Tag: competition

SpaceX signs deal with Royal Caribbean to use Starlink on its cruise ships

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has won a contract with the Royal Caribbean cruise line to provide broadband internet service to its passengers using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

Deployment of the Starlink technology across the fleet will begin immediately, leveraging the insights obtained from the trial onboard Freedom of the Seas, which has received tremendous positive feedback from guests and crew. The installation is slated to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2023.

The apparent success of Starlink on Royal Caribbean’s ships suggests it will quickly start appearing on other cruise lines shortly.

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Orbit Fab to offer orbital depot for refueling hydrazine fuel in satellites

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: Orbit Fab is now offering to launch for satellite customers an orbital hydrazine fuel depot, essentially a “gas station” in space, that can be used to refill that fuel on geosynchronous satellites.

Orbit Fab, a startup developing infrastructure for in-space refueling of spacecraft, will start offering hydrazine for satellites in geostationary orbit as soon as 2025 at a price of $20 million.

The company announced Aug. 30 its plans to start offering refueling services for GEO spacecraft using a depot and “fuel shuttle” spacecraft. That depot will also be able to support spacecraft such as servicing vehicles that can travel to the depot for “self-service” refueling.

At the $20 million price announced by Orbit Fab, the company would provide up to 100 kilograms of hydrazine. It’s the first time that the company has set a price for providing fuel, a move it says it made to help potential customers better understand the economics of refueling.

The depot would be placed in orbit slightly above that of geosynchronous satellites. A shuttle robot would dock with it, obtain the fuel, and then fly to a customer’s satellite, dock and refuel it. If that shuttle is built by Orbit Fab, the customer’s satellite will need the company’s standard refueling port. For geosynchronous satellites without that port, Orbit Fab is willing to partner with other orbital refueling and satellite servicing spacecraft, such as Northrop Grumman’s and Astroscale’s repair robot satellites.

This plan has several firsts. It is the first to offer a price for a specific amount of fuel. It also appears to be the first to refuel the hydrazine in satellites. Finally, it illustrates the on-going compartmentalization of the satellite servicing industry. Some companies are making tugs. Some are launching repair robots. Others are making robots to remove space junk. And Orbit Fab is going to build fuel stations where everyone else can get fuel.

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SpaceX launches another 46 Starlink satellites into orbit

10:50 pm

Capitalism in space: Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully placed another 46 Starlink satellites into orbit, launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings also completed their third flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

39 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 54 to 33 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 54 to 51.

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Astra gets contract to provide engines to OneWeb satellites

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Astra, the startup rocket company that recently announced a cessation in launches, has won a contract to provide engines used by OneWeb satellites to maneuver in orbit.

he Astra Spacecraft Engine was designed by Apollo Fusion, which Astra acquired last year. It is an electric Hall engine and has been used by York Space Systems, Spaceflight’s Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) Sherpa-LTE, and a U.S. Air Force intelligence satellite. Astra signed a deal earlier this year to supply the engines to LeoStella.

In retrospect, the purchase by Astra of Apollo last year was a signal that the company might be shifting its gears away from rocketry, at least in the short term. This contract, along with the others won by Apollo before Astra bought it, provides Astra a survival profit stream even as it has leaves the rocket launch market while attempting to develop its proposed larger Rocket-4. Whether it can resume launches eventually remains somewhat doubtful, as a number of new rocket companies should become operational in the interim, making that smallsat launch market very crowded.

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August 29, 2022 Quick space links

2:19 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay:

As I’ve said numerous times, I’ll believe this engine is a flight engine when I see it in flight.

The link goes to the research paper from the Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Electricity, which is in Chinese except for the abstract. This tweet highlights the “leg deploying test and full-scale landing impact experiment” from that paper.

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SpaceX launches 54 Starlink satellites into orbit

8:52 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight used its Falcon 9 rocket to put another 54 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The flight’s fairings completed their third flight. The first stage successfully completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. That stage however had an interesting first flight:

Known as B1069, the booster was damaged during recovery on a drone ship Dec. 21 after launching its first mission, sending a Dragon cargo ship toward the International Space Station. The rough recovery damaged the rocket’s engines and landing legs, causing the rocket to return aboard the drone ship to Port Canaveral on a tilt. The damage forced SpaceX and NASA to switch to a backup Falcon 9 booster for the launch of four astronauts to the space station in April. That launch was originally supposed to use B1069, which has been refurbished with new engines and other components.

In the past, rocket companies and NASA would have automatically thrown out this stage after being damaged. SpaceX however now treats these first stages like airplanes, repairable for reflight, even if damaged. Tonight’s flight proved the robustness of this strategy, and it did it carrying the most mass of any previous Falcon 9 launch.

The leaders in 2022 launch race:

38 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 53 to 33, and the entire world combined 53 to 51.

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Federal court rejects lawsuit by Dish/Viasat against Starlink

9:11 am

A U.S. appeals court has rejected a lawsuit by Starlink competitors Dish and Viasat that had claimed a plan by SpaceX to deploy some satellites in a lower orbit would have “potential environmental harms when satellites are taken out of orbit; light pollution that alters the night sky; orbital debris; collision risks that may affect Viasat; and because ‘Viasat will suffer unwarranted competitive injury.'”

This decision was the second time the courts have rejected this lawsuit, which by Viasat’s own words above is expressly designed mostly to block a competitor, not protect the environment or reduce space junk.

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Starliner manned launch delayed until 2023

8:42 am

NASA and Boeing yesterday announced that the first manned flight of a Starliner capsule has been delayed again, and will not occur before February 2023, at the earliest.

This delay is in order to fix the various thruster problems that occurred in the second unmanned demo flight in May 2021, dubbed OFT-2.

Nappi said some “debris-related conditions” likely caused those thrusters to shut down, but later noted that is their best estimate since the OMAC thrusters are in a service module that burns up on reentry and is not recovered. “We do not know where the debris may have come from,” he said. “The bottom line is that it looks to be the leading root cause, and we’ve eliminated that by looking at the CFT vehicle and making sure that there’s absolutely no debris in the system.”

Several reaction control thrusters also shut down during the mission, which Nappi said was likely due to low inlet pressures and can be addressed with a “tweak in timing and tolerances” in software. High pressures in a thermal control loop noticed in the mission were linked to filters that engineers determined are not needed and can be removed. A guidance system on the spacecraft called VESTA worked well but generated more data than the flight software could handle, requiring changes to the software. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words indicate once again that there are quality control problems at Boeing. For any “debris” to get into the thrusters without notice means someone at some point wasn’t doing things right.

SpaceX and Boeing got contracts to fly humans on their commercial capsules at the same time, in 2014. SpaceX began those flights in 2020, about three years behind schedule, mostly due to NASA-imposed delays. Boeing has still not flown, with almost all its delays resulting from company failures, almost all of which were uncovered during the two unmanned demo flights in 2019 and 2022.

Hopefully, the company will finally get the last kinks from the system before next year’s flight. In the meantime its inability to get this job done on time has meant it has lost a lot of commercial business, all of which went to SpaceX.

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T-Mobile and Starlink to team up

9:10 pm

SpaceX and T-Mobile today announced that sometime next year T-Mobile cell phones will use the Starlink satellite constellation to fill in any dead zones in its cell coverage.

T-Mobile says it’s getting rid of mobile dead zones thanks to a new partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet, at an event hosted by T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and Elon Musk. With their “Coverage Above and Beyond” setup, mobile phones could connect to satellites and use a slice of a connection providing around 2 to 4 Megabits per second connection (total) across a given coverage area.

That connection should be enough to let you text, send MMS messages, and even use “select messaging apps” whenever you have a clear view of the sky, even if there’s no traditional service available. According to a press release from T-Mobile, the “satellite-to-cellular service” will be available “everywhere in the continental US, Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and territorial waters.” The service is scheduled to launch in beta by the end of next year in “select areas,” and Sievert says he hopes it will someday include data.

The system will require Starlink’s second generation satellites, which right now also require SpaceX’s big Starship for launch. Once operational however it will work on the cell phones customers already own.

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Indian research project for China’s space station threatened by Chinese-India military conflict

11:21 am

A science instrument from India, slated to fly on a Chinese rocket to China’s Tiangong-3 space station, is now threatened by the military tensions between the two nations.

The project, called Spectrographic Investigation of Nebular Gas (SING), also involves collaboration with the [India] Institute of Astronomy [IIA], Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been designed and developed by research students at the IIA. The plan is to have it ready by the year end so that it can be launched in the summer of 2023. Though the plan is on schedule, scientists at the IIA are now consulting with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as well as the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on whether they are in the clear to go ahead with the project.

Chinese and Indian troops have been engaged in a prolonged stand-off in eastern Ladakh. The two sides have so far held 16 rounds of Corps Commander-level talks to resolve the stand-off, which erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong lake area.

It appears the Indian government is having second thoughts about this cooperative project. After decades of naive trust in the communists from both Russia and China, it seems India has finally realized the communists really have little interest in helping India, being more focused on using it for good PR while it steals Indian technology. Moreover, India now realizes that China has become a dangerous neighbor, willing to use its newfound power violently at the border between the two countries.

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SpaceX remounts Superheavy prototype #7 on launchpad

11:05 am

Superheavy #7 lifted onto launchpad

Capitalism in space: Using its giant launch tower crane that Elon Musk has dubbed Mechazilla, SpaceX engineers yesterday remounted the seventh Superheavy prototype onto the orbital launchpad in preparation for more engine tests leading to its first flight.

Booster 7 has been atop this launch mount before. Earlier this month, SpaceX conducted two “static fire” tests with Booster 7, firing the vehicle up while it remained attached to the mount.

Both of those tests — which occurred on Aug. 9 and Aug. 11, respectively — lit up just a single Raptor engine (apparently, a different one each time). And Booster 7 wasn’t fully outfitted at the time, sporting just 20 of its 33 engines (opens in new tab) (the vast majority of which stayed dormant during the tests).

After the Aug. 11 test, SpaceX lifted the Super Heavy prototype off the mount and hauled it back to a processing bay at Starbase. Technicians installed the remaining 13 Raptors and got it ready for Tuesday’s move back to the pad.

The picture above was sent out by Musk on his Twitter feed. Note the number of engines at the base. The tower itself, acting as a crane, has also simplified and speeded up operations. SpaceX can now quickly move the rocket back and forth from the assembly building, without the need of separate cranes.

The company is still targeting early September for the first orbital launch, though it also still needs to stack Starship prototype #24 (seen in the background) on top of Superheavy, and then do more tests.

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Two Chinese pseudo-companies pursuing suborbital tourist market

9:35 am

Link here. One company is apparently copying Blue Origin’s New Shepard, though its capsule’s exterior looks more like a copy of SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The other company however is doing something very unusual for a Chinese space operation. It appears to be designing something original, not a copy of some American achievement.

Space Transportation’s goal is to develop a suborbital spaceplane capable of carrying tourists on suborbital flights. The winged system is very different from Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, which is currently in flight test.

A larger Space Transportation vehicle would be a high-speed transport that would fly between distant locations on Earth in less than two hours.

…The company released very little information about the six launches it conducted this year. It’s not even clear where the flights took place, although Wikipedia indicates they might have been conducted from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

If successful, Space Transportation will have have done something almost unprecedented for China, building something from an entirely original design.

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NASA describes Starship’s first unmanned test lunar landing

9:28 am

In a briefing focused on the science that could be placed on the mission, a NASA official yesterday provided a status update of SpaceX’s first unmanned test flight by Starship to the Moon.

First, the official revealed that NASA is only requiring SpaceX to demonstrate a successful landing. Take-off will not be required. Also,

Starship is not designed to fly directly to the Moon like NASA’s Space Launch System, however. Instead, the first stage puts it only in Earth orbit. To go further, it must fill up with propellant at a yet-to-be-built orbiting fuel depot. Other Starships are needed to deliver propellant to the depot.

Watson-Morgan described the Concept of Operations for Starship’s Artemis III mission, starting with launch of the fuel depot, then a number of “propellant aggregation” launches to fill up the depot, then launch of the Starship that will go to Moon.

Previously SpaceX suggested that the ship would be directly refueled by subsequent Starships, with no middle-man fueling depot. It could be either engineering had made the depot necessary, or NASA politics have insisted upon it.

Finally, the talk outlined the elevator SpaceX is developing to lower the astronauts and equipment to the ground from Starship’s top.

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China launches hi-res Earth observation satellite

9:14 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to place a new version of a smallsat Earth observation satellite into orbit. Dubbed the Beijing-3B, it appears to be an upgrade of a design first launched last year.

The launch site was in the interior of China, and for certain dumped its first stage onto that interior.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 33 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 51.

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August 23, 2022 Quick space links

1:47 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay:

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SpaceX to use both Falcon 9 and Starship to launch 2nd gen Starlink satellites

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: In a letter sent to the FCC, SpaceX has revealed that it has revised its plans for launching the second generation of Starlink satellites, and has decided to launch them with both Falcon 9 and Starship rockets.

SpaceX has decided to use a mix of Falcon 9 and Starship rockets to launch the 30,000 satellites in its proposed second-generation Starlink broadband constellation. Launching some of the satellites with SpaceX’s “tested and dependable Falcon 9” will accelerate the constellation’s deployment to improve Starlink services. SpaceX director of satellite policy David Goldman wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to the Federal Communications Commission. Goldman did not say when SpaceX could start launching the second-generation constellation, which remains subject to FCC approval.

Previously the company’s plan had been to use Starship only, essentially retiring Falcon 9 once Starship was flying. This change could be for two fundamental reasons. First, the company has been launching Starlinks on Falcon 9 like clockwork this year, at a pace that could launch as many as 2,500 Starlink satellites in 2022 alone. With about 70% of that rocket reusable, it might now seem cost effective to continue to use it, even after Starship is flying.

The second reason is more worrisome, and has to do with Starship itself. SpaceX officials might now realize that the delays being imposed by the federal regulatory leviathan on Starship development might be significant enough that it won’t be ready when they need it for the full deployment of Starlink’s second generation constellation. If the FCC approves that deployment (an approval that is presently pending), SpaceX will have to launch at least half the full constellation of 30,000 satellites by around 2024 (thought that date might have been revised slightly).

It now might be necessary to use Falcon 9, because the federal government under Biden is standing in the way of Starship development.

Of course, it is possible that the engineering challenge of building Starship might be another reason. SpaceX might have realized that the rocket will be delayed anyway, and thus needs Falcon 9 to meet its timetable as promised to the FCC.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches satellite

8:47 am

China today successfully used its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket to launch what appears to be a technology test satellite for the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As the launch was from an interior spaceport in China, the rocket’s first stages crashed somewhere inland.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
32 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 32 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 50.

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NASA again approves design concept for Orbital Reef commercial space station

10:53 am

Proposed Orbital Reef space station

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space announced today that NASA has completed, apparently for the second time, the design review for the Orbital Reef space station that the company wants to build in partnership with Blue Origin and others, thus allowing the actual design of the station to begin.

This press release announcement, on August 22, 2022, is a bit puzzling, as Sierra Space made almost the exact same announcement in April 2022. What, did NASA have to do this twice? Did issues come up after the first approval? Was the agency reviewing different things?

Regardless, NASA as usual is slowing things down considerably. Sierra Space and Blue Origin, the primary partners in this private space station project, first announced it in October 2021. It took the government almost a year to simply approve the basic concept so that the design phase could finally begin. At this pace it will be 2090 before the station is launched.

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SpaceX and China complete launches

12:51 pm

Two launches have just occurred in the 2022 launch race. First, SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage successfully landed on its drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its ninth flight.

China in turn used its Long March 2D rocket to launch three military reconnaissance satellites, at what was the early morning hours of August 20, 2022, China time. The launch path took the rocket over China’s interior as well as Taiwan, with the first stage crashing somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
31 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 31 in the national rankings, and the entire world 52 to 49. The 52 launches so far this year is now the fifth best total for the U.S. since the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

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Indian company delivers Gaganyaan fairing and high altitude launch abort motor to ISRO

10:28 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian private company, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, yesterday delivered to India’s space agency ISRO the fairing and high altitude launch abort motor that will be used in Gaganyaan, that nation’s first manned spaceflight.

Though the article at the link does not say so, the fairings and abort motor will likely be used in one of two unmanned launch abort test flights ISRO intends to do before the actual manned mission, now set for sometime in ’24.

Hindustan Aeronautics is also a space company in India that will require watching. It not only built these major components for Gaganyaan, it also has built major components for India’s PSLV and GSLV rockets. It would not surprise me if the company eventually decides to build its own rocket, assuming the India government loosens the stranglehold it presently has over space and lets private companies compete against its government space operations. It was a similar stranglehold by NASA from the 1970s to the 2000s that squelched competition and innovation from the American private aerospace industry. When that ended, the renaissance in commercial space finally could begin.

UPDATE: It appears I was in error assuming Hindustan Aeronauts was a private company, as it is owned by the Indian government. I have edited the post above to reflect this. It appears the stranglehold the government has over India’s aerospace industry is no closer to loosening.

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Firefly completes a dress rehearsal countdown of Alpha rocket; schedules launch

10:14 am

Capitalism in space: Having successfully completed both a full dress rehearsal countdown and static fire test of its fully stacked Alpha rocket, Firefly Aerospace has now scheduled the rocket’s launch for September 11, 2022.

These details come from a tweet by the company, so details are very limited. Nonetheless, this will be the company’s second attempt to complete an orbital launch. The first attempt, in September 2021, failed when one of its first stage engines shut down prematurely.

The company had hoped to attempt this second launch ten months ago, but was forced to delay it when the federal government demanded its chief investor, Ukrainian billionaire Max Polykov, first sell off his share in the company.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Raytheon & Northrop Grumman successfully complete the second flight of a hypersonic missile prototype

10:04 am

Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, working in partnership, have successfully flown a hypersonic missile prototype for the second time in eleven months.

For the latest test, the HAWC prototype was carried under the wing of an aircraft and flown to high altitude, where it was released. A solid rocket booster then accelerated the vehicle to supersonic speed and a scramjet ignited. An engine without moving parts, a scramjet uses its forward motion to compress the incoming air into a shockwave that burns with fuel, producing enough thrust to propel the missile to over five times the speed of sound.

The latest prototype had only minor modifications from the previous flight and met all of its objectives. The data recovered by telemetry will be used to improve the digital models using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, which will increase the efficiency and performance as the weapon concept comes closer to practical deployment.

As this is a military project, not many details about the prototype were released, such as its size, speed, design.etc. One shouldn’t even trust the illustrations of the missile, provided by Northrop Grumman. Each shows the missile with a rounded lifting body shape on its bottom side, likely to protect and guide it on its re-entry, but there is no guarantee the illustrations’ shape matches that of the real missile.

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Maritime Launch Services signs land lease for its Nova Scotia spaceport

9:54 am

Capitalism in space: Maritime Launch Services yesterday obtained a 20-year land lease for its Nova Scotia spaceport from the province of Nova Scotia.

The lease covers 334.5 acres, and is renewable for an additional 20 years.

Unlike other spaceports, Maritime isn’t merely providing a launch site for rocket companies. Instead the company will also launch smallsats itself, using a Ukrainian-built rocket dubbed the Cyclone-4M. Initially the plan was to fly all launches in this manner, but the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia has caused Maritime to look for other launch providers as well.

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Starship gets its first communications satellite customer

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: Sky Perfect JSAT, a Japanese satellite communications company, today awarded SpaceX a launch contract using its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket to put its Superbird-9 communications satellite into orbit in 2024.

Superbird-9 will be launched by SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle in 2024 to geosynchronous transfer orbit. SpaceX’s Starship is a fully reusable transportation system that will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle. SKY Perfect JSAT and SpaceX will continue to work together ahead of the launch of Superbird-9 Satellite.

Sky Perfect is the first communications satellite company to choose Starship for a satellite launch. It is however the rocket’s fourth signed customer. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa made a deal in 2018 for a flight around the Moon, while NASA chose Starship in 2021 as the manned lunar lander in its Artemis program. UPDATE: SpaceX also has a second private manned customer, Jared Isaacman, whose present deal with SpaceX calls for two Dragon flights followed by a Starship flight.

Sky Perfect is not a new company, with sixteen satellites already in orbit providing communications, broadband, and entertainment to Japan and the Far East. It likely made this deal because it got a very good launch price, with options to back out if the rocket’s on-going development gets delayed by too much. It also made the deal because it helps to solidify Starship’s future, something Sky Perfect probably sees as a win considering the significant reduction of launch costs expected from Starship/Superheavy.

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A detailed description of Rocket Lab’s private Venus mission

10:00 am

Planned insertion of Rocket Lab's probe into Venus's atmosphere
Click for full figure.

Capitalism in space: In partnership with scientists at MIT, the Planetary Science Institute, and others, Rocket Lab engineers this week published a detailed description of the company’s planned privately funded mission to Venus, presently targeting a launch in May 2023.

From the paper’s abstract:

The Rocket Lab mission to Venus is a small direct entry probe planned for baseline launch in May 2023 with accommodation for a single ~1 kg instrument. A backup launch window is available in January 2025. The probe mission will spend about 5 min in the Venus cloud layers at 48–60 km altitude above the surface and collect in situ measurements. We have chosen a low-mass, low-cost autofluorescing nephelometer to search for organic molecules in the cloud particles and constrain the particle composition.

The figure above is figure 6 from the paper. It shows the probe’s planned path through Venus’s atmosphere. If the mission launches in May ’23 the probe would enter the atmosphere in October ’23.

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Astrobotic makes bid to buy assets of bankrupt Masten

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: Astrobotic, a startup focused on building lunar and planetary unmanned landers, has now made a formal bid to buy the remaining assets of Masten Space Systems, which had also been a startup focused on planetary missions but recently went bankrupt.

In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Delaware Aug. 14, Masten said it received a “stalking horse” bid of $4.2 million for Masten’s assets, including a SpaceX launch credit worth $14 million, from Astrobotic. The agreement, in effect, sets a minimum price for the sale of those assets but does not prevent Masten from seeking higher bids through an auction process that runs through early September.

The agreement appears to supersede an earlier agreement between Masten and a third lunar lander company, Intuitive Machines, included in Masten’s Chapter 11 filing July 28. That agreement covered the SpaceX launch credits alone and Masten did not disclose the value of it in its original filing.

Masten’s long term specialty has been vertical take-off and landing, something it has successfully done for the last several years on suborbital flights. This technology would be of great value to both Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines in developing their own first lunar landers.

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Merger deal between Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit and Breeze canceled

8:52 am

Capitalism in space: The merger deal between the Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit and the special purpose acquisition investment company (SPAC) Breeze has been canceled.

The Italian company had hoped to raise $185 million from the deal to expand staff and accelerate investments in ION Satellite Carrier, its orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) that completed its first commercial mission in late 2020.

However, “financial markets have changed substantially” since the deal was announced Jan. 27, Breeze CEO Douglas Ramsey said, amid rising interest rates, soaring inflation, and an ongoing war in Ukraine. “As we look ahead, we remain focused on identifying another value creating opportunity for Breeze shareholders,” Ramsey added.

A SPAC is a shell company designed solely to gather investment capital that is then used to either buy or merge with another company. In the process the company that is taken over goes public, its stock available on the stock market for trade. There have been a number of such takeovers in the space sector in the past few years, but most have turned out poorly for the investors in those SPACs, as noted in the article:

Of the nine space companies that went public through SPAC mergers in 2021, only Rocket Lab’s shares finished the year trading above their price when the merger closed. [Ed: both Virgin Galactic and Astra are examples of these failures.]

Demand for new SPAC deals has also been waning amid declining investor appetite for risk and increasing regulatory scrutiny over how these blank check firms operate. More than 40 SPAC mergers have been canceled so far this year, reported Bloomberg.

To put it more bluntly, investors have found these SPACs to be poor investments, and are bailing from them. This is likely what happened at Breeze, thus forcing the cancellation of the deal with D-Orbit.

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