Weaponizer – Kunai knife out of old leaf spring steel
An evening pause: If you have the skills, imagination, and proper tools, you can make anything. I run this at 2x normal speed, and miss nothing.
Hat tip Gene Shipp.
Tag: freedom
SpaceX launches two SES communication satellites
Only a few hours after SpaceX launched 52 Starlink satellites from California, the company successfully launched two communications satellites for the Luxembourg company SES, using its Falcon 9 rocket launching from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The rocket’s two fairings completed their third and seventh flights, respectively.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
19 SpaceX
11 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China 21 to 11 in the national rankings of this year’s launches, and the whole world combined 21 to 17. SpaceX by itself is tied with the rest of the world, including other American companies, 19 to 19.
SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully put another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 8th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
A second SpaceX launch today, this time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is set to launch very shortly, so the leader board for the 2023 launch race will also change as well:
18 SpaceX
11 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China 20 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 20 to 17. SpaceX now trails the entire world, including American companies. 18 to 19.
Astra asks for more time from Nasdaq before its stock is delisted
The rocket startup Astra has now asked Nasdaq to give it an extra six months beyond the early April deadline to get its stock price above $1 in order to avoid getting delisted from the stock market.
With its share price at $0.42 upon closing Thursday, Astra Chief Financial Officer Axel Martinez wrote in a blog post that the space company formally requested on Monday another six-month window to raise the share price above $1 for 10 consecutive business days as required to stave off a delisting.
It appears the company might be considering a reverse-stock split, whereby stocks are combined with the total number reduced, thus artificially raising the stock price. Nasdaq will consider this tactic an acceptable solution, though it is also considered a last-ditch approach.
Right now Astra is no longer an operational rocket company, having discontinued its Rocket-3 rocket. It says it is developing a new rocket, dubbed Rocket-4, but whether it can get this operational before it runs out of money or gets delisted remains unknown.
Rocket Lab and China launch satellites successfully
Both the American company Rocket Lab and China have successfully placed satellites in orbit in the past day.
First, Rocket Lab successfully placed two Earth observation satellites for the company Capella yesterday. This was also its second launch from Wallops Island in Virginia. The company made no attempt to recover the first stage.
Next, China today used its Long March 3B rocket to place its own Earth observation satellite into orbit from its Xichang spaceport, located in the country’s northeast but far from the ocean. No word on whether the rocket’s first stage and four strap-on boosters crashed near habitable areas.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
17 SpaceX
11 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
For the rest of the year, I will only list the leaders with each launch update. At this moment, American private enterprise leads China 19 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 19 to 17. SpaceX alone now trails the rest of the world combined, including American companies, 17 to 19.
These numbers will likely change later today, as SpaceX has two launches scheduled in just a few hours. One launch will place two communications satellites in orbit for the Luxembourg company SES. The other will launch another 52 Starlink satellites.
Student cubesat demonstrates how to use a solar sail for satellite deorbit
Using cheap off-the-shelf parts students at Brown University have successfully tested a simple solar sail in space and shown how it can be used to de-orbit satellites efficiently and inexpensively.
They built a satellite on a shoestring budget and using off-the-shelf supplies available at most hardware stores. They even sent the satellite — which is powered by 48 Energizer AA batteries and a $20 microprocessor popular with robot hobbyists — into space about 10 months ago, hitching a ride on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket.
…The students added a 3D-printed drag sail made from Kapton polyimide film to the bread-loaf-sized cube satellite they built. Upon deployment at about 520 kilometers — well above the orbit of the International Space Station — the sail popped open like an umbrella and is helping to push the satellite back down to Earth sooner, according to initial data. In fact, the satellite is well below the other small devices that deployed with it. In early March, for instance, the satellite was at about 470 kilometers above the Earth while the other objects were still in orbit at about 500 kilometers or more.
Based on the data, it is expected the cubesat will burn up in the atmosphere in five years, not twenty-five or so predicted for the other cubesats launched to the same orbital elevation.
This experiment above all proves that most of the very expensive demo missions to test this kind of technology have been grossly over-budget. The entire cost of this student-built project was just $10,000, and it actually was more successful in proving this technology than a number of past solar sail projects that cost millions.
Dragon freighter docks with ISS
A SpaceX Dragon freighter, on its third flight, today successfully docked with ISS, bringing with it several tons of supplies and several medical and engineering experiments.
It will remain at the station for about a month, during which astronauts will unload its supplies and experiments and load it with cargo and research results for safe return to Earth.
Firefly wins its second NASA contract to land payloads on the Moon
Capitalism in space: Firefly announced today that it has won a $112 million NASA contract to use its Blue Ghost lunar lander to bring three instruments to the Moon, one into orbit and two on the ground on the far side of the Moon.
Before landing on the Moon, the company’s Blue Ghost transfer vehicle will deploy the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite into lunar orbit to provide communications for future spacecraft, robots, and human explorers. After touching down on the far side of the Moon, the Blue Ghost lunar lander will deliver and operate NASA’s S-Band User Terminal, ensuring uninterrupted communications for lunar exploration, and a research-focused payload that measures radio emissions to provide insight into the origins of the universe.
The NASA press release provides more details about the three payloads.
This is Firefly’s second NASA lunar lander contract. The first is scheduled to land in 2024 and deliver ten NASA science instruments to Mare Crisium, the large mare region in the eastern side of the Moon’s visible hemisphere. This second flight is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2026.
NASA agrees to Axiom’s third planned commercial passenger mission to ISS
NASA today announced that it has given Axiom the go-ahead for its third planned commercial passenger mission to ISS, now tentatively scheduled for November 2023.
Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) is expected to spend 14 days docked to the space station. A specific launch date is dependent on spacecraft traffic to the space station and in-orbit activity planning and constraints. NASA and Axiom Space mission planners will coordinate in-orbit activities for the private astronauts to conduct in coordination with space station crew members and flight controllers on the ground.
As NASA did in announcing its agreement to Axiom’s previous flight, the agency’s press release makes believe it “selected” Axiom for this flight, as if it had the power and right to do so. Hogwash. Axiom has purchased the flight from SpaceX, and wishes to rent space on ISS for two weeks for its customers. All NASA has done is agree to the deal, while also charging Axiom very large fees for that rental.
SpaceX launches cargo Dragon to ISS
Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to put a cargo Dragon capsule into orbit and on its way to ISS.
The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The Dragon freighter is making its third flight, and will dock with ISS on the morning of March 16th.
The 2023 launch race:
17 SpaceX
9 China
4 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India
American private enterprise now leads China 18 to 9 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 18 to 15. SpaceX alone leads entire world, including the rest of the U.S., 17 to 16.
LeoLabs to establish radar facility in Argentina
LeoLabs, a private commercial company aiming to provide orbital tracking of all space objects as small as two centimeters, has announced plans to establish its seventh global radar facility in Argentina.
The S-band radar, scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, will be located on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego. “The Southern Hemisphere has not been well covered for space safety and space domain awareness,” LeoLabs CEO Dan Ceperley told SpaceNews. “There are a lot of conjunctions close to the North Pole and the South Pole. This radar will make a very meaningful improvement in the tracking of those conjunctions.”
Currently, LeoLabs tracks objects in low-Earth orbit with phased array radars in Alaska, Australia, Portugal’s Azores archipelago, New Zealand, Texas and Costa Rica.
The company essentially competes with the Space Force in tracking object in orbit, and has raised more than $100 million in private investment capital to build its ground stations.
Space startups get their SVB assets back when Feds move in
Because of the decision of the federal government to guarantee all deposits at the failed Silcon Valley Bank (SVB), even those above the $250K limit set by the FDIC law, several space rocket startups are no longer threatened with failure, for now.
Astra for example is now seeking to move as quickly as it can its assets, equaling about 15% of the company, to other financial institutions.
I would expect this incident will cause every company to make sure their assets are distributed more widely, as a hedge against the failure of one bank.