The competition heats up: Russia’s Proton successfully orbited a Turkish communications satellite on Saturday, the third successful launch in a row since a May 16 launch failure.
They hope to complete two more launches before the year is over.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has rearranged the payloads for its next two launches, delaying the SES-9 geosynchronous communications satellite launch until December to instead launch 11 Orbcomm low-orbit satellites in November.
Using the upgraded Falcon 9, this switch will give them more fuel to try a vertical landing of the first stage on this first launch. They will then try again on the second launch.
The competition heats up: NASA this week awarded contracts ranging from $4.7 to $6.9 million to three different smallsat launch companies.
The companies are Firefly Space Systems, Rocket Lab USA, and Virgin Galactic. The second is the company that just won the contract to put a privately-built lunar rover on the moon (part of the Google Lunar X-Prize).
In the past, cubesats and other small satellites could only afford to be secondary payloads on much larger rockets. Thus, they were at the mercy of the needs of the primary payload, often resulting in significant unplanned delays before launch. This in turn acted to discourage the development of smallsats. Now, with these private launch companies designed to service them exclusively the smallsat industry should start to boom.
Note also the low cost of these contracts. The small size of cubesats and the launchers designed for them means everything about them costs much less. Putting an unmanned probe into space is thus much more affordable.
The settlement between Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne over the failure of an Aerojet Russian engine that failed during an Antares launch has wiped out Aerojet’s entire second quarter profit.
The Rancho Cordova rocket engine maker reported a $38.1 million quarterly loss Tuesday, largely the result of a spectacular launchpad explosion last October that forced Aerojet to pay a hefty settlement to a key customer and prompted the end of a profitable supply contract. Aerojet, which has embarked on a cost-cutting program, said the third-quarter loss came to 62 cents a share. It compared to a year-ago loss of $9.9 million, or 18 cents a share.
The company’s stock has also been declining, probably linked to its loss of business to Blue Origin.
The competition heats up: Orbital ATK has scheduled December 3 as the date of the next Cygnus ISS cargo launch, using a ULA Atlas 5 rocket.
This is almost the same time that SpaceX intends to restart its Falcon 9 launches. Thus, the beginning of December should be quite entertaining.
During an inspection tour of Russia’s new Vostochny spaceport, Vladimir Putin announced that the first launch should be delayed from December to the spring of 2016.
“We do not need any drumbeating reports, we need high-quality results,” Putin said. “So let us agree: you finish the work related to water supply and wastewater disposal. It is necessary to prepare spaceships for launches. And be ready to carry out the first launches in 2016, somewhere in the spring.” “If you do that before Cosmonautics Day, that will be fine,” the president added.
Cosmonautics Day is the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight, April 12, so this is the new deadline Putin is setting. He doesn’t mention anything about the launch assembly building supposedly built to the wrong size.
SpaceX announced today that the next Falcon 9 launch will not occur before December, not mid-November as previously announced.
The announcement occurred at a space conference in Israel, and did not provide any specific launch dates.
The competition heats up: Flights on Worldview high altitude balloon will be offered through the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog.
World View, the commercial balloon spaceflight company, has been included in the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book as one of ten elite Fantasy Gifts. The annual Christmas Book will include an exclusive World View package available only to ten Neiman Marcus customers. This package features the rare opportunity to be a part of a World View test flight with a behind-the-scenes invitation while enjoying luxurious accommodations at the Miraval Resort in Tucson, Ariz. Each package also includes a private tour of Biosphere 2 with original crew member and World View CEO, Jane Poynter, along with a ticket to be one of the first to see Earth from the company’s luxury pressurized capsule.
The competition heats up: ULA has picked the two launchpads it will use for its new Vulcan rocket.
United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan rocket will lift off from the company’s existing Atlas 5 launch facilities in Florida and California, according to the company’s Vulcan program manager. The launch pads at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base will require modifications to accommodate the Vulcan booster, which is wider than the Atlas 5 rocket’s existing first stage, said Mark Peller, ULA’s Vulcan program manager, at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
This decision mainly outlines how ULA hopes to eventually reduce the number of launchpads it must maintain, and thus reduce its costs.
The competition heats up: Russia is negotiating with China to sell them Russian rocket engines.
No deal has been made, but it appears that Russia, faced with the possibility that it might lose the U.S. as a customers, is shopping its product around.
The Pentagon has denied ULA its request for a waiver to allow it to use more Russian engines in its Atlas 5 rocket than allowed by Congress.
It appears the Defense Department is in no hurry to give ULA any slack in its dependence on Russian engines, and instead seems to agree with Congress that the company should stop complaining and get around to replacing those engines as fast as possible.
The competition heats up: Blue Origins has revealed that the next test flight of its suborbital New Shepard capsule and launch rocket will take place before the end of 2015.
They also noted that they will not be selling any tickets for suborbital flights for at least two more years, until they are satisfied that the test flights have proven the system. This is a far cry from other suborbital companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR, who have made big promises to garner ticket sales, and have yet to deliver. Jeff Bezos’s company has instead decided to deliver first, and then sell tickets.
In the end, we shall see who wins the race to put the first tourists into space. What is certain in all this however is that Virgin Galactic has squandered the ten-year headstart it had when it started out in 2004.
In related news, Virgin Galactic says that construction of its second SpaceShipTwo ship is progressing well.
