Tag: Falcon 9

Vast announces first two customer payloads on its Haven-1 space station

12:28 pm

Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing

The space station startup Vast today announced the first two customers planning to place payloads on its Haven-1 single module space station, presently scheduled for launch in the second half of 2025.

The company also revealed that these payloads will be installed on the station in what it calls its Haven-1 Lab, which is essentially a variation of the payload rack system used on ISS.

The Haven-1 Lab features 10 Middeck Locker Equivalent payload slots, each roughly the size of a microwave. Each payload slot can weigh up to 30 kg (66 lbs), is provided with 100 W of continuous power, and has access to an Ethernet data connection. Payloads will be operated by the astronaut crew on Haven-1, as well as commanded and monitored by ground operators via Starlink laser links, providing Gigabit/s speed, low latency connectivity. Partners will have the opportunity to return products and samples from space via a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

In tandem with Vast’s announcement of its Haven-1 Lab, the company also announced Redwire and Yuri as its inaugural partners, representing some of the foremost experts in the development of microgravity payloads.

Redwire has flown numerous payloards already to ISS, including cutting edge 3D printers. Yuri is less well known, but it appears both it and Redwire are taking advantage of Vast’s much simpler paperwork requirements than NASA’s. Vast has taken no NASA funds, so it can approve payloads at its whim. Speeds things up, saves money, and everyone benefits.

These payloads will likely be part of the first Haven-1 manned mission, where four astronauts will spend 30 days in space, ferried to and from the module using a Dragon capsule and launched almost immediately after Haven-1 is placed in orbit.

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SpaceX launches another 20 Starlink satellites

9:30 am

I had my days wrong last night. In the previous post I said that SpaceX had another launch scheduled for later tonight. In actuality that launch was today, but in the wee hours early this morning. Four hours after a Falcon 9 placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral, another Falcon 9 placed 20 Starlink satellites into orbit from Vandenberg in California. That’s three launches in just one day.

The first stage completed its seventeenth launch, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

74 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 86 to 47, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 74 to 59.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

10:17 pm

SpaceX tonight completed its second launch in two nights since resuming launches after a two-week halt after the July 11th upper stage launch failure, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral and placing another 23 Starlink satellites in orbit.

The first stage completed its fourteenth launch, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

73 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 85 to 47, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 73 to 59.

SpaceX has another launch scheduled for tomorrow night.

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To guarantee no capsule debris hits inhabited areas, SpaceX to move its manned splashdowns to Pacific

10:32 am

As part of the changes SpaceX is instituting to the de-orbit procedures of its Dragon capsules in order to end any chance parts of the service module will fall in inhabited areas (as has happened several times in the past few years) the company will be shifting all manned splashdowns to the Pacific Ocean.

Repeated issues with large chunks of debris from Dragon — “trunks” where the fuel and electrical supplies are held — have repeatedly crashed down in areas ranging from Australia to North Carolina. One measure to fix that will be tasking future spacecraft after Crew-9, perhaps as soon as Crew-10, to splash down on the U.S. Pacific coast, SpaceX said during a press conference today (July 26).

“What we’ll do is we’ll implement a software change to complete the deorbit burn before jettisoning the trunk, like we did with Dragon-1, and then the trunk will intentionally land […] in an unpopulated area of the ocean,” Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, said in the livestreamed briefing. “So to make this change possible, we’ll move a Dragon recovery vessel to the Pacific sometime next year.”

Crew-9 is now scheduled to launch to ISS on August 18th on a six month mission, landing sometime in February 2025. Crew-10 would launch about that time and land sometime in August, 2025.

Side note: The announcement yesterday of August 18th for the launch of the next Dragon manned mission suggests NASA is now confident it can determine a date prior to that for returning Starliner. This reinforces the fact that the astronauts and Starliner are not “stranded” on the station, and any news source that states or even implies such a thing indicates it is a place where you are likely getting junk news, on all its stories.

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 resumes launches, successfully launching 23 Starlink satellites

11:44 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully resumed launches of its Falcon 9 rocket after a July 11, 2024 launch was a failure due to an engine leak in the upper stage. The rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, successfully placing 23 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage completed its seventeenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

72 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 84 to 47, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 72 to 59.

SpaceX has additional launches scheduled for tomorrow and the next day, so these numbers are only temporary.

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NASA and Boeing complete ground static fire tests of Starliner

11:20 pm

According to a press announcement tonight from NASA, the agency and Boeing have now completed the static fire tests using a Starliner ground capsule to duplicate the engine burns required to bring the in-space capsule back to Earth, carrying its two astronauts.

Teams completed ground hot fire testing at White Sands and are working to evaluate the test data and inspect the test engine. The ongoing ground analysis is expected to continue throughout the week. Working with a reaction control system thruster built for a future Starliner spacecraft, ground teams fired the engine through similar inflight conditions the spacecraft experienced on the way to the space station. The ground tests also included stress-case firings, and replicated conditions Starliner’s thrusters will experience from undocking to deorbit burn, where the thrusters will fire to slow Starliner’s speed to bring it out of orbit for landing in the southwestern United States.

Engineers now need to complete a review of those tests, followed by a full review leading to a decision as to when the astronauts will return on Starliner. No dates have yet been set, but expect these reviews to be completed within two weeks, and that Starliner will likely be scheduled for return in early August, prior to the scheduled launch of the next Dragon manned mission in mid-August.

All this assumes the FAA will clear SpaceX to resume launches before then. SpaceX is apparently ready to resume this week, but we have no indication the FAA will go along.

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Update on Cape Canaveral work by multiple launch companies

9:24 am

Link here. The article provides a nice summary of the construction work by Blue Origin, Stoke Space, and SpaceX at the cape, all leading to future launches and greater capabilities.

Blue Origin is still pushing for a September 29, 2024 first launch of its New Glenn orbital rocket. SpaceX is continuing work on its new Starship/Superheavy facilities as well as installing upgrades to its Falcon launchpads. The most interesting tidbit however is was about Stoke Space and its proposed Nova rocket:

The first two flights of Nova are planned for 2025, while 10 flights are planned for both 2026 and 2027. Initial flights of Nova will be expendable, with full reusability of the first and second stages coming later.

Stoke’s primary goal has been to make this rocket entirely reusable. It apparently plans to begin launching and do recovery tests as it goes until it achieves that reusability later.

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SpaceX to FAA: Allow launches to resume before completion of July 11th launch failure investigation

10:59 am

SpaceX on July 15, 2024 submitted a request to the FAA to quickly determine that the July 11th Falcon-9 launch failure posed no threat to public safety, and thus allow the company to resume Falcon 9 launches before the investigation of that failure is completed.

The FAA has two means of allowing a rocket to return to flight operations following a mishap. The first is that it approves a launch operator-led mishap investigation final report, which would include “the identification of any corrective actions.” Those actions need to be put in place and all related licensing requirement need to be met.

The other option is for a public safety determination to be issued. This would be an option if “the mishap did not involve safety-critical systems or otherwise jeopardize public safety,” according to the FAA.

“The FAA will review the request, and if in agreement, authorize a return to flight operations while the mishap investigation remains open and provided the operator meets all relevant licensing requirements,” the FAA wrote on its website.

SpaceX is apparently expecting the FAA to quickly approve this request, as it has now scheduled its next Falcon 9 launch for July 19, 2024, at the end of this week.

The lower level workers at the FAA probably want to get out of the way, but they have to obey orders from above, and it is my suspicion that the White House is applying pressure to make life hard for SpaceX. As I have noted, the FAA has not required the same level of due diligence from either NASA and its SLS rocket, or Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

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FAA to “investigate” SpaceX launch failure

9:12 am

In what appears to be a perfect example of bureaucratic hubris, the FAA announced right after the Falcon 9 upper stage failure on July 11, 2024 that it “is requiring an investigation” and that it “will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions.” The agency added:

A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. In addition, SpaceX may need to request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates any corrective actions and meet all other licensing requirements.

It is difficult to count all the ways this announcement is arrogant and political.

First, why has the FAA made no such similar demands upon Boeing and its Starliner capsule, during any of its three flights, all of which have had serious issues? On the present manned flight, the failure of its thrusters during docking posed a safety issue to the crew then, and poses a clear safety issue to the public when it comes time for the capsule to return to Earth. If those thrusters don’t fire as planned Starliner could crash anywhere.

Yet the FAA has been entirely uninterested. Could it be because Boeing is not owned by Elon Musk, and the Biden administration isn’t demanding the FAA come down hard on it?

Second, does the FAA really think SpaceX wouldn’t do an investigation of the upper stage failure without an order from the FAA? If anything, left to its own devices it is more likely the FAA would do nothing — as it has done with Boeing with both Starliner and the issues that have occurred with both SLS and Orion. SpaceX however will do an investigation without question, because the company takes such incidents very seriously, and always fixes the problem so that it does not pop up again.

Third, there is absolutely no one at the FAA qualified to do this investigation, or to determine if SpaceX’s “corrective actions” are the right choice. These are bureaucrats, not cutting edge engineers. All they are going to do is watch SpaceX’s people do the work, kibitz a bit here and there, and then rubberstamp the conclusions of the company’s engineers, after making SpaceX wait while it retypes SpaceX’s report.

To claim the FAA has the ability to “approve” any engineering actions here is absurd.

Fourth, to threaten to deny SpaceX’s launch license for future Falcon 9 rockets — the most reliable and dependable rocket ever built — illustrates again the partisan nature of this action. The specificity of the agency’s demands here runs very counter to its demands after other past launch anomalies, involving both SpaceX and others. It is as if the agency has gotten orders to do whatever it can to micromanage everything SpaceX does in order to hinder its operation.

I still expect SpaceX to finish its investigation within weeks, and be ready to fly by the end of July, when the Jared Isaacman manned mission is scheduled. I also now expect the FAA to block that schedule and cause an additional several week delay as it slowly retypes SpaceX’s conclusions.

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SpaceX launch experiences a failure of upper stage

10:52 pm

Second stage engine with leak

For the first time since June 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch experienced a failure today after lifting from Vandenberg in California. During a launch tonight of twenty Starlink satellites, the upper stage showed signs of a fuel leak during its initial burn, and according to a tweet from Elon Musk, it exploded when it relit to make a final orbital adjustment.

Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD [rapid unscheduled dissembly] for reasons currently unknown. Team is reviewing data tonight to understand root cause.

Starlink satellites were deployed, but the perigee may be too low for them to raise orbit. Will know more in a few hours.

The arrow on the screen capture from the live feed, taken during the upper stage’s initial burn, indicates that apparent leak.

The first stage however successfully completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

This failure ended an incredible string of 344 successful launches, a record unmatched by any rocket ever in the history of space exploration. It was also the very first launch failure of SpaceX’s Block 5 Falcon 9, the rocket’s final design that has allowed the first stages to be reused now more than twenty times.

The next SpaceX launch is presently scheduled for July 14, 2024, but we should expect that launch to be postponed while engineers investigate the failure tonight. We should also expect that delay to last no more than several weeks, at most.

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SpaceX launches Turkey’s first homebuilt geosynchronous communications satellite

4:39 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched Turkey’s first homebuilt geosynchronous communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings on this flight completed their tenth and sixteenth time, respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

71 SpaceX
30 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 83 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 71 to 57.

In just over half a year, SpaceX has now exceeded the annual record of 70 launches by the entire United States, set in 1966 and held until 2022.

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European Parliament member demands cancellation of launch deal with SpaceX

9:26 am

Christophe Grudler, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) has written a letter to the government-run weather satellite company Eumetsat, demanding that it cancel its decision on June 26, 2024 to use a Falcon 9 rocket rather than the Ariane-6 on its next launch.

In a letter headlined “Request to reconsider launch decision in favour of European strategic interests”, Grudler disputes the decision of EUMETSAT, the intergovernmental European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, to choose America rather than Europe for launching its new satellite. He argues it goes against the principle of giving preference to Europe, something the organisation denies.

“I am writing to urgently request that you reconsider the recent decision to allocate the MTG-S1 satellite launch to a non-EU launch provider, and instead await the results of the inaugural launch of Ariane-6, which was your first choice for this satellite,” the Liberal member of Parliament wrote in a letter to the board.

…Grudler’s requests are threefold: “Cancel the last Council decision regarding a specific launcher solution, Await the inaugural launch of Ariane-6 before making any final decisions for MTG-S1; Reaffirm your dedication to European strategic autonomy by supporting European launch solutions”.

Eumetsat’s decision was clearly a financial one. SpaceX charges much less than Ariane-6, and its Falcon 9 rocket is proven and launching routinely. Ariane-6 won’t have its first launch until next week, on July 9th.

Grudler’s demands are purely political, but since the EU has generally been run top-down, letting politics and power determine its policy, he could force a cancellation of the contract. In the short term this will help ArianeGroup, a partnership of the aerospace companies Airbus and Safran that own Ariane-6, while hurting Europe’s weather satellite capabilities. In the long run it however might aid the growth of Europe’s new competing rocket startups, as it will provide them a guaranteed market. At the same time, having a guaranteed market by government fiat tends to limit competition and thus raise costs.

It appears that some politicians in Europe are still not sold on capitalism and freedom.

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