rockets

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Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China

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Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future.

However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket—which has now been flying for a decade and a half—to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions.

Everyone wants a Starship these days

The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country’s state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship.

Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there’s more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn’t even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was “fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”

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NASA astronauts will have their own droid when they go back to the Moon

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Artemis IV will mark the second lunar landing of the Artemis program and build upon what is learned at the moon’s south pole on Artemis III.

“After his voyage to the Moon’s surface during Apollo 17, astronaut Gene Cernan acknowledged the challenge that lunar dust presents to long-term lunar exploration. Moon dust sticks to everything it touches and is very abrasive,” read NASA’s announcement of the Artemis IV science payloads.

A simple rendering a small moon rover labeled to show its science instruments

Rendering of Lunar Outpost’s MAPP lunar rover with its Artemis IV DUSTER science instruments, including the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer (EDA) and Relaxation SOunder and differentiaL VoltagE (RESOLVE). Credit: LASP/CU Boulder/Lunar Outpost

To that end, the solar-powered MAPP will support DUSTER (DUst and plaSma environmenT survEyoR), a two-part investigation from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The autonomous rover’s equipment will include the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer (EDA), which will measure the charge, velocity, size, and flux of dust particles lofted from the lunar surface, and the RElaxation SOunder and differentiaL VoltagE (RESOLVE) instrument, which will characterize the average electron density above the lunar surface using plasma sounding.

The University of Central Florida and University of California, Berkeley, have joined with LASP to interpret measurements taken by DUSTER. The former will look at the dust ejecta generated during the Human Landing System (HLS, or lunar lander) liftoff from the Moon, while the latter will analyze upstream plasma conditions.

Lunar dust attaches to almost everything it comes into contact with, posing a risk to equipment and spacesuits. It can also obstruct solar panels, reducing their ability to generate electricity and cause thermal radiators to overheat. The dust can also endanger astronauts’ health if inhaled.

“We need to develop a complete picture of the dust and plasma environment at the lunar south pole and how it varies over time and location to ensure astronaut safety and the operation of exploration equipment,” said Xu Wang, senior researcher at LASP and principal investigator of DUSTER, in a University of Colorado statement. “By studying this environment, we gain crucial insights that will guide mitigation strategies and methods to enable long-term, sustained human exploration on the Moon.”

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Russia’s Soyuz 5 will soon come alive. But will anyone want to fly on it?

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The Soyuz 5 rocket, also named Irtysh for a river that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan, answers to that purpose. Its first stage is powered by a single RD-171MV engine, which at sea level has three times the thrust of a single Raptor 3 engine, and is part of a family of engines that are the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engines in the world. The RD-171MV uses only Russian components.

Russian officials also plan to use the Soyuz 5 rocket as the “boost” stage of a super-heavy lift rocket, known as Yenisei, that would be used for a human lunar program. However the Yenisei rocket seems to be one of those Russian space initiatives that is forever mired in a nebulous development stage—often talked about as a national priority, but rarely advanced.

What market is there?

But the Soyuz 5 rocket now is very real, and it should launch within the next month. The question is, what market will it serve? Russia presently has the Soyuz 2, which has about half the lift capacity, for crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station, as well as the launch of smaller spacecraft. There is also the line of Angara rockets that has come online during the last decade.

The Soyuz 5 slots in between the Soyuz 2 and Angara A5 rocket in terms of performance. So what demand is there for a rocket with 18 tons of capacity to low-Earth orbit? One concern is that the number of geostationary satellites launched annually, once the bread and butter of the Proton vehicle, has dropped precipitously.

Another is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has taken Russian rockets off the table for many Western satellite operators. At the same time, international competition in the medium-lift market has stiffened. China has an increasing number of government and commercial options, and India’s launch offerings are growing as well. And for any company or country mostly concerned about price, Russia almost certainly can’t beat the reusable Falcon 9 booster offered by SpaceX.

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Stoke Space gives us another reason to take it very seriously

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Stoke Space announced a significant capital raise on Wednesday, a total of $510 million as part of Series D funding. The new financing doubles the total capital raised by Stoke Space, founded in 2020, to $990 million.

The infusion of money will provide the company with “the runway to complete development” of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding.

Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket’s innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle’s second stage. In fully reusable mode, Nova will have a payload capacity of 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and up to 7 tons in fully expendable mode.

Another bright fundraising star

There are some striking parallels between Stoke Space’s latest fundraising announcement and another forward-leaning launch company, Relativity Space. The latter was founded in 2016 with the promise of 3D-printing a rocket nearly in its entirety.

In November 2020, Relativity disclosed its own Series D funding, $500 million. At the time, the company had about 230 employees and was planning a launch the following year. Stoke presently has about 280 employees and intends to launch Nova next year.

Instead of lifting off in 2021, however, Relativity’s Terran 1 rocket would not launch for the first time until 2023, and since that time, the company has not flown again. In fact, Relativity nearly filed for bankruptcy last year before it received a large infusion of cash from Eric Schmidt, the former Google executive. Relativity has now largely abandoned additive manufacturing rockets and is focused on the development of a more traditional rocket, the Terran R vehicle.

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Removing these 50 objects from orbit would cut danger from space junk in half

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China, on the other hand, frequently abandons upper stages in orbit. China launched 21 of the 26 hazardous new rocket bodies over the last 21 months, each averaging more than 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds). Two more came from US launchers, one from Russia, one from India, and one from Iran.

This trend is likely to continue as China steps up deployment of two megaconstellations—Guowang and Thousand Sails—with thousands of communications satellites in low-Earth orbit. Launches of these constellations began last year. The Guowang and Thousand Sails satellites are relatively small and likely capable of maneuvering out of the way of space debris, although China has not disclosed their exact capabilities.

However, most of the rockets used for Guowang and Thousand Sails launches have left their upper stages in orbit. McKnight said nine upper stages China has abandoned after launching Guowang and Thousand Sails satellites will stay in orbit for more than 25 years, violating the international guidelines.

It will take hundreds of rockets to fully populate China’s two major megaconstellations. The prospect of so much new space debris is worrisome, McKnight said.

“In the next few years, if they continue the same trend, they’re going to leave well over 100 rocket bodies over the 25-year rule if they continue to deploy these constellations,” he said. “So, the trend is not good.”

There are technical and practical reasons not to deorbit an upper stage at the end of its mission. Some older models of Chinese rockets simply don’t have the capability to reignite their engines in space, leaving them adrift after deploying their payloads. Even if a rocket flies with a restartable upper stage engine, a launch provider must reserve enough fuel for a deorbit burn. This eats into the rocket’s payload capacity, meaning it must carry fewer satellites.

“We know the Chinese have the capability to not leave rocket bodies,” McKnight said. One example is the Long March 5 rocket, which launched three times with batches of Guowang satellites. On those missions, the Long March 5 flew with an upper stage called the YZ-2, a high-endurance maneuvering vehicle that deorbits itself at the end of its mission. The story isn’t so good for launches using other types of rockets.

“With the other ones, they always leave a rocket body,” McKnight said. “So, they have the capability to do sustainable practices, but on average, they do not.”

A Japanese H-IIA upper stage imaged by Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft last year. Credit: Astroscale

Since 2000, China has accumulated more dead rocket mass in long-lived orbits than the rest of the world combined, according to McKnight. “But now we’re at a point where it’s actually kind of accelerating in the last two years as these constellations are getting deployed.”

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ULA chief says Vulcan rocket will slip to 2024 after ground system issues

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ULA delay —

The Colorado-based launch company will end 2023 with just three launches.

–

ULA's Vulcan rocket rolls to the launch pad for testing.

Enlarge / ULA’s Vulcan rocket rolls to the launch pad for testing.

United Launch Alliance

United Launch Alliance will not see the debut of its next-generation Vulcan rocket in 2023, as previously planned.

The launch company’s chief executive, Tory Bruno, announced the delay on the social media site X on Sunday. United Launch Alliance had been working toward a debut flight of the lift booster on Christmas Eve, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Bruno made the announcement after the company attempted to complete a fueling test of the entire rocket, known as a wet dress rehearsal.

“Vehicle performed well,” Bruno wrote. “Ground system had a couple of (routine) issues, (being corrected). Ran the timeline long so we didn’t quite finish. I’d like a FULL WDR before our first flight, so XMAS eve is likely out. Next Peregrine window is 8 Jan.”

Peregrine is the rocket’s primary payload, a lunar lander built by Astrobotic that is intended to deliver scientific experiments for NASA and other payloads the Moon. It has specific launch windows in order to reach the Moon and attempt a landing during ideal lighting conditions.

From the information contained in Bruno’s comment, it appears as though the work to correct the ground systems to fuel Vulcan—the first stage propellant is methane, which United Launch Alliance has not worked with before—will take long enough that it will preclude another fueling test ahead of the rocket’s late December launch window. Thus, the next launch attempt will likely occur no earlier than January 8.

A light cadence

It has been a slow year for United Launch Alliance, which dominated the US launch industry a decade ago. The company is going to launch just three rockets this calendar year: the classified NROL-68 mission on a Delta IV Heavy rocket in June, the “Silentbarker” mission for the National Reconnaissance Office on an Atlas V in September, and two Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon on an Atlas V in October.

That is the company’s lowest total number of launches since its founding in 2006, when the rocket businesses of Lockheed Martin and Boeing were merged.

Part of the reason for the low total is that United Launch Alliance is undergoing a transition from its historical fleet of Delta and Atlas rockets to Vulcan, which is intended to be more price competitive with other commercial offerings, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. There will be a lot of demand for Vulcan once it starts flying regulary.

However, another factor is that the lower cost and equally reliable Falcon rockets have taken commercial and government launch business away from United Launch Alliance. SpaceX has steadily ascended over the last decade as United Launch Alliance has struggled to compete.

Whereas Bruno’s company launched just three rockets in 2023, on a handful of occasions SpaceX has launched three rockets in three days during this calendar year. SpaceX is likely to end the year with between 95 and 100 total launches.

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