spacex

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Two giants in the satellite telecom industry join forces to counter Starlink

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M&A —

SES is buying Intelsat, the world’s first commercial satellite operator, for $3.1 billion.

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The Intelsat 901 satellite is seen by a Northrop Grumman servicing vehicle in 2020.

Enlarge / The Intelsat 901 satellite is seen by a Northrop Grumman servicing vehicle in 2020.

Facing competition from Starlink and other emerging satellite broadband networks, the two companies that own most of the traditional commercial communications spacecraft in geostationary orbit announced plans to join forces Tuesday.

SES, based in Luxembourg, will buy Intelsat for $3.1 billion. The acquisition will create a combined company boasting a fleet of some 100 multi-ton satellites in geostationary orbit, a ring of spacecraft located more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. This will be more than twice the size of the fleet of the next-largest commercial geostationary satellite operator.

The problem is that demand is waning for communication services through large geostationary (GEO) satellites. There are some large entrenched customers, like video media companies and the military, that will continue to buy telecom capacity on geostationary satellites. But there’s a growing demand among consumers, and some segments of the corporate and government markets, for the types of services offered by constellations of smaller satellites flying closer to Earth.

The biggest of these constellations, by far, is SpaceX’s Starlink network, with more than 5,800 active satellites in its low-Earth orbit fleet a few hundred miles above Earth. Each of the Starlink satellites is smaller than a conventional geostationary platform, but linked together with laser communication terminals, thousands of these spacecraft pack enough punch to eclipse the capacity of internet networks anchored by geostationary satellites. Starlink now has more than 2.6 million subscribers, according to SpaceX.

Satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) offer some advantages over geostationary satellites. Because they are closer to users on the ground, low-Earth orbit satellites provide signals with lower latency. The satellites for these constellations can be mass-produced at relatively low cost, compared to a single geostationary satellite, which often costs $250 million or more to build and launch.

“In a fast-moving and competitive satellite communication industry, this transaction expands our multi-orbit space network, spectrum portfolio, ground infrastructure around the world, go-to-market capabilities, managed service solutions, and financial profile,” said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES, in a statement announcing the acquisition of Intelsat.

A trend of consolidation

Some of the largest legacy operators in geostationary orbit have made moves over the last decade to respond to the new competition.

The only operational low-Earth orbit internet constellation besides Starlink was launched by OneWeb, which primarily sells capacity to existing internet providers, who then distribute services to individual consumers. This is in contrast to SpaceX’s approach with Starlink providing services direct to homes and businesses.

Eutelsat, the third-largest operator of geostationary satellites, merged with OneWeb last year, creating a company with a blended offering of GEO and LEO services. Viasat, a pioneer in satellite internet services using dedicated spacecraft in geostationary orbit, last year purchased Inmarsat, which specialized in providing connectivity to airplanes and ships.

SES’s acquisition of Intelsat stands apart due to the size of their satellite fleets. Founded in 1985, SES currently operates 43 geostationary satellites, plus 26 broadband spacecraft in medium-Earth orbit (MEO) a few thousand miles above Earth. These MEO satellites operate in a kind of middle ground between LEO and GEO satellites, offering lower-latency than geostationary networks, while still flying high enough to not require hundreds or thousands of spacecraft to blanket the globe.

Intelsat has 57 geostationary satellites, primarily for television and video relay services. Al-Saleh said the combined company will offer coverage over 99 percent of the world, and provide services through a range of communication bands. For now, LEO broadband satellites in the Starlink and OneWeb networks beam signals to user terminals in Ku-band.

Al-Saleh said the combined networks of SES and Intelsat will span Ka-band, Ku-band, X-band, C-band, UHF, and secure bands tailored for military use. “That gives us a unique position in the market place to be able to deliver to our clients,” he said.

SES and Intelsat have 13 new satellites on order, including six GEO spacecraft and seven broadband MEO satellites. Intelsat also brings to the table access to OneWeb’s LEO constellation. Earlier this year, Intelsat announced it reserved $250 million of capacity on OneWeb’s network over the next six years, with an option to purchase double that amount.

This illustration shows the relative locations of satellites in geostationary orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit.

Enlarge / This illustration shows the relative locations of satellites in geostationary orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit.

“We will create a stronger expanded network capabilities that are multi-orbit,” Al-Saleh said in an earnings call Tuesday. “We are not just a GEO player. We are an all-orbit player.”

Internet signals coming from a GEO satellite, like a Viasat spacecraft, typically have a latency of about 600 milliseconds. Al-Saleh said SES’s O3b network in medium-Earth orbit provides signals with a latency of about 120 milliseconds. According to SpaceX, Starlink latency ranges between 25 and 60 milliseconds.

A satellite pioneer

Intelsat has a storied history. Founded in 1964 as an intergovernmental organization, Intelsat operated the first commercial communications satellite in geostationary orbit. It became a private company in 2001, then went public in 2013 before filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Intelsat emerged from bankruptcy proceedings as a private company in 2022.

“Over the past two years, the Intelsat team has executed a remarkable strategic reset,” said David Wajsgras, CEO of Intelsat, in a statement. “We have reversed a 10-year negative trend to return to growth, established a new and game-changing technology roadmap, and focused on productivity and execution to deliver competitive capabilities.”

SES and Intelsat expect the acquisition to close in the second half of 2025, pending regulatory approvals. The boards of both companies unanimously approved the transaction.

Both companies maintain hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the US government each year, and the military’s appetite for commercial satellite communications is going up. “I think many of the satellite players are seeing the benefit of that, not just us,” Al-Saleh said. “You can look at our competitors. You can look at Starlink. You can look at others. We’re all seeing an uptick in demand.”

Al-Saleh said he doesn’t foresee any roadblocks from the Pentagon or any government regulators before closing the transaction next year.

SES and Intelsat revealed last year there were in talks to combine. According to Al-Saleh, SES looked at multiple opportunities for mergers or acquisitions to make use of a multibillion-dollar windfall from the Federal Communications Commission tied to the auction of C-band satellite spectrum for cellular networks.

“It was clear to us that this particular transaction, if we’re able to successfully close it with the right type of value, is the most compelling proposition we had on the table,” he said.

Two giants in the satellite telecom industry join forces to counter Starlink Read More »

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NASA lays out how SpaceX will refuel Starships in low-Earth orbit

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Artist's illustration of two Starships docked belly-to-belly in orbit.

Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of two Starships docked belly-to-belly in orbit.

SpaceX

Some time next year, NASA believes SpaceX will be ready to link two Starships in orbit for an ambitious refueling demonstration, a technical feat that will put the Moon within reach.

SpaceX is under contract with NASA to supply two human-rated Starships for the first two astronaut landings on the Moon through the agency’s Artemis program, which aims to return people to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The first of these landings, on NASA’s Artemis III mission, is currently targeted for 2026, although this is widely viewed as an ambitious schedule.

Last year, NASA awarded a contract to Blue Origin to develop its own human-rated Blue Moon lunar lander, giving Artemis managers two options for follow-on missions.

Designers of both landers were future-minded. They designed Starship and Blue Moon for refueling in space. This means they can eventually be reused for multiple missions, and ultimately, could take advantage of propellants produced from resources on the Moon or Mars.

Amit Kshatriya, who leads the “Moon to Mars” program within NASA’s exploration division, outlined SpaceX’s plan to do this in a meeting with a committee of the NASA Advisory Council on Friday. He said the Starship test program is gaining momentum, with the next test flight from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas expected by the end of May.

“Production is not the issue,” Kshatriya said. “They’re rolling cores out. The engines are flowing into the factory. That is not the issue. The issue is it is a significant development challenge to do what they’re trying to do … We have to get on top of this propellant transfer problem. It is the right problem to try and solve. We’re trying to build a blueprint for deep space exploration.”

Road map to refueling

Before getting to the Moon, SpaceX and Blue Origin must master the technologies and techniques required for in-space refueling. Right now, SpaceX is scheduled to attempt the first demonstration of a large-scale propellant transfer between two Starships in orbit next year.

There will be at least several more Starship test flights before then. During the most recent Starship test flight in March, SpaceX conducted a cryogenic propellant transfer test between two tanks inside the vehicle. This tank-to-tank transfer of liquid oxygen was part of a demonstration supported with NASA funding. Agency officials said this demonstration would allow engineers to learn more about how the fluid behaves in a low-gravity environment.

Kshatriya said that while engineers are still analyzing the results of the cryogenic transfer demonstration, the test on the March Starship flight “was successful by all accounts.”

“That milestone is behind them,” he said Friday. Now, SpaceX will move out with more Starship test flights. The next launch will try to check off a few more capabilities SpaceX didn’t demonstrate on the March test flight.

These will include a precise landing of Starship’s Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico, which is necessary before SpaceX tries to land the booster back at its launch pad in Texas. Another objective will likely be the restart of a single Raptor engine on Starship in flight, which SpaceX didn’t accomplish on the March flight due to unexpected roll rates on the vehicle as it coasted through space. Achieving an in-orbit engine restart—necessary to guide Starship toward a controlled reentry—is a prerequisite for future launches into a stable higher orbit, where the ship could loiter for hours, days, or weeks to deploy satellites and attempt refueling.

In the long run, SpaceX wants to ramp up the Starship launch cadence to many daily flights from multiple launch sites. To achieve that goal, SpaceX plans to recover and rapidly reuse Starships and Super Heavy boosters, building on expertise from the partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, is keen on reusing ships and boosters as soon as possible. Earlier this month, Musk said he is optimistic SpaceX can recover a Super Heavy booster in Texas later this year and land a Starship back in Texas sometime next year.

NASA lays out how SpaceX will refuel Starships in low-Earth orbit Read More »

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SpaceX and Northrop are working on a constellation of spy satellites

Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex / /

X marks the spot —

First launch of these operational vehicles may occur next month from California.

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A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission in January 2020.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission in January 2020.

SpaceX

SpaceX is reportedly working with at least one major US defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, on a constellation of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.

According to Reuters, development of the network of hundreds of spy satellites by SpaceX is being coordinated with multiple contractors to avoid putting too much control of a highly sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one company.

“It is in the government’s interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person,” one of the news agency’s sources said, most likely referring to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Northrop will provide sensors for a subset of the satellites in the constellation—at least 50 of them—and test those spacecraft at its own facility prior to their launch into orbit, Reuters reports.

A proliferated constellation

The news agency first disclosed the existence of SpaceX’s contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, which is responsible for operating US spy satellites, in March. The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021.

While this network will be separate from SpaceX’s Starlink Internet constellation, the National Reconnaissance Office contract is leveraging SpaceX’s capability to put a large number of Starlink satellites into orbit with its existing manufacturing facilities and the reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The current Starlink megaconstellation has more than 5,700 operational satellites.

This spysat constellation is considered to be “proliferated” because there will be swarms of satellites launched into low-Earth orbit to provide imaging and other capabilities, and these should be less vulnerable to enemy attack because of their large numbers.

Although no nation has ever attacked another nation’s satellites, major space powers, including the United States, Russia, and China, are clearly working on such measures. A good reference for these efforts is the Secure World Foundation’s annual Global Counterspace Capabilities report.

In its reporting, Reuters suggests that the high-quality imaging sensors on the SpaceX satellites in low-Earth orbit will exceed the resolution of some of the best US spy satellites at higher altitudes. They may also provide a superior alternative to the current use of drones and reconnaissance aircraft, which can be risky to fly in the airspace of other nations.

The first elements of this proliferated constellation are likely to launch next month from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the NROL-146 mission. According to Troy Meink, the National Reconnaissance Office’s principal deputy director, this will be the first of as many as six such launches in 2024.

“This launch will be the first launch of an actual operational system,” Meink said at the annual Space Symposium earlier this month. “This system will increase timeliness of access, diversity of communication paths and enhance our resilience.”

An uneasy partnership

Typically, in its 22 years of operation, SpaceX has eschewed deep partnerships with traditional aerospace contractors, including Northrop Grumman. Early on, in fact, SpaceX had a legal confrontation with Northrop over the pintle engine injector technology used in the Merlin rocket engine that powered the Falcon 1, and later Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX counter-sued, saying Northrop had abused its position in an advisory role in the Air Force to spy on SpaceX. Eventually, the lawsuits were both dropped with no damages.

More than a decade later, SpaceX launched the “Zuma” satellite, an ultra-expensive classified spacecraft valued in excess of $3 billion and built by Northrop for the National Reconnaissance Office. The launch on a Falcon 9 rocket was successful in January 2018, but the spacecraft was subsequently lost. The failure was later blamed on a payload adaptor supplied by Northrop Grumman, although this has never been publicly confirmed.

It is clearly hoped by US government officials that this collaboration between SpaceX and Northrop will meet a happier fate.

SpaceX and Northrop are working on a constellation of spy satellites Read More »

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SpaceX’s most-flown reusable rocket will go for its 20th launch tonight

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File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket rolling out of its hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket rolling out of its hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

For the first time, SpaceX will launch one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters for a 20th time Friday night on a flight to deliver 23 more Starlink Internet satellites to orbit.

This milestone mission is scheduled to lift off at 9: 22 pm EDT Friday (01: 22 UTC Saturday) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Forecasters from the US Space Force predict “excellent” weather for the primetime launch.

Falcon 9 will blaze a familiar trail into space, following the same profile as dozens of past Starlink missions.

The rocket’s first-stage booster will shut off its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, reaching a top speed of more than 5,000 mph (8,000 km per hour). The first stage will detach from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, which will continue firing into orbit. The 15-story-tall Falcon 9 booster, meanwhile, will follow an arcing trajectory before braking for a vertical landing on a drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.

The 23 flat-packed Starlink spacecraft will deploy from the upper stage a little more than an hour after liftoff, bringing the total number of Starlinks in low-Earth orbit to more than 5,800 spacecraft.

A hunger for launch

Pretty much every day, SpaceX is either launching a rocket or rolling one out of the hangar to the launch pad. At this pace, SpaceX is redefining what is routine in the space industry, but the rapid-fire launch rate also means the company is continually breaking records, mostly its own.

Friday night’s launch will break another one of those records. This first-stage booster, designated by the tail number B1062, has flown 19 times since its first flight in November 2020. The booster will now be the first in SpaceX’s inventory to go for a 20th flight, breaking a tie with three other rockets as the company’s fleet leader.

When SpaceX debuted the latest version of its Falcon 9 rocket, the Falcon 9 Block 5, officials said the reusable first stage could fly 10 times with minimal refurbishment and perhaps additional flights with a more extensive overhaul. Now, SpaceX is certifying Falcon 9 boosters for 40 flights.

This particular rocket has not undergone any extended maintenance or long-term grounding. It has flown an average of once every two months since debuting three-and-a-half years ago. So the 20-flight milestone SpaceX will achieve Friday night means this rocket has doubled its original design life and, at the same time, has reached the halfway point of its extended service life.

In its career, this booster has launched eight people and 530 spacecraft, mostly Starlinks. The rocket’s first two flights launched GPS navigation satellites for the US military, then it launched two commercial human spaceflight missions with Dragon crew capsules. These were the all-private Inspiration4 mission and Axiom Mission 1, the first fully commercial crew flight to the International Space Station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday, April 7, on the Bandwagon 1 rideshare mission.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday, April 7, on the Bandwagon 1 rideshare mission.

Remarkably, this will be the sixth Falcon 9 launch in less than eight days, more flights than SpaceX’s main US rival, United Launch Alliance, has launched in 17 months.

It will be the 38th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 111th flight of a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket—the 114th launch by SpaceX overall—in the last 365 days. More than a third of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy missions, a number that will stand at 332 after Friday night’s flight, have launched in the past year.

This month, for the first time, SpaceX demonstrated it could launch two Falcon 9 rockets in less than five days from the company’s launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. SpaceX has also cut the turnaround time between Falcon 9 rockets at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The company’s most-used launch pad, SLC-40, can handle two Falcon 9 flights in less than four days.

It’s not just launch pad turnaround. SpaceX uses its drone ships—two based in Florida and one in California—for most Falcon 9 landings. In order to meet the appetite for Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX is getting rockets back to port and re-deploying drone ships back to sea at a faster rate.

SpaceX’s most-flown reusable rocket will go for its 20th launch tonight Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn

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The wait is over —

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4.”

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Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Welcome to Edition 6.38 of the Rocket Report! Ed Dwight was close to joining NASA’s astronaut corps more than 60 years ago. With an aeronautical engineering degree and experience as an Air Force test pilot, Dwight met the qualifications to become an astronaut. He was one of 26 test pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but he wasn’t selected. Now, the man who would have become the first Black astronaut will finally get a chance to fly to space.

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.

Ed Dwight named to Blue Origin’s next human flight. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, announced Thursday that 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963, will be one of six people to fly to suborbital space on the company’s next New Shepard flight. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. It took 20 more years for the first Black American to fly to space. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin is sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people. Five paying passengers will join Dwight for the roughly 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space over West Texas. Kudos to Space for Humanity and Blue Origin for making this happen.

Return to flight … This mission, named NS-25, will be the first time Blue Origin flies with human passengers since August 2022. Blue Origin hasn’t announced a launch date yet for NS-25. On an uncrewed launch the following month, an engine failure destroyed a New Shepard booster and grounded Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket program for more than 15 months. New Shepard returned to flight December 19 on another research flight, again without anyone onboard. As the mission name suggests, this will be the 25th flight of a New Shepard rocket and the seventh flight with people. Blue Origin has a history of flying aviation pioneers and celebrities. On the first human flight with New Shepard in 2021, the passengers included company founder Jeff Bezos and famed female aviator Wally Funk. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Revisit Astra’s 2020 rocket explosion. In March 2020, as the world was under the grip of COVID, Astra blew up a rocket in remote Alaska and didn’t want anyone to see it. New video published by TechCrunch shows Astra’s Rocket 3 vehicle exploding on its launch pad. This was one of several setbacks that have brought the startup to its knees. The explosion, which occurred at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex, was simply reported as an “anomaly” at the time, an industry term for pretty much any issue that deviates from the expected outcome, TechCrunch reports. Satellite imagery of the launch site showed burn scars, suggesting an explosion, but the footage published this week confirms the reality of the event. This was Astra’s first orbital-class rocket, and it blew up during a fueling rehearsal.

A sign of things to come … Astra eventually flew its Rocket 3 small satellite launcher seven times, but only two of the flights actually reached orbit. This prompted Astra to abandon its Rocket 3 program and focus on developing a larger rocket, Rocket 4. But the future of this new rocket is in doubt. Astra’s co-founders are taking the company private after its market value and stock price tanked, and it’s not clear where the company will go from here. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Russia’s plan to “restore” its launch industry. Yuri Borisov, chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has outlined a strategy for Russia to regain a dominant position in the global launch market, Ars reports. This will include the development of a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability. In an interview posted on the Roscosmos website, Borisov said he hopes Russia will have a “completely new fleet of space vehicles” by the 2028-2029 timeframe. Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.

Reason to doubt … Russia’s launch industry was a global leader a couple of decades ago when prices were cheap relative to Western rockets. But the heavy-lift Proton rocket is nearing retirement after concerns about its reliability, and the still-reliable Soyuz is now excluded from the global market after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the 2000s and 2010s, Russia’s position in the market was supplanted by the European Ariane 5 rocket and then SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Roscosmos originally announced the medium-lift Amur rocket program in 2020 for a maiden flight in 2026. Since then, the rocket has encountered a nearly year-for-year delay in its first test launch. I’ll believe it when I see it. The only new, large rocket Russia has developed in nearly 40 years, the expendable Angara A5, is still launching dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starship could fly again in May; Ariane 6 coming together

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Eating their lunch —

“I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right.”

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Nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines power Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle off the pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, early Thursday.

Enlarge / Nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines power Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle off the pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, early Thursday.

Welcome to Edition 6.36 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX wants to launch the next Starship test flight as soon as early May, the company’s president and chief operating officer said this week. The third Starship test flight last week went well enough that the Federal Aviation Administration—yes, the FAA, the target of many SpaceX fans’ frustrations—anticipates a simpler investigation and launch licensing process than SpaceX went through before its previous Starship flights. However, it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for Starship to start launching real satellites.

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.

Starship could threaten small launch providers. Officials from several companies operating or developing small satellite launch vehicles are worried that SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket could have a big impact on their marketability, Space News reports. Starship’s ability to haul more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit will be attractive not just for customers with heavy satellites but also for those with smaller spacecraft. Aggregating numerous smallsats on Starship will mean lower prices than dedicated small satellite launch companies can offer and could encourage customers to build larger satellites with cheaper parts, further eroding business opportunities for small launch providers.

Well, yeah … SpaceX’s dedicated rideshare missions are already reshaping the small satellite launch market. The price per kilogram of payload on a Falcon 9 rocket launching a Transporter mission is less than the price per unit on a smaller rocket, like Rocket Lab’s Electron, Firefly’s Alpha, or Europe’s Vega. Companies operating only in the smallsat launch market tout the benefits of their services, often pointing to their ability to deliver payloads into bespoke orbits, rather than dropping off bunches of satellites into more standardized orbits. But the introduction of Orbital Transfer Vehicles for last-mile delivery services has made SpaceX’s Transporter missions, and potentially Starship rideshares, more attractive. “With Starship, OTVs can become the best option for smallsats,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. If Starship is able to achieve the very low per-kilogram launch prices proposed for it, “then it will be difficult for small launch vehicles,” Fragnito said.

Rocket Lab launches again from Virginia. Rocket Lab’s fourth launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, and the company’s first there in nine months, took off early Thursday with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency, Space News reports. A two-stage Electron rocket placed the NRO’s payload into low-Earth orbit, and officials declared it a successful mission. The NRO did not disclose any details about the payload, but in a post-launch statement, the agency suggested the mission was conducting technology demonstrations of some kind. “The knowledge gained from this research will advance innovation and enable the development of critical new technology,” said Chris Scolose, director of the NRO.

A steady customer for Rocket Lab … The National Reconnaissance Office has become a regular customer of Rocket Lab. The NRO has historically launched larger spacecraft, such as massive bus-sized spy satellites, but like the Space Force, is beginning to launch larger numbers of small satellites. This mission, designated NROL-123 by the NRO, was the fifth and last mission under a Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract between NRO and Rocket Lab, dating back to 2020. It was also Rocket Lab’s second launch in nine days, following an Electron flight last week from its primary base in New Zealand. Overall, it was the 46th launch of a light-class Electron rocket since it debuted in 2017. Rocket Lab is building a launch pad for its next-generation Neutron rocket at Wallops. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Night flight for Astrobotic’s Xodiac. The Xodiac rocket, a small terrestrial vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology testbed, made its first night flight, Astrobotic says in a statement. The liquid-fueled Xodiac is designed for vertical hops and can host prototype sensors and other payloads, particularly instruments in development to assist in precision landings on other worlds. This first tethered night flight of Xodiac in Mojave, California, was in preparation for upcoming flight testing with the NASA TechLeap Prize’s Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge. These flights will begin in April, allowing NASA to test the ability of sensors to map a landing field designed to simulate the Moon’s surface in near-total darkness.

Building on the legacy of Masten … Xodiac has completed more than 160 successful flights, dating back to the vehicle’s original owner, Masten Space Systems. Masten filed for bankruptcy in 2022, and the company was acquired by Astrobotic a couple of months later. Astrobotic’s primary business area is in developing and flying robotic Moon landers, so it has a keen interest in mastering automated landing and navigation technologies like those it is testing with NASA on Xodiac. David Masten, founder of Masten Space Systems, is now chief engineer for Astrobotic’s propulsion and test department. “The teams will demonstrate their systems over the LSPG (Lunar Surface Proving Ground) at night to simulate landing on the Moon during the lunar night or in shadowed craters.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Starship could fly again in May; Ariane 6 coming together Read More »

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SpaceX’s workhorse launch pad now has the accoutrements for astronauts

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A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Upgrades at SpaceX’s most-used launch pad in Florida got a trial run Thursday with the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship heading for the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft launched at 4: 55 pm EDT (20: 55 UTC) Thursday from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission, known as CRS-30, is SpaceX’s 30th resupply mission to the space station since 2012.

The automated Dragon supply ship took off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, heading for a monthlong stay at the International Space Station, where it will deliver more than 6,000 pounds of hardware, fresh food, and experiments for the lab’s seven-person crew.

In the last few months, SpaceX has outfitted the launch pad with the equipment necessary to support launches of human spaceflight missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Cargo Dragon capsule is the same size and shape as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, but it’s filled with cargo racks and storage platforms rather than seats and cockpit displays.

This week, SpaceX technicians used the newly installed launch tower and crew access arm at SLC-40 to load time-sensitive experiments and supplies into the Cargo Dragon capsule atop the Falcon 9 rocket.

“CRS-30 will be our first Dragon to launch from Pad 40 since we put that brand-new crew tower in place,” said Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, in a prelaunch press conference.

Building new capability

Starting last year, construction crews at Cape Canaveral erected segments of a more than 200-foot-tall metal lattice tower at SLC-40, right next to the starting blocks for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Before then, SLC-40 was based on a “clean pad” architecture, without any structures to service or access Falcon 9 rockets while they were vertical on the pad.

In November, contractors raised the crew access arm to an attach point near the top of the tower. This walkway will allow astronauts to crawl into the Crew Dragon spacecraft during a launch countdown. It also provides access to the hatch on the Cargo Dragon spacecraft for final cargo loading.

Earlier this year, SpaceX tested an escape chute at SLC-40 that would be used in an emergency to help astronauts and ground crews quickly get away from the pad. The chute is similar in function to slide-wire baskets in use for decades at LC-39A, but instead of riding a basket from the top of the tower, personnel escaping a pad emergency would slide down a chute to carry them several hundred feet from the rocket.

SpaceX employees tested the pad escape chute last month at SLC-40. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, took the ride down the chute. “Astronaut and personnel safety is SpaceX’s highest priority, which is why I had to personally test the new slide,” she posted on X, alongside a wink emoji.

Teams test the new emergency chutes from the pad 40 crew tower in Florida pic.twitter.com/rWVj7zaHp0

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 19, 2024

“The team took commercially available off the shelf technology and applied it to the crew tower,” Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, wrote on X. “You are trained on it the same way you are trained on using an emergency exit door on airplane. Only takes a couple of quick physical actions to deploy the slide and anyone can effectively do it.”

As more people travel to space, particularly on larger vehicles like SpaceX’s Starship, simplifying safety systems will be important.

“This system will help us scale to bigger towers and spaceships (think 100 people on Starship),” Dontchev wrote.

SpaceX and its contractors completed all of this work as Falcon 9s fired off SLC-40 every few days with Starlink satellites and other missions.

For the last four years, all of SpaceX’s crew and cargo launches to the space station have departed from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles up the coast from SLC-40. In 2018 and 2019, SpaceX outfitted LC-39A for Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon missions ahead of the company’s first human spaceflight mission in 2020.

Walker said the new infrastructure added at SLC-40 is “nearly functionally identical” to the equipment for crew missions at LC-39A. The primary differences are the means of pad escape—the chute instead of slide-wire baskets—and a more robust elevator in the tower at SLC-40.

Previously, SpaceX used both SLC-40 and LC-39A for launches of its now-retired first-generation Dragon cargo capsules, which had their final supplies loaded before SpaceX raised the rocket vertical for launch. Like regular satellite launches on Falcon 9s, both pads could support the first-generation Dragon cargo missions.

“Thanks to this new state-of-the-art crew tower required for our human spaceflight missions, that late-load cargo operation got a massive upgrade, too,” Walker said. “It is much easier to load a huge complement of time-critical NASA science into our Dragon spacecraft in the flight orientation.”

SpaceX has drastically ramped up its launch cadence since building LC-39A for Dragon missions. The company plans nearly 150 Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launches this year. When you’re flying rockets every two or three days, it’s inevitable two missions will end up vying for the same launch slots. Most recently, that happened in February, when a NASA crew mission was ready to launch from LC-39A around the same time as a narrow launch window for Intuitive Machines’ first commercial lunar lander. Both had to go off of LC-39A.

“Historically, Pad 40 has kind of become our high rate pad,” Walker said. “We’ve gotten the time between launches down to just a couple of days.”

LC-39A has seen less use, primarily for Dragon crew and cargo flights, Falcon Heavy missions, and other “uniquely complex” missions like the Intuitive Machines lander, Walker said.

SpaceX’s workhorse launch pad now has the accoutrements for astronauts Read More »

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The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14

Science, Space, spacex, starship / /

Excitement guaranteed —

This third flight has a reasonable chance of success.

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SpaceX's Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

SpaceX

After SpaceX completed a fueling test of its third full Starship stack on Sunday night, successfully loading more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant onto the rocket, it was only a matter of time before the world’s largest rocket took flight.

Now, we have a tentative date. In a post on the social media site X, the company posted a link to watch “Starship’s third flight test” at 7: 30 am ET (11: 30 UTC) on March 14. Published on Tuesday morning, the social media post was ‘hidden,’ but somehow discovered late Tuesday night.

Nevertheless, this is a credible date that the company is working toward. Following the fueling test on Sunday night at the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, the hardware appears to be in good shape. Although SpaceX has yet to receive its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency recently announced that it has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight in November. So a mid-March launch date is plausible from a regulatory standpoint.

The first two Starship flights in April and November last year ultimately failed, but each of the experimental launches provided valuable data. On the second mission four months ago, the first-stage Super Heavy booster performed a nominal flight before it separated from the Starship upper stage. The Starship vehicle exploded a few minutes into its flight due to a leak during a liquid oxygen vent.

Based upon learnings from these first two flights, this next mission, with upgraded hardware and flight software, likely has a reasonable chance of success. Among the milestones SpaceX will seek to complete during this test flight are:

  • Nominal first-stage performance, followed by a controlled descent of the Super Heavy booster into the Gulf of Mexico
  • Starship separation from the first stage using “hot staging,” meaning engine ignition while the first stage is still firing its engines
  • Starship reaching an orbital velocity and engine shutdown
  • Early-stage testing of in-space refueling technology inside the propellant tanks of Starship
  • Controlled splashdown of Starship near the Hawaiian islands after flying around two-thirds of the planet.

SpaceX is seeking to demonstrate the basic flight capabilities of Starship so that it can move into a more operational phase with the big rocket. The company wants to begin deploying larger Starlink satellites from the vehicle this year, which will enable direct-to-cell phone Internet connectivity.

Additionally, a higher cadence of missions will allow the company to begin developing the technology and procedures needed for the in-space storage and transfer of propellant for deep-space missions. This is a necessary step for SpaceX to fulfill its obligations to NASA for the Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the Moon later this decade.

In a recent update, the company said more Starships are ready for flight, so a higher cadence is possible if this month’s flight is a success. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration disclosed that SpaceX is seeking to launch Starship at least nine times this year.

The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14 Read More »

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SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

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RUD —

“Several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically.”

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Starship launches on its second flight on November 18, 2023.

Enlarge / Starship launches on its second flight on November 18, 2023.

SpaceX

A little more than three months after the most recent launch of a Starship vehicle, which ended with both the booster and upper stage being lost in flight, the Federal Aviation Administration has closed its investigation of the mishap.

“SpaceX identified, and the FAA accepts, the root causes and 17 corrective actions documented in SpaceX’s mishap report,” the federal agency said in a statement issued Monday. “Prior to the next launch, SpaceX must implement all corrective actions and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements.”

SpaceX must still submit additional information to the FAA, which is responsible for the safety of people and property on the ground, before the agency completes its review of an application to launch Starship for a third time. The administrator for Commercial Space Transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, Kelvin Coleman, said last week that early to mid-March is a reasonable timeline for the regulatory process to conclude.

A launch attempt is likely to follow soon after.

What went wrong

In conjunction with Monday’s announcement, SpaceX released details for the first time of what happened to cause the November 18 launch to go awry.

In this update, SpaceX noted that the Super Heavy first stage of the rocket performed nominally, with all 33 Raptor engines on this massive rocket igniting successfully. The booster then performed a full-duration burn to reach stage separation. At this point, the upper stage executed a successful “hot staging” maneuver in which the Starship stage separated from the booster while some of the booster’s engines were still firing.

For the Super Heavy booster, the next step was to perform a series of burns to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico. As part of the initial burn, 13 of the rocket’s engines were intended to fire.

“During this burn, several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster,” SpaceX said. “The vehicle breakup occurred more than three and a half minutes into the flight at an altitude of ~90 km over the Gulf of Mexico.”

The problem was subsequently linked to a problem with supplying liquid oxygen to the Raptor engines.

“The most likely root cause for the booster RUD was determined to be filter blockage where liquid oxygen is supplied to the engines, leading to a loss of inlet pressure in engine oxidizer turbopumps that eventually resulted in one engine failing in a way that resulted in loss of the vehicle,” the company stated. “SpaceX has since implemented hardware changes inside future booster oxidizer tanks to improve propellant filtration capabilities and refined operations to increase reliability.”

Starship vents

As Super Heavy was experiencing these problems, the six Raptor engines on the Starship upper stage were burning nominally and pushing the vehicle along a flight path intended to take it nearly two-thirds of the way around Earth before splashing down near Hawaii. However, at about seven minutes after liftoff, a large vent of liquid oxygen occurred. There was excess liquid oxygen on the vehicle, SpaceX said, to gather data representative of future payload deployment missions. It needed to be released before Starship splashed down.

“A leak in the aft section of the spacecraft that developed when the liquid oxygen vent was initiated resulted in a combustion event and subsequent fires that led to a loss of communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers,” the company said. “This resulted in a commanded shut down of all six engines prior to completion of the ascent burn, followed by the Autonomous Flight Safety System detecting a mission rule violation and activating the flight termination system, leading to vehicle breakup.”

At the time, the vehicle had reached an altitude of 150 km, well into outer space, and had achieved a velocity of about 24,000 km/h. This is just short of orbital velocity, which is 28,000 km/h.

In its statement, SpaceX said it was implementing changes to the Super Heavy and Starship stages to account for these issues. The company is also seeking to improve the overall performance of Starship, with the addition of a new electronic Thrust Vector Control system for Starship’s upper-stage Raptor engines and more rapid propellant loading operations prior to launch.

SpaceX has four Starships in complete, or nearly complete, build stages. Should the next flight go smoothly, the company could begin to launch the world’s largest rocket on a more frequent basis.

SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starliner launch preps; Indian rocket engine human-rated

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Cape-a-palooza —

The Bahamian government and SpaceX signed an agreement for Falcon 9 booster landings.

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The first stage of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing's Starliner Crew Flight Test.

Enlarge / The first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test.

United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 6.32 of the Rocket Report! I’m writing the report again this week as Eric Berger is in Washington, DC, to receive a well-earned honor, the 2024 Excellence in Commercial Space Journalism Award from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Cape Canaveral is the world’s busiest spaceport, and this week, three leading US launch companies were active there. SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and a few miles away, Blue Origin raised a New Glenn rocket on its launch pad for long-awaited ground testing. Nearby, United Launch Alliance began assembling an Atlas V rocket for the first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in April. 2024 is shaping up to be a truly exciting year for the spaceflight community.

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.

Astroscale inspector satellite launched by Rocket Lab. Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, has launched a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space, Ars reports. This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit on February 18 by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm’s reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).

This is a first … Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission is the first satellite designed to approach and inspect a piece of space junk in orbit. This is a public-private partnership between Astroscale and the Japanese space agency. Of course, space agencies and commercial companies have demonstrated rendezvous operations in orbit for decades. The difference here is the H-IIA rocket is uncontrolled, likely spinning and in a slow tumble, and was never designed to accommodate any visitors. Japan left it in orbit in January 2009 following the launch of a climate monitoring satellite and didn’t look back. ADRAS-J is a technology demonstration that could pave the way for a follow-on mission to actually link up with this H-IIA rocket and remove it from orbit. Astroscale eventually wants to use these technologies for satellite servicing, refueling, and further debris removal missions. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)

Software error blamed for Firefly launch malfunction. Firefly Aerospace released an update Tuesday on an investigation into an upper stage malfunction on the company’s Alpha rocket in December. The investigation team, consisting of membership from Firefly, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the US Space Force, determined a software error in the rocket’s guidance, navigation, and control software algorithm ultimately caused the Alpha rocket to release its payload into a lower-than-planned orbit following a launch from California.

Upper stage woes… The software error prevented the rocket from sending the “necessary pulse commands” to control thrusters on the upper stage before its main engine was supposed to reignite. This second burn by the upper stage was supposed to circularize the rocket’s orbit, but it didn’t happen as planned. Still, the Alpha rocket safely released its commercial satellite payload for Lockheed Martin. Although the lower orbit caused the satellite to reenter the atmosphere earlier this month, Lockheed Martin said it was able to achieve many of the objectives of the technology demonstration mission, which focused on testing an electronically steered antenna. This was the fourth launch of an Alpha rocket, and two of them have suffered from upper stage malfunctions during engine restart attempts. Firefly says it is preparing the next Alpha rocket to fly “in the coming months.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

A good fundraising round for Gilmour Space. Australian startup Gilmour Space Technologies has raised $55 million Australian dollars ($36 million) in a Series D funding round announced Monday, Space News reports. The funding supports the small launch vehicle startup’s campaign to manufacture, test, and begin launching rockets and satellites from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland. Gilmour Space, founded in 2012, is developing a three-stage rocket called Eris. The first Eris test flight is expected “in the coming months, pending launch approvals from the Australian Space Agency,” according to the Gilmour Space news release.

Launching from down under… Gilmour Space is aiming to launch the first Australian-built rocket into orbit later this year. The Eris rocket is powered by hybrid engines, and Gilmour says it is capable of delivering about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. The $36 million fundraising round announced this week follows a $46 million fundraising round in 2021. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gilmour Space is aiming for the first flight of Eris in April, and this latest fundraising should give the company enough money to mount four test flights. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Starliner launch preps; Indian rocket engine human-rated Read More »

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SpaceX wants to take over a Florida launch pad from rival ULA

cape canaveral, Commercial space, launch, Science, slc-37, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance, US Space Force / /

First step —

SpaceX now plans at least four Starship launch pads, two in Texas and two in Florida.

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SpaceX's fully-stacked Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on a launch pad in South Texas.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s fully-stacked Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on a launch pad in South Texas.

One of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will become vacant later this year after the final flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket. SpaceX is looking to make the sprawling facility a new home for the Starship launch vehicle.

The environmental review for SpaceX’s proposal to take over Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral is getting underway now, with three in-person public meetings and one virtual meeting scheduled for March to collect comments from local residents, according to a new website describing the plan.

Then federal agencies, led by the Department of the Air Force, will develop an environmental impact statement to evaluate how Starship launch and landing operations will affect the land, air, and water around SLC-37, which sits on Space Force property on the Atlantic coastline.

Environmental studies for rocket launch facilities typically take more than a year, so it will be a while before any major construction begins to convert SLC-37 for Starship launches. In this case, federal officials anticipate publishing a draft environmental impact statement by December, then a final report by October 2025.

More immediately, ULA still has one more Delta IV Heavy rocket to launch from SLC-37 in March with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. Once that launch is complete, ULA will wind down operations at SLC-37, and eventually turn over the facility back to the Space Force, which will look for a new tenant. For several months, industry sources have pointed to SpaceX as the leading contender to take over SLC-37 after ULA is finished with the launch pad.

But that’s not quite a done deal yet. Last year, a senior official at ULA told Ars on background that the company was also interested in maintaining a presence at SLC-37.

ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, which debuted last month and will replace the Delta IV and Atlas V launch vehicles, uses a different launch pad a few miles up the coast from SLC-37. ULA is upgrading and expanding its ground facilities at Cape Canaveral to ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence, and the ULA official told Ars the company may want to continue using a rocket processing hangar just south of the Delta IV launch pad for storage and horizontal processing of Vulcan rockets.

Details are scarce about everything SpaceX wants to do with SLC-37, but officials wrote on the environmental review website that SpaceX would “modify, reuse, or demolish the existing SLC-37 infrastructure to support Starship-Super Heavy launch and landing operations.”

This aerial view shows a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket awaiting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / This aerial view shows a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket awaiting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The history of SLC-37 dates back to the 1960s, when NASA used the site for eight flights of the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets to prepare for the Apollo program. The facility sat dormant for 30 years until Boeing moved in to ready SLC-37 for the Delta IV rocket, which has now flown 34 times from SLC-37. The launch pad currently includes a 330-foot-tall (100-meter) mobile gantry, a fixed erector, a fixed umbilical tower, and a flame trench for Delta IV missions.

Starship, the world’s largest rocket, would not need any of that that infrastructure, so if SpaceX takes over the pad, the facility will likely undergo extensive demolition and construction.

If SpaceX isn’t cleared to use SLC-37, the company could build a brand new launch pad designated Space Launch Complex 50. If this is the path SpaceX takes, SLC-50 would be built on undeveloped land north of SLC-37 and south of SpaceX’s primary launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40.

Goodbye to LC-49, hello to SLC-37

SpaceX’s interest in setting up shop at SLC-37 shows the company is getting serious about developing a second base for Starship on Florida’s Space Coast. In 2022, SpaceX constructed a launch tower and launch mount for Starship at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But the company made little progress there last year as teams focused on Starship test flights from South Texas.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, says Starship is the rocket that will make possible his dream of building a settlement on Mars. He has also touted Starship as a vehicle for point-to-point travel on Earth. Both stages of Starship are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, with the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage returning to Earth for propulsive landings. Starship launch pads will double as landing pads.

Before any of those dreams are realized, Starship needs to get into orbit. The first two full-scale Starship test flights last year didn’t make it that far, but SpaceX got close on the second launch in November. SpaceX hopes to achieve a near-orbital mission with the third Starship test launch, perhaps as soon as early March.

Eventually, Musk envisions Starship launching multiple times per day on a variety of missions, carrying people, satellites, cargo, or refueling tankers into orbit. In order to do this, SpaceX will need a lot of launch and landing pads. SpaceX has toyed with the idea of floating offshore launch and landing platforms, but those plans are on hold.

In the near-term, SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch tower at the company’s Starbase test site in Cameron County, Texas. There’s also the partially-built launch tower at LC-39A, and now SpaceX has set its sights on SLC-37.

SpaceX was previously looking at building another Starship launch pad from scratch on NASA property at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA environmental studies for this location, known as Launch Complex 49, kicked off in 2021. Patti Bielling, a NASA spokesperson, told Ars on Friday the agency is no longer working on Launch Complex 49.

“At this time, there are no activities involving LC-49 on Kennedy,” Bielling said. “Any previous activities regarding LC-49 were suspended, and no actions were taken.”

One of the first operational applications for Starship will be to serve as a human-rated lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the Moon’s surface, but in order for Starship to reach the Moon, it has to be refueled in low-Earth orbit. This will require perhaps 10 or more refueling flights using a version of Starship called a tanker, all launching in a matter of weeks. Those tanker flights will launch on Super Heavy boosters from pads in Texas and Florida.

In parallel with continued Starship test flights and demonstrating in-space refueling technology, SpaceX needs to build more launch pads to make all this possible. Although SpaceX has backpedaled on several of its Starship launch pad ideas, the company’s interest in SLC-37 suggests it still has big plans for Starship in Florida.

SpaceX wants to take over a Florida launch pad from rival ULA Read More »

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Rocket Report: Falcon 9 flies for 300th time; an intriguing launch from Russia

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Co-planar —

Starship is fully stacked in South Texas for the rocket’s third test flight.

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The upper stage for the first Ariane 6 flight vehicle is seen inside its factory in Bremen, Germany. The upper stage's hydrogen-fueled Vinci engine is visible in this image.

Enlarge / The upper stage for the first Ariane 6 flight vehicle is seen inside its factory in Bremen, Germany. The upper stage’s hydrogen-fueled Vinci engine is visible in this image.

Welcome to Edition 6.31 of the Rocket Report! Photographers at Cape Canaveral, Florida, noticed a change to the spaceport’s skyline this week. Blue Origin has erected a full-size simulator of its New Glenn rocket vertically on its launch pad for a series of fit checks and tests. Late last year, we reported Blue Origin was serious about getting the oft-delayed New Glenn rocket off the ground by the end of 2024. This is a good sign of progress toward that goal, but there’s a long, long way to go. It was fun to watch preparations for the inaugural flights of a few other heavy-lift rockets in the last couple of years (Starship, SLS, and Vulcan). This year, it’s New Glenn.

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.

Russia launches a classified satellite. On February 9, Russia launched its first orbital mission of the year with the liftoff of a Soyuz-2-1v rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the far north of the country. The two-stage rocket delivered a classified satellite into orbit for the Russian military, Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com reports. In keeping with the Russian military’s naming convention, the satellite is known simply as Kosmos 2575, and there’s little indication about what it will do in space, except for one key fact.

But wait, there’s more … It turns out the launch of Kosmos 2575 occurred at exactly the same time of day as another Soyuz-2-1v rocket launched on December 27 with a Russian military satellite named Kosmos 2574. The newer spacecraft launched into the same orbital plane as Kosmos 2574, a strong indication that the two satellites have a shared mission. In recent years, Russia has tested rendezvous, proximity operations, and, at least in one instance, a projectile that would have applications for an anti-satellite weapon. You can be sure the US military and a global community of hobbyist satellite trackers will watch closely to see if these two satellites approach one another. If they do, they could continue technology demonstrations for an anti-satellite system. It’s unclear if the recent revelations regarding US officials’ concerns about Russian anti-satellite capabilities are related to these recent launches.

European startup testing methane-fueled rocket engine. Space transportation startup The Exploration Company has continued testing its methane-fueled Huracán engine, which will power an in-space and lunar transportation vehicle under development, European Spaceflight reports. Most recently, the Huracán engine completed another round of thrust chamber testing using liquid methane fuel as a coolant and tested a new thermal barrier coating. The methane/liquid oxygen engine is undergoing testing at a facility in Lampoldshausen, Germany, ahead of use on The Exploration Company’s Nyx Moon spacecraft, a transfer vehicle designed for transportation to and from cislunar space and also capable of Moon landings. The Nyx Moon is an evolution of a transfer vehicle the European startup is developing to ferry satellites between different orbits around Earth.

Other uses for Huracán… The Exploration Company appears to be positioning itself not only as a builder and operator of orbital and lunar transfer vehicles but also as a propulsion supplier to other space companies. In 2022, The Exploration Company received funding for the Huracán engine from the French government. At the time, the company described the engine as serving the needs of “the upper stages of small launchers and those of orbital vehicles.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Rocket Report: Falcon 9 flies for 300th time; an intriguing launch from Russia Read More »