared that Rocket Factory was in the lead to be the first European rocket startup to attempt an orbital launch. That changed when the rocket’s first stage was destroyed during a static fire launchpad engine test earlier this week. Right now it is not clear who is in the lead.

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Rocket Factory identifies cause of failure during rocket static fire test

9:14 am

According to Rocket Factory Augsburg, its investigation into the explosion during the first full nine-engine static fire test of its RFA-1 rocket earlier this week has identified the cause of the failure.

In an update on LinkedIn on 22 August, RFA COO Dr. Stefan Brieschenk announced that the company had completed an initial internal review. In what Dr. Brieschenk describes as “very preliminary” findings, he explains that the company has identified an “oxygen fire in one of the turbopumps” as the root cause of the incident. “That engine and that turbopump have run before without issues, wrote Dr. Brieschenk. “Eight engines ignited. We had multiple back-up and safety systems in place that were supposed to shut everything down – but things did not align on Monday as planned.”

As he notes, this is very preliminary. The company probably still does not know why the fire occurred in that turbopump, and it will need to find out in order to fix the problem. And without that fix, it is almost certain the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will not issue the company a launch license when a new first stage is built and delivered to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands where the launch is planned.

All in all, expect a delay of at least one year before that launch can occur. Base on the CAA’s past history, that delay could easily extend to two years.

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Starliner decision expected tomorrow, August 24

9:04 am

According to a NASA update today, the agency will hold “an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review” to discuss whether to return Starliner manned or unmanned on Saturday morning, August 24, 2024 and then hold a press conference immediately afterward to discuss the results of that review.

What makes this review and press conference different from all previous Starliner reviews and conferences is that NASA administrator Bill Nelson will attend.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership will hold an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review on Saturday, Aug. 24, for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. About an hour later, NASA will host a live news conference at 1 p.m. EDT from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The only reason a politico like Nelson would participate in such proceedings is because he has taken control of the decision-making process, and will make the decision himself. The review is likely to educate him as best as can be done in this short time, and he will then decide whether the two astronauts who launched on Starliner, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will return on it in the next week or so, or will stay on board ISS until February 2025 and return on the next Dragon crew capsule scheduled to launch to ISS in late September.

Nelson might have decided to get involved on his own, but I am certain that if so it was strongly “encouraged” by officials above him in the White House. There is an election coming up, and the risks involved in using Starliner to return the astronauts must be weighed in connection not just with its engineering concerns but with its political ramifications also.

Nelson’s decision will also provide us a strong indication of a future Harris administration’s attitude toward space.

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Chinese scientists find method to extract water from Chang’e-5 lunar samples

12:04 pm

Proposed concept for extracting water from lunar regoilth
Proposed concept for extracting water from
lunar regoilth

Chinese scientists have found that by heating Chang’e-5 lunar samples to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit it is possible to extract a significant amount of water. From the paper’s abstract:

FeO and Fe2O3 are lunar minerals containing Fe oxides. Hydrogen (H) retained in lunar minerals from the solar wind can be used to produce water. The results of this study reveal that 51–76 mg of H2O can be generated from 1 g of LR [lunar regolith] after melting at temperatures above 1200 K. This amount is ∼10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon. … Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in LR is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which are helpful for establishing scientific research station on the Moon.

A video in Chinese (hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay) that describes this research can be found here. (If any of my readers understands Chinese and can provide a translation of this video’s narration, I would be very grateful.) It includes an artist’s rendering (screen capture to the right) showing how such a system on the Moon could work to extract water from the soil. Sunlight would be focused by a lensed mirror into a glass-domed container, heating the ground. The water would evaporate, condense on the glass and be sucked into a tube that would transfer it to a water tank.

This design is of course very simple and preliminary. According to Jay, “They need to heat the soil to 1000℃ (1832°F) to get the iron oxide in the lunar soil to split, the oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water and iron (melting point of iron is about 1500℃). You will need a nuclear reactor to produce that much power for an inductive furnace to get that hot. Doing the calculation, it would take about 245kw to heat up a metric ton of dirt in one hour to a 1000℃ degrees. It could be done slower over 24 hours at 10kw.”

Despite the technical difficulties getting such equipment operational on the Moon, that this research suggests water can be produced practically anywhere on the lunar surface is signficant. It suggests that even if no easily accessible water ice is found in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles, lunar bases still have viable options for obtaining water, and they don’t have even be at the poles.

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China launches communications satellite

11:33 am

China today successfully launched a new communications satellite, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

A short clip showing the launch can be found here. (Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.)

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 53, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 68.

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New port for big cruise ships dropped in Florida because it threatens space operations

10:02 am

A plan to build a new terminal in Port Canaveral for the large cruise lines has now been dropped because the constant arrival and departure of those ships would hinder launches from both Cape Canaveral as well as the Kennedy spacport.

On Aug. 2, Florida Department of Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly and Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue expressed dismay about cruise-terminal plan changes that could affect the space industry. Kelly and Perdue, in a letter, said that unless the port returns to earlier plans for the berth, the Department of Transportation will shift investments to other seaports and spaceports, and the Department of Commerce will halt funding for Port Canaveral projects.

These threats were enough to cause the port to drop its plans.

This story strongly suggests that the Florida state government views the future income from spaceport operations to far exceed that of the tourist cruise business, and does not wish the latter to interfere with the former’s growth in any way.

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Proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia teams up with Voyager Space

9:54 am

The proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia that was first proposed by the company Maritime Launch Services in 2017 has now signed a partnership deal with the space station company Voyager Space.

Voyager, through its Exploration Segment, will provide comprehensive engineering, design and fabrication support to Maritime Launch, leveraging more than six decades of combined aerospace and defense technology experience. Voyager will bring its decades of commercial spaceflight engineering, manufacturing, and operations capabilities to provide engineering design and development and buildup of select portions of the launch site on behalf of Maritime Launch. Voyager will work alongside Maritime Launch to analyze launch client requirements and integrate them into the current site layout.

Maritime’s original plan had been to provide a launch location and rocket (produced by a Ukrainian company). Satellite companies would sign with both for launch services. The invasion of the Ukraine by Russia in 2022 killed that arrangement. So did red tape, as the Canadian government only passed a law allowing spaceports to make deals with international partners at the start of August.

It appears Maritime has realized that without that rocket partner, it needs another experienced partner to help build the spaceport itself and make sure launches by many different rocket companies are done safely. It has now hired Voyager to do this, since that company is leading the Starlab space station consortium that includes many very experienced companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Airbus, Mitsubishi, and the European Space Agency.

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Astroscale signs deal with JAXA to de-orbit old rocket upper stage

9:52 am

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

The Japanese orbital tug startup Astroscale has now signed the final deal with Japan’s space agency JAXA to de-orbit the old H2A rocket upper stage that the company is presently flying a demonstration rendezvous and proximity mission dubbed ADRAS-J.

The photo to the right was taken by ADRAS-J in the spring, shortly after it rendezvoused with the stage. The data from this demo mission has not only shown Astroscale’s spacecraft can autonomously rendezvous and fly in close formation to the stage, the stage itself is in excellent condition after fifteen years in space.

The ADRAS-J follow-on active debris removal spacecraft, ADRAS-J2, will similarly attempt to safely approach the same rocket body through [rendezvous and proximity operations], obtain further images, then remove and deorbit the rocket body using in-house robotic arm technologies.

If successful, Astroscale will have the capability to offer this surface to others, both governments and private concerns, thus making the removal of space junk a viable business. Until the past decade, most upper stages ended up in orbit where they remain for long periods. There are a lot of such older stages. Some end up burning up in the atmosphere harmlessly, while others break up in orbit and produce a lot of debris that is a threat to other spacecraft. Astroscale’s mission here will demonstrate the ability to remove such stages.

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NASA delays Starliner return decision to end of month

9:17 am

In a short FAQ posted by NASA today, the agency quietly revealed that the decision on whether to bring Starliner back with its astronauts on board has been delayed till the end of August.

NASA now plans to conduct two reviews – a Program Control Board and an Agency Flight Readiness Review – before deciding how it will safely return Wilmore and Williams from the station. NASA expects to decide on the path forward by the end of August.

It appears the agency has decided to bring more people into the decision-making process. In the briefing last week, it was then planning only one review, expected to be completed before the end of this week. It now sounds like a second review will occur after the first, pushing the decision back one more week.

All of NASA’s actions in the past three weeks have suggested an increasing involvement by upper management, possibly including White House officials. With an election coming up, the politicans who are supposed to be in charge have apparently inserted themselves into this process and are demanding greater review. I expect in the end the decision will fall to them, and might even be announced by NASA administrator Bill Nelson himself.

These actions have also suggested that upper management does not like the risks involved in returning the crew on Starliner. Politicians do not like to have bad things happen on their watch. We should therefore not be surprised if the decision is made to send Starliner home unmanned.

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SpaceX gets FCC okay for next Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:41 am

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Artist rendering of Superheavy being captured by
the tower chopsticks at landing. Click for video.

The FCC yesterday issued SpaceX a communications license for the fifth orbital test launch of its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket, with the license permitting Superheavy to “either return to the launch site or perform a controlled water landing.”

The license runs through February 15, 2025.

This does not mean a launch has been approved however. The FCC only gives approval for radio communications on such a flight. It is the FAA that must issue the actual launch license, and it as yet not done so.

SpaceX had announced on August 8, 2024 that it was ready to go. It is now almost two weks since then and the FAA has said nothing.

The only justifiable reason for this delay would be that SpaceX has requested permission to do the first chopstick landing of Superheavy at Boca Chica (as suggested by the FCC approval), and since this changes the already approved flight path from the previous four test launches, the FAA is reviewing it more closely, and taking its time to do so.

The simple fact is that it can’t learn anything by this review. It isn’t qualified to make any educated determination. Either it is willing to let SpaceX do that return, or not. If it is against it at this point, it should simply say so, demand SpaceX hold off a chopstick landing until later, and give it permission now to do another ocean landing. At least this way the company would have clarity and could proceed.

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Rocket Factory Augsburg’s rocket fails during 9-engine static fire test

9:21 am

Screen capture of test failure
Screen capture from video of test failure.
Note the flame shooting out sideways.

During a static test yesterday of Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA-1 rocket, the first using all nine first stage engines, the rocket experienced what the company called an “anomaly” early in the test, causing a major fire and explosion.

The company’s statement also said the launchpad was “saved” and no one was injured.

I have embedded below a clip from a BBC video of the event. A company official had said only yesterday that it hoped to launch in a matter of weeks, though that official had given no word on whether the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had issued a launch license. I suspect he hoped this test would be successful and the CAA would then issue the license. That won’t happen now.

The test took place at the new commercial Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, which has also struggled in the past two years to get full licensing from the CAA. It has obtained those licenses, but it would not be surprising if this failure will cause the CAA — which appears very risk adverse — to reconsider its approvals.

Until this failure, Rocket Factory appeared to be in the lead among the new European rocket startups to complete its first launch. That now changes. The Spanish startup PLD hopes to launch from French Guiana in 2025, and is presently building its launchpad there. The UK startup Orbex also hopes to launch in 2025, but it wants to launch from the Sutherland spaceport in Scotland, has faced significant regulatory delays over the past two years from the CAA, and will now likely face further delays because of this failure. Another German startup, Hyimpulse, has already completed a suborbital test launch from Australia, but has not set a date for an orbital test. It originally hoped to launch from Saxavord in 2025, but has been looking for alternatives recently. Finally, the German startup Isar Aerospace has a deal to launch from the Andoya spaceport in Norway, but has announced no launch date.
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SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites using a new first stage

8:50 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage was new, having never flown before. It successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, and is now part of the company’s fleet of Falcon 9 first stages.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 52, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 67.

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Sierra Space in negotiations to buy ULA

10:26 pm

According to the Reuters news agency, Sierra Space is negotiating with the joint owners of ULA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to buy the rocket company.

The sources, which are all anonymous, said the sale price is in the range of $2 to $3 billion. Those same sources said no deal has yet been worked out, and might not happen at all.

For Sierra, the deal would give it its own launch vehicle, Vulcan, for placing its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles into orbit. It would also give it a profit stream from the many military and commercial launch contracts already on ULA’s manifest. The combined cababilities of ULA and Sierra will create a formidable new player in the aerospace launch market.

For Boeing, it would provide it some much needed cash that it will be able to use to both restructure and revitalize its presently questionable operations.

It is unclear what Lockheed Martin will gain from the sale, other than the cash and the removal of this Frankenstein-like partnership with Boeing, which in the long run has probably not done it a lot of good.

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SpaceX launches 116 payloads on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission

12:20 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 116 payloads, including 108 satellites, on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing back at Vandenberg. As of posting the satellites had not deployed.

The payloads included a wide variety of satellites and demonstration missions, including one orbital tug from the European tug company D-Orbit, its Ion tug deploying five satellites. In addition, five different companies will be using their own deployment equipment to release about fifty of the satellites from the Falcon 9.

These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

82 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 97 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 82 to 67.

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China launches new set of classified remote-sensing satellites

9:06 am

China today launched a new set of classified remote-sensing satellites supposedly designed to test “new technologies of low-orbit constellations, using its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

Almost no information was released about the satellites. Nor did China’s state-run press reveal where the rocket’s lower stages, carrying toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

81 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 67.

These numbers will likely change in only a few hours, as SpaceX has another launch today, scheduled for 11:20 am (Pacific).

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India completes third and last test launch of its SSLV rocket

8:57 pm

India today successfully completed the third and last test launch of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), lifting off from its Sriharikota spaceport and carrying an experimental satellite designed to test a number of new technologies.

This launch is three-plus years late. It was originally to take place no later than 2021, but India’s space agency ISRO shut down entirely during the COVID panic, putting a halt on the rocket’s development. This delay also badly damaged ISRO’s attempt to grab the smallsat launch market. While it hid in basements in fear of a virus comparable to the flu, companies on the U.S. pushed to grab that market. Whether it can now grab its own market share is unclear, but the increased regulatory burdens that have appeared in the U.S. in the last three years gives it an opportunity.

This was India’s third launch in 2024, so the leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:

81 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 51, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 66.

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Lockheed Martin to purchase satellite builder Terran Orbital

1:48 pm

Lockheed Martin today announced that it intends to purchase the satellite company Terran Orbital, of which it already owns one third of its stock.

Lockheed said Aug. 15 it would buy Terran Orbital for $0.25 per share in cash and retire the company’s existing debt. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, has an enterprise value of $450 million. Shares in Terran Orbital closed Aug. 14 at $0.40.

Lockheed had six months ago offered to buy the company for $1 per share, but then withdrew the offer. It appears this new offer is intended to save the company, as Lockheed needs it. Right now 90% of Terran Orbital’s contracts are with Lockheed, and if the company goes under so do those deals.

This situation appears related to funding problems being experienced by the Rivada 300-satellite constellation. It had signed a $2.4 billion contract with Terran to build those satellites, but Terran removed that contract from its listed deals this week, suggesting that it no longer expected it to happen.

Lockheed Martin has made a strong effort in the past decade to remake itself to meet the challenges of the new space market, including entering the smallsat satellite manufacturing market. Thus it should be able to absorb Terran Orbital’s operations with little major harm to both, and much benefit.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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A tour of Blue Origin’s New Glenn factory

1:33 pm

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut on May 30, 2024 was given a detailed tour by founder/owner Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin’s New Glenn factory at Cape Canaveral.

It is incredible to watch, because for the very first time, Bezos shows us what the company is finally doing to prepare for the first New Glenn launch, targeting no earlier than the end of September. Unlike every other visual shown of this facility in the past, this tour actually shows a factory floor where work is going on.

Much of the backgrounds inside the stages have apparently been put out of focus to protect Blue Origin’s proprietary rights. No matter.

As for the state of the manufacture of the BE-4 engines, Bezos stated that he expects next year to be building one engine every three days. Cross your fingers that he is right.

I have embedded the video of the tour below. Enjoy, and get excited by the competition and capability this rocket will create when it finally starts flying.
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Rocket startup Stoke Space is saddled with the same red tape as SpaceX

10:06 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you! The rocket startup Stoke Space appears to be struggling with the same kind of environmental red tape that is hindering SpaceX, though in Stoke’s case the red tape appears absurdly unnecessary.

Stoke is the only company besides SpaceX developing a rocket with both its first and second stages returning to Earth to land vertically and then be reused. Unlike SpaceX Starship/Superheavy, which is gigantic and revolutionary in all ways, Stoke’s Nova rocket is comparable in size to the hundreds of rockets that have launched from Florida since the 1960s. Based on that six-decade track record, it would seem that getting rights to launch Nova (but not for its return) would be considered basic and routine, requiring little complex bureaucracy.

Hah! Fooled you!

Before any of this can take place, the Space Force must complete its “environmental assessment” of the company’s plans at LC-14 [the launchpad used for John Glenn’s first orbital mission and many others subsequently], in order to evaluate how repeat launches will affect local flora and fauna. These assessments are mandatory under federal law, and they can often take months — but the upside is that they provide a closer look at a company’s operational plans.

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ULA losing launch crews to other rocket companies

9:23 am

ULA, which hopes to set a company launch record next year, is right now suffering a major loss of its launch crews to SpaceX and Blue Origin.

This year alone, ULA has lost about 45 of its 105 Launch Operations engineers — the people who test, assemble and prepare every rocket and its cargo to fly — at its primary launch site in Florida, according to the person, who asked not to be identified discussing non-public information. The lack of experienced personnel has postponed work for future missions, the person said.

The article says the loss of these launch crew employees is because of higher pay offered by the other companies, but I suspect a contributing factor is ULA’s low rate of launches in recent years (3 in 2023 and 4 so far in 2024). These people have nothing to do, and see the lack of work as detrimental to their future careers. Better to move on, either to SpaceX where a lot of launches occur, one almost every other day, or to Blue Origin, where the rocket is new and the company has plenty of cash.

The flight of crews could also be because people do not see a future at ULA. For almost a year there have been rumors that Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which own it jointly, want to sell it. It was thought that sale would happen after the first Vulcan rocket launch, but it did not. In recent months those rumors have subsided, suggesting that the interest in buying the company has trailed off.

Despite these problems, ULA’s problems could very well be temporary. Its manifest has a lot of launches scheduled, and once Vulcan is certified for the military and operational for all its customers, it is expected to be launching more than twice a month next year. If those launches take place as planned, these issues will be begin to vanish very quickly.

In fact, it does appear that if you are an engineering student with an interest in rocketry, your future is extremely bright. There will be plenty of work opportunities for you in Florida in the future, from any one these companies.

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SpaceX launches two commercial Earth observation satellites

8:56 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched two commercial high resolution Earth observation satellites for the company Maxar, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its sixteenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The two fairings completed their seventh and seventeenth flights.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

81 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 50, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 65.

These numbers will continue to go up, as India has a launch scheduled for later today, while SpaceX has another Transporter launch scheduled for tomorrow, carrying dozens of smallsats.

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Russia launches Progress cargo spacecraft to ISS

9:34 pm

Russia tonight (August 15th in Russia) successfully launched a Progress freight to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

Rendezvous and docking with ISS scheduled for August 17, 2024 in the early morning.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

80 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 95 to 50, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 80 to 65.

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NASA leaning now to send Starliner astronauts home on Dragon, in February 2025

11:01 am

Though a decision will not be made until next week, during a press briefing today the nature of the briefing and the wording by NASA officials suggested that they are now leaning strongly to having the two Starliner astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, return on the next Dragon capsule to launch to the station on September 24, 2024 and return in February 2025.

My conclusion is based on several subtle things. First, no Boeing official participated, the second time in row that they were excluded. Second, this briefing included some new individuals who rank higher in the chain of command, and whose opening statements were clearly written carefully in advance and were read aloud.

Third, and most important, the wording of those statements repeatedly indicated they are looking at Dragon return more seriously. For example, NASA’s chief astronaut Joe Acaba suggested strongly that the two astronauts were now well prepared for an eight month mission, rather than coming home in August 2024. Other statements by officials suggested they themselves are less confident about returning on Starliner. Though the data suggests they can return safely, there remains enough uncertainty to make some people uncomfortable.

One factor not stated but is certainly controlling the situation now is the upcoming election in November. The Democrats who control Washington and the White House will allow nothing to happen that could hurt their election chances. We must therefore assume people in the White House are now in control and are the ones who now intend to make the decision about Starliner’s return.

Based on these factors, we should expect NASA to announce next week that the crew will return in a Dragon capsule. In order for the return to happen on Starliner NASA and Boeing engineers must somehow convince those politicos that the return would be entirely safe. Since these politicos are always risk adverse, it would shock me if they can be convinced. It could happen, but understanding the politically framework is important.

The officials stated that they have scheduled the final review next week, and it appears the decision will be announced then.

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Update on status of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket

9:23 am

Link here. The report provides a lot of detail about the ramped up operations of Blue Origin in Florida in preparation for the first launch of New Glenn, previously announced as September 29, 2024. It appears the company is finally getting something done, and is getting closer to that launch.

Nonetheless, this detailed report makes no mention of that launch date. Furthermore, based on the work presently being done, it appears that launching by that date is impossible. With less than two months to go, the rocket has not yet been stacked and brought to the launchpad for even one dress rehearsal countdown. In March the company did tanking tests using an engineering test prototype, but so far such tests have not been done on the actual flightworthy rocket. It seems there will not be enough time to do them and meet that September 29th date.

The report also claims that Blue Origin “continues to ramp up testing its BE-4 and BE-3U engines” and “should have no problem supporting engine demand for both New Glenn and Vulcan,” but provides no hint as to the actual number of engines produced. Recent numbers suggest that ULA will have sufficient engines to launch its rockets, but will New Glenn, which needs seven BE-4 engines compared to the two needed for ULA’s Vulcan? We presently have no idea.

All in all, however, things at Blue Origin in 2024 appear to finally be happening, after a five year lull of nothing under the previous CEO, Bob Smith. Even if that launch doesn’t happen in September, it appears that it will happen sometime within the six months that follow.

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Intuitive Machines wants to land VIPER rover on Moon

9:04 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines has now revealed it is putting together an industry partnership to bid on flying NASA’s VIPER lunar rover on its own largest lander, still under development.

In an Aug. 13 earnings call about its second quarter financial results, Intuitive Machines executives said they were planning to respond to a request for information (RFI) that NASA issued Aug. 9 seeking input from companies and organizations interested in taking over the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission that the agency said in July it would cancel.

Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said on the call that his company, which also responded to an earlier call for “expressions of interest” from NASA regarding VIPER, is working with other companies, universities and international partners on responding to NASA’s RFI. He did not identify any of those prospective partners.

…NASA, in its RFI, said that prospective partners would be responsible for the costs of any final testing and other work on the rover itself, as well as delivering it to the lunar surface and operating it once there. NASA, in its July 17 announcement that it would cancel VIPER, said the agency would save at least $84 million by halting work now on the rover, now complete and undergoing environmental testing.

Whether this company can raise the capital to finish this mission, now that NASA has said it cannot, remains unclear. That it is trying, and NASA is not, illustrates however why NASA should get out of the business of building anything and just buy it from the private sector. NASA’s attempt to build VIPER went 3Xs over budget and is considerably behind schedule. Now the private sector see profits in finishing the job, which will in turn save the agency considerable money. Imagine if NASA had done this from the beginning. The savings would have been even greater, and VIPER might right now be even closer to launch.

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Orbital tug startup Astroscale expands partnership with European aerospace giant Airbus

9:36 am

The Japanese-based orbital tug startup Astroscale has signed an agreement with the European company Airbus to expand their partnership beyond an earlier agreement to use Airbus’s robot arm on Astroscale’s tug.

Under the MoU, Astroscale and Airbus will explore ways to boost the development of navigation and docking technologies for satellite servicing and debris removal missions they did not specify. According to the news release, the expanded partnership seeks to combine Airbus’s satellite manufacturing and space systems heritage with technologies Astroscale is developing for in-orbit servicing.

Astroscale has been aggressively working to get business both in Europe and the U.S. by opening divisions in both regions. This deal is clearly part of that effort. It also provides Astroscale resources as a new startup it previously did not have.

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Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS delayed until 2025

9:26 am

Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, which had been targeting an October 2024 launch date, has now been delayed until 2025 because of “required interagency approval processes.”

NASA’s only announcement describing the delay was a tweet on X, which stated the following:

The Ax-4 crew members are pending approval to fly to the orbiting lab by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel.

Neither Axiom nor NASA provided further comment or explanation. The mission will fly three passengers from India, Poland, and Hungary and be commanded by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who now fulfills that role for Axiom. Since the three passengers are all government astronauts, it is possible that the bureaucracies from all three nations, plus NASA and its ISS partners, are entangled in negotiations far more complex than necessary.

This situation highlights quite clearly why both billionairs Jared Isaacman and Chun Wang have signed on with SpaceX to flight orbital missions — avoiding a docking with ISS — that require no permissions from NASA. Wang for example announced his deal yesterday, for a flight that is targeting a launch before the end of the year. Though that schedule is tight and might not be met, it appears the mission will likely fly before the Axiom one, which has been planned now for quite awhile.

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Portugal’s air traffic agency signs deal with company wishing to build spaceport in Azores

9:14 am

Santa Maria spaceport

Portugal’s air traffic agency, Portugal NAV, today signed an agreement with the spaceport company Atlantic Spaceport Consortium, to work out the details of placing a commercial spaceport on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores.

Under the cooperation agreement, the pair aim to define the guidelines that a future spaceport will need to adhere to when launching from Santa Maria. This includes defining exclusion zones, examining how to monitor and authorize launch activities, and studying under what conditions to impose partial or total launch restrictions for safety reasons.

The map to the right shows the location of the island, relative to Europe and Africa. No timeliine for construction has been given, though the consortium hopes to launch “a small atmospheric rocket” in September. It has also signed a deal in 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion) with a Ukrainian rocket startup.

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