Space

effects-of-falcon-heavy-launch-delay-could-ripple-to-downstream-missions

Effects of Falcon Heavy launch delay could ripple to downstream missions

falcon heavy, launch, military space, Space, space force, spaceplane, spacex, X-37b / /

On hold —

Officials hope to launch before the end of the year, but a longer delay is possible.

–

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is seen outside the company's hangar at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is seen outside the company’s hangar at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

SpaceX

SpaceX and the US Space Force thought they were ready to launch the military’s mysterious X-37B spaceplane this week, but ground teams in Florida need to roll the Falcon Heavy rocket back into its hangar for servicing.

This is expected to push back the launch until at least late December, perhaps longer. SpaceX and Space Force officials have not divulged details about the problems causing the delay.

SpaceX called off a launch attempt Monday night at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to resolve a problem with a ground system. A senior Space Force official told Ars on Wednesday that additional issues will cause an additional delay in the launch.

“We’re working through a couple of technical glitches with our SpaceX team that just are going to take a little bit more time to work through,” said Col. James Horne, deputy director of the Space Force’s Assured Access to Space directorate. “We haven’t nailed down a specific launch date yet, but we’re going to have to roll back into the HIF (Horizontal Integration Facility) and work through some things on the rocket.”

Horne, a senior leader on the Space Force team overseeing military launches like this one, said the ground equipment problem that prevented liftoff Monday night could be fixed as soon as Wednesday. But it will take longer to resolve other issues he declined to specify. “We found some things that we need to run some analysis on, so that’s what’s driving the delay,” he said.

SpaceX was similarly vague in its explanation for the delay. In a post on the social media platform X, SpaceX said the company was standing down from the launch this week to “perform additional system checkouts.”

There’s a chance the Falcon Heavy might be back on the launch pad by the end of December or early next year. A SpaceX recovery vessel that was on station for the Falcon Heavy launch in the Atlantic Ocean is returning to shore, suggesting the launch won’t happen anytime soon.

“We’ve got to look at the schedule and balance that with all the other challenges,” Horne said. “But I hope we can get it off before the end of the year.”

Lunar launch date in jeopardy

When it’s ready to fly, the Falcon Heavy launch with the military’s X-37B spaceplane will likely get high priority on SpaceX’s launch schedule. The military’s launch ranges, like the one at Cape Canaveral, are primarily there to serve national security requirements, even though they get a lot more use from commercial space missions.

Depending on how long it’s delayed, this military launch could affect several SpaceX missions currently scheduled to fly in January. Most notably, a Falcon 9 rocket is slated to lift off from the same launch pad in January with the first commercial Moon lander from Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company contracted to deliver scientific payloads to the lunar surface for NASA.

This robotic mission is one of the first two US-built spacecraft to attempt a Moon landing since the last Apollo landing in 1972. The Intuitive Machines mission, named IM-1, is scheduled to launch during a narrow window from January 12–16.

A few days earlier, as soon as January 8, another commercial lunar lander from Astrobotic is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on the first test flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. The Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines missions can only launch a few days each month due to limitations imposed by orbital mechanics and lighting conditions at their landing sites. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander was previously supposed to launch on December 24, but ULA pushed back the launch to perform more testing on the Vulcan rocket.

The landers from Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are both at Cape Canaveral, waiting for their turn in the Florida spaceport’s busy launch manifest.

The IM-1 mission has to depart Earth from Launch Complex 39A, the same site previously used by the Saturn V rocket and space shuttle. SpaceX has outfitted the pad to top off the Intuitive Machines lander with cryogenic propellant just before launch, a capability unavailable at SpaceX’s other launch pad in Florida. Likewise, LC-39A is the only launch pad capable of supporting Falcon Heavy missions.

It usually takes a couple of weeks to reconfigure LC-39A between Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 launches. The Falcon Heavy is significantly more powerful, with three Falcon 9 first-stage boosters connected together to haul more massive payloads into orbit.

A private astronaut mission managed by Axiom Space is also in the mix, with a launch date set for January 9. This mission, known as Ax-3, will carry four commercial astronauts aboard a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft on a roughly two-week flight to the International Space Station. Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at SpaceX, said the company hasn’t decided which pad Ax-3 will launch from.

All of SpaceX’s crew missions to date have lifted off from LC-39A, but the company recently constructed a crew access tower and arm to enable astronaut flights to depart from nearby Space Launch Complex 40. This gives SpaceX some flexibility to alleviate launch bottlenecks at LC-39A, which is required for some of the company’s most important missions.

LC-39A will remain the primary launch pad for SpaceX’s crew missions, Walker said Wednesday, but she added: “Having the second pad available enables us to be ultra-responsive to customer needs and growing demand by moving a Dragon over to SLC-40 when the need arises.”

It’s a good problem to have so many interesting payloads vying for a launch slot with SpaceX, but the tyranny of physics and infrastructure constraints could mean one of these missions might have to wait a little longer for a ride to space.

Effects of Falcon Heavy launch delay could ripple to downstream missions Read More »

new-survey:-nearly-30%-of-esa-workers-experience-workplace-harassment

New survey: Nearly 30% of ESA workers experience workplace harassment

ESA, Space, workplace harassment / /

Bad environment —

A new internal survey, leaked to Ars, shows continued problems at the space agency.

–

Image of the facade of a building with a curved corner, largely comprised of glass.

Enlarge / The ESA headquarters in Paris.

According to a new internal survey conducted by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) staff association, about 30 percent of ESA’s employees have either experienced or witnessed harassment in the workplace. The survey, published internally on December 6 and seen by Ars Technica, confirms the findings of our recent investigation into allegations of harassment and bullying at the agency.

The internal survey ran from July 19 to September 15 of this year and collected the responses of 2,751 workers, representing nearly half of all ESA employees across its six main centers in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, and Italy. The ESA staff association was set up by ESA to represent staff members, but the survey included both staff members and on-site contractors who are loaned to the agency through a network of cooperating manpower companies in Europe.

Among the respondents, nearly a third said they had witnessed harassment during their time at the agency, while 28 percent said they had directly experienced it. The report states that a “complementary analysis of 1,200 comments” provided by the respondents suggests that about 20 percent of the ESA workers experienced harassment within the past 24 months. The types of harassment disclosed in the survey included bullying and mobbing (60 percent of cases), moral harassment (30 percent of cases) and sexual harassment (10 percent cases).

(Mobbing is a form of psychological abuse that involves multiple people working together to undermine a person. Moral harassment involves any behavior designed to cause emotional distress by humiliation, intimidation, and unfair criticism.)

A history of problems

The reported levels of harassment are nearly identical to those found by independent studies conducted in 2008 and 2009 by occupational psychology consultancy Pearn Kandola.

Authors of the Pearn Kandola studies at that time described the levels of reported harassment as “concerning” and recommended the agency take action. The authors of the new report, however, admit that whatever measures have been taken in the ensuing years have not delivered results.

That may be because few of these incidents appear to be reported. The report says that the results of the new survey are in stark contrast to the rarity of harassment reports collected by the agency’s HR department. Surveyed workers who said they had experienced harassment gave several reasons for not speaking up, with 40 percent indicating they were either intimidated by fear of retaliation or worried that reporting problems would damage their career. Other reasons mentioned included distrust in the administrative procedure and a belief that nothing would change.

“The majority of reasons why colleagues do not step forward when experiencing or witnessing harassment stem from a particular behavioral pattern that might be referred to as culture, which is prevalent in the offices and corridors of ESA,” the report states. “Such a notion is not new and is often shrugged off with some complacency that the culture cannot be changed.”

Ineffective policies

ESA’s spokesperson previously denied problems with corporate bullying and harassment to Ars Technica, referring to what the agency described as state-of-the-art anti-harassment policies. The new report suggests most ESA workers don’t take advantage of these policies: “62 percent of staff and 81 percent of contractors were either not aware of the ESA Policy on Facilitation & Mediation and the recently revised Policy on Reporting Unwanted Conduct and Investigating Harassment at ESA or did not consider them useful.”

Of the ESA employees Ars spoke with during the earlier investigation, most who experienced harassment failed to seek help either from the agency’s HR department or, in the case of contractors, their manpower companies. And in at least one case, a contractor was fired for “bad behavior” after lodging an official complaint about a manager whose behavior four other colleagues described as abusive.

Since the publication of that investigation, about 30 additional individuals have come forward, detailing various grievances experienced within the ESA environment. The newly collected incidents include cases of mobbing, being yelled at in public, marginalizing and side-lining of workers, and assigning them menial tasks below their qualification and experience level.

As an intergovernmental organization, ESA has a special legal status that places it outside any national jurisdiction. Thanks to this immunity, guaranteed in the agency’s founding document the Convention, signed in 1975, local labor laws may not apply, and all the agency’s internal documents, including staff email and correspondence, are out of reach to external investigators.

Because of the issues it has identified, the staff association’s report admits that the situation has “a serious impact on the performance of the Agency and stands in the way of ESA being simply a safe, attractive, and joyful place to work that we can be proud of.” It argues, however, that the reported levels of harassment are comparable to those seen in a 2022 study by the United Nations International Labor Organization on violence and harassment at work. The UN also saw that roughly 20 percent of workers had experienced harassment—but that was over their entire lifetime in the workforce. In contrast, the new survey suggests that 20 percent of the workers at ESA have an equivalent experience within just the past two years.

Tereza Pultarova is a London-based science and technology reporter. She has been covering the space sector for over 10 years and has previously served as a senior reporter at Space.com.

New survey: Nearly 30% of ESA workers experience workplace harassment Read More »

blue-origin-sure-seems-confident-it-will-launch-new-glenn-in-2024

Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024

blue origin, Commercial space, Jeff Bezos, launch, new glenn, Space / /

Place your bets —

Does Jeff Bezos’s heavy-lift rocket really have a shot at launching next year?

–

This picture, taken several months ago, shows different parts for Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket inside the company's manufacturing facility in Florida.

Enlarge / This picture, taken several months ago, shows different parts for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket inside the company’s manufacturing facility in Florida.

Blue Origin

For the first time, it’s starting to feel like Jeff Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, might have a shot at launching its long-delayed New Glenn rocket within the next 12 months.

Of course, there’s a lot for Blue Origin to test and validate before New Glenn is ready to fly. First, the company’s engineers need to fully assemble a New Glenn rocket and raise it on the company’s sprawling seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. There’s a good chance of this happening in the coming months as Blue Origin readies for a series of tanking tests and simulated countdowns at the launch site.

It’s tempting to invoke Berger’s Law, the guideline championed by my Ars colleague which states that if a launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of a calendar year—and if it is at least six months away—the launch will delay into the next year. Given Blue Origin’s history of New Glenn delays, that’s probably the safer bet. New Glenn’s inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for 2024.

But it’s worth noting that Blue Origin has been consistent in its 2024 launch schedule for New Glenn for a while now, and on Tuesday, a senior Blue Origin official doubled down on this goal for the debut of New Glenn. There are also several signs beyond statements from Blue Origin that the company is making real progress with its new rocket.

The two-stage New Glenn will stand more than 320 feet (98 meters) tall, with the capability to haul nearly 100,000 pounds (45 metric tons) of payload into low-Earth orbit, according to Blue Origin. This is a weight class above the uppermost capability of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket or SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket but below SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

A NASA official last month said the agency anticipates putting one of its robotic Mars missions on the first flight of Blue Origin’s new rocket next year. The Mars science mission, named ESCAPADE, consists of two small identical spacecraft to study the Martian magnetosphere. It is relatively low in cost, and NASA is willing to accept some risk in launching it on the first New Glenn flight, but if it doesn’t depart Earth next year, the mission faces a two-year delay.

Lars Hoffman, Blue Origin’s vice president of government sales, gave a high-level overview of the privately-developed New Glenn rocket during a presentation Tuesday to the Space Force Association’s Spacepower Conference in Orlando.

“We’re now ready to really start amping things up a bit,” Hoffman said. “We’ll start launching New Glenn next year.”

What to watch for in 2024

Hoffman showed a video inside Blue Origin’s New Glenn manufacturing plant near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles away from the launch site at Cape Canaveral. Blue Origin intends to use most of the parts visible inside, which included tanks and other metallic structures, on real flightworthy New Glenn rockets, he said. Some of the equipment will be used for qualification testing on the ground.

“The manufacturing pace is just picking up by the day,” Hoffman told the gathering of Space Force officials. “This is all flight hardware that we’re going to fly on our first launches next year. There’s some qual hardware in there as well, but things are picking up very fast. In fact, we’re expanding the buildings there to support that scaling.”

In the last few weeks, photographers have caught glimpses of New Glenn’s payload fairing traveling on a transporter down a road near Cape Canaveral. The clamshell-like fairing has a diameter of 23 feet (7 meters) and a height of more than 70 feet (21.9 meters), with roughly twice the volume as a typical payload shroud flown on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket, according to Hoffman.

The fairing is now inside Blue Origin’s hangar near the New Glenn launch pad, Hoffman said. A large section of a New Glenn first stage booster, complete with Blue Origin livery, was also spotted just outside the manufacturing complex in Florida. When asked by Ars on Tuesday, Hoffman declined to confirm if this booster is slated for the first New Glenn flight, or if it is a ground test unit, but he said most of what Blue Origin has shown inside the factory is flight hardware.

“With our launch site right next door, it makes it very easy for us to build the rocket, transport it right to the launch site at our integration facility, with payload processing right nearby, all of it right there together,” Hoffman said.

Construction at the New Glenn launch pad, located on a site once used to launch Atlas rockets, is now complete, according to Hoffman. The pad is one of the largest launch sites at the Florida spaceport. “It is just ready to go, and we’ll put it to good use starting next year.”

An artist's rendering of a New Glenn rocket in flight.

Enlarge / An artist’s rendering of a New Glenn rocket in flight.

Over the next few months, Hoffman said Blue Origin plans to ramp up engine testing ahead of the debut launch of New Glenn. This will include firings of the methane-fueled BE-4 engine and the hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engine on a test stand in Alabama. Seven BE-4s will power the first stage of New Glenn, and two BE-3Us will be on the second stage.

Similar versions of both of these engines will be flight-proven by the time New Glenn finally takes off. The BE-3U is a different variant of the BE-3 engine used on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket, and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket will use two BE-4 engines from Blue Origin on each of its first stage boosters.

One of the most significant milestones leading up to the debut of New Glenn will be out of Blue Origin’s hands. Hoffman identified the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket with its BE-4 engines, now planned for January, as one of the key events in the run-up to the maiden flight of New Glenn.

Hoffman didn’t provide a specific timeline, but he told Ars that Blue Origin’s gound teams in Florida are preparing to raise a New Glenn rocket vertical on its launch pad for a series of cryogenic propellant loading tests. These tests, sometimes called “wet dress rehearsals,” will include filling the rocket with methane and liquid oxygen propellants. Recent history with other new rockets suggests minor problems can stretch out these tests for months.

Two Blue Origin officials told Ars that the company is not currently planning to perform a full-scale test-firing of an entire New Glenn booster, with all seven of its BE-4 engines, before the inaugural launch. If this holds, it would be unusual. These hotfire tests are a standard part of preparing of the first flight of a new rocket. Just this year, we’ve seen ULA test-fire its Vulcan booster, Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket go through multiple hotfire tests, and SpaceX’s enormous Super Heavy booster fire up its engines on the launch pad.

Blue Origin does plan to test-fire New Glenn’s second stage before the inaugural launch, the officials said.

Hoffman didn’t narrow down the schedule for the first flight of New Glenn beyond some time next year, but NASA’s ESCAPADE mission tentatively slated to fly on it is on contract for a launch date in August 2024. However, this schedule is under review, according to Laura Aguiar, a NASA spokesperson.

The official launch schedule in August would have the New Glenn rocket place the two ESCAPADE probes into an orbit around Earth, leaving the spacecraft themselves to perform the final maneuvers to escape Earth’s gravity and fly to Mars. Aguiar told Ars there are other options available, including using the ample lift capability of New Glenn to send the twin probes directly to Mars on a trajectory known as a Hohmann transfer, allowing for a launch date later next year.

“The NASA team, in conjunction with our spacecraft and rocket partners, are constantly evaluating alternative trajectory profiles that optimize the availability and flexibility of our launch opportunities,” Aguiar said in a written statement. “Some of these alternatives involve a more traditional (Hohmann) planetary transfer, which allows for launch availability further into 2024.”

Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, now has approximately 11,000 employees, primarily at locations in suburban Seattle, West Texas, Huntsville, Alabama, and Cape Canaveral. Although it has never launched anything into orbit, Blue Origin is one of two companies competing in the suborbital space tourism and research market, alongside Virgin Galactic. Blue Origin has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to develop a human-rated Moon lander to carry astronauts to the lunar surface on one of the agency’s Artemis missions.

Blue Origin also wants to join ULA and SpaceX in launching the US military’s most critical national security space missions. And Amazon, where Bezos made his fortune, wants to launch a large number of its Kuiper Internet satellites on Blue Origin rockets.

A new chief executive, Dave Limp, will take the reins at Blue Origin this month from Bob Smith, who oversaw a period of vast growth in employee headcount. Despite this, the company fell further behind its main competitor, SpaceX.

The orbital-class New Glenn is a centerpiece of making Bezos’s space ambitions a reality. Its first stage is designed to be reusable from the start to reduce launch costs and improve launch cadence. Hoffman said Blue Origin aims to recover the booster on a floating offshore platform beginning with the first flight. Blue Origin recently delivered a large fixture to Port Canaveral, Florida, to help rotate landed New Glenn boosters from a vertical to a horizontal position after returning to shore.

Blue Origin eventually intends to recover and reuse the entire rocket. “We are on a path to full reusability in the long term, and that’s the goal,” Hoffman said.

Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024 Read More »

after-15-months-blue-origin’s-new-shepard-spacecraft-will-finally-fly-again

After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again

blue origin, new shepard, Science, Space / /

Blue is back —

Taking some science and some postcards for a ride.

–

Photos from New Shepard launch day.

Enlarge / Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch system consists of a booster and a capsule.

Blue Origin is finally returning to flight.

On Tuesday the company announced, via the social media site X, that its New Shepard spacecraft would launch no earlier than next Monday.

“We’re targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission,” the company stated. “#NS24 will carry 33 science and research payloads as well as 38,000 @clubforfuture postcards to space.”

The uncrewed New Shepard 24 test flight will refly the science payloads that were aboard the New Shepard 23 flight, which experienced an engine nozzle failure at 1 minute and 4 seconds following liftoff in September 2022. The capsule’s emergency escape system performed as intended, rapidly pulling the spacecraft away from the disintegrating rocket and allowing Blue Origin to recover the payloads flown for NASA and other customers.

Blue Origin finished its accident analysis this spring and implemented a fix to the problem, including design changes to the BE-3 engine combustion chamber. In May, the company said it planned to return to flight “soon.” Then, in September, the Federal Aviation Administration closed its mishap investigation.

The company originally targeted an uncrewed return-to-flight mission in early October; however, two sources told Ars that the additional two-month delay was caused by an issue with certifying an engine part intended for flight.

A new rocket?

Blue Origin has not specified which rocket and spacecraft will be flying next week from its launch site in West Texas, near the town of Van Horn. The company’s first New Shepard rocket, Booster 1, was lost during an April 2015 flight. Booster 2 was retired in October 2016 after performing a successful test of the launch escape system on its fifth and final flight. Booster 3, which was lost during the NS-23 mission in September, was the company’s oldest operational rocket, making its debut in December 2017.

The company has used its newest rocket, Booster 4, exclusively for human launches on New Shepard. This rocket has some modifications from Booster 3 to qualify it as a human-rated rocket. The company has also built a fifth booster that may be making next Monday’s flight.

Tuesday’s announcement came amid a tidal wave of changes in leadership at Blue Origin this month, with several high-profile retirements and the arrival of its new chief executive, who has come to the company from Amazon, Dave Limp. He replaced Bob Smith, who had an uneven tenure as leader of Blue Origin. As Ars reported last month, Limp is likely evaluating the long-term prospects of New Shepard, which remains far from breaking even financially.

The company may pivot toward its larger projects, including the New Glenn rocket and lunar lander for the Artemis program, which have a greater chance of raising significant revenue. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has funded Blue Origin out of his pocket, providing as much as $2 billion a year in operating expenses.

However, given the announcement of New Shepard’s return to flight, it’s clear that Blue Origin isn’t moving entirely away from New Shepard just yet.

After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again Read More »

the-us-military’s-spaceplane-is-about-to-fly-again—it-needs-a-bigger-rocket

The US military’s spaceplane is about to fly again—it needs a bigger rocket

Boeing, falcon heavy, Kennedy Space Center, launch, Space, spacex, X-37b / /
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket stands on Launch Complex 39A in Florida, hours before its scheduled liftoff with the military's X-37B spaceplane.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket stands on Launch Complex 39A in Florida, hours before its scheduled liftoff with the military’s X-37B spaceplane.

Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is poised for launch as soon as Tuesday night from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the US military’s mysterious X-37B spaceplane is fastened atop the heavy-lifter for a ride into orbit.

Although the Space Force is keeping details about the military spaceplane’s flight under wraps, we know it’s heading into an unusual orbit, probably significantly higher than the X-37B’s previous sojourns that stayed within a few hundred miles of Earth’s surface.

SpaceX’s launch team called off a launch attempt Monday night “due to a ground side issue” and reset for another launch opportunity as soon as Tuesday night at 8: 14pm EST (01: 14 UTC). When it lifts off, the Falcon Heavy will light 27 kerosene-fueled engines to power the rocket off its launch pad overlooking the Atlantic coastline.

You can watch the launch using SpaceX’s live video feed on X, the social media platform, or if you prefer YouTube, third-party streams are available from Spaceflight Now and NASASpaceflight.

The exact altitude the X-37B will be flying through is unclear, but hobbyists and amateur sleuths who use open source information to reconstruct trajectories of top-secret military spacecraft suggest the Falcon Heavy will haul the winged vehicle into an orbit that could stretch tens of thousands of miles above the planet.

What’s more, the Falcon Heavy will apparently take a flight path toward the northeast from Florida’s Space Coast, then ultimately release the X-37B on a trajectory that will take it over Earth’s polar regions. This is a significant departure from the flight profile for the military spaceplane’s six previous missions, which all flew to space on smaller rockets than the Falcon Heavy.

In a statement, the Space Force said this flight of the X-37B is focused on “a wide range of test and experimentation objectives.” Flying in “new orbital regimes” is among the test objectives, military officials said.

“It seems to me like it might be a much higher orbit that it’s going to,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, which promotes sustainable and peaceful uses of outer space. “Otherwise, I don’t know why they would use a Falcon Heavy, which is a pretty big thing.”

Covering more ground

The X-37B spaceplane has attracted a lot of attention and speculation since its first mission in 2010. Across multiple administrations, Pentagon officials have consistently walked a narrow line between acknowledging the existence of the spaceplane, and divulging limited information about its general purpose, while treating some details with the utmost secrecy. The military does not talk about where in space it flies. With a few exceptions, defense officials haven’t publicly discussed specifics of what the X-37B carries into orbit.

The military has two Boeing-built X-37B spaceplanes, or Orbital Test Vehicles, in its inventory. They are reusable and designed to launch inside the payload fairing of a conventional rocket, spend multiple years in space with the use of solar power, and then return to Earth for a landing on a three-mile-long runway, either at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California or at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It resembles a miniature version of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiter, with wings, deployable landing gear, and black thermal protection tiles to shield its belly from the scorching heat of reentry. It measures 29 feet (about 9 meters) long, roughly a quarter of the length of NASA’s space shuttle, and it doesn’t carry astronauts. The X-37B has a cargo bay inside the fuselage for payloads, with doors that open after launch and close before landing.

The Space Force made a surprise announcement on November 8 that the next flight of the X-37B, sometimes called OTV-7, would launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. All six of the spaceplane’s past flights launched on smaller rockets, either United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V or SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The US military’s spaceplane is about to fly again—it needs a bigger rocket Read More »

ula-chief-says-vulcan-rocket-will-slip-to-2024-after-ground-system-issues

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

rockets, Science, Space, ula, Uncategorized, vulcan / /

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.

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

hubble-back-in-service-after-gyro-scare—nasa-still-studying-reboost-options

Hubble back in service after gyro scare—NASA still studying reboost options

Hubble Space Telescope, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / /
The Hubble Space Telescope viewed from Space Shuttle Atlantis during a servicing mission in 2009.

Enlarge / The Hubble Space Telescope viewed from Space Shuttle Atlantis during a servicing mission in 2009.

NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope resumed science observations on Friday after ground teams spent most of the last three weeks assessing the performance of a finicky gyroscope, NASA said.

The troublesome gyroscope is a critical part of the observatory’s pointing system. Hubble’s gyros measure how fast the spacecraft is turning, helping the telescope aim its aperture toward distant cosmic wonders.

Hubble still provides valuable scientific data for astronomers nearly 34 years since its launch aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990. Five more shuttle servicing missions repaired Hubble, upgraded its science instruments, and replaced hardware degraded from long-term use in space. Among other tasks, astronauts on the last of the shuttle repair flights in 2009 installed six new gyroscopes on Hubble.

Moving parts sometimes break

The gyros have long been one of the parts of Hubble that require the most upkeep. A wheel inside each gyro spins at a constant rate of 19,200 revolutions per minute, and the wheel is, in turn, sealed inside a cylinder suspended in a thick fluid, according to NASA. Electronics within each gyro detect very small movements of the axis of the wheel, which supply Hubble’s central computer with information about the spacecraft’s turn rate. Hair-thin wires route signals from the gyroscopes, and these wires can degrade over time.

Three of the six gyros installed on Hubble in 2009 have failed, and three others remain operational. The three still-functioning gyros are based on a newer design for longer life, but one of these units has shown signs of wear in the last few months. This gyroscope, designated Gyro 3, has always exhibited “consistent noisy behavior,” said Pat Crouse, Hubble project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Hubble typically needs three gyros to operate normally, so ground controllers shut down Gyro 3 for roughly seven years until Hubble needed it in 2018, when another gyroscope failed, leaving only three of the devices still working.

“Back in August, we saw issues,” Crouse told Ars this week. “It would sort of sporadically output some rate information that was not consistent with the observed spacecraft body rates, but it was short-lived, and we were characterizing what that performance was like and how much we could tolerate.”

The gyro’s performance worsened in November when it fed Hubble’s control system erroneous data. The gyroscope sensed that the spacecraft was changing its orientation when it really wasn’t moving. “That, then, contributed to an error in attitude that was kind of causing a little bit of drift,” Crouse said.

Automated software on Hubble detected the errors and put the spacecraft into “safe mode” two times last month. Hubble quickly resumed science observations each time but then went into safe mode again on November 23. Hubble managers took some extra time to gather data on the gyro’s health. Engineers commanded Hubble to move back and forth, and the suspect gyro consistently seemed to work well.

Hubble back in service after gyro scare—NASA still studying reboost options Read More »

ariane-6-rocket-set-to-restore-europe’s-space-access-next-year

Ariane 6 rocket set to restore Europe’s space access next year

Corporates and innovation, Deep tech, Government and policy, Space, Startups and technology / /

The European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 rocket is scheduled for its debut launch in mid-2024, its director Josef Aschbacher announced yesterday.

The news follows a successful hot-fire test on November 23 at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. The term ‘hot-fire’ refers to the fact that the engine is fired with its propellants, producing actual combustion and exhaust. The only difference from an actual launch is that the boosters are not ignited — keeping the rocket firmly planted to the ground.

“With the latest test complete, Ariane 6 has been through the essential rehearsals required for qualification,” said Aschbacher on X, formerly Twitter. “We have validated our models, increased our knowledge of operations and are now confident for our first launch period for Europe’s new heavy-lift launcher.” 

While the inaugural flight won’t carry major payloads in orbit, it will transport several smaller satellites. If that launch is successful, Arianespace, the company who developed the rocket, will aim for a second launch later in the year. That second launch would carry the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite for the French military, said the company’s CEO Stéphane Israël in a press briefing.

Following that, Ariane 6 would be put to work conducting as many flights as possible. The long-term objective is to launch the rocket into space 9-10 times per year, said Israël. These would include 18 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband megaconstellation project.  

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Ariane 6 was first scheduled to launch four years ago. However, the rocket suffered a series of delays, attributed to technical issues, COVID-19, and design changes. 

With Ariane 6’s predecessor, Ariane 5, officially decommissioned and Italy’s Vega C rocket grounded following launch failure in December, Europe is currently without independent access to space satellites. 

So it is welcome news that Ariane 6 is on track for launch in around 6 months’ time — if all goes to plan that is. 

Published

Back to top

Ariane 6 rocket set to restore Europe’s space access next year Read More »

europe’s-ariane-6-rocket-is-‘ready-to-rumble’-following-full-dress-rehearsal

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket is ‘ready to rumble’ following full dress rehearsal

Corporates and innovation, Deep tech, Government and policy, Space / /

The European Space Agency’s next-generation heavy-lift rocket Ariane 6 successfully completed a full dress rehearsal on Thursday, in preparation for its maiden flight next year.

The so-called hot-fire test at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana “simulated a complete launch sequence and thus validated the entire flight phase of Ariane 6’s core stage,” said the agency.  

During the rehearsal, the rocket engine was ignited while securely mounted to a test stand or test platform. The term ‘hot-fire’ refers to the fact that the engine is fired with its propellants, producing actual combustion and exhaust. The only difference from an actual launch was that the boosters were not ignited — leaving Ariane 6 firmly planted on the launch pad. 

“The teams from ArianeGroup, CNES and ESA have now run through every step of the rocket’s flight without it leaving Earth,” explained ESA director general Josef Aschbacher, who declared success means “We are back on track towards resecuring Europe’s autonomous access to space.”

Ariane 6 was first scheduled to launch four years ago. However, the rocket has suffered a series of delays, attributed to technical issues, COVID-19, and design changes. The rocket’s previous hot-fire test, in June, ended in failure. 

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

With its Ariane 6’s predecessor, Ariane 5, officially decommissioned and Italy’s Vega C rocket grounded following launch failure in December, Europe is now without independent access to space satellites. 

Until Ariane 6 gets up and running, the EU is forced to contract the work to Elon Musk’s SpaceX — the company’s Falcon rocket is the only viable alternative for hauling large satellites into orbit. 

Despite its setbacks, Ariane 6 has a number of institutional launches to carry out, not just for the ESA. It has been attracting commercial contracts, including 18 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband megaconstellation project.

For now, ArianeGroup’s CEO Martin Sion praised the team for the “real industrial feat”, but added that “a few additional tests”, notably fault tolerance, were still needed before the rocket was ready for launch. The next test, of the upper stage, is set to take place this December.

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket is ‘ready to rumble’ following full dress rehearsal Read More »

esa-inks-deal-with-airbus,-voyager-space-to-secure-place-on-iss-successor

ESA inks deal with Airbus, Voyager Space to secure place on ISS successor

Corporates and innovation, Deep tech, Investors and funding, Space, Startups and technology / /
ESA inks deal with Airbus, Voyager Space to secure place on ISS successor

The European Space Agency has signed a deal with Airbus and Voyager Space to secure its next home in orbit. 

The two companies are currently developing Starlab, one of several planned replacements for the International Space Station (ISS), which is set to retire in 2030. 

Under the agreement, ESA will assess how the Starlab space station could be used to provide continued access to space for Europe after the retirement of the ISS. ESA would primarily use Starlab for astronaut missions and space-based research. The agency could also potentially provide cargo and crew transportation services for the new space station.

“ESA appreciates the transatlantic industry initiative for the commercial Starlab space station, and the potential that its strong European footprint holds for significant European industrial and institutional contributions to, and use of, said station,” said Josef Aschbacher, the agency’s director general.

Starlab is one of several projects competing to replace the ISS. Its main challengers are Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which envisions a “mixed-use business park” called Orbital Reef, and Northrop Grumman, which wants to build a modular, free-flying space station. NASA has provided funding for all three concepts and will now determine which of the contenders merit further backing. 

Starlab is currently the most attractive option for Europe because of its partnership with French aerospace giant Airbus, which has  track record of supporting European space missions. Airbus most recently supplied the European service module for Orion, Europe’s contribution to NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon. 

Having Airbus involved helps not only with the technical development of Starlab, but also its business development, Matthew Kuta, president of Voyager Space previously stated. “We have great relationships with ESA, but clearly Airbus has much better relationships,” he said. 

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with


ESA inks deal with Airbus, Voyager Space to secure place on ISS successor Read More »

why-europe-is-lagging-behind-in-the-spacetech-race

Why Europe is lagging behind in the spacetech race

Ecosystems, Europe, Government and policy, Space / /

News broke last month that the European Space Agency (ESA) had engaged SpaceX to launch four of Europe’s Galileo satellites into orbit in 2024. The decision to turn to Elon Musk’s US-based company comes in the wake of delays to Europe’s own Ariane 6 rockets, which mean the continent is without its own means to deliver large payloads into space.

Though it’s only designed to bridge the gap in our current capabilities, it’s a disappointing development for Europe’s spacetech community. But one that, unfortunately, many of us saw coming. 

Why Europe is falling behind in space 

Europe is currently lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to spacetech, and the agreement with SpaceX is emblematic of a frustrating situation that’s hampering opportunities to advance its capabilities. 

So why has Europe had to turn to a US-based company? After all, there is no shortage of demand, and it’s not like the region is short on the kind of top level engineering talent that’s needed to develop its own rockets. 

One of the main problems is that there’s simply a lack of competition to fuel the development of new capabilities. I’d also argue that governments aren’t helping the situation. 

Compared to the US and China, European spacetech companies face a huge funding gap. In the US, funding largely comes from NASA and the Department of Defence who invested more than $62 billion in 2022.

It’s a similar story in China, where government support totalled $12 billion. Compare that with ESA, which has an annual budget of just 7.5 billion euros, and it’s easy to see why the region is lagging behind. 

How did we get here? 

It’s clear that dependency on foreign imports and companies like SpaceX will, in the long run, leave Europe’s sovereignty vulnerable. So, why have we fallen so far behind?

In part, ESA suffers from regulations on “geographic return.” This means that when a country funds ESA, an equivalent amount of money must be reinvested into its own domestic industry.

“Geographic return” was originally introduced to encourage investment and share the load (and returns) across big and small nations. In recent years, however, it has come under increased scrutiny for hampering the European space sector’s ability to be competitive, because in short, innovation and competition aren’t evenly spread. Finance should go to the best products, the best ideas and the most scalable commercial innovations, regardless of geography.

Earlier this year, ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher wrote that the region should move towards a “fair contribution principle,” which means adjusting the contribution of each European member state according to the outcome of the industrial competitions and the actual share gained by its industry in these competitions. 

While it’s undoubtedly a step in the right direction, I would say this does not go far enough. Scrapping “geographic return” entirely would be the kind of game changer that Europe needs to keep pace with the global space tech race. 

The power of partnership 

Another reason Europe is falling behind its global counterparts is the absence of public-private partnerships, which would support growth in the continent’s space sector.

Take the US for example, where NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme backed SpaceX’s development of Falcon 9, the first (and cheapest) partially-reusable rocket. The success of Falcon 9 set the stage for an atmosphere of enduring public-private partnerships, which foster competitiveness in the US today. 

NASA’s administrator Bill Nelson has also stated that he backs fixed-price contracts with companies working on space exploration. Fixed-price contracts assume companies building technical systems absorb any unanticipated expenses, not NASA. This makes the market more competitive for growth-stage companies selling low-cost services to the agency.

Here in Europe however, we simply don’t have the same atmosphere of public-private partnerships. That’s in part because we don’t have a joint defence initiative. We also don’t have an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos who are willing to invest billions. According to NASA’s own independently verified numbers, SpaceX’s development costs of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets were approximately $390 million in total.

Unlike the US, there’s also no single European country big enough to go it alone. This is where collaboration between public-private partnerships and like-minded companies could make all the difference. After all, it’s a process we’ve seen flourish with pan-European success stories like Airbus and defence systems specialist MBDA. 

Europe needs to ignite its space tech landscape

Spacetech has the potential to advance innovation across every aspect of our lives. Europe is full of companies that are developing technologies that won’t just advance our extra-terrestrial ambitions, but improve lives down here on terra firma too. However, they can only succeed if they have the support and backing they need to flourish. 

If the current disparity continues, Europe runs the risk of becoming a mere spectator as space industries in countries like the USA and China surge ahead. Left unchecked, it’s a situation that won’t just hamper our ability to launch our own satellites into space, but potentially jeopardise our economy, our security, and even our defence capabilities. 

And that’s a space race that we simply cannot afford to lose. 

Portrait photo of Jean François Morizur
Jean François Morizur, founder and CEO at Cailabs. Credit: Cailabs

Jean-François Morizur is the founder and CEO of Cailabs and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree in Science & Healthcare. Prior to founding Cailabs in 2013, he was Senior Associate at Boston Consulting Group and is co-inventor of Cailabs’s groundbreaking Multi-Plane Light Conversion technology.

Why Europe is lagging behind in the spacetech race Read More »