SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

87 SpaceX
37 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 102 to 56, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 87 to 71.

SpaceX resumes launches with a bang!

Within hours of the FAA clearing SpaceX to resume launches, the company did so most emphatically, launching twice in little more than an hour apart from opposite coasts.

First the company placed 20 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its eighteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Then, one hour and five minutes later, the company launched 21 Starlink satellites, the Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg in California. That first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

This fast return to flight underlines the unnecessary delay of at least one day in launches caused by the FAA’s red tape. SpaceX had scheduled at least one of these launches the previous night — and was clearly ready to launch — but had to cancel it because the FAA stood in the way.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

86 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 101 to 54, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 86 to 69.

2024 is now the second year in a row the U.S. rocket industry has completed more than 100 launches, something it could not do for the first three-quarters of a century after Sputnik, when our precious government used NASA to run our entire space program. Now that freedom and capitalism has managed to wrest some control away from NASA, Americans are finally doing what they would have done in the 1960s, had Congress and President Kennedy not stepped in, first requiring all space exploration be run under a “space program” controlled by NASA, and then passing the Communications Satellite Act in 1962 which forbid Americans from running private profit-oriented launches without government participation.

FAA gets out of the way

My heart be still! The FAA today cleared SpaceX to resume launches, after grounding its fleet for two days because a Falcon 9 first stage, flying on its 23rd launch and having successfully placed 21 satellites into orbit, fell over after landing softly on its drone ship in the Atlantic.

The FAA statement was short but to my mind illustrates again the growing effort of the administrative state to require Americans to obtain its permission to do anything at all.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation of the anomaly during (Wednesday’s) mission remains open, provided all other license requirements are met. SpaceX made the return to flight request on Aug. 29 and the FAA gave approval on Aug. 30.

That the FAA even grounded SpaceX for one second, and then required SpaceX to ask permission to fly again, is all unacceptable and a great abuse of power. There was no reason for this grounding at all. Even as the FAA announced it two days ago the agency admitted the failed landing posed no threat to the public. It should have immediately said the company had every right to continue flying.

Even though there are people at the FAA with good intentions, the overall trend there and everywhere within that Washington bureaucracy is to expand its power, to make demands of Americans in every way, and to insist it must be the gatekeeper for any action by any American. Only today for example the FDA declared unilaterally that all retailers now have to obtain photo ID from anyone under thirty who wishes to buy tobacco. It claims it has the right to mandate this based on a legislation passed in 2019, but without question this is a very liberal interpretation of that law, which merely raised the minimum age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21. I am sure it did not give the FDA the outright ability to declare such mandates without any review by anyone.

Power grabs like this are only going to get worse, unless Americans vote in new legislators and support them when they act to neuter these agencies. It remains however strongly doubtful whether most Americans are willing to do this. It would require a love of freedom and the risks it entails to abandon the regulatory state, and right now I don’t think most people have that kind of courage. They have grown used to having a big daddy acting to protect them, and appear willing to accept that gentle tyranny more and more.

Has the FAA grounded SpaceX?

The FAA statement yesterday seemed quite clear — that the agency was grounding all SpaceX launches until the investigation into the failed landing of a Falcon 9 first stage was completed. That clarity was further accepted by numerous news organizations today, all of which clearly described in their reporting the FAA’s action as a grounding of further SpaceX launches for an unspecified amount of time, from days to weeks. (See here, here, and here for just a few examples.)

Nonetheless, there are strong indications that the FAA’s grounding will be very short. For example, though no dates are presently firm, SpaceX continues to list at least two Starlink launches as well as the Polaris Dawn private manned mission as targeting launches over the next few days, with one Starlink launch still aiming for a 10:18 pm (Pacific) launch tonight from Vandenberg. That liftoff might be tentative, but that SpaceX is still pushing for that launch date suggests it is trying to pressure the FAA to back off.

And SpaceX has good reason to expect that pressure to work. The FAA has already admitted there were no public safety issues from the first stage failure. In the past it has allowed launches to proceed under that condition, even if the investigation was on-going. SpaceX is almost certainly making this point known to the FAA, if its managers don’t know it already. We will find out I think by the end of today.

Even if the FAA backs down, that it even attempted any grounding in this situation was an egregious abuse of its regulatory power. There was no rational reason for it to even hint at doing so, even based on its own regulations as well as its statutory authority. If the goal was to do its job and not to harass SpaceX and Elon Musk, it would have immediately announced that no grounding was required because no issues of public safety were involved in the failure. Instead, it pushed its power, forcing SpaceX to push back.

SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites but loses first stage at landing

SpaceX last night successfully placed 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours.

The first stage however fell over on its drone ship in the Atlantic after landing. This was its 23rd flight, which would have been a record reuse of a Falcon 9 booster had it landed successfully. Because of this failure, SpaceX rescheduled another Starlink launch, delaying it one day until August 30, 2024, as engineers assessed the stage data to determine the cause of the problem. From the video is appears that one leg on the far side, out of sight, either failed to deploy or collapsed after landing.

To be clear, SpaceX anticipates only a one day delay in all its launches because of this issue.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

84 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 99 to 53, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 84 to 68.

Manned Polaris Dawn launch delayed due to weather

SpaceX tonight scrubbed the launch of Jared Isaacman’s manned Polaris Dawn orbital mission due to poor weather predicted in the splashdown zones off the coast of Florida when the mission would have ended.

The flight has tentatively set now for August 30, 2024, but that remains a very preliminary date.

SpaceX however is not sitting on its hands while it waits for good weather for this manned mission. Tonight it has two Starlink launches scheduled a little more than an hour apart, one from Cape Canaveral in Florida followed by the second from Vandenberg in California. If the first launch is successful its Falcon 9 first stage will set a new record, flying for its 23rd time.

SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites using a new first stage

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage was new, having never flown before. It successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, and is now part of the company’s fleet of Falcon 9 first stages.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 52, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 67.

SpaceX launches 116 payloads on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission

SpaceX today successfully launched 116 payloads, including 108 satellites, on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing back at Vandenberg. As of posting the satellites had not deployed.

The payloads included a wide variety of satellites and demonstration missions, including one orbital tug from the European tug company D-Orbit, its Ion tug deploying five satellites. In addition, five different companies will be using their own deployment equipment to release about fifty of the satellites from the Falcon 9.

These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

82 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 97 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 82 to 67.

SpaceX launches two commercial Earth observation satellites

SpaceX this morning successfully launched two commercial high resolution Earth observation satellites for the company Maxar, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its sixteenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The two fairings completed their seventh and seventeenth flights.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

81 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 50, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 65.

These numbers will continue to go up, as India has a launch scheduled for later today, while SpaceX has another Transporter launch scheduled for tomorrow, carrying dozens of smallsats.

SpaceX announces another commerical passenger flight on a Dragon capsule

SpaceX today announced it will fly a four-passenger commerical flight, using the Dragon capsule dubbed Endurance and flying the first manned human flight to circle the poles.

The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years.

The “Fram2” mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX’s launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three-to-five day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.

As with the Jared Isaacman’s previous and future Dragon manned missions, the flight avoids any of the NASA bureucracy and costs by not docking with ISS. The flight is targeting a launch date before the end of this year, but that date is not firm.

SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

After a launch abort less than a minute before launch yesterday, SpaceX successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites this morning, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The past three days for SpaceX was quite busy, as my readers can easily see: Three launches in three days. It appears the company is working hard to recover its launch pace from the several week pause after an upper stage had a leak on a July 11th launch.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

80 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 95 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 80 to 64.

The launch schedule for the rest of the week will be as busy, with the Russians launching a Progress freighter to ISS, India launching its SSLV rocket, and SpaceX having two more launches on its manifest.

SpaceX launches two broadband satellites for the Space Force and Norway

SpaceX tonight successfully launched two broadband satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The satellites will provide improved broadband service in the Arctic regions for both the Space Force and Norway, which partnered with Northrop Grumman to build the satellites.

The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 22nd flight, tying the record of one other booster for the most reuses. It landed on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

79 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 94 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 79 to 64.

SpaceX launches an additional 21 Starlink satellites

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched an additional 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 21st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Note how a first stage is now used more than twenty times, and it almost goes without notice.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

78 SpaceX
33 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 92 to 49, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 78 to 63.

SpaceX sets August 26, 2024 as new launch date for Polaris Dawn private manned mission

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

According to a post on X yesterday, SpaceX has rescheduled the launch of the private Polaris Dawn manned orbital flight to August 26, 2024. The flight is financed entirely by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who will also command the mission (his second in space).

The mission will launch on a Falcon 9, with the Dragon Resilience spacecraft carrying four private astronauts. During the orbital flight the capsule will attempt to fly as high as 870 miles, the highest any human will have flown since the Apollo missions. It will then attempt the first spacewalks by a private citizen ever. They will open a hatch, and Isaacman will push himself outside.

The schedule change from July 31st is almost certainly due to the uncertainties surrounding the return of Starliner from ISS, which have also caused uncertainties in the launch date of SpaceX’s next manned mission to ISS. With only two launchpads in Florida for both missions (plus other required launches), a lot of juggling has been required.

SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

76 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 90 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 76 to 62.

SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

75 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 88 to 47, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 60.

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

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.

SpaceX launches another 20 Starlink satellites

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.

SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

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.

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

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.

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

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.

NASA and Boeing complete ground static fire tests of Starliner

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.

Update on Cape Canaveral work by multiple launch companies

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.

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

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.

FAA to “investigate” SpaceX launch failure

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.

SpaceX launch experiences a failure of upper stage

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.

SpaceX launches Turkey’s first homebuilt geosynchronous communications satellite

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.

European Parliament member demands cancellation of launch deal with SpaceX

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.

Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn mission to launch July 31, 2024

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

According to a short notice on the Polaris Dawn webpage, Jared Isaacman’s manned orbital mission where he will do the first spacewalk by a private citizen is now targeting a launch date of July 31, 2024.

The four-person mission is planned to spend five days in orbit in SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule, during which it will fly to as high as 870 miles, the highest orbit flown since Gemini 11 in 1966, and the farthest any human has flown from Earth since the Apollo lunar missions. That orbit will make possible some new radiation research:

[T]his is high enough to penetrate the inner band of the radioactive Van Allen Belts that encircle the Earth. This isn’t good for the crew consisting of Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, Mission Pilot Scott Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon, but their initial orbit will be highly elliptical with a lower altitude of 120 miles (190 km), so their exposure will be minimal.

The purpose of this radiological game of chicken is to conduct 38 science experiments to study the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health. When these are completed, the altitude for the remainder of the five days in orbit will be reduced to 430 miles (700 km).

Isaacman will then attempt his spacewalk, opening a hatch on Resilience that replaced its docking port. While Isaacman will be the only one to exit the capsule, all four crew members will be in comparable spacesuits, since the capsule has no airlock and thus its entire atmosphere will escape during these activities.

If this mission is successful, I expect Isaacman will renew his push at NASA for making the goal of his next Polaris mission to replace the gyros on the Hubble Space Telescope. At the moment agency officials have expressed skepticism and seem uninterested. That might change however.

SpaceX gets NASA contract to launch gamma-ray space telescope

NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a new gamma-ray space telescope, dubbed the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), using its Falcon 9 rocket and targeting an August 2027 launch date.

The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $69 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The COSI mission currently is targeted to launch August 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

This wide-field gamma-ray telescope will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. NASA’s COSI mission will probe the origins of the Milky Way’s galactic positrons, uncover the sites of nucleosynthesis in our galaxy, perform studies of gamma-ray polarization, and find counterparts to multi-messenger sources. The compact Compton telescope combines improved sensitivity, spectral resolution, angular resolution, and sky coverage to facilitate groundbreaking science.

The stated launch price gives us a sense of what SpaceX is charging these days for launches. The contract award also illustrates once again why the delays in developing ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets — caused by Blue Origin’s difficulties in manufacturing its BE-4 rocket engine — has ended up costing both companies a lot of money in sales. SpaceX keeps getting these launch contracts because Vulcan and New Glenn are not yet flying operationally. Vulcan has flown once, but it is probably isn’t capable of adding additional launches to is manifest. More important, the rocket is not yet reusable, and probably could not match SpaceX’s price.

As for New Glenn, it supposedly will make its first launch this fall, but we shall see. It remains four-plus years behind schedule, and though it is described as reusable, its first stage landing vertically like a Falcon 9, it is doubtful it will become doing this on its first launches. It needs to prove out its systems first.

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