Tag: Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin invests in new solid-fueled rocket startup

9:36 am

In its most recent fund-raising round, the solid-fueled rocket startup X-Bow (pronounced “crossbow”) raised $35 million in private investment capital, with Lockheed Martin being the largest investor.

Lockheed Martin’s involvement marks a deepening interest in securing alternative sources for solid rocket motors, components that are increasingly vital to a wide range of U.S. missile systems, including hypersonic weapons. The investment comes three years after Lockheed’s attempt to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne was blocked by the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds. Aerojet was later bought by L3Harris Technologies, leaving Lockheed without a vertically integrated propulsion supplier.

Nor is this the first time that Lockheed Martin has invested in a rocket startup. It had previously invested in ABL and Orbex, both liquid-fueled but struggling or failing, as well as the much more successful Rocket Lab. It has also invested in the orbital tug startup Orbit Fab, the orbital capsule company Inversion Space, and the satellite startup Terran Orbital, which it ended up buying entirely.

All in all, Lockheed Martin appears determined to join the new wave of space startups, if not by doing it itself but by buying into the successes of new startups. So far this has not entirely paid off, but it does appear to be, in the long term, a viable strategy to keep Lockheed Martin competitive and in the game.

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It only took $22 billion and 19 years: Lockheed Martin proudly announces the completion of the first Orion capsule capable of manned flight

10:56 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion’s heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”.
Nor has this issue been fixed.

My heart be still. On May 1, 2025 Lockheed Martin proudly announced that it had finally completed assembly and testing of the first Orion capsule capable of taking human beings into space.

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has completed assembly and testing of NASA’s Orion Artemis II spacecraft, transferring possession to NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) team today. This milestone is a significant step for NASA and the Artemis industry team, as they prepare to launch a crew of four astronauts to further the agency’s mission in establishing a human presence on the Moon for exploration and scientific discovery. It will also help build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.

Orion is the most advanced, human-rated, deep space spacecraft ever developed. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor to NASA for Orion and built the crew module, crew module adaptor and launch abort system. “This achievement is a testament to our employees and suppliers who have worked tirelessly to get us to this important milestone,” said Kirk Shireman, vice president of Human Space Exploration and Orion program manager at Lockheed Martin. “The Orion spacecraft completion for Artemis II is a major step forward in our nation’s efforts to develop a long-term lunar presence. It’s exciting to think that soon, humans will see the Earth rise over the lunar horizon from our vehicle, while also traveling farther from Earth than ever before.”

What disgusting hogwash. First of all, Lockheed Martin was issued the contract to build two capsules, one for testing and one for manned flight, in 2006. It only took the company 19 years to build both. Second, that 2006 contract was supposed to only cost $3.9 billion. Instead, NASA has forked out more than $22 billion.

And what have we gotten? Two capsules, plus a handful of prototype test versions. Worse, this first capsule will be the first to ever carry the life support systems that keep humans alive, as Lockheed Martin admits in its press release:
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A U.S. startup building a returnable capsule raised $44 million in investment capital

9:37 am

The new American company Inversion Space — which is developing an orbiting cargo capsule called Arc — has now raised $44 million in private investment capital.

The Los Angeles-based company announced Nov. 20 that it raised a Series A round led by Spark Capital and Adjacent, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Kindred Ventures and Y Combinator. The company has raised $54 million to date, with a $10 million seed round in 2021. It also won in September a Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) agreement with the Space Force’s SpaceWERX valued at $71 million, a combination of government and private funding to support work on reentry vehicles tailored for military customers.

Inversion will use the funds to further development of Arc, a reentry vehicle designed to provide what it called “precision delivery on-demand” from space to the Earth. The company is currently working on the design of Arc with a first flight planned for 2026.

The number of companies developing orbiting cargo capsules, either to provide supplies to the new space stations or to do manufacturing in orbit for return and sale on Earth, appears to be growing by leaps and bounds. First there was SpaceX’s Dragon, though the company has not yet flown any in-space manufacturing missions. Varda followed next, and has already flown and returned one capsule successfully. Sierra Nevada will follow next year with the first launch of its reusable Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle. Inversion will be the fourth.

In Europe there is The Exploration Company in France with its Nyx capsule, the German startup Atmos with its Phoenix capsule, and the Spanish startup PLD with its Lince capsule. There may be more.

All of these orbiting and returnable capsules have multiple profit opportunities, which explains why there has been a willingness of investors to provide them funds. They can either supply cargo to the four private stations presently under construction, or fly independent orbital missions where the capsule carries equipment to produce products of value that can only be manufactured in weightlessness.

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Lockheed Martin drops out of commercial manned lunar rover consortium

9:29 am

Lunar Outpost, one of the three companies/partnerships that have won NASA contracts to develop manned lunar rovers for the Artemis program, has replaced Lockheed Martin as one of its partners.

This fact was only made evident now, three months after Lockheed parted ways, with a statement that a new much smaller company, Leidos, has joined the consortium.

That statement listed the other members of the Lunar Dawn team: General Motors, Goodyear and MDA Space. Notably absent was Lockheed Martin, which Lunar Outpost had described as its “principal partner” on the rover when it won the NASA contract in April. The website for Lunar Dawn also did not list Lockheed Martin as a partner.

In a Sept. 25 interview, Justin Cyrus, chief executive of Lunar Outpost, confirmed that Lockheed Martin was no longer involved in the rover project. “We just weren’t able to reach an agreement as we were negotiating the terms and conditions of the statement of work for this contract,” he said.

Both Lunar Outpost and Lockheed Martin provided no specific reasons for the break-up, other than typical PR statements such as “it wasn’t a good fit for us or them.”

The rover being built is dubbed Lunar Dawn. The present NASA contract only covers the design phase. Once completed NASA will choose one consortium to build the rover itself, picking from either the Lunar Outpost design or the designs submitted by Intuitive Machines and Venturi Astrolab.

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Intuitive Machines targeting January 2025 for launch of its next lunar lander

9:37 am

The landers either at or targeting the Moon's south pole
The landers either at or targeting the Moon’s south pole

The company Intuitive Machines is now aiming to launch its second Nova-C lunar lander, dubbed Athena, during a January 1-5, 2025 launch window.

The landing site is indicated on the map to the right, on the rim of Shackleton crater and almost on top of the south pole. While Chang’e-7 is targeting the same crater rim, it is not scheduled for launch until 2026.

The lander will not only include a drill for studying the surface below it, it will release a small secondary payload, the Micro-Nova Hopper, which will hopefully hop down into the permanently shadowed craters nearby.

The launch will also carry a lunar orbiter, dubbed Lunar Trailblazar, which will not only do spectroscopy of the lunar surface, looking for water, it will also be used as a communications relay satellite with Athena. That orbiter, designed to demonstrate the ability to build a smallsat at low cost, was previously threatened with cancellation because its builder, Lockheed Martin, went way over budget.

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Lockheed Martin testing its own inflatable module design

9:40 am

Lockheed Martin recently successfully completed a test of its own inflatable module design, conceived in this case not as a full-scale module but as an airlock for ingress and egress from a space station.

In the Aug. 14 test, the inflatable airlock design was put through multiple, gas-in/gas-out cycles — essentially inflations and deflations with enough nitrogen gas to pressurize the airlock to the point it becomes as rigid as steel — to assess the extent to which its Vectran material strains over time, a process called creep. Knowing how creep affects a Vectran structure will allow Lockheed Martin to properly assess its operational life potential. Test engineers here have also put subscale softgoods habitat designs to the test, purposely bursting them to spotlight their robust nature and determine their pressure thresholds.

With the addition of Lockheed Martin, there are now at least four companies building inflatable modules for sale to space station companies. Sierra Space has the most developed module design, but a company in India recently announced it will build and sell its own. In addition, an American startup dubbed Max Space is building its own test module and hopes to launch next year.

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ABL completes investigation into launchpad fire in July

10:12 am

The rocket startup ABL yesterday released the results of its investigation into launchpad fire in July that destroyed its RS1 rocket during a static fire test prior to an orbital test launch.

In a statement, ABL Space Systems said it ignited the E2 engines in the first stage of the RS1 rocket in the test, but aborted the test after just half a second because of a low pressure reading in one engine that the company said was caused by a faulty pressure sensor. The engines shut down, but a fire then broke out under the base of the vehicle, fed by fuel leaks from two engines. That fire was contained but could not be extinguished by either water or inert gas systems, and the company started offloading kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants from the vehicle.

The launch pad the company uses at Kodiak does not have its own water supply, with the company instead using mobile tanks that ran out of water 11 and a half minutes after ignition. That caused the fire to spread “and a progressive loss of pad systems,” the company stated, including the inability to continue detanking the rocket and eventually telemetry from the rocket.

ABL’s first launch attempt of this rocket in January 2023 failed when the first stages shut down immediately after lift-off and the rocket crashed on the launchpad. It completed its investigation of that failure in October 2023 and was ready for its second launch attempt this summer when the fire described above occurred.

The company has raised several hundred million dollars, with its chief investor being Lockheed Martin, which has also signed a contract for as many as 58 RS1 launches. It increasingly appears those launches might very well go to other providers.

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Sierra Space in negotiations to buy ULA

10:26 pm

According to the Reuters news agency, Sierra Space is negotiating with the joint owners of ULA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to buy the rocket company.

The sources, which are all anonymous, said the sale price is in the range of $2 to $3 billion. Those same sources said no deal has yet been worked out, and might not happen at all.

For Sierra, the deal would give it its own launch vehicle, Vulcan, for placing its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles into orbit. It would also give it a profit stream from the many military and commercial launch contracts already on ULA’s manifest. The combined cababilities of ULA and Sierra will create a formidable new player in the aerospace launch market.

For Boeing, it would provide it some much needed cash that it will be able to use to both restructure and revitalize its presently questionable operations.

It is unclear what Lockheed Martin will gain from the sale, other than the cash and the removal of this Frankenstein-like partnership with Boeing, which in the long run has probably not done it a lot of good.

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Lockheed Martin to purchase satellite builder Terran Orbital

1:48 pm

Lockheed Martin today announced that it intends to purchase the satellite company Terran Orbital, of which it already owns one third of its stock.

Lockheed said Aug. 15 it would buy Terran Orbital for $0.25 per share in cash and retire the company’s existing debt. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, has an enterprise value of $450 million. Shares in Terran Orbital closed Aug. 14 at $0.40.

Lockheed had six months ago offered to buy the company for $1 per share, but then withdrew the offer. It appears this new offer is intended to save the company, as Lockheed needs it. Right now 90% of Terran Orbital’s contracts are with Lockheed, and if the company goes under so do those deals.

This situation appears related to funding problems being experienced by the Rivada 300-satellite constellation. It had signed a $2.4 billion contract with Terran to build those satellites, but Terran removed that contract from its listed deals this week, suggesting that it no longer expected it to happen.

Lockheed Martin has made a strong effort in the past decade to remake itself to meet the challenges of the new space market, including entering the smallsat satellite manufacturing market. Thus it should be able to absorb Terran Orbital’s operations with little major harm to both, and much benefit.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Firefly gets a major 25-launch contract from Lockheed Martin

9:02 pm

Firefly today announced that Lockheed Martin has awarded it a launch contract for 25 launches through 2029.

The contract “commits Lockheed Martin to 15 launch reservations and 10 optional launches.”

What is interesting about this agreement is who Lockheed did not give the launches to. Lockheed Martin has been a major investor in Rocket Lab, which is about to complete its 50th operational launch. It also has been a major investor in the rocket startup ABL, which in 2021 Lockheed Martin awarded its own giant launch contract for 58 launches through 2029.

ABL however has not yet had a successful launch. It tried twice in 2022, but has done nothing since. It could very well be that this new contract for Firefly is a signal that Lockheed Martin has lost faith in ABL, that there are more fundamental problems in that company. Those problems could also be related to the new regulatory burdens from the FAA that in the past two years appear to have slowed development by all American rocket startups.

That Lockheed Martin did not give this contract to Rocket Lab, which is flying, could be because Lockheed is trying to encourage the development of multiple small satellite launchers, in order to provide its main satellite-making business a variety of good options.

Either way, this deal strengthens Firefly’s position, even though its Alpha rocket has only had two launches (in 2022 and 2023), both of which put the payloads in orbit but failed to place them in the correct orbit. Moreover, the company has said it would launch four times in 2024, and as yet to launch once.

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Lockheed Martin withdraws bid to buy Terran Orbital

9:35 am

Lockheed Martin yesterday withdrew its early March offer to buy the satellite manufacuture Terran Orbital, purchasing the shares it did not already own for approximately $500 million.

No reason was given, but it appears the other shareholders at Terran Orbital objected to the purchase, and Lockheed probably decided the fight wasn’t worth it.

In that proposal, Lockheed offered to acquire the roughly two-thirds of Terran Orbital stock it did not already own. Lockheed also proposed to pay more than $70 million to buy outstanding stock warrants and either assume or repay $313 million in Terran Orbital debt, putting the total value of the proposal at more than $500 million.

Lockheed, besides being a major investor in Terran Orbital, is a major customer of the company, buying dozens of its smallsat buses for programs such as satellites for the Space Development Agency. Lockheed said in its offer letter that it accounted for 81% of Terran Orbital’s backlog.

Terran Orbital responded to the proposal March 4 with a stockholder rights plan, or “poison pill” move, to prevent a hostile takeover. It acknowledged the proposal and said an independent board committee would evaluate it as part of an ongoing strategic review.

Both companies now say they will continue to work together in the future.

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Technical issues with Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule to delay next Artemis mission

9:20 am

It appears that technical issues with Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule are one of the main reasons NASA has had to delay next Artemis mission, the first to put humans inside that capsule and then take them around the Moon.

In January 2024 it was reported that the mission would be delayed from a launch before the end of 2024 until 2025. We now know why:

NASA is working with Orion spacecraft prime contractor Lockheed Martin to resolve a handful of issues that came up late last year during ground testing, forcing the space agency to delay the launch readiness target date for its Artemis II circumlunar mission to September 2025. The Lockheed Martin assembly, test, and launch operations (ATLO) team at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is reinstalling some electronics and implementing workarounds for others affected by an electrical circuit flaw found in digital motor controllers on the spacecraft.

While a resolution to that issue appears to be getting closer, the Orion program and contractor teams are also working through the corrective actions process for a problem with how the Orion batteries handle the shock of an extreme abort case.

In other words, Lockheed Martin discovered these two electrical issues only last year, after spending almost two decades and more than $15 billion developing Orion.

As I predicted in January, “None of these dates will be met. I predict that further delays will be announced next year and the year after that, pushing all these missions back again, in small increments.” I also predicted that NASA will be lucky to land a human on the Moon by 2030, a mere fifteen years after its original target date of 2015, set by George Bush Jr. in 2004.

In the meantime, expect SpaceX’s Starship to begin regularly commercial and governmental flights to the Moon in the next five years. Long before SLS and Orion put humans on the Moon, Starship will be doing it privately for less cost.

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Lockheed Martin offers to buy startup satellite maker Terran Orbital

9:38 pm

Lockheed Martin now has submitted an offer to buy the startup satellite maker Terran Orbital for $293 million.

Lockheed Martin has submitted a nonbinding offer to buy satellite maker Terran Orbital’s 223 million outstanding shares for $1 each and pay $70 million for its outstanding warrants.

Lockheed Martin also offered to cover about $313 million of the company’s outstanding debt.

Lockheed already owns 28.3% of Terran Orbital, and uses the satellite maker to produce its military satellites, so this deal seems a good fit. It also fits the overall long term strategy of Lockheed, which has been investing in a number of other startups (such as rocket startups Rocket Lab and ABL). The company has clearly seen the future. Rather than continue working like an old-style bloated big space company, it has been using these new companies as models for its future work.

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Lockheed Martin & Boeing get Space Force satellite development contracts

9:43 am

The Space Force has awarded Lockheed Martin and Boeing $66 million contracts each to design their own version of a new communications satellite for the military.

Over the next 15 months, the companies will create prototype satellites showing how they would meet the Space Force’s requirements for the MUOS satellites. DoD announced the contract awards Jan. 25.

The Space Force is expected to select one of the companies in 2025 to manufacture two flight-ready narrowband satellites to modernize the existing constellation of five MUOS satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Narrowband communications use relatively small amounts of data, but are critical for military operations.

A third unnamed company also bid but was not selected. The choice of Boeing for this competition is surprising, considering its numerous management and engineering problems across a wide range of products, from airplanes to space capsules. NASA itself has been so dissatisfied with Boeing’s work that in 2020 it decided at that time “to eliminate Boeing from future award consideration.” That decision appears to still stand. As far as I can remember Boeing not won any NASA contracts since.

Moreover, Lockheed Martin built the current MUOS satellites in orbit, while Boeing does not have a big reputation in recent years building satellites.

All told, it will therefore be extremely surprising if Boeing wins this competition. I suspect the Space Force issued this contract to help keep Boeing a viable company and to give it an opportunity to get its act together. Rewarding incompetence however is rarely successful.

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Military awards satellite contracts worth $2.5 billion to three companies

9:25 am

The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency (SDA) today announced the award of contracts to Sierra Space, Lockheed Martin, and L3Harris for the construction of 54 reconnaissance satellites, with a total value of $2.5 billion.

The 54 satellites will form part of the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a massive missile detection and tracking constellation in low Earth orbit that’s being built and launched in “tranches.” The trio of contracts announced today is for 18 satellites each in the Tranche 2 Tracking Layer: L3Harris’s award is worth $919 million; Lockheed Martin, $890 million; and Sierra Space, $740 million.

Last week SDA had awarded Rocket Lab its own 18-satellite contract for this constellation, worth $515 million.

The contract awards signal several major changes in the Pentagon’s space strategy. First, it is farming the work out to multiple companies, two of which (Rocket Lab and Sierra Space) are new. In the past the military relied on a very limited number of companies, all well established, with most contracts going to only one vender. New companies had great difficulties getting in the door.

Second, it is building a constellation of smallsats rather than single large satellites. Smallsats are cheaper to build and replace, and are much harder military targets to hit.

Third, though it appears the military is designing these satellites, it appears it is still shifting much of the work from it to the private sector. In other words, the Pentagon is becoming a customer instead of a builder. The result will be a healthy space industry capable of doing more for itself and the military.

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ESA firms up space station partnership with Voyager Space

8:38 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the American company Voyager Space last week signed an agreement making Voyager’s Starlab space station Europe’s main space station destination, replacing ISS.

Starlab will fulfill that role, at least partially, in the future for the space agencies of individual ESA member states. It’s expected to launch as soon as 2028, with operations set to start in 2029. This will include access for astronaut missions and to conduct research as well as providing opportunities for commercial business development. Starlab is also set to provide a complete “end-to-end” system in low-Earth orbit to which European crews and cargo will journey.

This European deal became more likely when Airbus joined the partnership of Voyager and Lockheed Martin in January 2023. It is also probably why Northrop Grumman in October 2023 abandoned its own space station project and joined this one instead. ESA is a big customer, most likely to guarantee the most profits.

What makes this deal different than ISS is that the station will not be owned by this large government customer. The companies building Starlab — led by Voyager — will be free to sell its services to anyone who wishes to use it. This deal also means that NASA and ESA will be going separate ways after ISS, no longer partnering on a station.

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Space Force awards multi-satellite contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman

9:26 am

Capitalism in space: In what is a landmark deal indicating the complete shift by the military from building its own satellites to letting private enterprise do it, the Space Development Agency (SDA) of the Space Force yesterday announced it has awarded Lockeheed Martin and Northrop Grumman each a contract to build and operate 36 satellites.

The 72 satellites will make up a portion of SDA’s network known as Tranche 2 Transport Layer. SDA is building a large constellation called the proliferated warfighter space architecture that includes a Transport Layer of interconnected communications satellites and a Tracking Layer of missile-detection and warning sensor satellites. Northrop Grumman’s contract for 36 satellites is worth approximately $733 million. The agreement with Lockheed Martin, also for 36 satellites, is worth $816 million, SDA said.

What makes this contract different than previous military satellite contracts is that the military will do relatively little design. It has released the basic specifications, and is asking private enterprise to do the work for it. It is a customer, not a builder. When the military attempted its own design and construction, the job would take sometimes a decade or more, cost many billions (with cost overruns), and often failed. This new constellation is targeting a 2026 launch, only two years from now.

The constellation will also be more robust than the gold-plated giant satellites the military would build previously. Rather than rely on a single do-it-all satellite which is easy to take out, the constellation has many satellites, and can easily compensate if one or even a few are damaged or destroyed.

This shift was one of the fundamental reasons the military wanted to create a separate Space Force. As part of the Air Force the office politics within that branch of the military had been impossible to make this shift. Too many managers in the Air Force liked building big gold-plated satellites. Once the Space Force took over those managers were taken out of the equation.

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Lockheed Martin opens factory to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis

10:41 am

Capitalism in space: As part of fulfilling a contract won from the Space Force, Lockheed Martin has now opened a new factory in Colorado expressly designed to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis.

Lockheed Martin’s 20,000-square-foot factory is located at the company’s Waterton campus near Denver, Colorado. It has six parallel assembly lines and capacity to manufacture 180 small satellites per year, Kevin Huttenhoff, Lockheed Martin’s senior manager for space data transport, told SpaceNews. The first satellites to be made at the facility are for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency. SDA plans to build a mesh network of hundreds of data transport and missile-detection sensor satellites in low Earth orbit.

Lockheed Martin in February 2022 won a $700 million contract to produce 42 communications satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer Tranche 1. The company in November 2020 also won a $187.5 million contract to manufacture 10 Transport Layer Tranche 0 satellites that are scheduled to launch later this month. The Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites — projected to launch in late 2024 — will be made at the new factory. The Tranche 0 satellites were assembled at a different facility where Lockheed Martin manufactures Global Positioning System (GPS) spacecraft.

The multiple assembly lines allows the company to configure each for a different customer and satellite, with one for example producing smallsats for a military contract while another produces smallsats for a commercial customer.

Of all the big space companies, Lockheed Martin has made the most moves quickly adapting to the new space market of new rockets and small satellites. Not only has it built this facility, it has been an major investor in several new smallsat rocket companies, including Rocket Lab and ABL. It also opened its first assembly-line smallsat factory in 2017.

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Arianespace signs deal to study the possibility of using Orbex’s commercial rocket for launches

5:20 pm

In what must be considered a major sea change in Europe, Arianespace — the European Space Agency’s (ESA) official commercial launch company — has now signed a deal with Orbex, a rocket startup based in the United Kingdom, to study the possibility of using Orbex’s not-yet-launched Prime rocket for future European launches.

In particular, it is expected that future collaboration would be particularly beneficial for customers planning small satellite constellations, providing a flexible solution for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) payloads. Light and heavy-lift launch vehicles could jointly support customers in deploying their initial constellations into the required orbital planes, provide precise injections of a smaller number of satellites through dedicated missions, as well as provide replenishment and replacement launches.

While the ESA began developing a partnership with Orbex back in 2021 when it awarded Orbex a development contract worth 7.45 million euros, for Arianespace to go directly to this independent company for launch services suggests the new policy of ESA to stop developing its own rockets but to become a customer hiring the rockets of private companies is gaining steam.

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Lockheed Martin reorganizes its space divisions to better compete in the new commercial market

9:58 am

Lockheed Martin today announced that it is reorganizing its space divisions to make them better aligned with the new commercial market, and thus better able to win market share.

The company will streamline its operation from “five lines of business to three,” the first focused on commercial space, the second focused on classified military projects, and the third focused on military missile work.

As a big space company, Lockheed Martin has made a great effort in recent years to break into the commercial rocket industry. It was a major investor in Rocket Lab, and is also a major investor in the rocket startup ABL, which it is sending a lot of business. It also realigned its satellite construction business to focus on smallsats, including investing a lot of money in the smallsat company Terran Orbital.

This reorganization is clearly an effort to underline these changes. Whether it will work remains to be seen. Often such reorganizations in big older corporations end up being nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

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Aerojet Rocketdyne wins contract from Lockheed Martin to build more Orion engines

8:22 am

Aerojet Rocketdyne announced yesterday that it has been awarded a new $67 million contract from Lockheed Martin to build the Orion propulsion engines for Artemis missions six though eight.

This contract option includes delivery of three additional sets of Orion’s service module auxiliary engines and three additional jettison motors. The eight auxiliary engines each produce 105 pounds of thrust to help maintain Orion’s in-space trajectory and position, and supplement the Orion Main Engine. The jettison motor, located on Orion’s Launch Abort System (LAS), generates 40,000 pounds of thrust to separate the LAS from the crew module during both nominal operations and abort scenarios, allowing the spacecraft to continue on its journey. The jettison motor is the only motor on the LAS that fires during every mission.

These Artemis missions are not expected to occur until very late in this decade, by which time Starship will likely be making regular commercial trips to the Moon. At that time Orion will look increasingly ridiculous next to Starship, and will demonstrate starkly the difference in what government can do versus a free private sector.

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Lockheed Martin tests in-orbit cubesat rendezvous

9:16 am

Using two cubesats released separately after launch, Lockheed Martin has successfully tested maneuvering and rendezvous in space.

The two cubesats, each the size of a toaster, were deployed 300 kilometers above geostationary orbit from a ring-shaped secondary payload that carried multiple smallsats. They were released three days apart about 750 kilometers away from each other and a month later they were navigating within 400 meters of each other, Karla Brown, Linuss program manager, told reporters during a news conference at Lockheed Martin’s technology center at the Catalyst Campus.

One of the cubesats performed the role of servicing vehicle and the other was the resident space object. She said she expects the satellites to come even closer, to about 200 meters as the experiment continues. The more significant goal that was accomplished was proving AI algorithms that would be needed to perform a space servicing mission, Brown said.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of this project however is how it is funded. This is old-fashioned R&D (research & development), funded not by the government but by Lockheed Martin as part of a a suite of related in-space servicing projects. Before the arrival of the military-industrial complex post World War II, such work was always paid for in house by the private sector. This commercial R&D was often given great freedom to experiment, in the hope that it would result in new products producing profits.

With the arrival of lots of government money in the 1950s and 1960s, that private R&D money dried up. Big space companies would instead only do the research and development that was funded by the government, either by NASA or the Pentagon. As a result, innovation dried up as well.

The return of private R&D likely means we shall once again see more innovation, since it will once again be done to search out new innovative ways to do things.

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Lockheed Martin picked by Australia to build two military communications satellites

8:54 am

Australia’s military announced yesterday that it has chosen Lockheed Martin as the “preferred bidder” to build two military communications satellites.

According to Australian media reports, the ADF [Australian Defense Force] is interested in buying at least two geostationary communications satellites and wants a sovereign military satcom capability. Currently Australia’s defense forces rely on commercial satellite services and on the U.S. Wideband Global Satcom constellation. Air Vice-Marshal David Scheul, head of Australia’s Air Defence and Space Systems Division, said the project will deliver the country’s “first sovereign-controlled satellite communication system over the Indo-Pacific ocean regions.”

Lockheed Martin edged out competing teams led by Airbus, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Australia’s largest satellite operator Optus.

To get the contract, Lockheed Martin partnered with almost a dozen Australian companies. The specifics of the deal however still have to be worked out.

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Space station builder Voyager raises $80 million in private investment capital

8:36 am

Capitalism in space: Voyager Space, one of three companies that NASA has provided funds to build a private space station, has now raised $80 million in private investment capital.

The funding includes participation from NewSpace Capital, Midway Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other documents viewed by TechCrunch. Seraphim Space also participated, TechCrunch has confirmed. The funding was filed with the SEC on January 27.

The company is building Starlab in partnership with Nanoracks (which is the majority owner of Voyager) and Lockheed Martin, which has already received $160 million from NASA.

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ABL’s first launch attempt fails

9:14 am

The first launch of ABL’s RS1 rocket failed yesterday when the first stage engines shut down right after liftoff so that the rocket fell back onto the launchpad and exploded.

The company said in subsequent updates that the nine engines in its first stage shut down simultaneously after liftoff, causing the vehicle to fall back to the pad and explode. The company did not disclose when after liftoff the shutdown took place or the altitude the rocket reached. The explosion damaged the launch facility but no personnel were injured.

This rocket startup has raised several hundred million dollars, with its chief investor Lockheed Martin, which has also signed a contract for as many as 58 RS1 launches.

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Blue Origin-led team bids for NASA manned lunar lander contract

11:09 am

Capitalism in space: Though few details have been released, Blue Origin has teamed up with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to bid for a NASA contract to build a second manned lunar lander, after SpaceX’s Starship.

Blue Origin revealed its team’s submission to that second NASA program in a brief statement posted on its website on Tuesday, saying “in partnership with NASA, this team will achieve sustained presence on the Moon.”

The deadline for proposals was Tuesday. NASA is expected to make an award decision in June 2023.

Blue Origin’s team also includes spacecraft software firm Draper, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics, a manufacturer of military and civil robotic systems that was acquired by Blue Origin in January.

It will be interesting to see if this proposed lander is significantly different than the previous proposal, which NASA considered overpriced and not as capable as Starship.

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UK govt requests public comment on Shetland spaceport

9:11 am

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of the United Kingdom, tasked with regulating space operations, has requested public comment on the environmental impact of the proposed Shetland spaceport, dubbed SaxaVord and presently under construction.

Shetland Islands Council granted planning permission in February, with Lockheed Martin and Skyrora among the companies looking at launching satellites, as early as next year.

One of the environmental considerations is for no launches or tests between mid-May and the end of June to avoid disturbing breeding birds. U nst’s 135 bird species include red-throated divers, merlins, puffins and Arctic terns.

The spaceport has said it expects to conduct at least 30 launches a year, once operational. That number is probably optimistic.

Meanwhile, it is beginning to appear that — at least in these early stages — the CAA is not going to be helpful to Great Britain’s effort to develop a space industry. Not only does this action suggest it is not enthused about this spaceport and is putting up barriers to it, it has slow-walked the licensing of the Virgin Orbit launch from Cornwall, costing that company so much money because of the delay that its liquidity was threatened.

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Lockheed Martin invests $100 million in startup satellite maker Terran Orbital

9:14 am

Lockheed Martin has now invested $100 million in the startup smallsat-maker Terran Orbital, which has already been building satellites of a wide variety for customers.

Under the deal, which runs through 2035, the smaller Florida-based firm will build SAR and other advanced payloads, as well as satellite sub-assemblies, for the aerospace behemoth, Terran said in a press release today. These include electro-optical, hyperspectral, infrared and secure communication payloads, as well as things like star trackers and flight computers.

With this deal, Terran has also decided that it will no longer launch its own radar constellation, as that constellation would have competed directly with its radar satellite customers. Instead, it will make its radar satellite for others, including Lockheed Martin.

As an example of the variety of smallsats Terran Orbital has been building, it manufactured the smallsat lunar orbiter CAPSTONE for NASA, now on its way to the Moon but being operated for NASA by a different private company, Advanced Space.

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NASA buys 3 Orion capsules from Lockheed Martin for $2 billion

10:02 am

Nice work if you can get it! Earlier this week NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a new contract worth $1.99 billion to build three more Orion capsules for its Artemis program.

This order marks the second three missions under the agency’s Orion Production and Operations Contract (OPOC), an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract for up to 12 vehicles. A breakout of these orders includes:

  • 2019: NASA initiates OPOC IDIQ and orders three Orion spacecraft for Artemis missions III-V.
  • 2022: NASA orders three additional Orion spacecraft missions for Artemis VI-VIII for $1.99 billion.
  • In the future: NASA can order an additional six Orion missions.

Under OPOC, Lockheed Martin and NASA have reduced the costs on Orion by 50% per vehicle on Artemis III through Artemis V, compared to vehicles built during the design and development phase. The vehicles built for Artemis VI, VII and VIII will see an additional 30% cost reduction.

Lawdy me! They’ve reduced the price! Lockheed Martin is only charging NASA three-quarters of a billion dollars per capsule on this new contract (after NASA spent about $18 billion for the development of the first six capsules– that’s $3 billion each). And Lockheed Martin will only charge about a half billion per capsule for future capsules! My heart be still.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is designing, testing, building, and will likely launch its reusable Starship manned spacecraft, which could launch about 10 Orion capsules on each launch, for about $10 billion total. Once flying the expected cost per launch will likely be much less than $100 million, with SpaceX claiming it could be as low as $2 million. Even if you add the development cost for these launches, Starship will cost less than Orion by many magnitudes, on its first launch.

I wonder, which is the better bargain? NASA clearly can’t figure it out, and NASA has the smartest, most brilliant people in the universe working for it.

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ABL completes dress rehearsal countdown for its first RS1 rocket launch

9:59 am

Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company ABL successfully completed a full dress rehearsal countdown for its first RS1 rocket this past week, and is presently negotiating with the FAA the launch date for that rocket’s first test launch.

Though ABL is its own independent company, one of its biggest investors has been Lockheed Martin. In fact, in almost all ways, ABL is a Lockheed Martin division, and appears to be part of the older and bigger company’s strategy for entering the smallsat market.

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