Tag: competition

SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

8:38 am

Capitalism in space: Earlier this morning SpaceX successfully launched 53 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage was flying its thirteenth flight, and supposedly landed successfully, though the stage’s video cut off just before landing, the drone ship video did not show it on the pad, and the confirmation of that landing was very late. It is possible it landed on a spot that the camera did not show, or that the landing occurred in the ocean and the stage was lost. We shall have to wait and see.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

28 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 40 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 40 to 35.

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Having regained communications with CAPSTONE, engineers prepare for first mid-course burn

8:55 pm

Engineers are now preparing CAPSTONE for its first first mid-course engine burn, slightly late due to a loss of communications during the past two days.

The spacecraft is in good health and functioning properly.

The CAPSTONE team is still actively working to fully establish the root cause of the issue. Ground-based testing suggests the issue was triggered during commissioning activities of the communications system. The team will continue to evaluate the data leading up to the communications issue and monitor CAPSTONE’s status.

If all goes well, that engine burn will occur as early as 11:30 am (Eastern) on July 7th.

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China begins construction of commercial spaceport

9:39 am

The new colonial movement: China’s state-run press today announced the ground-breaking of a spaceport on the southern island of Hainan that will be dedicated to launches by that country’s pseudo-commercial companies.

The location is in Wenchang City, the same location of the country’s Wenchang spaceport used to launch government’s newest Long March rockets. While it isn’t clear from the Chinese news report, this new facility is likely at the same location.

Though China touts this as a commercial facility for private commercial launch companies, everything in China is still controlled and owned by the government. Nothing will happen at this new site that China’s military does not approve.

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Rocket Lab to launch twice in 10 days for NRO

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced yesterday that its next two launches, scheduled for July 12th and July 22nd, will demonstrate the ability of the company to quickly launch reconnaissance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The NROL-162 and NROL-199 missions will carry national security payloads designed, built, and operated by the National Reconnaissance Office in partnership with the Australian Department of Defence as part of a broad range of cooperative satellite activities with Australia. The satellites will support the NRO to provide critical information to government agencies and decision makers monitoring international issues.

These twin missions will be a demonstration of responsive launch under NRO’s Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract for launching small satellite through a streamlined, commercial approach, and are the third and fourth missions contracted to Rocket Lab by the NRO under the contract.

Several federal military agencies have been testing this capability with almost all the new rocket companies, from the large, such as SpaceX, to the small, such as Rocket Lab and Astra.

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Engineers lose contact with CAPSTONE on its way to Moon

2:24 pm

Shortly after the spacecraft was successfully deployed from its Proton upper stage on yesterday, engineers lost contact with the spacecraft as it headed towards the Moon.

“The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network,” NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier wrote in an emailed statement today (July 5).

“If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days,” Frazier added. “Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible.”

The spacecraft will not arrive in lunar orbit until November, but along the way it needs to do a number of course corrections. Thus, there is some time pressure to reestablishing communications. That task now falls with the private company Advanced Space, which won a contract to operate the spacecraft for NASA.

UPDATE: More details are provided by the operators of the spacecraft, Advanced Space press, here. Though they canceled a course correction burn today, they apparently have plenty of time to do it, since the probe is already on a course to reach lunar orbit. The burn was simply intended to increase the accuracy of the trajectory.

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Europe’s new long term space strategy calls for its own independent and competing manned program

10:25 am

Figure 6 from the Terrae Novae policy paper

The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday unveiled a new roadmap for its future space effort, aimed primarily in developing an independent space program capable of launching its own astronauts and taking them to both the Moon and Mars.

The program is dubbed Terrae Novae (“New Worlds”) and aims to put European astronauts on other worlds using its own rockets and landers by the 2030s. The graphic to the right, figure 6 from the policy paper, illustrates this long term goal.

From the full document [pdf]:
» Read more

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ArianeGroup chosen by Europe to develop reusable rockets

9:47 am

The new colonial movement: The European Commission, which makes the major decisions for the European Space Agency, has chosen the European commercial company ArianeGroup to run two programs designed to produce that continent’s first reusable rocket.

From the press release [pdf]:

The SALTO project will facilitate the first flight tests of the Themis reusable stage demonstrator in Kiruna, Sweden. The ENLIGHTEN project will speed up the development and introduction of reusable engine technologies.

The main goal of SALTO will be to develop the kind of vertical landing technology that SpaceX now does routinely. ENLIGHTEN in turn will develop rocket engines using either methane or hydrogen as the fuel. The total budget allocated for both is just under 50 million euros, which seems quite small. The press release also made no mention of a schedule for accomplishing these tasks.

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South Korea ships its first lunar orbiter to U.S. for August launch

9:22 am

The new colonial movement: South Korea today packed and shipped its first lunar orbiter, dubbed Danuri, to the United States for an August 3, 2022 launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, Danuri was sent from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul, to Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, in a specially designed container. The orbiter will be flown to Orlando International Airport and arrive at the Floridian space center Thursday. It will later undergo maintenance, assembly and other pre-launch preparations for about a month before launch.

If all goes right, Danuri will orbit the Moon for a year, both testing its own technology as well as observing the lunar surface.

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Food fight! China denies NASA chief’s charge that it wants to dominate space

9:16 am

On July 2, 2022, in an interview for a German news outlet, NASA administrator described in somewhat overbroad terms the long range goals of the Chinese space program.

“We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,’” Mr. Nelson said in an interview published Saturday in the German newspaper Bild.

….China’s space program, at its heart, is a military space program, Mr. Nelson said. “China is good. But China is also good because they steal ideas and technology from others,” he said, according to Bild.

A China spokesman for its Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, immediately slammed Nelson’s comments, adding some of his own overbroad accusations against the U.S.
» Read more

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Rocket Lab’s Photon completes course corrections, deploys CAPSTONE to Moon

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab’s Photon upper stage successfully completed its seventh engine burn, putting NASA’s cubesat test lunar orbital on a path toward the Moon.

Following its launch on June 28, CAPSTONE orbited Earth attached to Rocket Lab’s Photon upper stage, which maneuvered CAPSTONE into position for its journey to the Moon. Over the past six days, Photon’s engines fired seven times at key moments to raise the orbit’s highest point to around 810,000 miles from Earth before releasing the CAPSTONE CubeSat on its ballistic lunar transfer trajectory to the Moon. The spacecraft is now being flown by the teams at Advanced Space and Terran Orbital. [emphasis mine]

From here on out CAPSTONE will use its own tiny thrusters to do any course corrections as it heads for an arrival in lunar orbit on November 13, 2022.

The highlighted words in the quote above are significant in and of themselves. The spacecraft is not being operated by NASA. In fact, other than paying for it, NASA has little to do with CAPSTONE. It was designed and built by Terran Orbital. It was launched by Rocket Lab. And it is now being controlled by Advanced Space, a private commercial company focused on providing in-space operations for others.

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Virgin Orbit puts seven Space Force smallsats in orbit

10:05 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit last night successfully launched seven smallsats for the Space Force, using its Cosmic Girl 747 carrier plane and its LauncherOne rocket.

This was the company’s first night time launch, and its second in 2022. The leader board for the 2022 launch race remains the same:

27 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 39 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 39 to 35.

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In 2022 freedom continues to fuel the launch industry towards new records

4:27 pm

With 2022 now half over, we can now get a quick sense of the state of the world’s rocket industry by the number of launches that have so far been accomplished this year.

Last year was the most successful year in rocketry since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Both nations and private companies managed to launch successfully 134 times, one more than the previous record in 1975. Similarly, with 48 launches in 2021, the U.S. completed the most launches since the height of the 1960s space race, 48 total.

These high numbers last year also suggested that the growth was not a one time thing, but based on a wider sustained growth that would continue.

It now appears that both these records will be smashed in 2022. Below is a graph showing the total number of successful launches year-by-year by the United States since Sputnik, as of June 30, 2022.
» Read more

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Kepler signs up D-Orbit’s orbital tug for its next two satellites

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: The Canadian company Kepler — which already has nineteen satellites in orbit providing data communications — will use the orbital tug developed by the start-up D-Orbit and dubbed ION on its next two satellites.

After separating from the launch vehicle, D-Orbit intends to use ION to drop Kepler’s satellites off at a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) between 500 and 600 kilometers. Each satellite is the size of six cubesats, a standard smallsat form factor measuring 10 centimeters on each side.

Kepler previously had a deal to use Momentus’s Vigoride tug, but delays and further in-orbit technical problems with that tug has apparently forced it to switch to D-Orbit.

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OneWeb signs up startup rocket company Relativity for future satellite launches

9:34 am

Capitalism in space: The rocket startup Relativity, which hopes to complete its first test launch of its small Terran-1 rocket before the end of the year, yesterday announced that it has won a launch contract with OneWeb to use its larger but not-yet-ready-for-launch Terran-R rocket to place future OneWeb satellites into orbit.

Under the agreement, Relativity will launch OneWeb’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites on Terran-R, the first fully reusable and entirely 3D printed rocket, starting in 2025. These launches will support OneWeb’s deployment of its Gen 2 satellite network, which will add capacity and fresh capabilities to build upon the initial constellation of 648 satellites the company is currently building out.

Since its launch contract with Arianespace using Russian Soyuz rockets fell apart due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, OneWeb has been signing up a range of rocket companies, first SpaceX, then India, now Relativity. Apparently the satellite company realized it was a bad idea to depend on only one rocket, and is now lining up several to make sure its satellites can launch on schedule, no matter what.

For Relativity, this agreement solidifies its future, even before it has completed its first launch. It now has five customers for its Terran-R rocket, with contracts worth $1.2 billion. All it has to do now to become a major player in the global launch market is to get its rockets off the ground.

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ISRO chief: India’s manned mission will be delayed

9:22 am

The new colonial movement: The head of India’s space agency ISRO revealed during a press conference following yesterday’s PSLV launch that he is delaying by one or two years Gaganyaan manned mission.

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Chairman S Somanath on Thursday said the launch of the ambitious Gaganyaan mission, the country’s first manned space flight, cannot happen this year or next year as the agency is keen to ensure that all safety systems are in place.

Somanth’s comments confirm an earlier report. It appears he wants the agency to do at least two unmanned tests of the spacecraft’s crew abort system. He also want further tests of the GSLV rocket that will launch the manned capsule.

Somanth also indicated that India’s next attempt to land a rover on the Moon, Chandrayaan-3, might also be delayed from the presently scheduled August ’22 target launch as they review the lander’s systems.

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FCC approves Starlink for moving vehicles; rejects DISH’s request to use Starlink wavelength

9:06 am

The FCC made two decisions yesterday that were both favorable to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

First, it gave Starlink permission to provide service on moving vehicles such as cars, trucks, boats, and aircraft. Second, it rejected a DISH network request to use a wavelength in its ground-based system that is presently being used by both Starlink and OneWeb satellites.

This decision will continue the shift in communications from high-orbit/ground-based to low-orbit satellite constellations.

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Rocket Lab’s Photon upper stage completes 3rd of 7 engine firings to get CAPSTONE to Moon

9:37 am

Rocket Lab’s Photon upper stage has now successfully completed the third of seven planned engine burns designed to slowly raise the Earth orbit of NASA’s experimental lunar cubesat CAPSTONE so that it can eventually be sent towards the Moon.

Lunar Photon’s HyperCurie engine will perform a series of orbit raising maneuvers by igniting periodically to increase Photon’s velocity, stretching its orbit into a prominent ellipse around Earth. Six days after launch, HyperCurie will ignite one final time, accelerating Photon Lunar to 24,500 mph (39,500 km/h) and setting it on a ballistic lunar transfer. Within 20 minutes of this final burn, Photon will release CAPSTONE into space for the first leg of the CubeSat’s solo flight. CAPSTONE’s journey to NRHO is expected to take around four months from this point. Assisted by the Sun’s gravity, CAPSTONE will reach a distance of 963,000 miles from Earth – more than three times the distance between Earth and the Moon – before being pulled back towards the Earth-Moon system.

Once in lunar orbit, CAPSTONE will be used to both test operations in that orbit (similar to the one NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station will use) while also demonstrating the use of a cubesat on an interplanetary mission.

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Amazon to FCC: Consider limiting SpaceX’s Starlink constellation for our benefit

9:28 am

In a letter sent to the FCC last week, Amazon asked the agency to limit the size of SpaceX’s full constellation so that Amazon will be free to someday launch its own Kuiper constellation.

In the recent letter, Amazon recommends the FCC license a “subset of SpaceX’s proposed system” (as opposed to the whole fleet) to give the agency additional time to consider the “novel challenges” such a significant expansion might present. For example, Amazon believes hundreds to “more than 10,000” of SpaceX’s new satellites could be operating in the altitudes already approved for its Kuiper satellites, which could cause interference in the spectrum and “orbital overlap.” The company claims SpaceX has refused its requests for communication around these concerns as it has urged the FCC to approve its application. It also cites eight other satellite operations who have objected to the plan, including Dish Network, which is currently engaged in a public battle over radio frequencies with SpaceX.

Amazon’s concerns might carry more weight if the launch of its constellation was not so delayed. Both Amazon and SpaceX began development of their satellite constellations at about the same time. Yet, while SpaceX has already launched almost 3,000 satellites, and is providing its service to several hundred thousand customers, Amazon has yet to launch a single satellite.

Thus, though what Amazon is asking the FCC seems reasonable, it is also asking the FCC to block a competitor’s successful operation while it dilly-dallies along, accomplishing little.

This pattern from Amazon fits the pattern of all of Jeff Bezos’s space-related projects: Big promises, little action, and when competitors get things done sue or demand the government play favorites. Sure does not seem to me to be a good long-term business plan.

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India’s PSLV rocket completes launch, putting nine satellites into orbit

9:08 am

India’s PSLV rocket successfully placed nine satellites into orbit today, completing that country’s second launch in 2022.

Since the Wuhan panic arrived in 2020, India’s space program has slowed to a crawl. Beforehand, it had been averaging six launches per year with the expectation that in 2020 it might double that number. Furthermore, the PSLV rocket had been a major player in the emerging smallsat market, routinely putting one to three dozen smallsats into orbit with each launch, with one launch in 2017 putting a record 104 smallsats into orbit.

Then the Wuhan panic arrived and everything stopped. Today’s PSLV launch was only its fifth launch since 2019. With almost all launches canceled, India’s smallsat business moved to SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and other rocket companies that did not panic and continued to launch.

Today’s launch however might signal a renewal. It was not managed by India’s old space agency, ISRO, but a new government agency called NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), which is supposedly focused on encouraging the growth of India’s commercial aerospace sector, independent of the government. Whether a government agency can accomplish such a task in India remains entirely unknown.

The leader board in the 2022 launch race remains the same:

27 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 37 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 37 to 34.

A ULA Atlas-5 launch later today could change these numbers.

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SpaceX launches SES communications satellite

2:14 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched a SES communications satellite, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage, making its second flight, successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. As of this writing, the satellite itself has not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

27 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 37 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 37 to 34.

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Sierra Space signs partnership deal with Turkey

10:15 am

Sierra Space and ESEN (another affiliated company of Sierra Space’s mother company Sierra Nevada) have signed a partnership agreement with the Turkish Space Agency to work together over the next five years in developing Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft and its LIFE orbital space station.

Though the agreement mentions how the three will work together to develop both Dream Chaser and LIFE, because of State department security regulations Sierra Space must be very careful about what technology it reveals to Turkey. I therefore expect the heart of the agreement are these two bullet points from the press release:

  • Space environment utilization on-orbit in LEO, including use of Sierra Space’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) space habitat module
  • Sending payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO) and the moon

Turkey wants to launch its own planetary probes as well as astronauts in order to compete with its Middle East neighbor the UAE. It has thus decided to pay Sierra Space to help it do that. The company can use the cargo Dream Chaser to lift smallsat payloads into orbit, and later use the manned version to lift Turkish astronauts to the LIFE station.

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Axiom leases former Fry’s retail building housing fullscale mock-up of ISS

10:00 am

Capitalism in space: The private commercial space station company Axiom has leased a former Fry’s retail building that also happens to house the only fullscale mock-up of ISS anywhere.

Axiom Space, which has a contract with NASA to test components of its planned Axiom Station at the International Space Station, has leased the former location of Fry’s Electronics in Webster, Texas to house its engineering operations. The former big-box retail store, which closed when the national chain went out of business in 2021, is unique for its football-field-long representation of the ISS.

…Contained within a building that itself was shaped to resemble oversized space station modules, the former Fry’s ISS includes most of the real complex’s major components. The mockup features the U.S. Destiny laboratory, Quest airlock and Cupola; Russia’s Zvezda service module and Zarya functional cargo block (FGB); Japan’s Kibo laboratory; and the European Space Agency Columbus module.

The space station installation also has a replica of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, two models of NASA’s never-realized X-38 emergency crew return vehicle and astronauts (mannequins) in replica spacesuits. Additional oversized modules previously served as product demonstration rooms and an in-store cafe, while most of the station sat among and above aisles of computers and other devices.

Most of the mock-up hangs overhead, out of the way. In reconfiguring the building for its own use, Axiom intends to leave these mock-up units untouched. Engineers will do design work and module development of Axiom’s own station below.

Axiom’s occupation of this building is only temporary. Once its larger facility is completed in the next few years in the industrial park dubbed Houston Spaceport it will shift all operations there.

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SpaceX preps for final engine tests before first orbital Starship/Superheavy flight

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: Having moved its 7th prototype Superheavy booster to the launch pad in Boca Chica even as its installs the six Raptor engines on the 24th prototype of Starship, SpaceX is now about to begin the final engines tests prior to the first orbital Starship/Superheavy flight.

For the first time the chopstick arms on the launch tower were used to lift and place the Superheavy booster onto the pad. It is expected that static fire tests of its 33 Raptor engines could begin within the next few weeks.

The orbital Starship meanwhile is still in the assembly building, where engineers are installing its own six Raptor engines.

Though SpaceX has not made public the exact schedule of tests leading to launch, it is expected that the company will do a short static fire test program with Superheavy alone, and then do a follow-up short series of tests once the Starship prototype is stacked on top. Based on past history, if the tests show no problems SpaceX will quickly move to launch. Though there have been indications that it is targeting July, it would not be surprising if that date slips to August.

The race between Starship and SLS for which will get into orbit first appears to be tightening.

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Scientists claim rocket launches are going to damage ozone layer

9:25 am

Junk science: This week NOAA government scientists published a paper claiming that the upcoming increase in rocket launches worldwide is a threat to the ozone layer and will also — my heart be still — promote climate change!

The study found that a tenfold increase in the amount of soot injected into the stratosphere every year would after 50 years lead to an annual temperature increase in that layer of 1 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius). The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere just above the lowest troposphere. The study found that the projected warming would slow down subtropical jet streams, bands of strong wind circling the planet at the lower edge of the stratosphere that influence the African and Indian summer monsoons.

Warmer temperatures in the stratosphere would also degrade the protective ozone layer, which blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun from reaching the planet’s surface.

The paper’s abstract also said this:

We show that the rocket black carbon increases stratospheric temperatures and changes the global circulation, both of which cause a reduction in the total ozone column, mainly in the northern high latitudes. Comparing the amplitude of the atmospheric response using different emission rates provides insight into stratospheric adjustment and feedback mechanisms. Our results show that the stratosphere is sensitive to relatively modest black carbon injections.

This is garbage science, and I wouldn’t bother posting a link to it if other news sources weren’t promoting it. These predictions — based on a very simple computer model — are nothing more than guesses, and are apparently designed to both attack the growing space industry as well as garner funding for more such junk science, as illustrated by this quote from the NOAA press release:

“We need to learn more about the potential impact of hydrocarbon-burning engines on the stratosphere and on the climate at the surface of the Earth,” said lead author Christopher Maloney, a CIRES research scientist working in NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory. “With further research, we should be able to better understand the relative impacts of different rocket types on climate and ozone.”

For almost a half century climate scientists — many working for government agencies like NASA and NOAA — have been publishing junk papers like this, predicting climate doom in only a few decades unless we do as they say, while funneling boatloads of cash into their pockets. Almost none of those predictions have turned out to be correct.

This report is equally suspect, especially because it touts the false statistic that “launch rates have tripled in recent decades.” The number of launches has not tripled from its long-term average since Sputnik. The only way you can get manufacture that fake statistic is if you compare last year’s total (134) with the launch numbers from the early 1960s, before the space race had even begun. And while the launch numbers are likely to rise dramatically in the coming years, the numbers will still be infinitesimal compared to other industries. Going from 50-100 launches to 200-500 launches is hardly the end of the world.

It really is far past time for the press and the general public to stop listening to these fake papers.

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Virgin Orbit signs deal to launch from Brazil

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit yesterday announced that it has signed an agreement with the Brazil Space Agency (AEB) to establish facilities and conduct launches from that nation’s long unused Alcântara spaceport.

The license is granted to Virgin Orbit Brasil Ltda. (VOBRA), a newly formed and wholly owned Brazilian subsidiary dedicated to bringing the LauncherOne air-launch rocket system to the Alcântara Launch Center (Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara, CLA).

The formation of the VOBRA entity for dedicated Brazilian space activities is designed to bring an important new capability to the country and economic value to the region. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne system, which uses a customized 747 aircraft, Cosmic Girl, as its flying and fully reusable launch pad, will conduct launches from the existing airbase at the Brazilian site, flying hundreds of miles before releasing the rocket directly above the equator — a global sweet spot — or at other optimal locations identified for each individual mission.

Being able to launch smallsats from the equator gives Virgin Orbit the ability to place those satellites in any orbit around the Earth for far less fuel, an advantage not available to spaceports at higher latitudes.

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China and Rocket Lab complete successful launches

8:51 am

Two launches this morning herald the upcoming busy launch schedule for the last few days of June.

First China launched from its Jiuquan interior spaceport an Earth observation satellite using its Long March 4C rocket. As is usual with China, the first stage crashed on land, though no details have been provided.

Next, Rocket Lab used its Electron rocket to send NASA’s CAPSTONE cubesat lunar probe on its way to the Moon. More information here.

CAPSTONE is currently in low-Earth orbit, and it will take the spacecraft about four months to reach its targeted lunar orbit.

…CAPSTONE is attached to Rocket Lab’s Lunar Photon, an interplanetary third stage that will send CAPSTONE on its way to deep space. Shortly after launch, Lunar Photon separated from Electron’s second stage. Over the next six days, Photon’s engine will periodically ignite to accelerate it beyond low-Earth orbit, where Photon will release the CubeSat on a ballistic lunar transfer trajectory to the Moon. CAPSTONE will then use its own propulsion and the Sun’s gravity to navigate the rest of the way to the Moon. The gravity-driven track will dramatically reduce the amount of fuel the CubeSat needs to get to the Moon.

Once at the Moon, the spacecraft will enter a polar orbit varying from 1000 to 43,500 miles from the surface, with its prime mission to test operations in that lunar orbit.

Not only did NASA hire a private company, Rocket Lab, to launch it, the agency also hired a private company, Terran Orbital, to build it.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

26 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 36 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 36 to 34.

For the rest of June, the American companies SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, and ULA all have planned launches, as well as India. If all succeed, that would put the total launches in the first half of ’22 at 74, a pace that would almost reach 150 launches by the end of the year, smashing the annual record set last year. The U.S.’s pace in turn is likely to exceed the number of launches it completed in all of ’22 in July, with the possibility it could complete 75-80 launches by the end of the year, exceeding the U.S. annual record of 70 set in 1966.

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NASA completes suborbital launch from commercial spaceport in Australia

8:59 am

Early this morning NASA successfully completed its first rocket launch from Australia since 1995, launching a suborbital payload from a new commercial spaceport on the northern coast of Australia.

The rocket is Nasa’s first of three to blast off from the newly constructed Arnhem Space Centre on the edge of the Northern Territory. Scientists hope it will help them study the impact of a star’s light on the habitability of nearby planets.

Onlookers who travelled to the remote site glimpsed the rocket for only about 10 seconds before it shot out of view.

After a short fifteen minute flight the sounding rocket and payload were recovered. The next suborbital launch is scheduled for July 4th.

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Iran claims it has completed a second suborbital test of new rocket

8:48 am

According to Iran’s state-run press, it yesterday successfully completed the second suborbital test of its new Zuljanah rocket.

The announcement said nothing about where or when the launch took place. According to this Iranian report, the rocket “has two solid propulsion phases and a single liquid propulsion phase.”

The rocket had completed a suborbital test in January 2021. In March 2022 satellite imagery suggested a second test had exploded on the launchpad sometime in late February.

Since the video of the launch provides no specific information about where or when, it is quite possible it is simply footage from the January 2021 launch. It will require orbital imagery to confirm this claim.

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