Tag: competition

Taiwan company issues letter of intent to build cubesat facility in California city

9:27 am

The city of Paso Robles in California has now received an official letter of intent from the Taiwan cubesat company Gran Systems, describing its desire to build spaceport there.

The CEO of Gran Systems recently toured the proposed Paso Robles Spaceport and tech corridor area and met with Paso Robles Airport Manager Mark Scandalis to discuss opportunities for establishing its California facility in Paso Robles.

Though the news article refers to this as a “spaceport,” I don’t think this has anything to do with launching rockets. Instead, this spaceport is part of Paso Robles’ effort to establish an industrial park at its airport, including space companies such as satellite builders, and Gran Systems has decided to rent space there, probably to widen its market in the U.S.

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Arianespace signs deal with Spanish rocket startup PLD

8:58 am

Following up with its agreement with the UK rocket startup Orbex, Arianespace yesterday also signed a deal with the Spanish rocket startup PLD to study using that company’s as-yet-unflown Miura-5 rocket.

Like the Orbex deal, this agreement makes it possible for Arianespace to arrange launches using PLD’s rocket. It also tells us that Arianespace and the European Space Agency are shifting from designing and building their own rockets — a process that has failed to produce any profit and had presently left Europe with no launch capability — to acting simply as a customer buying that capability from independent competing private companies.

For this to work however both Orbex and PLD will have to get their rockets off the ground.

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China launches 41 satellites on single launch, a record for that country

8:49 am

China today successfully used its Long March 2D rocket to place 41 satellites in orbit, a new record for that country, lifting off from its interior Taiyuan spaceport in north China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage crashed within China, or whether it landed near any habitable areas. The Chinese state-run press also provided no information about any of those 41 satellites.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

40 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 45 to 23 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 45 to 39, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 40 to 39.

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World Economic Forum decides its business is running space too!

8:13 am

We’re the government and we’re here to help you! The World Economic Forum (WEF) yesterday released its proposed new set of guidelines for mitigating space junk in orbit, even though some of the most important commercial satellite operators (SpaceX and Viasat) have not signed on.

The Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations document, released by the WEF June 13, outlines recommendations to avoid collisions that can create debris by limiting the lifetime of satellites in orbit after they have completed their missions and improving coordination among satellite operators.

Among those recommendations is to establish a success rate for “post-mission disposal,” or removal of satellites from orbit after the end of their missions, to 95% to 99%. That disposal should be completed no more than five years after the end of each satellite’s mission.

You can read the guidelines here [pdf], which the WEF is pushing governments worldwide to adopt. Though SpaceX and Viasat have not signed on, 27 companies have endorsed the guidelines, including OneWeb, Airbus, Axiom, and a host of orbital tug and space junk removal startups, the latter of which all benefit from these guidelines.

While the proposals makes some sense, everyone in the space industry should remain skeptical, and resist the call for more government regulation. Once this power is given to government it will never be recanted, and will only grow with time. Moreover, all signs indicate that such interference by law by government is unnecessary. Both satellite operators and most rocket companies (the exception mostly China) have been making strong efforts to deal with the issue of space junk, for profit. The fact that there are a host of orbital tug and space junk startups right now illustrates this. Investors have realized there is money to be made removing satellites and space junk. They don’t need government telling them what to do.

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Boeing gets NASA contract to develop new airplane wing design

10:22 am

In its effort to reduce fossil fuel use and thus save us from being burned to death by global warming in only a decade, NASA has now awarded Boeing a contract to develop new airplane wing design that it predicts will lower fuel use by up to 30%.

The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To build the X-66A, Boeing will work with NASA to modify an MD-90 aircraft, shortening the fuselage and replacing its wings and engines. The resulting demonstrator aircraft will have long, thin wings with engines mounted underneath and a set of aerodynamic trusses for support. The design, which Boeing submitted for NASA’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, is known as a Transonic Truss-Braced Wing.

While developing a more efficient wing design is certainly worthwhile, having skepticism about this project is certainly reasonable. First of all, it seems somewhat strange to award Boeing such a contract at this time, considering NASA own experience with the company with Starliner, as well as that company’s problems with other government contracts for the military.

Secondly, the press release makes a big deal about the project getting an X-plane designation, an entirely superficial and PR related title that if anything suggests there is very little steak to this sizzle.

Third, it is unclear the nature of this contract. Is is cost-plus, or fixed price? The press release says NASA will “invest $425 million over seven years, while the company and its partners will contribute the remainder of the funding, estimated at about $725 million.” If cost-plus, this means nothing. Boeing will use any excuse to go over budget in order to get more money from NASA.

Finally, half a billion dollars to develop and test a new airplane wing design, using an already existing airplane, seems incredibly exorbitant. And to require seven years to build it seems ridiculously long.

All in all, I suspect the real goal of this project is to funnel tax dollars to Boeing to help keep it afloat, not to build a new green airplane.

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Forgotten Weapons – Girardoni Air Gun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The air rifle that Lewis & Clark took on their expedition to impress the American Indians they met. When I recently read their memoirs, I was baffled that an air gun existed in the early 1800s. This video shows it in detail, noting that it was actually invented in 1780 for the Austrian Army.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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SpaceX launches 72 smallsats; lands a Falcon 9 1st stage for the 200th time

3:22 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 72 smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

With this launch, SpaceX achieved a significant milestone, successfully landing a Falcon 9 first stage for the 200th time, an achievement that for more than a half century all managers and most engineers in the rocket business claimed was not only impossible, but impractical. They insisted that the first stage would not be able to be reused because of the stress of launch. SpaceX has proved these close-minded fools very wrong. This particular first stage completed its ninth mission on this flight, a number that has become very routine for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stages. The stage landed back at Vandenberg,

As of posting the satellites have not all deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

40 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 45 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 45 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 40 to 38.

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SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites

12:21 am

Just after midnight tonight (Pacific) SpaceX successfully launched another 52 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, the 199th time that SpaceX has accomplished this so-called impossible task. The two fairing halves completed their fourth and fifth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

39 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 44 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 44 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 39 to 38.

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China tests parachutes on recent Long March 3B launch

10:17 am

During a May 17, 2023 launch of a Long March 3B rocket, China tested the use of parachutes to better control the descent and landing of the rocket’s boosters.

The system was used on a Long March-3B rocket carrying a BeiDou navigation satellite into orbit on May 17 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province, according to the academy.

Developed by the academy, the parachute brought down the rocket boosters to a predetermined location, narrowing the range of the landing area by 80 percent.

Based on the limited information provided by China’s state-run press, it appears this system was only tested on the four strap-on boosters, not on the first stage core. Regardless, such a system, which appears to be a copy of the system Rocket Lab has been developing for the last four years, will significantly reduce the hazards to Chinese inhabitants who live in the drop zones of these rockets.

Note too that China previously tried to copy SpaceX’s grid fins. Apparently its engineers found it difficult if not impossible to reverse engineer that concept, so they apparently decided to try copying Rocket Lab’s parachute methods instead.

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Firefly buys orbital tug company Spaceflight

10:21 am

Firefly Aerospace announced yesterday that it has purchased the orbital tug company Spaceflight, and will now offer its Sherpa tug as part of its launch services.

Spaceflight Inc. was known as a leader in arranging launches of small satellites on small launch vehicles or as secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles, deploying more than 460 payloads. Spaceflight had also developed its own series of orbital transfer vehicles called Sherpa, using a mix of chemical and electric propulsion systems.

Spaceflight has worked with a wide range of launch providers, although at one point it ran afoul of one of its largest partners, SpaceX. However, Firefly said that Spaceflight’s services will, going forward, be used only with Firefly’s vehicles.

Though Firefly will honor the contracts Spaceflight arranged for smallsats to be launched on other rockets, it appears it will be no longer be acting as a launch arranger. Instead, it will offer smallsats a package launch deal, including both its Alpha rocket and the tug. For this deal to pay off however Firefly has got to get Alpha operational. The two launches scheduled for this summer should do this, assuming they fly with no problems.

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Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA contracts for six launches each

10:09 am

As part of its long term launch agreement with SpaceX and ULA, the Space Force today awarded both companies contracts for six launches each, all to occur beginning in 2025.

According to the overall agreement, each company got five-year contracts to launch as many as 40 missions. ULA won 60% of the missions and SpaceX 40%. However, the delays to ULA’s Vulcan rocket will likely change those numbers:

In a report released June 8, the Government Accountability Office noted that the NSSL program office continues to order launch services from ULA and SpaceX amid concerns about Vulcan’s delays. “ULA delayed the first certification flight of the Vulcan launch system … to accommodate challenges with the BE-4 engine and a delayed commercial payload, nearly two years later than originally planned,” said GAO. “In the event that Vulcan is unavailable for future missions, program officials stated that the Phase 2 contract allows for the ability to reassign missions to the other provider.”

One of the reasons that ULA has not hurried its effort to make Vulcan reusable and more competitive with SpaceX is that is already has this guaranteed military launch commitment. It doesn’t need to be as competitive.

What needs to happen is a third or fourth company has to enter the market, giving the military other options. The military also has to cancel this long term launch agreement, which limits the number of companies it will do business with to just SpaceX and ULA. It would be much better to open the competition up to everyone. The ULA would be forced to compete.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket launches satellite

9:41 am

China’s Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket today successfully placed what its state-run press described as a “experiment satellite … to verify satellite communication and remote sensing technologies.”

The rocket lifted off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi desert. No word on where the rocket’s three lower stages crashed, or whether they did so near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 43 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 38, with SpaceX by itself now tied those other nations combined 38 to 38.

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Boeing sued for stealing specialized tooling to assembly SLS

9:36 am

A Colorado company, Wilson Aerospace, on June 6, 2023 filed a lawsuit against Boeing, claiming that the company conspired with Wilson’s direct competitors to steal the designs of its specialized tool for installing the core station engines on SLS.

According to the lawsuit, after some initial discussions, Boeing arranged for a “live” demonstration of Wilson’s torque device, during which participants could handle and operate it to verify the tool’s capability and performance. What Wilson claims it did not realize, however, is that some of the participants in this demonstration were not Boeing employees. “Wilson later learned that at least seven of those in attendance for the live presentation were external to Boeing and were, at the time, employees of Wilson’s direct competitors,” the lawsuit states. “This fact was concealed from Wilson who was deceived by Boeing and the ‘Bogus Boeing Employees’ into giving the presentation by falsely suggesting to Wilson that everyone was a Boeing employee.”

The complaint alleges that Boeing subsequently used information from this demonstration, as well as proprietary drawings and designs, to work with Wilson’s competitors to develop a cheaper solution. “Boeing concealed these facts from Wilson as part of its scheme to defraud Wilson and to transmit Wilson’s IP to its direct competitors,” the lawsuit states.

The company is demanding a jury trial. If its charges are proved true, it will be another piece of evidence demonstrating the level of corruption that exists at Boeing.

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ULA completes dress rehearsal launch countdown and static fire test of Vulcan

9:31 am

ULA yesterday successfully completed a full dress rehearsal launch countdown new Vulcan rocket, including a short 2-second static fire test of the rocket’s two first stage BE-4 engines.

A Vulcan rocket fired its two BE-4 engines in a static-fire test called the Flight Readiness Firing (FRF) at 9:05 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41. The engine start sequence started at T-4.88 seconds, ULA said in a statement an hour after the test, with the engines throttling up to their target level for two seconds before shutting down, concluding the six-second test.

The test appeared to go as planned. “Nominal run,” Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, tweeted moments after the test.

This dress rehearsal had originally been scheduled for late May, but issues on the rocket required ULA to scrub the launch and return the rocket to the assembly building.

There appear to be only three issues remaining before that first launch can occur. First there is the hydrogen leak that caused the destruction of the rocket’s Centaur upper stage during a static fire engine test in March. The company has apparently still not determined what action — if any — must be taken on this.

Second is whether the rocket’s primary payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, is ready for launch. It appears it has completed all ground testing, but there were questions whether its software has been adjusted for a new landing site that NASA assigned it in February.

Third is scheduling. Peregrine’s monthly launch windows are only four to five days long each month. This limitation also has to be juggled with other ULA launches on the same launchpad, using its soon-to-be retired Atlas-5 rocket.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches its rocket for 2nd time

9:17 am

The Chinese pseudo-company CAS Space yesterday successfully launched its rocket Lijian-1 rocket for second time, lifting off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert and carrying a record (for China) of 26 cubesats.

As was usual for China, its state-run press revealed almost nothing about the satellites. Nor did it provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages crash-landed in China, or if they did any damage or landed near habitable areas.

This pseudo-company is actually even more pseudo than other Chinese pseudo-companies, as it is a direct spin-off created by the government Chinese Academy of Sciences, with most of its investors directly linked to that academy.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 43 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 37, with SpaceX by itself beating those other nations combined 38 to 37.

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Firefly delays NASA launch to August

9:16 am

According to papers filed with the FCC, Firefly’s July launch attempt of its Alpha rocket, carrying a set of NASA cubesats, has now been delayed one month to August.

Meanwhile, a second launch by Firefly for the Space Force is presently tentatively scheduled for June, and the company says it is wrapping up preparations for that launch. That contract’s prime focus is to demonstrate to the military the ability to launch with only a 24-hour notice.

If so, then this new rocket company, which has only launched twice before, with the second launch barely reaching orbit, will be launching twice in only a matter of weeks, both times from its launchpad at Vandenberg.

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OneWeb offers its satellite constellation broadband service to the maritime industry

9:06 am

With its full constellation of 634 satellites in orbit, OneWeb has now made its satellite constellation broadband service available to the maritime industry.

With 634 OneWeb operational satellites now in orbit, the OneWeb constellation is complete and fully operational down to 35 degrees latitude. OneWeb will have the final ground stations completed and operational requirements in place, ensuring the company remains on track to deliver full global maritime services by the end of the year. Now OneWeb will start selling services to the maritime industry, via its specialist maritime distribution partners.

OneWeb and its partners have also developed a range of hardware terminal products which are available from trusted maritime communications providers Intellian and Kymeta. Offering hardware terminal products from two established providers with different form factors enables greater choice for customers.

More information here.

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NASA names winners in annual student rocket competition

9:01 am

NASA yesterday named the winners in its annual student rocket launch competition, which took place at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on April 15, 2023.

The live stream of the competition is available here, cued to when the rockets begin launching.

The number of awards is a bit too many, making it seem that NASA wanted to make sure every team got some form of participation award. Nonetheless, these students demonstrated that they will soon be building real rockets, as part of the new and emerging rocket industry.

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NASA: Psyche asteroid mission now targeting October ’23 launch

9:51 am

A report [pdf] from NASA on the steps taken by JPL to get the Psyche asteroid mission back on track after it failed to meet its launch date last fall says those steps are working, and the spacecraft should now succeed in meeting its new October ’23 launch date.

Both the report and today’s press release are filled with vague PR blather interspersed with complementing JPL for addressing the issues, including hiring about a dozen more people to get the main software issue that had prevented last year’s launch solved. I noticed one point however that was not mentioned clearly in the press release nor had been made clear in the earlier investigation report that today’s newly released report labels as “COVID-19 Related” issues.

The return to majority in-person work has made a tremendous difference in restoring visibility and informal communications across the project. Drop-in meetings, social coffee hours, off-site intensives, and individuals “walking the floor” have improved team interaction, problem-solving, efficiency, and trust. The team is also making judicious use of remote and hybrid access options as appropriate to ensure flexibility while not compromising their collaboration.

In other words, the panic over Wuhan had so restricted in-person contact at JPL that it had hampered the project’s development. Based on the vague language used to describe almost everything else mentioned in this new report, it appears that this issue more than anything else contributed the launch delay. Not surprisingly, no one at NASA, JPL, Caltech, or in the government wishes to make this admission bluntly. It would illustrate once again the foolishness of the lockdown policies imposed during the panic by the government and academia.

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Tianzhou unmanned freighter completes month-long free flight, re-docks with Tiangong-3

9:30 am

Engineers today successfully re-docked a Tianzhou unmanned freighter to China’s Tiangong-3 space station after 33 days flying in formation with the station.

As is usual, China released no information about the reasoning behind this free flight, though some reasons are obvious. The station has two docking ports, and during that 33-day time period the station also completed a crew swap, with one Shenzhou capsule docking with three new astronauts while the previous crew and its Shenzhou capsule was still docked. The Tianzhou freighter had to undock to provide a port during this time period for the two manned capsules.

This formation free flight and docking was also likely testing the kind of routine maneuvers China plans to do when it launches its Hubble-class optical space telescope next year. That telescope will fly freely near the station during most of its operations. For maintenance and repair however it is my understanding that it will be brought back to the station and docked with it. The just completed independent flight of the Tianzhou freighter demonstrated this capability.

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Russia to launch Luna-25 on August 11, 2023

9:23 am


Click for interactive map.

According to reports in Russia’s state run press, the new launch date for its Luna-25 lander to the Moon has now been scheduled for August 11, 2023.

The launch of an automatic space probe to the Moon, the Luna-25, is scheduled for August 11 this year, the tour operator RocketTrip has said on its website. “August 11 is the launch date,” the website says in the section devoted to the tour to the Vostochny spaceport for the launch of the Luna-25.

The launch had been scheduled for July. The one month delay was announced last week, with no explanation.

The map shows landing locations of three landers that are all scheduled for launch in the next four months. All are targeting spots near the Moon’s south pole (the white cross).

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Researchers successfully transmit electricity from space

10:22 am

In a test of a system to wirelessly transmit electricity from solar power stations in orbit, researchers from Caltech have succeeded in transmitting a small amount of electricity from an orbiting cubesat launched in January.

“Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space,” [professor Ali] Hajimiri says. “We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there.”

This small scale test mainly proved the technology can survive launch, operate in space, and transmit power back to Earth. Whether the rate of transmission can be profitable remains as yet unknown. Nor is it yet known the effects such energy transmissions through the atmosphere will have.

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German rocket startup successfully completes full duration engine test of upper stage

10:03 am

The German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg on June 2, 2023 successfully completed a full duration engine test of the upper stage of its rocket.

Launch service provider Rocket Factory Augsburg AG (RFA) has successfully hot fired its upper stage for a full duration of 280 seconds. This marks the successful completion of the Integrated System Test (IST) campaign, in which a staged-combustion Helix engine was integrated into an upper stage tank system and hot fired several times up to full duration in the final test. This is the 1st time in Europe that a privately developed staged combustion upper stage has been successfully hot fired.

The company will also use the Helix engine in its first stage, so this test essentially proved its capability for that use as well. With this success, the company will now start constructing the first stage, with the first launch of the entire rocket targeting the end of this year.

Two important tidbits about this story. First, the test was done at a private testing facility in Germany. In the past all such testing was done under the control of the the European Space Agency, at its sites. Germany has essentially now broken that monopoly in its push to develop its own independent rocket industry of competing private companies.

Second, the launch is presently aiming to take off from a launchpad the company has leased and is building at the new Shetland Island spaceport in the United Kingdom. I wonder if it will have the same regulatory problems as Virgin Orbit in getting its launch permit. If so, that launch won’t happen this year.

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Three astronauts return to Earth safely from China’s Tiangong-3 space station

9:49 am

After completing six months in space on China7s Tiangong-3 space station, three astronauts safely returned to Earth yesterday, with their Shenzhou capsule touching down in inner Mongolia.

This mission was the first full six month mission on the station. During their mission they completed four spacewalks. Though little was published about what was accomplished on those EVAs, it is likely it involved completing the construction of the station as well as installing some exterior experiments.

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SpaceX launches 22 2nd generation Starlink satellites

6:19 pm

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 22 2nd generation Starlink satellites into orbit, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 8:20 am (Eastern).

The first stage completed its third flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their sixth and ninth times respectively.

The company had hoped to follow this launch with a second from Cape Canaveral only hours later, sending a new Dragon cargo freighter to ISS, but that launch was scrubbed due to weather concerns later in the day. It has been rescheduled for tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

37 SpaceX
20 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 42 to 20 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 42 to 36. SpaceX by itself leads the world 37 to 36, but when you add other American companies it trails everyone else combined 37 to 42.

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Newly discovered Starliner issues delay launch again

9:24 am

NASA and Boeing revealed today that two newly discovered design issues involving Starliner’s parachutes and the tape used to protect the capsule’s wiring has forced it to cancel the planned June launch, with no firm new launch date scheduled.

The parachute issue involves the parachute cords, specifically the “soft link joints” that connect those lines to the capsule.

[Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner VP] told reporters fabric links that join the parachutes to the lines of the spacecraft, called soft link joints, need to be replaced and possibly recertified to withstand heavier loads and stresses to ensure crew safety. “They were tested recently because of a discovery that we found during the review process where we believed that the data was recorded incorrectly,” Nappi said. “We tested (the soft links), and sure enough, they did fail at the lower limit.” [emphasis mine]

The tape — which has been found to be far more flammable than expected — is difficult to fix.

The second problem found last week is more extensive since the tape used to protect Starliner’s wiring harnesses from nicks or abrasions runs for hundreds of feet through several of the spacecraft’s internal systems. “There is a lot of tape on the wire harnesses,” Nappi said. “We’re looking at solutions that would provide for potentially another type of wrapping over the existing tape in the most vulnerable areas that reduces the risk of a fire hazard.”

That both of these issues were not fixed in development is beyond astonishing and speaks so badly of Boeing’s engineering and management that it is difficult to find words. In fact, for Boeing to use tape that could cause a fire now, more than a half century after the Apollo 1 capsule fire, suggests a level of incompetence that makes one wonder why anyone would ever fly on any of its spacecraft or airplanes. This is certainly not the company that built the 747.

Officials indicated that they might be able fix this issues fast enough that a fall launch could occur, but made no promises.

For Boeing, this new delay only worsens its bottom line. It built Starliner on a fixed-price contract, so every delay and issue must be paid for by it, not NASA. Meanwhile, the delays mean that SpaceX is getting flight contracts to ISS from NASA, contracts that Boeing would have gotten had Starliner been ready as planned. Worse, ISS is now looking at a 2028 retirement. If Boeing doesn’t get Starliner operational soon, there might not even be any contracts for it to win.

I have embedded the full press conference below for those who wish to watch NASA and Boeing officials blather about how they really haven’t done anything stupid here. Really, you have got to believe them!
» Read more

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Viasat completes merger with Inmarsat

9:22 am

After two years dealing with regulatory delays, Viasat has finally completed its purchase of Inmarsat, producing a single company that has 8,000 employees and a fleet of nineteen operating satellites.

The key quote from the link however is this:

Their merger announcement sparked additional consolidation plans as operators look to bolster their defenses amid a growing competitive threat from Starlink in the satellite broadband market. Eutelsat announced plans to buy OneWeb in November 2022 and hopes to complete its merger this summer. SES and Intelsat confirmed March 29 they were in talks about merging, although they have not provided a meaningful update since then.

In other words, the older geosynchronous satellite companies are consolidating because of the competition posed by SpaceX’s Starlink system, which also suggests these companies have never competed very aggressively against each other to cut costs. Now that someone new (SpaceX) has arrived doing that, they find their only option is to merge. Apparently the corporate culture in each separate company finds cutting costs difficult. Merger appears to be their only avenue for doing so.

I wonder what will happen to these old satellite companies when (or if) Amazon finally begins launching and operating its own Kuiper constellation, in direct competition with SpaceX. Unless they finally begin to offer a competitive product at a competitive price, I expect after consolidation we will begin to see bankruptcies.

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Sierra Space powers up its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle for the first time

9:09 am

Sierra Space yesterday announced that it has successfully run electricity for the first time through its first Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity.

The press release is remarkably lacking in detailed information, or graphics. This quote is really the only hard facts mentioned:

Sierra Space simulated the power that will be generated from Dream Chaser’s solar arrays once on orbit. Test engineers plugged that power into Dream Chaser and began turning on systems. Sierra Space exercised flight computers, base processors and low-voltage distribution units.

Tenacity has been under construction since 2016, when the company won its NASA contract to build it. That’s seven years to build a single spacecraft, and yet all they have done so far is feed electricity through it for the first time. In that time period SpaceX not only built multiple prototypes of Starship and Superheavy, it has flown multiple test flights.

Is money an issue? The actual contract amount NASA gave Sierra Space to build Tenacity has never been published, though NASA has said the total awarded for all the cargo missions to be flown by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Sierra Space equaled $14 billion. Since these fixed price contracts also require the companies also commit some of their own funds, or obtain outside financing, it is possible that Sierra Space has had money issues slowing development.

Regardless, Dream Chaser was first supposed to fly in 2020. It is now three years late, with no clear indication that a launch will come anytime soon. In many way, Sierra Space is beginning to remind me of Blue Origin, endlessly issuing promises but never delivering.

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Russia delays launch of its Luna-25 mission one month to August

8:55 am


Click for interactive map.

Russia today announced that it is delaying the July launch of its Luna-25 mission to August.

No reason for the delay was revealed. The mission itself has been under development for almost a quarter century, with numerous delays. It will be the first lunar probe by Russia since the 1970s.

The lunar mission will be launched atop a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Fregat booster from the Vostochny space center in the Russian Far East. Under the lunar project, the Luna-25 automatic station will be launched for studies in the area of the lunar south pole. The lander is set to touch down in the area of the Boguslawsky crater.

The green dot on the map shows this crater, with the white cross the Moon’s south pole. The other two missions are also targeting launches this summer, with Chandrayaan-3 set for a July launch and Nova-C in late September.

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