Space – Page 12

Space policy is about to get pretty wild, y’all

Features, Science, Space / 9u50fv / November 8, 2024

Saddle up, space cowboys. It may get bumpy for a while.

President Donald Trump steps on the stage at Kennedy Space Center after the successful launch of the Demo-2 crew mission in May 2020. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The global space community awoke to a new reality on Wednesday morning.

The founder of this century’s most innovative space company, Elon Musk, successfully used his fortune, time, and energy to help elect Donald Trump to president of the United States. Already, Musk was the dominant Western player in space. SpaceX launches national security satellites and NASA astronauts and operates a megaconstellation. He controls the machines that provide essential space services to NASA and the US military. And now, thanks to his gamble on backing Trump, Musk has strong-armed himself into Trump’s inner circle.

Although he may not have a cabinet-appointed position, Musk will have a broad portfolio in the new administration for as long as his relations with Trump remain positive. This gives Musk extraordinary power over a number of areas, including spaceflight. Already this week, he has been soliciting ideas and input from colleagues. The New York Times reported that Musk has advised Trump to hire key employees from SpaceX into his administration, including at the Department of Defense. This reflects the huge conflict of interest that Musk will face when it comes to space policy. His actions could significantly benefit SpaceX, of which he is the majority owner and has the final say in major decisions.

It will be a hugely weird dynamic. Musk is unquestionably in a position for self-dealing. Normally, such conflicts of interest would be frowned on within a government, but Trump has already shown a brazen disregard for norms, and there’s no reason to believe that will change during his second go at the presidency. One way around this could be to give Musk a “special adviser” tag, which means he would not have to comply with federal conflict-of-interest laws.

So it’s entirely possible that the sitting chief executive of SpaceX could be the nation’s most important adviser on space policy, conflicts be damned. Musk possesses flaws as a leader, but it is difficult to argue against results. His intuitions for the industry, such as pushing hard for reusable launch and broadband Internet from space, have largely been correct. In a vacuum, it is not necessarily bad to have someone like Musk providing a vision for US spaceflight in the 21st century. But while space may be a vacuum, there is plenty of oxygen in Washington, DC.

Being a space journalist got a lot more interesting this week—and a lot more difficult. As I waded through this reality on Wednesday, I began to reach out to sources about what is likely to happen. It’s way too early to have much certainty, but we can begin to draw some broad outlines for what may happen to space policy during a second Trump presidency. Buckle up—it could be a wild ride.

Bringing efficiency to NASA?

Let’s start with NASA and firmly establish what we mean. The US space agency does some pretty great things, but it’s also a bloated bureaucracy. That’s by design. Members of Congress write budgets and inevitably seek to steer more federal dollars to NASA activities in the areas they represent. Two decades ago, an engineer named Mike Griffin—someone Musk sought to hire as SpaceX’s first chief engineer in 2002—became NASA administrator under President George W. Bush.

Griffin recognized NASA’s bloat. For starters, it had too many field centers. NASA simply doesn’t need 10 major outposts across the country, as they end up fighting one another for projects and funding. However, Griffin knew he would face a titanic political struggle to close field centers, on par with federal efforts to close duplicative military bases during the “Base Realignment and Closure” process after the Cold War. So Griffin instead sought to make the best of the situation with his “Ten Healthy Centers” initiative. Work together, he told his teams across the country.

Essentially, then, for the last two decades, NASA programs have sought to leverage expertise across the agency. Consider the development of the Orion spacecraft, which began nearly 20 years ago. The following comment comes from Julie Kramer-White from an oral history interview conducted in 2016. Kramer is a long-time NASA engineer who was chief engineer of Orion at the time.

“I’ll tell you the truth, ten healthy centers is a pain in the butt,” she said. “The engineering team is a big engineering team, and they are spread across 9 of the 10 Centers… Our guys don’t think anything about a phone call that’s got people from six different centers. You’re trying to balance the time zone differences, and of course that’s got its own challenge with Europe as well but even within the United States with the different centers managing the time zone issue. I would say as a net technically, it’s a good thing. From a management perspective, boy, it’s a hassle.”

Space does not get done fast or efficiently by committee. But that’s how NASA operates—committees within committees, reviewed by committees.

Musk has repeatedly said he wants to bring efficiency to the US government and vowed to identify $2 trillion in savings. Well, NASA would certainly be more efficient with fewer centers—each of which has its own management layers, human resources setups, and other extensive overhead. But will the Trump administration really have the stomach to close centers? Certainly the congressional leadership from a state like Ohio would fight tooth and nail for Glenn Research Center. This offers an example of how bringing sweeping change to the US government in general, and NASA in particular, will run into the power of the purse held by Congress.

One tool NASA has used in recent years to increase efficiency is buying commercial services rather than leading the development of systems, such as the Orion spacecraft. This most prominent example is cargo and crew transportation to the International Space Station, but NASA has extended this approach to all manner of areas, from space communications to lunar landers to privately operated space stations. Congress has not always been happy with this transition because it has lessened its influence over steering funding directly to centers. NASA has nonetheless continued to push for this change because it has lowered agency costs, allowing it to do more.

Yet here again we run into conflicts of interest with Musk. The primary reason that NASA’s transition toward buying services has been a success is due to SpaceX. Private companies not named SpaceX have struggled to compete as NASA awards more fixed-price contracts for space services. Given Congress’ love for directing space funds to local centers, it’s unlikely to let Musk overhaul the agency in ways that send huge amounts of new business to SpaceX.

Where art thou, Artemis?

The biggest question is what to do with the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. Ars wrote extensively about some of the challenges with this program a little more than a month ago, and Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg News, wrote a scathing assessment of Artemis recently under the headline “NASA’s $100 billion Moon mission is going nowhere.”

It is unlikely that outright cancellation of Artemis is on the table—after all, the first Trump administration created Artemis six years ago. However, Musk is clearly focused on sending humans to Mars, and the Moon-first approach of Artemis was championed by former Vice President Mike Pence, who is long gone. Trump loves grand gestures, and Musk has told Trump it will be possible to send humans to Mars before the end of his term. (That would be 2028, and it’s almost impossible to see this happening for a lot of reasons.) The Artemis architecture was developed around a “Moon-then-Mars” philosophy—as in, NASA will send humans to the Moon now, with Mars missions pushed into a nebulous future. Whatever Artemis becomes, it is likely to at least put Mars on equal footing to the Moon.

Notably, Musk despises NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, a central element of Artemis. He sees the rocket as the epitome of government bloat. And it’s not hard to understand why. The Space Launch System is completely expendable and costs about 10 to 100 times as much to launch as his own massive Starship rocket.

The key function the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft currently provide in Artemis is transporting astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit and back. There are ways to address this. Trump could refocus Artemis on using Starship to get humans to Mars. Alternatively, he could direct NASA to kludge together some combination of Orion, Dragon, and Falcon rockets to get astronauts to the Moon. He might also direct NASA to use the SLS for now but cancel further upgrades to it and a lunar space station called Gateway.

“The real question is how far is a NASA landing team and beachhead team are willing to go in destabilizing the program of record,” one policy source told Ars. “I can’t see Trump and Vance being less willing to shake up NASA than they are other public policy zones.”

What does seem clear is that, for the first time in 15 years, canceling the Space Launch System rocket or dramatically reducing its influence is on the table. This will be an acid test for Musk and Trump’s rhetoric on government efficiency, since the base of support for Artemis is in the deep-red South: states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida.

Will they really cut jobs there in the name of efficiency?

Regulatory reform

Reducing government regulations is one area in which the pathway for Musk and Trump is clear. The first Trump administration pushed to reduce regulations on US businesses almost from day one. In spaceflight, this produced Space Policy Directive-2 in 2018. Some progress was made, but it was far from total.

For spaceflight, Musk’s goal is to get faster approval for Starship test flights and licensing for the (literally) hundreds of launches SpaceX is already conducting annually. This will be broadly supported by the second Trump administration. During Trump’s first term, some of the initiatives in Space Policy Directive-2 were slowed or blocked by the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA, but the White House push will be even harder this time.

A looser regulatory environment should theoretically lead to more and more rapid progress in commercial space capabilities.

It’s worth noting here that if you spend any time talking to space startup executives, they all have horror stories about interacting with the FAA or other agencies. Pretty much everyone agrees that regulators could be more efficient but also that they need more resources to process rules in a timely manner. The FAA and Federal Communications Commission have important jobs when it comes to keeping people on the ground safe and keeping orbits sustainable in terms of traffic and space junk.

The second Trump administration will have some important allies on this issue in Congress. Ted Cruz, the US Senator from Texas, will likely chair the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which oversees legislation for space activities. He is one of the senators who has shown the most interest in commercial space, and he will support pro-business legislation—that is, laws that allow companies freer rein and regulatory agencies fewer teeth. How far this gets will depend on whether Republicans keep the House or Democrats take control.

Other areas of change

Over the course of the last seven decades, space has largely been a non-partisan topic.

But Musk’s deepening involvement in US space policy could pose a serious problem to this, as he’s now viewed extremely negatively by many Democrats. It seems probable that many people in Congress will oppose any significant shift of NASA’s focus from the Moon to Mars, particularly because it aligns with Musk’s long-stated goal of making humans a multiplanetary species.

There are likely to be battles in space science, as well. Traditionally, Republican presidents have cut funding for Earth science missions, and Democrats have increased funding to better study and understand climate change. Generally, given the administration’s likely focus on human spaceflight, space science will probably take a back seat and may lose funding.

Another looming issue is Mars Sample Return, which NASA is reconsidering due to budget and schedule issues. Presently, the agency intends to announce a new plan for retrieving rock and soil samples from Mars and returning them to Earth in December.

But if Musk and Trump are bent on sending humans to Mars as soon as possible, there is little sense in the space agency spending billions of dollars on a robotic sample return mission. Astronauts can just bring them back inside Starship.

Finally, at present, NASA has rich partnerships with space agencies around the world. In fact, it was the first Trump administration that created the Artemis Accords a little more than four years ago to develop an international coalition to return to the Moon. Since then, the United States and China have both been signing up partners in their competition to establish a presence at the South Pole of the Moon.

One huge uncertainty is how some of NASA’s long-established partners, especially in Europe, where there is bound to be tension around Ukraine and other issues with the Trump administration, will react at the US space agency’s exploration plans. Europeans are already wary of SpaceX’s prowess in global spaceflight and likely will not want to be on board with any space activities that further Musk’s ambitions.

These are just some of the high-level questions facing NASA and US spaceflight. There are many others. For example, how will Trump’s proposed tariffs on key components impact the national security and civil space supply chain? And there’s the Department of Defense, where the military already has multibillion dollar contracts with SpaceX, and there are bound to be similar conflicts and ethical concerns.

No one can hear you scream in space, but there will be plenty of screaming about space in the coming months.

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

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Nearly three years since launch, Webb is a hit among astronomers

astronomy, James Webb Space Telescope, NASA, Science, Space, space telescope / 9u50fv / November 6, 2024

From its halo-like orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope is seeing farther than human eyes have ever seen.

In May, astronomers announced that Webb detected the most distant galaxy found so far, a fuzzy blob of red light that we see as it existed just 290 million years after the Big Bang. Light from this galaxy, several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun, traveled more than 13 billion years until photons fell onto Webb’s gold-coated mirror.

A few months later, in July, scientists released an image Webb captured of a planet circling a star slightly cooler than the Sun nearly 12 light-years from Earth. The alien world is several times the mass of Jupiter and the closest exoplanet to ever be directly imaged. One of Webb’s science instruments has a coronagraph to blot out bright starlight, allowing the telescope to resolve the faint signature of a nearby planet and use spectroscopy to measure its chemical composition.

These are just a taste of the discoveries made by the $10 billion Webb telescope since it began science observations in 2022. Judging by astronomers’ interest in using Webb, there are many more to come.

Breaking records

The Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Webb on behalf of NASA and its international partners, said last week that it received 2,377 unique proposals from science teams seeking observing time on the observatory. The institute released a call for proposals earlier this year for the so-called “Cycle 4” series of observations with Webb.

This volume of proposals represents around 78,000 hours of observing time with Webb, nine times more than the telescope’s available capacity for scientific observations in this cycle. The previous observing cycle had a similar “oversubscription rate” but had less overall observing time available to the science community.

Nearly three years since launch, Webb is a hit among astronomers Read More »

The next Starship launch may occur in less than two weeks

raptor, Science, Space, starship, test flight / Shannon Garcia / November 6, 2024

The company will also use Starship’s next flight to assess new tiles and other elements of the vehicle’s heat shield.

“Several thermal protection experiments and operational changes will test the limits of Starship’s capabilities and generate flight data to inform plans for ship catch and reuse,” the company’s statement said. “The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials and will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles. The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles.”

Final flight of the first Starship

The five previous flights of Starship, dating back to April 2023, have all launched near dawn from South Texas. For the upcoming mission, the company will look for a late-afternoon launch window, which will allow the vehicle to reenter during daylight into the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX’s update also confirms that this will be the last flight of the initial version of the Starship vehicle, with the next generation including redesigned forward flaps, larger propellant tanks, and newer tiles and secondary thermal protection layers.

Reaching a near-monthly cadence of Starship flights during only the second year of the vehicle’s operation is impressive, but it’s also essential if SpaceX wants to unlock the full potential of a rocket that needs multiple refueling launches to support Starship missions to the Moon or Mars.

Wednesday’s announcement comes the day after the US presidential election in which Donald Trump was given a second term by American voters, and it is notable that he was assisted in this through an all-out effort by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Musk’s interventions in politics were highly controversial and alienated a significant segment of the US population and political class. Nevertheless Musk’s gambit paid off, as the election of Trump will now likely accelerate Starship’s development and increase its centrality to the nation’s space exploration endeavors.

However, the timing of this launch announcement is likely coincidental, as SpaceX did not need formal regulatory approval to move ahead with this sixth attempt—it was almost entirely dependent on the readiness of the company’s hardware, software, and ground systems.

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NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites

Commercial space, military space, National Reconnaissance Office, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex, spy satellite, starlink, starshield / Beth Washington / November 5, 2024

“A satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time.”

This frame from a SpaceX video shows a stack of Starlink Internet satellites attached to the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, moments after jettison of the launcher’s payload fairing. Credit: SpaceX

The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world.

“You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019.

The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to build a network of at least 100 satellites, and perhaps many more, to monitor adversaries around the world. So far, more than 80 of these SpaceX-made spacecraft, each a little less than a ton in mass, have launched on four Falcon 9 rockets. There are more to come.

A large number of these mass-produced satellites, or what the NRO calls a “proliferated architecture,” will provide regularly updated imagery of foreign military installations and other sites of interest to US intelligence agencies. Scolese said the new swarm of satellites will “get us reasonably high-resolution imagery of the Earth, at a high rate of speed.”

This is a significant change in approach for the NRO, which has historically operated a smaller number of more expensive satellites, some as big as a school bus.

“We expect to quadruple the number of satellites we have to have on-orbit in the next decade,” said Col. Eric Zarybnisky, director of the NRO’s office of space launch, during an October 29 presentation at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

The NRO is not the only national security agency eyeing a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency plans to kick off a rapid-fire launch cadence next year to begin placing hundreds of small satellites in orbit to detect and track missiles threatening US or allied forces. The Space Force is also interested in buying its own set of SpaceX satellites for broadband connectivity.

The Pentagon started moving in this direction about a decade ago, when leaders raised concerns that the legacy fleets of military and spy satellites were at risk of attack. Now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a handful of other companies, many of them startups, specialize in manufacturing and launching small satellites at relatively low cost.

“Why didn’t we do this earlier? Well, launch costs were high, right?” said Troy Meink, the NRO’s principal deputy director, in an October 17 discussion hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “The cost of entry was pretty high, which has come way down. Then, digital electronics has allowed us to build capability in a much smaller package, and a combination of those two is really what’s enabled it.”

A constant vigil

NRO officials still expect to require some large satellites with sharp-eyed optics—think of a Hubble Space Telescope pointed at Earth—to resolve the finest details of things like missile installations, naval fleets, or insurgent encampments. The drawback of this approach is that, at best, a few big optical or radar imaging satellites only fly over places of interest several times per day.

With the proliferated architecture, the NRO will capture views of most places on Earth a lot more often. Two of the most important metrics with a remote-sensing satellite system are imaging resolution and revisit time, or how often a satellite is over a specific location on Earth.

“We need to have persistence or fast revisit,” Scolese said on October 3 in a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit Washington think tank. “You can proliferate your architecture, put more satellites up there, so that a satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time that’s needed by the users. That’s what we’re doing with the proliferated architecture.

“That’s enabled by a really rich commercial industry that’s building hundreds or thousands of satellites,” Scolese said. “That allowed us to take those satellites, adapt them to our use at low cost, and apply whatever sensor is needed to go off and acquire the information that’s needed at whatever revisit time is required.”

The NRO’s logo for its proliferated satellite constellation, with the slogan “Strength in Numbers.” Credit: National Reconnaissance Office

The NRO has identified other benefits, too. It’s a lot more difficult for a country like Russia or China to take out an entire constellation of satellites than to destroy or disable a single spy platform in orbit. Military officials have often referred to these expensive one-off satellites as “big juicy targets” for potential adversaries.

“It gives us a degree of resilience that we didn’t have before,” Scolese said.

The proliferated constellation also allows the NRO to be more nimble in responding to threats or new technologies. If a new type of sensor becomes available, or an adversary does something new that intelligence analysts want to look at, the NRO and its contractor can quickly swap out payloads on satellites going through the production line.

“That’s a huge change for an organization like the NRO,” Zarybnisky said. “It’s a catalyst. Another catalyst for innovation in the NRO is these smaller, lower price-point systems. Rapid turn time means you can introduce that next technology into the next generation and not wait for many years or even decades to introduce new technologies.”

Three-letter agencies

The NRO provides imaging, signals, and electronic intelligence data from its satellites to the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. Scolese said the NRO wants to get actionable information into the hands of users across the federal government as quickly as possible, but the volume of data coming down from hundreds of satellites presents a challenge.

“Once you go to a proliferated architecture and you’re going from a few satellites to tens of satellites to now hundreds of satellites, you have to change a lot of things, and we’re in the process of doing that,” Scolese said.

With so many satellites, it “means that it’s no longer possible for an individual sitting at a control center to say, ‘I know what this satellite is doing,'” Scolese said. “So we have to have the machines to go off and help us there. We need artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated processes to help us do that.”

“We will deliver data in seconds, not minutes, and not hours,” Zarybnisky said.

The existence of this constellation was made public in March, when Reuters reported the NRO was working with SpaceX to develop and deploy a network of satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX’s Starshield business unit is building the satellites under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021, according to Reuters. This is remarkably inexpensive by the standards of the NRO, which has spent more money just constructing a satellite processing facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida (thanks to Eric Berger’s reporting in Reentry for this juicy tidbit).

Chris Scolese appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2019 during a confirmation hearing to become director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Reuters reported Northrop Grumman is supplying sensors to mount on at least some of the SpaceX-built satellites, but their design and capabilities remain classified. The NRO, which usually keeps its work secret, officially acknowledged the program in April, a month before the first batch of satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

SpaceX revealed the existence of the Starshield division in 2022, the year after signing the NRO contract, as a vehicle for applying the company’s experience manufacturing Starlink Internet satellites to support US national security missions. SpaceX has built and launched more than 7,200 Starlink satellites since 2019, with more than 6,000 currently operational, 10 times larger than any other existing satellite constellation.

The current generation of Starlink satellites launch in batches of 20 to 23 spacecraft on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. They’re flat-packed one on top of the other inside the Falcon 9’s payload shroud, then released all at once in orbit. The NRO’s new satellites likely use the same basic design, launching in groups of roughly 21 satellites on each mission.

According to Scolese, the NRO owns these SpaceX-built satellites, rather than SpaceX owning them and supplying data to the government through a service contract arrangement. By the end of the year, the NRO’s director anticipates having at least 100 of these satellites in orbit, with additional launches expected through 2028.

“We are going from the demo phase to the operational phase, where we’re really going to be able to start testing all of this stuff out in a more operational way,” Scolese said.

The NRO is buttressing its network of government-owned satellites with data buys from commercial remote-sensing companies, such as Maxar, Planet, and BlackSky. One advantage of commercial imagery is the NRO can share it widely with allies and the public because it isn’t subject to top-secret classification restrictions.

Scolese said it’s important to maintain a diversity of sources and observation methods to overcome efforts from other nations to hide what they’re doing. This means using more satellites, as the NRO is doing with SpaceX and other commercial partners. It also means using electro-optical, radar, thermal infrared, and electronic detection sensors to fully characterize what intelligence analysts are seeing.

The NRO is also studying more exotic methods like quantum remote sensing, using the principles of quantum physics at the atomic level.

“There’s camouflage,” Scolese said. “There are lots of techniques that can be used, which means we have to go off and look at very different phenomenologies, and we’ve developed and are developing capabilities that will allow us to defeat those types of activities. Quantum sensing is one of them. You can’t really hide from fundamental physics.”

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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US Space Force warns of “mind-boggling” build-up of Chinese capabilities

china, Space, syndication, US Space Force / 9u50fv / November 2, 2024

Both Russia and China have tested satellites with capabilities that include grappling hooks to pull other satellites out of orbit and “kinetic kill vehicles” that can target satellites and long-range ballistic missiles in space.

In May, a senior US defense department official told a House Armed Services Committee hearing that Russia was developing an “indiscriminate” nuclear weapon designed to be sent into space, while in September, China made a third secretive test of an unmanned space plane that could be used to disrupt satellites.

The US is far ahead of its European allies in developing military space capabilities, but it wanted to “lay the foundations” for the continent’s space forces, Saltzman said. Last year UK Air Marshal Paul Godfrey was appointed to oversee allied partnerships with NATO with the US Space Force—one of the first times that a high-ranking allied pilot had joined the US military.

But Saltzman warned against a rush to build up space forces across the continent.

“It is resource-intensive to separate out and stand up a new service. Even … in America where we think we have more resources, we underestimated what it was going to take,” he said.

The US Space Force, which monitors more than 46,000 objects in orbit, has about 10,000 personnel but is the smallest department of the US military. Its officers are known as “guardians.”

The costs of building up space defense capabilities mean the US is heavily reliant on private companies, raising concerns about the power of billionaires in a sector where regulation remains minimal.

SpaceX, led by prominent Trump backer Elon Musk, is increasingly working with US military and intelligence through its Starshield arm, which is developing low Earth orbit satellites that track missiles and support intelligence gathering.

This month, SpaceX was awarded a $734 million contract to provide space launch services for US defense and intelligence agencies.

Despite concerns about Musk’s erratic behavior and reports that the billionaire has had regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saltzman said he had no concerns about US government collaboration with SpaceX.

“I’m very comfortable that they’ll execute those [contracts] exactly the way they’re designed. All of the dealings I’ve had with SpaceX have been very professional,” he said.

Additional reporting by Kathrin Hille in Taipei.

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As North Korean troops march toward Ukraine, does a Russian quid pro quo reach space?

ICBM, military space, North Korea, russia, Science, Security, Space, Ukraine / Beth Washington / November 2, 2024

Earlier this week, North Korea apparently completed a successful test of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, lofting it nearly 4,800 miles into space before the projectile fell back to Earth.

This solid-fueled, multi-stage missile, named the Hwasong-19, is a new tool in North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal of weapons. It has enough range—perhaps as much as 9,320 miles (15,000 kilometers), according to Japan’s government—to strike targets anywhere in the United States.

The test flight of the Hwasong-19 on Thursday was North Korea’s first test of a long-range missile in nearly a year, coming as North Korea deploys some 10,000 troops inside Russia just days before the US presidential election. US officials condemned the missile launch as a “provocative and destabilizing” action in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

The budding partnership between Russia and North Korea has evolved for several years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on multiple occasions, most recently in Pyongyang in June. Last September, the North Korean dictator visited Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest launch base, where the leaders inspected hardware for Russia’s Angara rocket.

In this photo distributed by North Korean state media, a Hwasong-19 missile fires out of a launch tube somewhere in North Korea on October 31, 2024. Credit: KCNA

The visit to Vostochny fueled speculation that Russia might provide missile and space technology to North Korea in exchange for Kim’s assistance in the fight against Ukraine. This week, South Korea’s defense minister said his government has identified several areas where North Korea likely seeks help from Russia.

“In exchange for their deployment, North Korea is very likely to ask for technology transfers in diverse areas, including the technologies relating to tactical nuclear weapons technologies related to their advancement of ICBMs, also those regarding reconnaissance satellites and those regarding SSBNs [ballistic missile submarines] as well,” said Kim Yong-hyun, South Korea’s top military official, on a visit to Washington.

As North Korean troops march toward Ukraine, does a Russian quid pro quo reach space? Read More »

What is happening with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft?

Boeing, Science, Space, starliner / Shannon Garcia / November 2, 2024

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft safely landed empty in the New Mexico desert about eight weeks ago, marking a hollow end to the company’s historic first human spaceflight. The vehicle’s passengers during its upward flight to the International Space Station earlier this summer, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, remain in space, awaiting a ride home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

Boeing has been steadfastly silent about the fate of Starliner since then. Two senior officials, including Boeing’s leader of human spaceflight, John Shannon, were originally due to attend a post-landing news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. However, just minutes before the news conference was to begin, two seats were removed—the Boeing officials were no-shows.

In lieu of speaking publicly, Boeing issued a terse statement early on the morning of September 8, attributing it to Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s commercial crew program. “We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program,” Nappi said, in part.

And since then? Nothing. Requests for comment from Boeing have gone unanswered. The simple explanation is that the storied aviation company, which has a new chief executive named Kelly Ortberg, remains in the midst of evaluating Boeing’s various lines of business.

Figuring out what to do with Starliner

“There are probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with, or that just distract us from our main goal here. So, more to come on that,” Ortberg said during his first quarterly earnings call last week. “I don’t have a specific list of things that we’re going to keep and we’re not going to keep. That’s something for us to evaluate, and the process is underway.”

Also last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is considering putting some of its space businesses, including Starliner, up for sale. This suggests that if Boeing can get a return on its investment in Starliner, it probably would be inclined to take the money. To date, the company has reported losses of $1.85 billion on Starliner. As a result, Boeing has told NASA it will no longer bid on fixed-price space contracts in the future.

What is happening with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft? Read More »

Rocket Report: New Glenn shows out; ULA acknowledges some fairing issues

rocket report, Science, Space / Kelly Newman / November 2, 2024

“We have integrated some corrective actions and additional inspections.”

New Glenn arrives at Launch Complex 36 in Florida. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.18 of the Rocket Report! One of the most intriguing bits of news this week is the rolling of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket out to its launch complex in Florida. With two months remaining in 2024, will the company make owner Jeff Bezos’ deadline for getting to orbit this year? We’ll have to see, as the Rocket Report is not prepared to endorse any timelines at the moment.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

ESA selects four companies for reusable launch. The European Space Agency announced this week the selection of Rocket Factory Augsburg, The Exploration Company, ArianeGroup, and Isar Aerospace to develop reusable rocket technology, European Spaceflight reports. The four awardees are divided into two initiatives focused on the development of reusable rocket technology: the Technologies for High-thrust Reusable Space Transportation (THRUST!) project and the Boosters for European Space Transportation (BEST!) project. The awarded companies will now begin contract negotiations with ESA to further develop and test their solutions.

The best thrust anywhere … The THRUST! initiative aims to push forward the development of European liquid propulsion systems, and Rocket Factory Augsburg and The Exploration were selected to develop projects under this initiative. The BEST! project was launched to stimulate the development of future reusable rocket first stages or boosters, and ArianeGroup and Isar Aerospace were chosen for this. Europe has a number of initiatives now aimed at developing a reusable rocket, but it seems doubtful that a European rocket will launch into orbit in the 2020s and successfully return to Earth. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

UK startup pursues fully reusable rocket. Astron Systems intends to develop a fully reusable two-stage rocket to transport about 360 kilograms to low-Earth orbit, Space News reports. Founded in 2021 and located at the Harwell Science Campus in England, Astron is one of 12 startups in the fall 2024 class of the TechStars Space Accelerator. “We have a vision for the future in-orbit economy being this big thriving thing,” Astron co-founder Eddie Brown said. “Small satellites are the beating heart of the in-orbit economy today. There are a lot of customers that are crying out for better launch solutions.”

But they have a ways to go … The company seeks to build a methane-liquid oxygen rocket, but clearly it is starting small. Astron Systems has raised more than $600,000 to date, including private investment, grants from Innovate UK and ESA, and backing from Techstars Space. The company’s initial work is with pump technology and a torch igniter. The company’s optimistic forecast calls for a test launch in late 2027. We’ll pencil that date in rather than putting it down in ink, if that’s OK. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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Avio to build rocket motors for US military. Arlington-headquartered Avio USA was incorporated in April 2022. At the time, Italy-based Avio stated that the wholly owned subsidiary would be used to “explore business opportunities in the US market.” By 2023, the company revealed that it had identified “a significant production capacity gap relative to the substantial acceleration in demand requirements” in the area of tactical propulsion. This week the Italian rocket maker said it had begun design work on its first US-based solid rocket motor production facility, European Spaceflight reports.

Demand is rising … Avio USA is evaluating a number of possible locations in multiple US states for the several-hundred-acre production facility. A decision on the location of the facility is expected in the first half of 2025. “We are seeing significant demand for our capabilities from our current customers in multiple product lines, and this facility will be critical in creating our production capacity so we can meet the needs of our current and future customers as an independent supplier,” said Avio USA CEO James Syring. Avio will join several US startups in a hurry to ramp up solid rocket motors for missiles as the conflict in Ukraine continues. In the immortal words of Megadeth: Peace Sells … but Who’s Buying? (submitted by Ken the Bin)

ULA assessing fairing issues. A little more than a year ago, a snippet of video that wasn’t supposed to go public made its way onto United Launch Alliance’s live broadcast of an Atlas V rocket launch carrying three classified surveillance satellites for the US Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. The public saw video of the clamshell-like payload fairing falling away from the Atlas V rocket as it fired downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2023. It wasn’t pretty. Numerous chunks of material, possibly insulation from the inner wall of the payload shroud’s two shells, fell off the fairing, Ars reports.

Issue still being looked at … We have heard murmurings about fairing issues on the Atlas V for a while now, but United Launch Alliance and Space Force officials have been tight-lipped. More than a year later, however, the company acknowledges it is still investigating the issue. A ULA spokesperson said the company continues to review data related to the fairing debris and will share information upon completion of the investigation. “We are working very closely with our customers and suppliers on the observations in advance of future launches to improve our capabilities,” the spokesperson said. “We have integrated some corrective actions and additional inspections of the hardware.” Payload fairing debris could pose a risk to sensitive components on the spacecraft that the shroud is supposed to protect.

China launches next space station crew. A Long March 2F rocket topped with the Shenzhou 19 crew spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Tuesday carrying a crew of three Chinese astronauts, Space.com reports. Aboard were commander Cai Xuzhe, 48, who was a member of the Shenzhou 14 mission, and rookie astronauts Song Lingdong, 34, a former air force pilot, and Wang Haoze, also 34, a spaceflight engineer. About six hours after the launch, the Shenzhou 19 spacecraft docked with the Tiangong space station.

Keeping the station on track … The astronaut trio is set to spend six months in orbit aboard Tiangong, conducting various experiments and embarking on several extravehicular activities, or spacewalks. Shenzhou 19 is the 33rd spaceflight mission under China’s human spaceflight program. These missions include uncrewed test flights, crewed missions, launching Tiangong modules and smaller space lab precursor missions, next-generation crew spacecraft test flights, and Tianzhou cargo and refueling missions. China intends to keep Tiangong, which has about 20 percent of the mass of the International Space Station, flying for at least a decade. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Firefly’s CEO to work “maniacally” to scale the company. Firefly’s previous CEO was in the job for less than two years before a shock exit in July after reported allegations of an inappropriate employee relationship. Now the company has a new top boss, Jason Kim, who left his job as chief executive of satellite-making subsidiary Millennium for Firefly. “I’m thrilled to be here,” Kim told CNBC in an interview. “I’m going to work maniacally to support this team so that we can achieve all of our visionary ideas.”

It starts with the engines … Kim is looking to fly more Alpha rockets and bring the Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) online in 2026. Kim sees Firefly as having a key advantage—”an engine that works”—in its Reaver engines that power the Alpha rockets. And for MLV, Kim said Firefly took that “great engine technology” and “scaled it up to become Miranda, so you’re not starting from scratch” with a new engine. “We’re making huge strides on MLV,” Kim added. “We’ve had 50 Miranda engine tests already.” Although Alpha may not be reusable, the company has purposely designed the MLV for reusability. “We’re closer to how SpaceX tackled [rocket reuse],” Kim said. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

US Senator wants FAA to move faster. The Federal Aviation Administration must make “immediate changes” to the regulatory framework governing launch and re-entry, according to Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), a senior authorizer and appropriator who oversees the space sector, Payload reports. “Across the commercial space industry, concerns are abundant in every stage of FAA’s Office of Space Transportation of both its formal licensing process and its information pre-application review,” Moran wrote in a letter to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker.

More funding may help … Referencing possible delays with NASA’s Artemis program, Moran called on the FAA to rapidly increase transparency and accountability, saying that America’s leadership in space depends on faster action. “It is irrational to think it often takes more time to complete licensing evaluations than actual rocket development and testing,” Moran wrote. The chief of the FAA’s space division, Kelvin Coleman, has previously said Congress could fix the issues with more funding. The FAA’s Office of Space Transportation has an annual budget of $42 million.

Europe moves to address geo-return concerns in launch. In its most basic form, the European Space Agency’s geo-return policy ensures that companies in member states receive contracts proportional to their country’s financial contributions to ESA. While the policy does foster greater contributions to the agency, it can also add complexity to programs, requiring supply chains to be spread across multiple European countries. For commercial launch companies, this is almost certain to add cost to a public-private partnership with ESA.

No constraints … Now, European Spaceflight reports, ESA seeks to exempt a commercial launch competition from this geo-return policy. The program aims to incentivize the development of a diversified European commercial launch services market. ESA Director of Space Transportation Toni Tolker-Nielsen said, “There will be no constraints on geo-return in this request for proposals.” This would seem to be a positive step forward for private launch companies in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and elsewhere. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

What are the next steps for Starship? In a feature, Ars explores the roadmap for SpaceX and the Starship rocket over the next three to five years and the path toward landing NASA astronauts on the Moon. The capture of a Super Heavy booster on October 13 at the company’s Starbase facility in South Texas brings the company closer to such a higher flight rate. SpaceX proved its titanic booster does not need cumbersome landing legs and can eliminate days of processing time otherwise needed to move a landed rocket back to the launch site. Less mass and shorter turnarounds are huge wins for Starship.

A long road ahead … Among the key milestones are: an in-flight relight of a Raptor engine, returning a Starship upper stage to land, reflying a Super Heavy booster, performing one or more in-flight refueling demonstrations, flying a long-duration mission around the Moon (probably 100 days or longer), landing an uncrewed version of Starship on the Moon, and, finally, landing humans as part of the Artemis program. If all goes well, it should be possible for NASA to fulfill the initial promise of the Artemis program and land two astronauts on the surface of the Moon in 2028. This is two years later than NASA’s current goal of September 2026 but would still represent a herculean task by SpaceX and the space agency. If there are significant setbacks, such as failed tower catches or mishaps during fueling in space, the program will doubtlessly face more delays.

New Glenn first stage rolls to the launch site. Blue Origin took another significant step toward the launch of its large New Glenn rocket on Tuesday night by rolling the first stage of the vehicle to a launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Ars reports. Moving the rocket to the launch site is a key sign that the first stage is almost ready for its much-anticipated debut. Development of the New Glenn rocket would bring a third commercial heavy-lift rocket into the US market, after SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Starship vehicles. It would send another clear signal that the future of rocketry in the United States is commercially driven rather than government-led.

So when New Glenn? … The rocket must still undergo two key milestones: completing a wet dress rehearsal in which the vehicle will be fully fueled and its ground systems tested, followed by a hot-fire test during which the first stage’s seven BE-4 rocket engines will be ignited for several seconds. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has been pushing the company hard to launch New Glenn for the first time this year, and the schedule is getting tight. Blue Origin already had to stand down from an October launch attempt and delay the launch of a small Mars-bound payload for NASA called ESCAPADE. Ars estimates the rocket will launch no earlier than early- to mid-December if all goes well.

Next three launches

Nov. 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-77 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 20: 57 UTC

Nov. 4: H3 | Kirameki 3 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 05: 48 UTC

Nov. 4: Electron | Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes| Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 09: 30 UTC

Rocket Report: New Glenn shows out; ULA acknowledges some fairing issues Read More »

Finally, a sign of life for Europe’s sovereign satellite Internet constellation

broadband, Commercial space, European Union, Internet, iris2, Science, Space / Shannon Garcia / November 2, 2024

The estimated 10 billion-plus euro cost of the IRIS² program is nearly double initial projections. European officials also confirmed the sovereign satellite network won’t begin providing services to European government customers until 2030, three years later than the commission’s previous schedule.

Rising costs and negotiations over how much governments and industry will pay for IRIS² have delayed the contract award for months. Earlier this year, press reports indicated the SpaceRISE consortium’s proposal for IRIS² carried a total cost of 12 billion euros. It seems the price has been negotiated down, at least by a small percentage, to around 10 billion.

It’s also worth noting that the EU will this year only commit to funding the IRIS² initiative through the end 0f 2027, when the commission’s seven-year budget framework expires. It’s almost certain the IRIS² program will require more government funding beyond 2027, but the European Commission said it will decide later on additional money, subject to the “availability of the corresponding appropriations.”

In April, a senior official in the German government, the EU’s top contributor, called for the IRIS² program to be restarted. Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, called the proposed 12 billion euro price “exorbitant” and said the entire project was “ill-conceived” in a letter to Thierry Breton, then the EU’s internal market commissioner, according to a report in the Germany newspaper Handelsblatt.

Habeck’s protest obviously did not stop the European Commission from awarding the contract to the SpaceRISE consortium. The 12-year agreement will cover the development, deployment, and operation of at least 290 satellites placed at different orbital altitudes, from low-Earth orbit up to medium-Earth orbit several thousand miles above the planet.

At these higher altitudes, IRIS² can cover the globe with fewer satellites than Starlink, OneWeb, or Amazon Kuiper.

The commission’s press release said the agreement, the largest space contract in EU history, should be signed in December. At that time, “legal and financial commitment from both parties will be taken,” the commission said.

The SpaceRISE consortium includes numerous European satellite and telecom companies, including spacecraft manufacturers Airbus Defence and Space, Thales Alenia Space, and OHB. Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat, and Thales SIX are also part of the industry group.

These companies are typically competitors in the satellite and telecom markets, as are SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat, which head up the consortium. Getting all the contractors and subcontractors to play nice with one another will be no small feat.

Finally, a sign of life for Europe’s sovereign satellite Internet constellation Read More »

NASA’s oldest active astronaut is also one of the most curious humans

don pettit, NASA, Science, Space / DJ Henderson / October 28, 2024

For his most recent trip to the International Space Station, in lieu of bringing coffee or some other beverage in his “personal drink bag” allotment for the stay, NASA astronaut Don Pettit asked instead for a couple of bags of unflavored gelatin.

This was not for cooking purposes but rather to perform scientific experiments. How many of us would give up coffee for science?

Well, Donald Roy Pettit is not like most of us.

At the age of 69, Pettit is NASA’s oldest active astronaut and began his third long-duration stay on the space station last month. A lifelong tinkerer and gifted science communicator, he already is performing wonders up there, and we’ll get to his current activities in a moment. But just so you understand who we’re dealing with, the thing to know about Pettit is that he is insatiably curious, and wants to share the wonder of science and the natural world with others.

Here’s just one small example. During his last six-month increment in orbit, from late 2011 to the middle of 2012, Pettit had some Lego blocks he’d been using for student demonstrations. After the final one, he asked if he could use the Legos for a science experiment. He turned them into a belts-and-rollers-type Van de Graaff generator and produced groundbreaking work in electric fluids. This research was published in Physical Review Letters after Pettit returned to Earth. Most of us probably could not even spell Van de Graaff generator, and this dude is up there, in space, building them out of toys.

The way Pettit, a chemical engineer by training, explains things is that he has the “programmatic” scientific research he does for NASA, and then there’s everything else, often done during his limited free time.

“This is well-planned, well thought out, peer-reviewed, and uplinked to station with the supplies needed,” he said of programmatic research. “And then you have what I call science of opportunity. This is science which comes to mind while you are there, simply because you are there, and you can do it because you can. The scientific disciplines that I’ve dabbled in on the International Space Station include fluid physics, classic physics, chemistry, biology, plant growth, and Earth observations.”

Wafers of water ice. Credit: Don Pettit/NASA

NASA’s oldest active astronaut is also one of the most curious humans Read More »

If you thought Astra was going to go away quietly, you were wrong

astra, rocket 4, Science, Space / Beth Washington / October 26, 2024

On Wednesday morning, a surprising email popped into my inbox with the following subject line: “Astra announces Department of Defense contract valued up to $44 Million.”

I had to read it a second time to make sure I got it right. Astra, the launch company? Astra, whose valuation went from $2.6 billion to $25 million after a series of launch failures? Astra, the company that was taken private in July at 50 cents a share?

Yes, it was that Astra.

This was curious, indeed. To get some answers, I spoke with the cofounder of Astra, Chris Kemp, who remains the company’s chief executive.

“If I have learned anything, it’s that you just don’t give up,” Kemp said. “You know, if you give up easily, this is not the place to be. Fortunately, I am surrounded by a team that has chosen not to give up.”

Rocket 4 becomes more real

I’ll be frank: When Kemp and his co-founder, Adam London, took Astra private this summer, I never expected to hear from the company again. Astra certainly was not the first launch company to fail, and it won’t be the last. But it is the first to seemingly resurrect itself in such a dramatic way.

To be clear, Astra is not back yet. The company remains in the phase of building and testing rocket stages and engines and does not have a launch vehicle ready to go. Its new booster, Rocket 4, will launch no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2025, Kemp said. (That date should probably be viewed with some skepticism).

The company has previously discussed Rocket 4, which is intended to carry 600 kg to low-Earth orbit, as far back as August 2022. But at the time, most of the launch industry, including this reporter, shrugged and moved along. After all, the company’s smaller vehicle, Rocket 3, failed on five of its seven orbital launch attempts. The general sentiment was that the new rocket would never fly.

However, even as Astra’s finances worsened and the company had to stave off bankruptcy by being taken private, not everyone dismissed the vision. In April 2023, the US Space Force awarded a task order for Rocket 4 to launch the STP-S29B mission. That was interesting, but it was just a single data point. Then came this week’s announcement that the US Department of Defense’s “Defense Innovation Unit” had awarded a grant worth up to $44 million to Astra for a “tactically responsive launch system.”

If you thought Astra was going to go away quietly, you were wrong Read More »

Rocket Report: Sneak peek at the business end of New Glenn; France to fly FROG

astra, blue origin, china, Commercial space, launch, new glenn, new shepard, rocket report, Science, Space, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan / Kelly Newman / October 26, 2024

“The vehicle’s max design gimbal condition is during ascent when it has to fight high-altitude winds.”

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket, with seven BE-4 engines installed inside the company’s production facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.17 of the Rocket Report! Next week marks 10 years since one of the more spectacular launch failures of this century. On October 28, 2014, an Antares rocket, then operated by Orbital Sciences, suffered an engine failure six seconds after liftoff from Virginia and crashed back onto the pad in a fiery twilight explosion. I was there and won’t forget seeing the rocket falter just above the pad, being shaken by the deafening blast, and then running for cover. The Antares rocket is often an afterthought in the space industry, but it has an interesting backstory touching on international geopolitics, space history, and novel engineering. Now, Northrop Grumman and Firefly Aerospace are developing a new version of Antares.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astra gets a lifeline from DOD. Astra, the launch startup that was taken private again earlier this year for a sliver of its former value, has landed a new contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the development of a next-gen launch system for time-sensitive space missions, TechCrunch reports. The contract, which the DIU awarded under its Novel Responsive Space Delivery (NRSD) program, has a maximum value of $44 million. The money will go toward the continued development of Astra’s Launch System 2, designed to perform rapid, ultra-low-cost launches.

Guarantees? … It wasn’t clear from the initial reporting how much money DIU is actually committing to Astra, which said the contract will fund continued development of Launch System 2. Launch System 2 includes a small-class launch vehicle with a similarly basic name, Rocket 4, and mobile ground infrastructure designed to be rapidly set up at austere spaceports. Adam London, founder and chief technology officer at Astra, said the contract award is a “major vote of confidence” in the company. If Astra can capitalize on the opportunity, this would be quite a remarkable turnaround. After going public at an initial valuation of $2.1 billion, or $12.90 per share, Astra endured multiple launch failures with its previous rocket and risked bankruptcy before the company’s co-founders, Chris Kemp and Adam London, took the company private again this year at a price of just $0.50 per share. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin debuts a new New Shepard. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture successfully sent a brand-new New Shepard rocket ship on an uncrewed shakedown cruise Wednesday, with the aim of increasing the company’s capacity to take people on suborbital space trips, GeekWire reports. The capsule, dubbed RSS Karman Line, carried payloads instead of people when it lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. But if all the data collected during the 10-minute certification flight checks out, it won’t be long before crews climb aboard for similar flights.

Now there are two … With this week’s flight, Blue Origin now has two human-rated suborbital capsules in its fleet, along with two boosters. This should allow the company to ramp up the pace of its human missions, which have historically flown at a cadence of about one flight every two to three months. The new capsule, named for the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, features upgrades to improve performance and ease reusability. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Sign Me Up!

China has a new space tourism company. Chinese launch startup Deep Blue Aerospace targets providing suborbital tourism flights starting in 2027, Space News reports. The company was already developing a partially reusable orbital rocket named Nebula-1 for satellite launches and recently lost a reusable booster test vehicle during a low-altitude test flight. While Deep Blue moves forward with more Nebula-1 testing before its first orbital launch, the firm is now selling tickets for rides to suborbital space on a six-person capsule. The first two tickets were expected to be sold Thursday in a promotional livestream event.

Architectural considerations … Deep Blue has a shot at becoming China’s first space tourism company and one of only a handful in the world, joining US-based Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic in the market for suborbital flights. Deep Blue’s design will be a single-stage reusable rocket and crew capsule, similar to Blue Origin’s New Shepard, capable of flying above the Kármán line and providing up to 10 minutes of microgravity experience for its passengers before returning to the ground. A ticket, presumably for a round trip, will cost about $210,000. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

France’s space agency aims to launch a FROG. French space agency CNES will begin flight testing a small reusable rocket demonstrator called FROG-H in 2025, European Spaceflight reports. FROG is a French acronym that translates to Rocket for GNC demonstration, and its purpose is to test landing algorithms for reusable launch vehicles. CNES manages the program in partnership with French nonprofits and universities. At 11.8 feet (3.6 meters) tall, FROG is the smallest launch vehicle prototype at CNES, which says it will test concepts and technologies at small scale before incorporating them into Europe’s larger vertical takeoff/vertical landing test rockets like Callisto and Themis. Eventually, the idea is for all this work to lead to a reusable European orbital-class rocket.

Building on experience … CNES flew a jet-powered demonstrator named FROG-T on five test flights beginning in May 2019, reaching a maximum altitude of about 100 feet (30 meters). FROG-H will be powered by a hydrogen peroxide rocket engine developed by the Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation in Poland under a European Space Agency contract. The first flights of FROG-H are scheduled for early 2025. The structure of the FROG project seeks to “break free from traditional development methods” by turning to “teams of enthusiasts” to rapidly develop and test solutions through an experimental approach, CNES says on its website. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 sweeps NSSL awards. The US Space Force’s Space Systems Command announced on October 18 it has ordered nine launches from SpaceX in the first batch of dozens of missions the military will buy in a new phase of competition for lucrative national security launch contracts, Ars reports. The parameters of the competition limited the bidders to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA). SpaceX won both task orders for a combined value of $733.5 million, or roughly $81.5 million per mission. Six of the nine missions will launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, beginning as soon as late 2025. The other three will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Head-to-head … This was the first set of contract awards by the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 procurement round and represents one of the first head-to-head competitions between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and ULA’s Vulcan rocket. The nine launches were divided into two separate orders, and SpaceX won both. The missions will deploy payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office and the Space Development Agency. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX continues deploying NRO megaconstellation. SpaceX launched more surveillance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office Thursday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. While the secretive spy satellite agency did not identify the number or exact purpose of the satellites, the Falcon 9 likely deployed around 20 spacecraft believed to be based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite bus, a derivative of the Starlink spacecraft platform, with participation from Northrop Grumman. These satellites host classified sensors for the NRO. This is the fourth SpaceX launch for the NRO’s new satellite fleet, which seeks to augment the agency’s bespoke multibillion-dollar spy satellites with a network of smaller, cheaper, more agile platforms in low-Earth orbit.

The century mark … This mission, officially designated NROL-167, was the 100th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket this year and the 105th SpaceX launch overall in 2024. The NRO has not said how many satellites will make up its fleet when completed, but the intelligence agency says it will be the US government’s largest satellite constellation in history. By the end of the year, the NRO expects to have 100 or more of these satellites in orbit, allowing the agency to transition from a demonstration mode to an operational mode to deliver intelligence data to military and government users. Many more launches are expected through 2028. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

ULA is stacking its third Vulcan rocket. United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon’s most precious national security satellites, Ars reports. Space Force officials expect to approve ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem on the rocket’s second demonstration flight earlier this month, when one of Vulcan’s two strap-on solid-fueled boosters lost its nozzle shortly after liftoff.

Pending certification … Despite the nozzle failure, the Vulcan rocket continued climbing into space and eventually reached its planned injection orbit, and the Space Force and ULA declared the test flight a success. Still, engineers want to understand what caused the nozzle to break apart and decide on corrective actions before the Space Force clears the Vulcan rocket to launch a critical national security payload. This could take a little longer than expected due to the booster problem, but Space Force officials still hope to certify the Vulcan rocket in time to support a national security launch by the end of the year.

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn has all its engines. Blue Origin published a photo Thursday on X showing all seven first-stage BE-4 engines installed on the base of the company’s first New Glenn rocket. This is a notable milestone as Blue Origin proceeds toward the first launch of the heavy-lifter, possibly before the end of the year. But there’s a lot of work for Blue Origin to accomplish before then. These steps include rolling the rocket to the launch pad, running through propellant loading tests and practice countdowns, and then test-firing all seven BE-4 engines on the pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Seven for seven … The BE-4 engines will consume methane fuel mixed with liquid oxygen for the first few minutes of the New Glenn flight, generating more than 3.8 million pounds of combined thrust. The seven BE-4s on New Glenn are similar to the BE-4 engines that fly two at a time on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, said three of the seven engines on the New Glenn first stage have thrust vector control capability to provide steering during launch, reentry, and landing on the company’s offshore recovery vessel. “That gimbal capability, along with the landing gear and Reaction Control System thrusters, are key to making our booster fully reusable,” Limp wrote on X. “Fun fact: The vehicle’s max design gimbal condition is during ascent when it has to fight high-altitude winds.”

Next Super Heavy booster test-fired in Texas. SpaceX fired up the Raptor engines on its next Super Heavy booster, numbered Booster 13, Thursday evening at the company’s launch site in South Texas. This happened just 11 days after SpaceX launched and caught the Super Heavy booster on the previous Starship test flight and signals SpaceX could be ready for the next Starship test flight sometime in November. SpaceX has already test-fired the Starship upper stage for the next flight.

Great expectations … We expect the next Starship flight, which will be program’s sixth full-scale demo mission, will include another booster catch back at the launch tower at Starbase, Texas. SpaceX may also attempt to reignite a Raptor engine on the Starship upper stage while it is in space, demonstrating the capability to steer itself back into the atmosphere on future flights. So far, SpaceX has only launched Starships on long, arcing suborbital trajectories that carry the vehicle halfway around the world before reentry. In order to actually launch a Starship into a stable orbit around Earth, SpaceX will want to show it can bring the vehicle back so it doesn’t reenter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner. An uncontrolled reentry of a large spacecraft like Starship could pose a public safety risk.

Next three launches

Oct. 26: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-8 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21: 47 UTC

Oct. 29: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-9 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 11: 30 UTC

Oct. 30: H3 | Kirameki 3 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 06: 46 UTC

Rocket Report: Sneak peek at the business end of New Glenn; France to fly FROG Read More »