Tag: competition

Firefly loses first stage for next launch when it explodes during static fire test

8:40 am

During a static fire engine test yesterday in preparation for launch, the rocket startup Firefly lost the first stage when an explosion occurred at what appeared to be the base of the rocket. From the company’s update:

During testing at Firefly’s facility in Briggs, Texas, the first stage of Firefly’s Alpha Flight 7 rocket experienced an event that resulted in a loss of the stage. Proper safety protocols were followed, and all personnel are safe. The company is assessing the impact to its stage test stand, and no other facilities were impacted.

Video of the explosion can be seen here.

This incident will obviously delay the next launch, which had only just been scheduled following the completion of the company’s investigation into its launch failure in April. This explosion also suggests there remain serious issues with the Alpha rocket, which has only had two full successes in six launch attempts.

At the same time, with the successful soft landing of its Blue Ghost lander on the Moon earlier this year, Firefly has demonstrated its engineering can be sound and robust. It just appears that a lot more work needs to be done to get Alpha into shape.

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China launches two “test satellites”

7:46 pm

China earlier today successfully launched two test satellites for “experimental verification of Earth observation technologies, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang space port in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. The two satellites are part of the Shiyan family of satellites that have done rendezvous and proximity operations as well as surveillance of other satellites in orbit.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

126 SpaceX
58 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 126 to 98.

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Two Japanese startups partner to fly the first private lunar sample return mission

9:53 am

Two Japanese startups, the lunar landing company Ispace and the orbital capsule startup ElevationSpace, have signed an agreement to develop the first private mission to bring samples back to Earth from the Moon.

Based on the agreement, Ispace and ElevationSpace will jointly pursue development to undertake a lunar return mission. Ispace has already demonstrated the technology to deploy a lander into lunar orbit through its two lunar missions operated in 2023 and 2025. The company is currently considering the development of an Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV), derived from its existing lunar lander development technology.

The collaboration aims to conduct a technology demonstration to verify the feasibility of missions utilizing an and the sample return re-entry capsule being developed by ElevationSpace, as well as to evaluate the overall system characteristics.

At the moment this project is only a PowerPoint proposal. Though Ispace has made two attempts to soft land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon, neither was a success. It has three further contracts with NASA, ESA, and Japan’s space agency JAXA, but none has flown yet, and its orbital vehicle is only under development.

As for ElevationSpace, it has flown nothing yet as well. Its first demo satellite, designed to test re-entry and recovery, won’t fly until late next year, assuming its launch rocket, Isar’s new Spectrum, gets to orbit.

Nonetheless, this project illustrates the continuing shift to the private sector in space. The companies are doing this to demonstrate their capabilities in order to win contracts from both commercial and government customers.

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Avio wins $47 million study contract to build reusable upper stage rocket

9:20 am

Avio's proposed reusable upper stage
Click for original.

The Italian rocket company Avio has won $47 million study contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to begin design work on a reusable upper stage rocket.

The contract runs for two years, with a goal to “assess and prepare the requirements, the design and the technologies for both the ground and flight segments required for an upper stage demonstrator that in the future could return to Earth and be reused on another flight.”

In other words, Avio is not yet building this upper stage, but will use this money to work up a design. The Avio graphic to the right suggests the lower stage will be based on the first stage of Avio’s solid-fueled Vega-C rocket. The upper stage concept appears to resemble Starship, which suggests Avio will be aiming for a vertical landing, using the methane-fueled engines it is developing for its not-yet-launched Vega-E rocket.

This ESA contract once again shows that agency’s shift to the capitalism model. Rather than develop this idea in-house, as it has done so poorly in the past, ESA has asked a private company to do it, and own what it develops.

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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites

7:49 pm

SpaceX this evening successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage, B1063, completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. (This booster had been listed as the first stage on a launch two days ago, but it turns out the booster on that flight was B1082, completing its 16th flight.) The present rankings for the most reflights of a rocket:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

126 SpaceX
57 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 126 to 97. China has a launch scheduled for this evening, but nothing as yet has been published about its status as of this posting.

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China completes two launches

2:01 pm

Since yesterday China successfully completed two launches from two of its interior spaceports.

First, it successfully launched what its state-run press described as a satellite that will “primarily support monitoring and research activities in weather forecasting, atmospheric chemistry and climate change”, its Long March 4C rocket lifting off yesterday from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

Then today China’s Long March 6A lifted off from its Taiyuan spaceport in north China, placing in orbit the eleventh set of satellites in the Guowang internet constellation, eventually aiming to be 13,000 satellites strong. China’s state-run press did not specify the exact number of satellites. Based on previous launches using the Long March 6A, the number was likely five, bringing the number of this constellation’s satellites now in orbit to 87.

No word on where the the lower stages of both rockets crashed inside China. This is even more critical with the Long March 4C, since it uses very toxic hypergolic fuels that can dissolve your skin if it touches you.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

125 SpaceX
57 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 125 to 97.

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Canadian rocket startup Nordspace postpones first suborbital test launch

9:42 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

After trying twice earlier this week to launch its first suborbital test rocket from its Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland, the rocket startup Nordspace has decided to postpone that launch for at least several weeks, while it investigates the fuel leaks on the launchpad that caused fires during both launch attempts.

From the company’s website:

After detailed review over the last 15 hours, the root cause has been discovered to be related to our propellant quality slightly differing between vehicle tests at our test facility in Ontario, compared to our first launch test in Newfoundland and Labrador at our spaceport. This led to a fuel-rich scenario. All systems on the rocket and ground performed nominally after careful review. Personnel, rocket and the launch pad are perfectly safe and secure, and our safety systems operated nominally. As our company’s manufacturing and testing facilities are located in Ontario, there’s no expedient way to make the necessary modification with the temporary infrastructure and suppliers we have in place at our launch site.

This company is only about three years old, so this delay is hardly systematic to its operations. In that time they have established their own private spaceport, have built their first demo satellite (set to launch in June 2026), and developed a test suborbital rocket, Taiga, that is on the cusp of its first launch. The company is also developing its own rocket engines, as well as an orbital rocket dubbed Tundra.

Its speed puts to shame Canada’s other proposed spaceport in Nova Scotia, which was first proposed in 2016, and has far accomplished little. Many of its problems stemmed from the Ukraine War, which lost it the rocket it had hoped to market. Even so, it only signed its first launch customer in August of this year.

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Germany’s military commits to spending $41 billion on space through 2030

9:25 am

In another sign that the member nations of the European Space Agency (ESA) are increasingly going their own way, Germany’s defense minister announced yesterday that his agency plans to spend $41 billion on space through 2030.

According to a 25 September Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) release published following the minister’s address, the €35 billion investment will cover five main priorities: hardening against data disruptions and attacks, improved space situational awareness, redundancy through several networked satellite constellations, secure, diverse, and on-demand launch capabilities, and a dedicated military satellite operations centre.

This commitment is going to definitely benefit the three German rocket startups, Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Hyimpulse. It will also likely benefit the North Sea launch platform — based in Germany — that is being built by a German consortium that has already received almost one million from the government.

While the European partners in ESA have generally kept their military spending separate from that agency, in the past a large bulk of this defense spending would have been committed to ESA joint projects, such as funding the agency’s commercial launch operation, Arianespace, to do the launches. No more.

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NASA cancels Sierra Space’s contract for Dream Chaser cargo missions to ISS

8:01 am

Tenacity grounded in a warehouse
Tenacity grounded in a warehouse, with the
Shooting Star small cargo capsule attached to
its aft port.

NASA today announced it has modified its fixed-price cargo contract with Sierra Space, canceling the planned seven cargo missions as well as a demo docking mission, replacing this with one test flight that will simply go into orbit and then return to Earth.

After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions, however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract.

The first launch of Tenacity, the only Dream Chaser so far constructed, has been repeatedly delayed for the past two years, with no explanation from either the company or NASA. Those delays started in 2023 as engineers began the final ground testing before launch, so though we do not know what the issue is it is likely that testing found something fundamentally wrong with the spacecraft that Sierra could not afford to fix.

According to Sierra’s own press release, the company will target a late 2026 launch for that free flyer mission. The company still hopes that mission will make further flights possible, either purchased by NASA or by others wishing to use Tenacity for in-orbit manufacturing, something it first proposed last year.

In the past two years, Sierra has shifted its focus away from commercial manned space and more towards winning military defense contracts. Part of that decision might have come from the problems with Dream Chaser. The decision might have also been fueled by the company’s generally unsatisfactory experience working with Blue Origin on their proposed Orbital Reef space station. While Sierra committed cash to develop and test its LIFE inflatable module, including a full scale prototype, Blue Origin appeared to do nothing at all. As early as September 2023 there were rumors the partnership was falling apart.

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

12:13 am

SpaceX this evening successfully placed 24 additional Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, moving it up into the top rankings for the most reuse by a rocket:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069

Sources here and here.

As for the 2025 launch race, this is the present leader board:

125 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 125 to 95.

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Axiom hires Redwire to build the solar panels for its first station module

9:18 am

Axiom's new module assembly sequence
Axiom’s assembly sequence for its planned station, initially attached to ISS but subsequently detached

The space station startup Axiom today announced that it has signed an agreement with the space hardware company Redwire to build the solar panels for its first station module, now under construction.

The companies announced Sept. 25 that Redwire will provide a version of its Roll-Out Solar Array, or ROSA, to Axiom for use on Axiom Station’s Payload Power Thermal Module, known as AxPPTM. AxPPTM is the first module Axiom plans to launch for its commercial station. Under a revised assembly schedule announced last December, AxPPTM will berth with one of two ports on the International Space Station used by Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

It would remain there until Axiom launches a second module, called Hab1. At that point, AxPPTM would unberth from the ISS and dock with Hab1, forming the initial station that can support four-person crews. Axiom would later add more modules.

At present Axiom is targeting a 2026 launch of the AxPPTM module. The hull, built by Thales Alenia, is presently being tested in Europe, and is expected to shipped to Houston for integration later this year.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
» Read more

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Starlab selects Vivace to build the primary structure of its proposed space station

8:25 am

The American space stations under construction
The American space stations under development

The Starlab consortium today announced that it has chosen the Louisiana space hardware company Vivace to build the primary structure of its proposed space station, designed to launch as one very large module inside SpaceX’s Starship.

The aluminum-based structure, one of the largest single spaceflight structures ever developed for launch, will be built at Vivace’s facility in New Orleans, La., with additional development and testing support from [NASA’s] Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in Louisiana.

…The program will use Vivace’s New Orleans facility at MAF for fabrication, with support from U.S. government partners for subject matter expertise, structural analysis and potential test infrastructure. MAF will also support specialized large-scale manufacturing and assembly operations.

It appears Starlab chose this subcontractor because of its extensive ties to NASA, likely in the hope this will increase the chances it will win the upcoming station construction contracts NASA is expected to issue in the next year or so.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
» Read more

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