Tag: spaceflight

OneWeb satellite factory coming to Florida

9:00 am

The competition heats up: OneWeb officially announces its plan to build its satellite factory in Florida.

OneWeb Satellites LLC prepares to break ground on its new estimated $85 million high volume satellite manufacturing factory in Exploration Park, Florida. Announced during a ceremony with Florida Governor Rick Scott and OneWeb founder Greg Wyler, the factory near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is set to open in 2017, with delivery of initial satellites later that year or early the next. OneWeb Satellites is a joint venture between OneWeb, a satellite based internet provider, and Airbus Defence and Space, the world’s second largest space company.

I think this news report of the press conference notes the most important aspect of this satellite factory, its assembly-line approach:

Typically, communications satellites take four to five months to assemble, Brian Holz, chief executive of OneWeb Satellites, a joint venture of OneWeb and Europe’s Airbus Group’s Defense and Space said during an event near the future location of the factory. “We’re going to build one in an eight-hour shift,” he said. He did not give details but said the factory would be highly automated.

If all goes right, they should begin launch satellites in large numbers within two years, which will mean a lot of additional launch business for the smallsat rocket industry.

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Video of recovered Falcon 9 first stage on the road

8:49 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s recovered Falcon 9 first stage was moved by road back to the company’s testing facility in Florida yesterday, a journey that was recorded by bystanders, including people in a Kennedy Space Center tour bus.

I have embedded the longest video below the fold, because it provides the best closeup view of the booster. Look especially at the booster’s top, where you can see practically no damage. This thing looks ready to fly.
» Read more

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Problems with attitude system doomed Hitomi

12:48 am

A series of failures in the attitude system on Japan’s X-ray space telescope Hitomi led to its destruction.

The problem started when the satellite’s inertial reference unit detected Hitomi was rotating around its Z-axis at 21.7 degrees per hour. The spacecraft was actually stable at the time, mission managers from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Friday. The satellite’s attitude control system commanded Hitomi’s reaction wheels, rapidly-spinning devices which control the pointing of the spacecraft with momentum, to counteract the spin. The action caused the satellite to rotate in the opposite direction as the faulty inertial reference unit indicated, officials said. Momentum accumulated inside the reaction wheel system, and magnetic torquers aboard the satellite were unable to unload the building momentum, which neared the reaction wheels’ design limit.

Hitomi’s computers recognized the dangerous situation and put the satellite into safe hold a few hours later. The satellite tried to stabilize using the craft’s hydrazine-fueled rocket thrusters to aim its solar panels toward the sun. But the trouble was not over, and the spacecraft’s solar sensor was unable to find the sun. Struggling to correct the growing spin rate, small rocket firings inadvertently caused Hitomi to rotate faster due to a bad setting in the thruster system, JAXA officials said.

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The commerical battle over U.S. surplus ICBM’s

8:48 am

Link here. The article provides a good summary of the conflict between Orbital ATK and Virgin Galactic over the Defense Department’s possible sale of surplus ICBM’s for commercial use.

While Orbital has been lobbying to get Congress to lift the ban on the Pentagon selling its surplus rockets to the private sector, Virgin Galactic has been harnessing the industry lobbying arm to convince Congress to keep the ban. They fear that if the missiles become available, their as yet unflown LauncherOne will not be able to compete.

I find it very revealing that Virgin Galactic wants to use regulation to hinder their competitors. To me, this is another sign that they are not very competitive or competent in actual rocket building. Rather than build and launch their rocket at a competitive price, they want to stifle an opportunity to lower launch costs.

A hearing on this issue is taking place today. Stay tuned.

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Pakistan pulls out of India satellite project

8:32 am

This op-ed provides a revealing outline of how the political tensions in Islamic Pakistan have damaged efforts by India to work together on a satellite project.

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced India’s decision to develop (and gift) a satellite to benefit all SAARC member countries [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation] in different fields like weather data exchanges, disaster management, telecommunication and tele-medicine. The work on this satellite has already begun at the Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO), and the satellite is expected to be launched by the end of 2016. After remaining indecisive about this project for long, Pakistan has finally decided to opt out of the SAARC satellite project. Now, India would launch this satellite not as a satellite for SAARC, but as a South Asia satellite.

Pakistan’s decision may not be totally surprising given the current chill in the India-Pakistan relationship. The initial discussions on this project were progressing in a constructive fashion with Pakistan. However, Pakistan subsequently made a technical and financial help offer to India for the construction of the satellite. This was not accepted by India, which could be one of the main reasons for Pakistan opting out of this project. Obviously, Pakistan has missed an opportunity to develop ‘orbital cooperation’ with India in spite of having ‘terrestrial confrontation’.

The article, describing other cooperative efforts by India, including working with Russia and China to link the GPS systems of the three countries. once again indicates to me that India as a country is successfully becoming a first world nation.

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An update on Philae

8:21 am

Link here. No big news. The lander remains silent, and has not yet been precisely located on the surface, though they have a pretty good idea where it is. They expect to get images of it on the surface sometime before September, when Rosetta’s mission will end with its own attempted touchdown on Comet 67P/C-G.

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An update on SpaceX’s recovered first stage

8:07 am

Link here. The story not only gives a detailed description of the prep work done to get the stage, dubbed CRS-8 S1, ready for transportation to the test facility where it will undergo static fire tests, it also gives an update on the status of SpaceX’s upcoming launches. This one sentence sums it up:

The frequency of SpaceX launches is expected to pick up the pace in June with up to three launches planned, potentially including the historic reuse of the CRS-8 S1.

If SpaceX can get three rockets off the ground in one month, a first for the company, they will help ease their launch backlog while also demonstrating that they can launch at a fast and reliable rate.

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OneWeb to set up operations in Florida

12:41 am

The competition heats up: The head of OneWeb confirmed today that his company is going to establish its base of operations in Florida.

The founder of OneWeb, Greg Wyler, confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel that his company is moving to Kennedy Space Center. Wyler plans to announce more details Tuesday morning in a news conference with Gov. Rick Scott, who will explain $20 million in state incentive dollars for the company. “It’s pretty exciting to see that Florida will be the base for a new satellite network that will extend high-speed access to 54 percent of the globe,” Wyler said in a phone interview.

OneWeb already has $500 million in funding to launch the new satellites, designed to boost internet access globally. It also has contracts with Virgin Galactic and French company Arianespace for launches. The company plans to hire at least 250 people.

The important part of this story for Florida is that OneWeb will be building its satellites there. Whether any are ever launched from Florida will depend on Virgin Galactic ever getting off the ground. Otherwise, most of these satellites will launch from French Guiana.

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Privately-built inflatable module installed on ISS

6:54 pm

The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace’s BEAM inflatable module, built in only three years for a mere $17 million, was installed on ISS this past weekend.

BEAM will allow Bigelow and NASA to demonstrate the capabilities of the inflatable habitat on ISS. It is expected to perform for at least two years of testing on the Station, providing a key shake out of the technology that is likely to play a major role in human deep space exploration. “(BEAM) will be a great way to test out the thermal characteristics of this new type of module, along with its radiation protection,” added Kopra. “It’s going to be a neat thing.”

Following its test period, the SSRMS will remove the module from the Station before releasing it Nadir (Earth-facing). The module will eventually re-enter around a year later.

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The history of Falcon 9’s recoverable first stage

11:43 am

This is a beautiful short supercut of the history of SpaceX’s effort to develop a recoverable first stage. Hat tip Rand Simberg.

The video notes that it took less four years, from the first flight of Grasshopper to the first successful landing by a Falcon 9 first stage. This is the kind of pace I remember as a child in the America I grew up in. New ideas were fast and continuous, and things moved. I pray we are heading for a new renaissance where things will move again.

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Next Atlas 5 launch delayed again

10:44 am

In the heat of competition: ULA has once again suspended future Atlas 5 launches indefinitely while it investigates the launch anomaly during the Cygnus launch several weeks ago.

The problem involves the system that delivers kerosene fuel to the rocket’s Russian-made RD-180 first-stage engine. Bruno said he expects to know within the next few days which components are suspect. Engineers have not found anything in the processing of the rocket for that launch on March 22 that was different from any previously flown, Bruno added. “We have a very good idea (of what the problem is), but we’re not quite done isolating it,” Bruno said. “I think in the next few days we should be able to say which components … we’re actually focused on.”

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Tucson to be sued over space tourism deal

10:35 am

In the heat of competition: A think-tank has announced that it plans on suing the Tucson city government over its deal with the space tourism balloon company World View.

Jim Manley, Senior Attorney with the conservative think-tank Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, told us he’s filing the suit tomorrow on behalf of three Pima County residents. “We’re asking the court to put a stop to the World View deal and all of the deals that come out of it.”

Manley calls the World View deal “illegal” for, among other things, violating Arizona’s Gift Clause. He says, “What the Gift Clause requires is that money be spent for a public purpose, and that the government receive fair compensation in return.” The lawsuit will also state the deal violates competitive bidding laws, because, Manley says, it was negotiated in secret, with no public bidding.

As much as I think it smart of the city government to try to encourage this business to settle in Tucson, I know, living here in Tucson, that a taint of corruption lingers over the city’s very liberal government. It would not surprise me if this deal includes some of that.

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McCain challenges ULA cost figures for new engine

10:30 am

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has questioned the cost numbers that ULA has given the government for replacing the Russian engines it uses in the first stage of its Atlas 5 rocket.

ULA has been trying to convince Congress to let it use those Russian engines indefinitely. McCain wants their use discontinued, now. The result: a battle of numbers.

The real bottom line has really nothing to do with the Russian engines, however. The real bottom line is the bottom line itself: ULA has to quickly develop a rocket that costs less to launch, or else they will lose all their business to SpaceX. Their use of these Russian engines now in the Atlas 5 is really irrelevant, in the long run.

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Vostochny’s past and future

10:22 am

Link here. The article provides an excellent overview of the problems at Vostochny as well as it future, even as the new Russian spaceport prepares for its first launch. Two key quotes:

During 2016, reports about mismanagement, non-payment of salaries and corruption persisted despite all the political scandals in 2015 and the Kremlin’s promises to resolve problems. In January, the Izvestiya daily reported the arrest of three leading engineers of the technical oversight directorate in Vostochny in a massive bribery investigation. Around the same time, the total amount of stolen federal funds from Spetsstroi was estimated at nearly 1.4 billion rubles, according to the Izvestiya.

However in February, a Moscow court ordered the release of former head of the Far-Eastern division of Spetsstroi, (known as Dalspetsstroi) Yuri Khrizman from prison to house arrest, apparently after prosecutors had failed to substantiate charges of unlawful spending of more than five billion rubles against him. Khrizman led construction at Vostochny until 2013 and, reportedly, had a reputation for excellence and integrity among his associates and subordinates. Since his arrest, at least one independent publication described the case against Khrizman as a misguided attempt to find a scapegoat in the hopelessly corrupt construction business. [emphasis mine]

And this:

[G]iven likely delays faced by new projects, Vostochny could see little use until the introduction of the launch pad for the Angara rockets, which was not expected until at least 2021.

Why does this all remind me so much of SLS and Orion? Both seem to be gigantic overpriced projects initiated by the government that are so expensive the government itself can’t afford to do much with them? At least in the U.S., we have one saving grace: the amount of corruption is significantly less.

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Falcon 9 first stage hoisted from barge

10:04 am

The competition heats up: The recovered first stage from last week’s Falcon 9 launch has been hoisted from the barge where it landed and is being prepared for testing prior to reuse.

The crane maneuvered the first stage on to a cradle, where ground crews were expected to complete procedures to “safe” the rocket — a process which includes draining the vehicle of its toxic igniter fluid, disarming of its pyrotechnic destruct system, and removal of propellants and high-pressure gases. Some of the safing procedures were accomplished at sea before the rocket booster, which also includes the “interstage” adapter to connect with the Falcon 9’s upper stage, arrived back on Florida’s Space Coast.

The rocket’s four landing legs will be removed or retracted, and then the booster will be rotated horizontal and loaded on a trailer for transport to a nearby SpaceX facility for inspections and a series of “static fire” engine tests.

The link has some good pictures of the operation and the stage.

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The Orion fantasy

10:21 am

There is a commercial space conference going on in Colorado this week, which explains the plethora of breaking stories from the new commercial space companies both yesterday and today.

Two stories today from Aviation Week, however, are more about the old big space industry and the old way of doing things, and both reveal the hollow nature of that entire effort.

Both stories are about work Lockheed Martin is doing in connection with its Orion capsule, and both try to convince us that this capsule is going to be the central vehicle for the first missions to Mars.

Function starts in the bones of the spacecraft,” [Mike Hawes, Lockheed Martin vice president and Orion program manager,] said in an April 12 interview at the 32nd annual Space Symposium here. “To be a deep space spacecraft, you have to build differently than you would if your requirements were to stay in low Earth orbit and be quiescent at the International Space Station for a few months. That’s driven Orion from the beginning. Any architecture you look at needs a crew capability, a long-term design requirement. So, you can debate a lot of different missions, but you need that fundamental capacity we have invested in Orion.”

I say balderdash. Orion is an over-priced and over-engineered ascent/descent capsule for getting humans in and out of Earth orbit. Spending billions so it can also go to Mars makes no sense, because its heat shield and other capsule technologies for getting through the Earth’s atmosphere are completely useless in interplanetary travel. Moreover, such a small capsule is completely insufficient for a long Mars mission, even if you test it for a “1,000 day” missions, as Hawes also says in the first article. To send a crew to Mars, you need a big vessel, similar to Skylab, Mir, ISS, or Bigelow’s B330 modules. A mere capsule like Orion just can’t do it.

Eventually, it is my hope that Congress will recognize this reality, and stop funding big space projects like SLS and Orion, and instead put its money behind the competitive private efforts to make money in space. Rather than trying to build its own capsules, space stations, rockets, and interplanetary vessels (something that NASA has repeatedly tried to do without any success), NASA should merely be a customer, buying the capsules, space stations, and interplanetary vessels that private companies have built, on their own, to make money, on their own.

Consider for example Bigelow’s B330. Each module is about as big as Skylab or Mir, and costs mere pennies to build and launch, compared to those government-designed stations. Moreover, Bigelow can build it fast, and repeatedly. Similarly, Orion has cost billions (about $16 billion when it makes its first manned mission in 2021 at the earliest) and will have taken 15 years to build. SpaceX built Dragon in seven years, Orbital ATK built Cygnus in five years, and Boeing is going to build Starliner in about four years, all for about $10 billion, total.

The contrast is striking, and though ordinary people with the ability to add 2 plus 2 can see it, it takes Congressman a little longer (as they need to use their fingers to count). Sooner or later they will get it, and Orion and SLS will disappear. Bet on it.

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NOAA plans use of private weather data

9:56 am

The competition heats up: Mandated by Congress to use commercial weather data obtained from privately launched weather satellites, NOAA has announced its first plan for doing so.

The first Commercial Weather Data Pilot, or CWDP, will kick off this summer with a solicitation for GPS radio occultation data of the sort NOAA and Eumetsat have been using for years to improve weather forecasts. GPS radio occultation receivers that have flown on a handful of research satellites and the U.S.-Taiwanese COSMIC constellation obtain highly detailed temperature and humidity soundings by observing tiny distortions of U.S. Air Force GPS signals as they pass through the atmosphere. While the U.S. and Taiwan are preparing to replace the six original COSMIC satellites with the first six of 12 planned satellites slated to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy perhaps late this year, meteorologists would like to see scores of additional GPS radio occultation satellites in orbit.

Several companies, including GeoOptics, PlanetiQ and Spire, have announced plans to address that demand by deploying constellations of dozens to hundreds of small satellites equipped with GPS radio occultation receivers. Spire launched its first four operational satellites last September.

If this goes as I hope, private companies will launch enough satellites to provide the data, at a far lower cost than NOAA spends to build and launch its own satellites, so that eventually it will not pay for the government to do it anymore. Just as private space is replacing NASA in supplying crew and cargo to ISS, private space can do the same for NOAA.

And like NASA initially, NOAA’s managers have been very reluctant to allow this to happen, as it will eventually take the business from them and give it to others. Since they, like NASA, can’t do it very efficiently, however, they can’t really argue their case very well, which is why Congress has been forcing their hand.

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Japanese Venus probe sends back first science data

9:26 am

In a triumph of engineering, the salvaged Japanese Venus probe Akatsuki has beamed back to Earth its first science data.

After an unplanned five-year detour, Japan’s Venus probe, Akatsuki, has come back to life with a bang. On 4–8 April, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) presented the first scientific results from the spacecraft since it was rescued from an errant orbit around the Sun and rerouted to circle Venus, four months ago. These include a detailed shot of streaked, acidic clouds and a mysterious moving ‘bow’ shape in the planet’s atmosphere.

Despite the probe’s tumble around the Solar System, its instruments are working “almost perfectly”, Akatsuki project manager Masato Nakamura, a planetary scientist at JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Sagamihara, Japan, announced at the Inter­national Venus Conference in Oxford, UK. And if another small manoeuvre in two years’ time is successful, he said, the spacecraft might avoid Venus’s solar-power-draining shadow, and so be able to orbit the planet for five years, rather than the two it was initially assigned.

The timing is also good, since Akatsuki is now the only probe circling Venus, and will be for a number of years, until someone else approves, builds, and launches a mission.

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Orbital ATK to launch robotic servicing mission

9:22 am

The competition heats up: Orbital ATK has signed Intelsat to the first contract for a private robotic servicing mission to defunct commercial communications satellites.

Orbital ATK is offering the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV), a spacecraft designed to rendezvous with a commercial satellite and dock to the nozzle of its apogee kick motor and surrounding adapter ring. The MEV would then take over propulsion and attitude control for the satellite, offering up to five years of extended life.

Intelsat has agreed to be the customer for the first MEV mission, named MEV-1 and scheduled for launch in 2018. MEV-1 will first dock with a retired satellite in a graveyard orbit above stationary orbit to test its systems, then dock with an active Intelsat satellite to extend its life for five years.

I like the concept. Unlike other much more complicated proposals, which propose to actually refuel the satellite’s original tank, this is simple, quick, and quite doable for relatively little developmental cost. Orbital ATK already as the technology to do the rendezvous, from its Cygnus freighter. All they need to refine is the specific technology to attach to the specific satellites.

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Aerojet Rocketdyne pitches its AR1 rocket engine to reporters

9:15 am

The competition heats up: At a space conference this week Aerojet Rocketdyne pitched its AR1 rocket engine, still under development, as the ideal replacement for the Russian engine in the Atlas 5.

The U.S. Air Force awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a contract in February worth up to $534 million over five years to certify and start delivering flight-ready AR1 engines in 2019. Aerojet Rocketdyne says it already has kicked in $70 million, with its total investment expected to exceed $250 million over the life of the contract.

Van Kleeck, vice president of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s advanced space and launch business unit, said the Air Force contract — the largest of several propulsion-related awards the service has made in recent months — is a sign of the Air Force’s confidence in the AR1’s ability to provide an expedient replacement for the RD-180 engine the Defense Department is under pressure from Congress to stop using.

United Launch Alliance, however, has anointed Blue Origin’s methane-fueled BE-4 engine as the front runner to replace the RD-180 by serving as the main engine for the Denver company’s next-generation rocket Vulcan.

“The AR1 engine can fly both on an Atlas and Vulcan and it’s the only engine that can do so,” Van Kleeck said.

Aerojet has been losing business to the newer commercial space companies like Blue Origin, and desperately needs to find a customer for the AR1. In the long run the Air Force contract won’t suffice, as it really is no more than government corporate welfare and cannot sustain them as a company. This press conference was part of that effort.

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Swiss company buys jet for vomit-comet

9:06 am

The competition heats up: A Swiss company has purchased an Airbus wide-body jet for use as a commercial zero gravity vomit comet.

What makes this different than previous zero-g companies is that they plan to fly a lot of people for a reasonable amount of money.

Prices range from 2,700 Swiss francs ($2,826) for a seat in the “party zone” with up to 40 passengers to as high as 65,000 francs for the VIP Room, which will hold up to 12 passengers, who will also get a luxury watch and can keep their flight suit.

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Russian billionaire backs interstellar project

9:00 am

The competition heats up: A Russian billionaire has announced a $100 million investment in an effort to use lasers to propel cellphone-sized spacecraft on an interstellar voyage to Alpha Centauri.

Called Breakthrough Starshot, the programme is based on an idea that has been around for decades: the solar sail. The theory is that a lightweight space sail could harness the momentum carried by photons in order to travel without fuel.

The Breakthrough Starshot team is betting that a burst of concentrated lasers, fired from the ground, could rapidly accelerate a mobile-phone-sized device equipped with microelectronics and a tiny sail — providing much more energy than could be harnessed from the Sun. Whereas NASA’s plutonium-powered New Horizons spacecraft took nine years to reach Pluto, the “nanocraft” envisioned by Breakthrough Starshot would pass by the dwarf planet and exit the Solar System in three days.

The project’s initial US$100-million budget covers only research and development of such a spacecraft. But Breakthrough Starshot’s ultimate goal is to demonstrate proof of concept for an international programme that would send a fleet of nanocraft into space. Doing so would require the group to surmount enormous scientific and engineering challenges in developing the necessary laser technology, materials and communications systems.

This technology is related though not identical to an earlier story about using lasers to power spacecraft.

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Russian assets in France seized

8:59 am

Russia’s refusal to pay damages in a court case has forced France to seize $700 million owed to Russia’s aerospace industry.

In total, France has seized Russian assets worth $1 billion following the Kremlin’s refusal to pay damages to former Yukos shareholders.

In July 2014, The Hague international arbitration court ruled that Russia must pay $50 billion for expropriating the assets of Yukos. The seized assets include $400 million owed by French-based satellite provider Eutelsat to the Russian Satellite Communications company and $300 million owned by French space launch provider Arianespace to Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, the magazine reported, citing the Shearman & Sterling legal firm which represents the Yukos shareholders.

This story is similar to the Sea Launch court suit by Boeing, whom the Russians owe $300 million. In that case Boeing has moved to block Russia from selling Sea Launch.

Both stories suggest that the Russians are in big financial trouble, partly caused by a lack of understanding of capitalism. In both cases, they formed partnerships with western businesses and failed to realize that those partnerships placed financial obligations upon them. From its Soviet days Russia probably thought they could ignore those obligations if it became inconvenient, and they are now discovering that this is not really possible if they wish to sell their goods to the rest of the world.

I expect Russia’s space industry to increasingly become isolated from the rest of the world market, partly because of these events.

In related news, Roscosmos has revealed that after the initial launch at Vostochny in April, the second launch will not occur until 2017. This indicates that the first launch is merely a face-saving effort to hide the fact that construction is really more than a year behind schedule, not three months.

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