Category Archives: Rockets

Rockets, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Space transport roundup – June.25.2019

Following up on  yesterday’s roundup, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy successfully reached orbit and deployed a big batch of satellites on board. Three ISS crew members also made it back to Earth safely via their Soyuz spacecraft.

** SpaceX Falcon Heavy completes the company’s “most difficult launch ever”, as described by Elon Musk. While the center core rocket failed to make a successful landing, everything else went quite well, including the first-time capture of a nosecone fairing in a net. The biggest challenge – multiple firings of the upper stage engine after long coasting periods – went well. In total, 24 satellites were deployed.

The launch:

The landings of the two side boosters and the miss of the central core:

The fairing on the net of the SpaceX ship Ms. Tree (formerly Mr. Steven):

More at:

** The Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 finally makes it to orbit via the FH but the mission still has two hurdles ahead before the sail begins to accelerate from the push of sunlight. On July 2nd, the CubeSat is to be ejected from the Prox-1 carrier spacecraft and then about a week later the sail will be deployed: LightSail 2 Has Launched! | The Planetary Society

** Soyuz lands safely in Kazakstan with three ISS crew members:

“The Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 59 crew members Anne McClain of NASA, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, and Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos, Tuesday, June 25, 2019 Kazakh time (June 24 Eastern time). McClain, Saint-Jacques, and Kononenko are returning after 204 days in space where they served as members of the Expedition 58 and 59 crews onboard the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)” – NASA

Highlights of the departure from the station and the landing:

** Chinese Long March 3B rocket launches navigation satellite: China launches new BeiDou satellite – CGTN

China sent a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in its southwestern province of Sichuan on Tuesday. Launched on board a Long March-3B carrier rocket, the satellite was sent to a inclined geosynchronous earth orbit.

More at Chinese Long March 3B lofts Beidou-3I2 – NASASpaceFlight.com.

** India-based Bellatrix Aerospace raises $3M for development of smallsat rocket launchers and satellite propulsion systems.

“This funding will help Bellatrix to space qualify our products soon. During the coming months, we will be subjecting our thrusters to rigorous ground qualification tests and also work on key innovations that will make our products stand out. We will also be expanding to key global locations,” Rohan Ganapathy, co-founder at Bellatrix said.

** Misc. space transport items:

  • Next Atlas 5 launch delayed by battery failure – Spaceflight Now – “The next launch of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite, previously scheduled for Thursday, has been delayed to no earlier than July 12 to replace a failed battery on the vehicle.”
  • STS-121 The Hardest Launch Part 4: Damage to the Heatshield | Wayne Hale’s Blog – The former Space Shuttle Program Manager recounts a case that illustrates the challenges in assessing risks for Shuttle launches in the aftermath of the Columbia loss.
  • SpaceRyde wants to make access to space more available and more affordable | TechCrunch – Canada’s SpaceRyde startup is developing a smallsat launch system using a high-altitude balloon platform. “Earlier this year, SpaceRyde launched a stratospheric balloon carrying a scaled down version of their launch platform and rocket in Northern Ontario, Canada. The test wasn’t a complete success – a modification to the off-the-shelf rocket engine they used didn’t work exactly as expected – but it did demonstrate that their in-flight launch platform orientation tech worked as intended, and Safari says the malfunction that did occur is relatively easy to fix.Next up for SpaceRyde is to work towards a full-scale demonstration of their platform, which Safari says should happen sometime next year….“
  • Univ. of Washington rocketeers take the prize at Spaceport America Cup – GeekWire – Washington’s Society for Advanced Rocket Propulsion won the top prize at this year’s Spaceport America Cup competition held at the NM spaceport. “The SARP team took the Judge’s Choice and Overall Winner Award at the world’s largest collegiate rocket engineering contest, which is run by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association and drew 120 teams from 14 countries. Each team is required to design, build and fly a rocket that can reach 10,000 feet or 30,000 feet, depending on the contest category.“

** Raptor engine spotted at site of the Starship orbital demonstrator under construction in Florida.

Another Starship test vehicle is in construction at Boca Chica Beach facility and Elon says flights will take place at both places:

A comparison of the Starships in Florida and Texas:

Elon wants to speed up the Raptor and Starship program: SpaceX: Elon Musk Teases Rapid, Cheap Raptor Production to Get to Mars Fast | Inverse

SpaceX is planning to give its Mars-bound Raptor engine design a big production boost, CEO Elon Musk teased in a series of Twitter posts Monday. By the end of this year, Musk declared, the company is aiming to produce a new engine every 12 hours.
…
Musk suggested on Twitter that SpaceX is set to ramp up production for the engine “exponentially” soon. The sixth engine is almost done, and the firm is “aiming for an engine every 12 hours by end of year.” This should equate to around 500 engines per year, as Musk explained that a full year of production is around 70 percent of the peak daily rate.

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Safe Is Not an Option

Rockets

Space transport roundup – June.24.2019

1 Comment

The Falcon Heavy mission and the Soyuz return are the focus points of today’s roundup:

** SpaceX:

*** The countdown is proceeding for the Falcon Heavy liftoff tonight for the complex STP-2 mission. The four hour launch window opens at 11:30 pm EDT (0330 GMT on 25th). The weather forecast shows an 80% chance of acceptable conditions for launch during the window.

The SpaceX webcast will begin about 20 minutes before the liftoff time. NASA TV coverage will start at 11:00 pm EDT.

Updates to check as the window approaches:

The mission events time line is given in the SpaceX Press Kit (pdf). SpaceX will attempt to recover all 3 boosters:

Falcon Heavy’s side boosters for the STP-2 mission previously supported the Arabsat-6A mission in April 2019. Following booster separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will attempt to land at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 and LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Falcon Heavy’s center core will attempt to land on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

There is also a ship sent to capture in a net and/or drag from the sea the two fairing halves of the nosecone.

Liftoff through final deployment will span over 3.5 hours and include 3 in-orbit firings of the second stage engine.

The STP-2 mission will use a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle to perform 20 commanded deployment actions and place 24 separate spacecraft in three different orbits. The spacecraft include the Air Force Research Laboratory Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) satellite; the NOAA-sponsored Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC-2) constellation; four NASA experiments; and many other missions.

After about 7 hours, the second stage will be “passivated”, which includes dumping any remaining fuel to avoid any chance the stage would explode and increase debris in low earth orbit. Eventually the stage will de-orbit into the atmosphere.

Some photos of the FH on the pad:

More about the mission:

The Planetary Society is closely following the launch since it includes the deployment of the LightSail-2 mission inside  Georgia Tech’s Prox-1 smallsat:

Here’s a video update from the Cape by Chris Gebhardt of NASASpaceflight.com:

** A Soyuz capsule is set to return with three ISS Expedition 59 crew members today: Departing Trio Aboard Soyuz Crew Ship Awaiting Undocking – Space Station

At 4:15 p.m. EDT, the hatch closed between the Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station in preparation for undocking. NASA Flight Engineer Anne McClain, Expedition 59/Soyuz Commander Oleg Konenenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency are scheduled to undock their Soyuz at 7:25 p.m.

The landing is set for just over 40 minutes before the FH liftoff window opens:

Their landing in Kazakhstan is targeted for approximately 10:48 p.m. and will conclude a more than six month mission conducting science and maintenance aboard the space station, in which they circled the globe 3,264 times, covering 86.4 million miles.

The latest on the undocking and return:

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The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos,
and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

Rockets

Space transport roundup – June.22.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** Blue Origin’s BE7 lunar lander engine was fired successfully this week:

** Jeff Bezos described his goals for Blue Origin during an on-stage interview held at the recent JFK Space Summit in the JFK Library in Massachusetts.

** Spinlaunch awarded a Dept. of Defense contract for delivery of payloads to low earth orbit with the company’s catapult style launch system, which is currently in development at the New Mexico spaceport.

From the PR:

LONG BEACH, Calif.–Jonathan Yaney, founder and CEO of SpinLaunch, has announced that the company has been awarded a responsive launch prototype contract from the Department of Defense (DOD), facilitated by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

SpinLaunch is developing a kinetic energy-based launch system that will provide the world’s lowest-cost orbital launch services for the rapidly growing small satellite industry. In 2018, the company received $40 million in a Series A financing round from Airbus Ventures, Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.

The recently published State of the Space Industrial Base states that the future and growth of the U.S. space economy is “critically dependent on continuing reductions in the costs and risks associated with launch. There is a bifurcation of launch providers between lower-cost, ‘bulk’ carriers…and higher-cost, ‘niche’ providers offering lower lift-mass, but launch to a specific orbit.”

“SpinLaunch fills this gap by providing dedicated orbital launch with high frequency at a magnitude lower cost than any current ‘niche’ launch system,” stated Yaney. “This will truly be a disruptive enabler for the emerging commercial space industry. There is a promising market surge in the demand for LEO constellations of inexpensive small satellites for disaster monitoring, weather, reconnaissance, communications and other services.”

In January 2019, SpinLaunch moved from Silicon Valley to its new 140,000 square foot headquarters in Long Beach, California and last month broke ground on a new $7 million test facility on 10 acres at New Mexico’s Spaceport America. First kinetic energy flight tests are expected to occur early 2020 and the company has announced its plans for first launch by 2022.

Few technical details are known publicly about the Spinlaunch system. This image was released with the PR but it’s difficult to decipher. It appears to show the launch projectile attached to the rotating mechanism that will bring the projectile up to a significant fraction of orbital velocity.

Spinlaunch PR image
“Illustration depicting SpinLaunch orbital vehicle inside the electric kinetic launcher.” (Photo: Business Wire)

See also the Spinlaunch Fact Sheet (pdf) –

Due to its unique technology, SpinLaunch is able to offer readily-available, low cost, dedicated launches at high frequencies. SpinLaunch is working to provide up to five launches per day at a price of $250,000 / launch.

** Orbit Fab‘s satellite water propulsion initiative begins with water sent to the ISS: Orbit Fab Becomes the First Private Company to Supply the International Space Station with Water – Orbit Fab

Within a year of securing venture funding, Orbit Fab has launched their hardware twice to the International Space Station (ISS) and supplied the station with water. Following the success of the multi-day microgravity refueling demonstration, Kenneth Shields, COO of the ISS U.S. National Laboratory, said in a statement, “With their recent successful completion of in-orbit water transfer operations aboard the space station, Orbit Fab became the first private company to supply the ISS with water using its own proprietary refueling equipment and processes. This concept of operations was not previously conceived of in the original design of the ISS, thus demonstrating NASA’s flexibility and desire to accommodate private sector clients who are utilizing the ISS U.S. National Laboratory as a steppingstone to an industrialized Low Earth Orbit.”

Using water as an in-space propellant has the advantage of being a very safe substance, which is important on the station where NASA is extremely cautious about such things.

Water was used for this propellant transfer demonstration as it is one of the most inert and easy to handle propellants available. Several companies offer satellite thrusters that use water as a propellant, among them is OrbitFab co-founder Daniel Faber’s former company, Deep Space Industries, which was recently acquired by Bradford Space. Orbit Fab plans on offering a variety of storable propellants on orbit, including water, xenon, green monopropellants, hydrazine, NTO, and hydrogen peroxide.

Orbit Fab water containers on the ISS
Two of the Orbit Fab water containers on the ISS.

Details on the hardware used to transfer water to a spacecraft are available at:

** The window for the next Rocket Lab Electron launch opens on June 27th.

The Make It Rain mission will launch multiple spacecraft as part of a rideshare flight procured by Spaceflight. The launch window will open in late June, with launch taking place from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula.

The mission is named ‘Make it Rain’ in a nod to the high volume of rainfall in Seattle, where Spaceflight is headquartered, as well in New Zealand where Launch Complex 1 is located. Among the payloads on the mission for Spaceflight are BlackSky’s Global-4 satellite and Melbourne Space Program’s ACRUX-1 CubeSat.

** Ariane V successfully launches two satellites to GEO:

** Commercial launch industry must deal with the double challenges of the introduction of lower priced reusable rocket flight services and a drop in the number of orders for big GEO communications satellites:

It’s been a little more than three years since Space X launched the Falcon 9 reusable rocket booster B1021 on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in April 2016. When the rocket came back to Earth, it became the first to land vertically on a ship at sea, and then the first to be flown again, on a March 2017 SES-10 mission. Shortly before then, in November 2015, Blue Origin launched its suborbital New Shepard booster, and successfully achieved a powered vertical soft landing.

Such demonstrations have proven that it is possible to bring big payloads into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) — and potentially do so at a fraction of the cost of expendable launches.

“The big factor here is time,” notes Marco Caceres, an analyst with Reston, Va.-based consultancy Teal Group. “When you have an expendable launch vehicle, everything is brand new and you have to test everything. And typically, you don’t launch more than once a month. With reusability your check out time is less, because everything tends to work. As long as there are no cracks, you’re going to launch again within a couple of weeks.”

** Student rocket teams battle it out at the Spaceport America Cup competition in New Mexico:

** EXOS Aerospace sets June 30th for next SARGE launch from Spaceport America. This will be the third flight of the reusable sounding rocker.

** Sweden’s arctic Esrange spaceport will support reusable rocket operations:

SSC is currently developing Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden with new capabilities and services. A testbed for reusable rockets is currently being established, and SSC aims at launching small satellites in a couple of years. In addition, SSC is now introducing a new flight ticket service for suborbital space flights, accessible and affordable for both current and new types of customers. The new concept introduces both the opportunity to fly fractional payloads, ranging from only a few kg up to 800 kg, and a substantially more frequent flight schedule. The flight ticket service is carried out jointly between SSC and DLR MORABA within the EuroLaunch partnership.

Swedish Space Corporation SSC has been launching more than 560 suborbital rockets from Esrange Space Center since the 1966. At Esrange, SSC also operates one of the world largest ground stations for satellite control and data reception. This legacy gives SSC a unique position in the European space community.

For scientists and researchers using microgravity as a tool, the new flight ticket concept SubOrbital Express covers a complete set of services ranging from a flight ticket including launch, quick and safe land recovery to customized services such as design and development of experiment payload modules.

The Spaceport Sweden project is a separate initiative aimed towards suborbital space tourism. The goal is to enable spaceflight participants one day to view the aurora from a Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo or other high altitude vehicle.

** Boeing aims to start Spaceliner crew spacecraft missions to the ISS this fall, starting with an uncrewed flight in September. An item today about a recent test:

** SpaceX:

*** Falcon Heavy set for launch on Monday evening from Pad 39A at Cape Kennedy Space Center during a 4 hour window that opens at 11:30 pm EDT (0330 GMT on 25th). A successful static firing of the engines took place last Wednesday:

The mission will be unusually demanding: SpaceX fires Falcon Heavy’s 27 booster engines ahead of “most difficult launch ever” – Teslarati.

SpaceX has a webpage dedicated to the STP-2 Mission:

…this mission will deliver 24 satellites to space on the DoD’s first ever SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. The STP-2 mission will be among the most challenging launches in SpaceX history with four separate upper-stage engine burns, three separate deployment orbits, a final propulsive passivation maneuver and a total mission duration of over six hours. In addition, the U.S. Air Force plans to reuse side boosters from the Arabsat-6A Falcon Heavy launch, recovered after a return to launch site landing, making it the first reused Falcon Heavy ever flown for the U.S. Air Force.

Weather conditions look promising: Falcon Heavy L-2 Weather Forecast: 70% Chance Favorable – SpaceX/NASA.

The SpaceX webcast will presumably start at least 15 minutes before liftoff.

The 24 payloads include four NASA sponsored spacecraft. So NASA TV is providing coverage of the launch: Coverage Set for NASA Tech Missions Launching on SpaceX Falcon Heavy | NASA.

This includes a “prelaunch NASA technology show […] scheduled for Sunday, June 23 at noon from Kennedy. NASA will stream the briefing live at https://www.nasa.gov/live“.

The platform for the center core to land on will be placed at “more than 1240 km (770 mi) off the coast of Florida”: A SpaceX surprise: Falcon Heavy booster landing to smash distance record – Teslarati

The payloads include university and private spacecraft such as the Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 solar sailing demonstrator: Here’s Our First Look at LightSail 2 Installed on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Rocket | The Planetary Society

LightSail-2 inside Prox-1
An image of  Prox-1, a satellite built by a team at Georgia Tech, with a dotted lines marking the location of The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 spacecraft inside it. A week after the Falcon Heavy upper stage deploys Prox-1 into orbit, the deployer door will open and eject LightSail 2.

*** First Crew Dragon flight to the ISS no earlier than November 15th according to the latest schedule.

*** SpaceX has a third GPS launch set for December: SpaceX on track for US Air Force Falcon 9 mission later this year – Teslarati

Reading between the lines, the US Air Force has effectively confirmed that GPS III Space Vehicle 03 (SV03) – the third GPS III satellite built by Lockheed Martin – is ready for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, scheduled no earlier than December 2019.

*** Starhopper still awaits the Raptor engine needed to do low altitude test flights. Preparation of the engines at the McGregor test site is taking longer than expected. It appears that first hops may not take place till July.

*** Starhopper preps and construction of the Starship orbital demostrators can often be viewed via these sources:

A recent Starhopper tank test:

A new structure is in construction at the Boca Chica facility:

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Delta-v

Rockets

Space transport roundup – June.18.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** Gyroc tethered hover test – Airbourne Engineering in the UK:  Successful Test of VTVL Rocket | Airborne Engineering Limited

…The vehicle, codenamed Gyroc (a shortening of “gyro-stabilised rocket”) is the result of an internal research and development project that has been under way at Airborne for a few years at our Westcott facility in the United Kingdom. VTVL rockets like Gyroc can be used to test technologies required for landing on other planets, such as the Moon or Mars. We believe that this is the first time such a vehicle has been successfully tested in Europe.

… Gyroc uses non-toxic rocket propellants (nitrous oxide and isopropyl alcohol,) weighs about 20kg and can hover for over 30 seconds. After more testing, we plan to scale-up the vehicle so that it can be used to assist other organisations developing autonomous planetary landing technology and who need a way to carry out testing in a realistic way on the Earth. Although the development of Gyroc has been entirely self-funded by Airborne Engineering, we are very grateful to the European Space Agency who have kindly provided some additional funds to support the recent test programme. It is hoped this will lead to future collaboration.

** Stratolaunch is up for sale:

CNBC:

The hefty price tag includes ownership of the airplane as well as the intellectual property and facilities.

Stratolaunch is the world’s largest airplane by wingspan, which stretches 385 feet — longer than an American football field. The plane is powered by six jet engines salvaged from Boeing 747 aircraft.

Allen’s vision of a massive plane that can launch rockets from the air was at least partially fulfilled in April, when Stratolaunch flew for the first time after about eight years in development. Based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the giant airplane flew for more than two hours before landing after what was deemed a successful first flight.

** Blue Origin has several major projects underway in Florida: Blue Origin investing $1 billion into Space Coast for ‘road to space’ – Florida Today

If all goes according to Blue Origin’s ambitious plan, the Space Coast will become the opening phase of a “road to space” for millions of people taking their livelihoods beyond Earth’s fragile atmosphere.

The Jeff Bezos-led company is investing more than a billion dollars into the region to transform infrastructure — old and new — into gateways for its upcoming New Glenn rocket, a towering vehicle slated to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station no earlier than 2021. It will also be built, launched and refurbished here after landing on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

“New Glenn is all about millions of people living and working in space,” Scott Henderson, Blue Origin’s vice president of test and flight operations, said Tuesday during a National Space Club Florida Committee luncheon in Cape Canaveral. “It sets the foundation for building an infrastructure required to get to space.”

** Ariane V rocket set to liftoff from Kourou, French Guiana on June 20th with the AT&T T-16 and Eutelsat 7C communications satellites during the window 2143-2330 GMT (5:43-7:30 p.m. EDT).

VS248 payloads
“Flight VA248’s two satellite passengers are readied for launch during parallel activity inside the Spaceport’s S5 building. The photo at left shows AT&T T-16 during its fueling process, while at right EUTELSAT 7C undergoes its fit-check with the payload adapter that will provide the interface with Ariane 5 when integrated on the launcher.” – Arianespace

** Russian Proton rocket set to launch the German and Russian X-ray telescopes on June 21st at 1217 GMT (8:17 am EDT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan: Proton rocket, Russian-German astronomy satellite arrive at launch pad – Spaceflight Now

** ULA Vulcan rocket development update: ULA Preparing Proven Hardware and New Innovations for Vulcan – NASASpaceFlight.com

One of the only components of Vulcan Centaur which will likely not fly prior to Vulcan’s debut is the BE-4 engine, two of which will power Vulcan’s first stage. The BE-4 is a liquid methane and liquid oxygen fueled engine developed by Blue Origin, originally for their New Glenn launch vehicle.

New Glenn is also expected to debut in 2021, so the BE-4 could only fly prior to Vulcan’s debut if New Glenn flies first. The BE-4, as well as BE-3U engines for New Glenn, will be manufactured at a new factory in Huntsville, Alabama, not far from ULA’s Decatur factory. Construction equipment has begun to arrive at the factory site.

Prototype engines have been test fired extensively at Blue Origin’s West Texas facility, also the launch site of their suborbital New Shepard vehicle. Further testing and eventual qualification of the engine will take place in Texas, as well as the 4670 test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Blue Origin is also preparing an engine test facility at LC-11 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, next to the future launch site of New Glenn, LC-36.

** Firefly seeking payloads for first demo flight of Alpha rocket:

The company

has an (undisclosed) customer for the flight, but the smallsat launcher also has some unused capacity for the mission—the Alpha rocket has about twice as much lift as an existing competitor, Rocket Lab’s Electron vehicle.

So on Monday, Firefly announced that it will accept some academic and educational payloads free of charge on the Alpha flight. “We’ve wanted to do something like this on our first flight from the beginning,” Markusic said. The payloads will fly to a 300km circular orbit, with a 97-degree inclination.

** SpaceX:

*** STP-2 Falcon Heavy launch preparations: Liftoff from Pad-39A at Cape Kennedy Space Center is set for a window that opens on the evening of June 24th at 11:30 pm-3:30 am EDT (0330-0730 GMT)

If the routine test goes as planned, SpaceX’s third completed Falcon Heavy will be ready to lift off as early as 11:30 pm ET (03:30 UTC), June 24th. Atop the massive rocket will be the US Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission, a collection of 24 small satellites from a variety of US government agencies and academic institutions. Practically speaking, STP is often more of an engineered excuse to launch, involving satellites and customers that are willing to accept higher risk than more valuable payloads, making it far easier for the US military to certify new technologies and new commercial launch vehicles.

As previously discussed on Teslarati, STP-2 is an extremely ambitious mission that aims to simultaneously certify or pave the way towards certification of critical capabilities. First and foremost, it will (barring serious anomalies) give the US military the data it needs to certify SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for all national defense launches, giving ULA’s Delta IV Heavy its first real competition in a decade and a half.

Included under the umbrella of that catch-all certification is a sort of torture-test validation of the long-coast capabilities of SpaceX’s Falcon upper stage. To successfully complete STP-2, the upper stage will be subjected to “four separate upper-stage engine burns, three separate deployment orbits, a final propulsive passivation maneuver, and a total mission duration of over six hours.” It will likely be SpaceX’s most technically-challenging launch ever.

*** Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 solar sail on FH flight and the Society is providing lots of information on all aspects of the launch:

*** The Falcon 9 launch of the RadarSat constellation spacecraft looks to be the last SpaceX launch from Vandenberg for several months:

*** Announcement of Korean satellite launch contract may be just one of several launches for 2019 that have not yet been revealed by SpaceX: SpaceX Falcon 9 wins Korean launch contract as 2019 mystery missions persist – Teslarati

As previously discussed in both Teslarati articles and newsletters, comments from SpaceX executives in February and May 2019 reiterate the company’s expectation of 18-21 launches in 2019, excluding Starlink. Hofeller’s “more than 21 launches” admittedly came more than two months before a catastrophic Crew Dragon failure threw the spacecraft’s launch manifest into limbo.

Three months later, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell reiterated the idea that SpaceX could beat its 2018 launch record (21 launches) or at least get close. Curiously, she specifically noted that SpaceX’s purported 18-21 launch manifest excluded Starlink missions, of which SpaceX has already launched one. In short, SpaceX has completed 7 launches in 2019 (6 if Starlink v0.9 is excluded). The company’s public manifest – unofficially cobbled together by fans – shows 9 more launches scheduled for a total of 15 non-Starlink launches in 2019.

To meet Shotwell’s expected 18-21 non-Starlink launches, anywhere from 3 to 6 missions are apparently missing from publicly-managed launch manifests. It’s unclear if SpaceX actually has enough launch-ready customers to achieve those ambitious targets. Additionally, SpaceX is currently on track to complete 8 launches total (1 Starlink) in the first half of 2019. In 2017 and 2018 (two years without interruption), SpaceX consistently launched an equivalent number (or more) missions in the first half of the year when compared to the second half, and both years have maxed out at 9 launches in H2.

*** SpaceX aiming Starlink internet services at markets outside of densely populated urban areas: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hints at Starlink’s global reach at Tesla shareholder event – Teslarati

Elon Musk’s specific comment indicated that Starlink – at least in its current iteration – was never meant to serve more than “3-5%” of Earth (population: ~7.8 billion), with most or all of its users nominally located in areas with low to medium population densities. This generally confirms technical suspicions that Starlink (and other constellations like OneWeb and Telesat) is not really capable of providing internet to everyone per se.

For SpaceX, each Starlink satellite – per official statements that the first 60 satellites represent more than 1 terabit of bandwidth – likely offers bandwidth of roughly 17-20 gigabits per second. In simpler terms, this means that one Starlink satellite overhead could theoretically support as many as 4000 users simultaneously streaming YouTube videos at 1080p/30fps, a figure that sounds impressive but glosses over the sheer number of people that live in cities. Importantly, every single Starlink satellite at ~550 km will likely have a service radius of several thousand – if not tens of thousands of – square kilometers.

Here’s an overview of the Starlink project:

*** Starhopper continues to wait for it’s Raptor engine, which apparently was damaged in tests at the SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas. Elon Musk said in a tweet that the next test hop of the Starhopper was awaiting repairs to the engine. This also means that his update on the Starship project, which he had hinted would be given on June 20th, will be postponed.

*** The roads near the Starhopper launch pad will be closed during testing times: County preps for SpaceX closures – Brownsville Herald

In a first, Cameron County has announced possible closures of Boca Chica Beach and State Highway 4 for SpaceX testing that could span a week-long window, as opposed to three-day windows.

Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. announced in the public notice that closures are possible on June 20 and/or June 21 and/or June 22, as well as June 24 and/or June 25 and/or June 26 from 2 to 8 p.m. for space flight activities.

Testing was initially scheduled for this week, but during the last week of May and each week of June the county has announced the testing has been rescheduled.

*** Views of Starhopper and orbital demo Starship vehicles in Texas and Florida:

SpaceX is leasing Coastal Steel to build its largest spaceship ever. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said right now, there is simultaneous construction of the interplanetary Starship going on in both Texas and Florida.

 

 

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LEGO Ideas NASA Apollo Saturn V 21309
Outer Space Model Rocket for Kids and Adults, Science Building Kit
(1900 pieces)

Rockets

Space transport roundup – June.11.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

[ Update June.12.2019: The launch and deployment of the three RadarSat Constellation spacecraft were successful. Also, the booster landed safely back at Vandenberg AFB, which was fogged in during both the launch and landing.

]

** SpaceX Falcon 9 to launch with 3 RadarSat Constellation spacecraft on Wednesday during the window 7:17-7:30 am PDT (10:17-10:30 am EDT; 1417-1430 GMT) from Vandenberg AFB in California. The SpaceX webcast will start about 15 minutes before liftoff. Info on the mission is provide by the SpaceX RadarSat launch press kit.

More below in the SpaceX section.

** Relativity Space will 3D print and assemble rockets at Mississippi factory:

Via MDA:

Aerospace company Relativity is expanding its rocket component production and rocket engine testing operations at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Hancock County. The project is a $59-million corporate investment and will create 190 jobs, increasing employment at Relativity’s Stennis Space Center site to 200 workers.

…

With this expansion, Relativity is increasing infrastructure to more than 350,000 square feet of operations, production, testing and launch facilities. In the past year, the company has increased its employment from 14 to 90 workers. Relativity became the first venture-backed company to secure a launch site Right of Entry at Cape Canaveral Launch Complex-16 from the U.S. Air Force and has a 20-year exclusive-use Commercial Space Launch Act agreement at Stennis Space Center’s E4 test complex, as well as membership on the National Space Council advising the White House.

Relativity will activate its manufacturing equipment in July and plans to complete development of the world’s first 3D-printed rocket, Terran 1, in 2020. The company is on track to conduct its first orbital test launch at the end of 2020 and enter commercial service in 2021. 

** The SpaceShipCompany is building more SpaceShipTwo rocketplanes in Mojave, California for Virgin Galactic:

** An Embry-Riddle student team fires a liquid-fueled rocket engine, which they designed and built:

** The Stanford Student Space Initiative (SSI) also fires a liquid fueled engine that they designed and built:

** Equatorial Space Industries is a Singapore-based rocket start-up that’s developing the Volans Block 1 vehicle, powered by a hybrid motor (Paraffin/LOX), for smallsat launch services.

Volans Block 1 Rocket“Named after southern sky’s constellation representing a flying fish, Volans
is a two-stage, hybrid-propelled launch vehicle capable of delivering
20-70kg of payload to a wide range of orbits.”

The company had a successful fund-raising round earlier this year: Equatorial Space Industries Secures Angel Funding – SpaceWatch.Global. The unspecified amount of money will

… support development of ESI’s upcoming suborbital SHARP (Suborbital Hybrid Ascent and Recovery Program) vehicle slated to fly in early 2020. The vehicle’s engine will use liquid Nitrous Oxide as compared Liquid Oxygen used in the previous v.2.2 Engine ground prototype, and will be capable of in-flight restartability.

The location of the test flight, as well as cooperation and arrangements with local suppliers and authorities, will be revealed in the next few months. ESI’s Volans microlauncher is expected to conduct its first test flight in 2021 from a yet-to-be determined location in the APAC region.

** Misc:

** SpaceX:

*** Falcon 9 booster will attempt to land back at Vandenberg after liftoff with the 3 RadarSat Constellation spacecraft:

The booster, which will be on its second flight, was test fired on the VAFB pad last Saturday: SpaceX static fires Falcon 9 for West Coast pad’s second booster landing ever – Teslarati

*** SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch of USAF STP-2 mission now set for the evening of June 24th from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center sometime between 11:30 pm-3:30 am EDT (0330-0730 GMT on 25th). This will be the 3rd launch of the FH and will carry 24 different satellites, most of which were funded by the USAF but also includes satellites from NASA, NOAA, and several universities.

The Planetary Society will also be flying the LightSail 2 solar light powered vehicle on the FH: LightSail 2 Has a New Launch Date! – The Planetary Society

*** SpaceX raises funding for new projects: SpaceX worth $33B after raising more than $1B for Starlink and Starship – Teslarati

Since April 2018, SpaceX has successfully raised more than $1.24 billion through the sale of equity, likely sold to investors by extrapolating the company’s current record of success to include the potential of its next two products, Starlink and Starship.

Thanks to SpaceX’s successful streak of fundraising, the company is now valued at $33.3 billion according to sources that spoke with CNBC reporter Michael Sheetz. The same source indicated that demand for SpaceX equity remains strong as the company seeks to continue extremely expensive development and production programs. Most notably, SpaceX is simultaneously building two full-scale orbital Starship prototypes at separate facilities in Texas and Florida, readying an earlier Starhopper testbed for serious test flights, and is in the midst of ramping up its Starlink satellite production to levels unprecedented in the history of spaceflight.

*** Starhopper still waiting for the Raptor engine that will power its low altitude test flights: SpaceX testing rescheduled – Brownsville Herald

According to the notice, State Highway 4 to Boca Chica Beach is scheduled to close from 2 to 8 p.m. on June 17 and/or in the alternative during the same time period on June 18 and/or June 19.

*** Views of Starhopper and Starship Orbital demo vehicle activities recently at the Boca Chica Beach, Texas facilities:

*** And some photos of the second Starship demonstrator under construction in Cocoa Beach, Florida:

 

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The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos