Rocket Lab

Max Q: Ocean splashdown • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in ispace, Max Q, Rocket Lab, SpaceNo Comments

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. TC’s in-person Space event is almost upon us. Will you be there? Learn more about the event here. In this issue: Rocket Lab’s helicopter catch attempt ends in ocean splashdown ispace wants to stake its claim to the moon News from the FCC, Constellr and more Rocket Lab’s second attempt to catch a rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter was aborted, though it’s unclear at the time of writing what exactly went wrong. Rocket Lab aims to recover its rocket boosters using a parachute and a helicopter — a bit different than SpaceX, whose boosters return to Earth by vertically landing on a pad. Instead, Rocket Lab’s technique is to equip the booster with a parachute to slow its descent, and keep a helicopter waiting nearby to snag it out of midair. From there, the plan is for the helicopter to carry the booster straight back to the company’s production complex. But alas, we did not see a catch after this launch. Here’s what we know: After a nominal launch and payload deployment, the company’s Sikorsky S-92 helicopter did not make the catch attempt. Instead, the company recovered the booster from the ocean after it splashed down. We’ll be looking out for more information on what went wrong in the days ahead. Tokyo-based startup ispace’s lunar ambitions will soon be put to the test, as the company gears up for its first launch at the end of this month. The startup will attempt to send its “Hakuto-R” lander to the moon’s surface, kicking off an ambitious lunar exploration program of the same name. Founded in 2010, ispace is one of many emerging companies that want to foster new markets on and around the moon; on its website, it describes its goal as becoming “a gateway for private sector companies to bring their business to the moon.” Being the middle- and last-mile delivery partner of the moon could prove to be lucrative, given the intensifying interest from both government space agencies and private companies in lunar exploration. But there’s more than far-off revenues at stake in this first launch; recent reporting suggested that ispace is preparing to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as early as this fiscal year. While the company was previously targeting a launch window of November 9-15, ispace said Monday it was now aiming to launch no earlier than November 22. The new date was chosen “in careful coordination” with launch partner SpaceX, the startup said in a statement. Indeed, ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada confirmed that the lander had arrived in Cape Canaveral, Florida, via cargo plane in advance of launch. The ispace M1 Hakuto-R lander. Image Credits: ispace More news from TC and beyond Arkisys is launching a new program called “Embark” for on-orbit payload services for SBIR and STTR Phase I entrants. (Arkisys) Blue Origin delivered its set of two BE-4 rocket engines to United Launch Alliance, which will be used on ULA’s heavy-lift Vulcan Centaur rocket as early as next year. (Blue Origin) China is releasing things into orbit using spaceplanes, and we don’t know what they are! (SpaceNews) China launched the third and final module for its Tiangong Space Station, and the rocket booster that carried it to orbit began its uncontrolled reentry back to Earth. (The New York Times/USSC) Constellr raised $10 million in seed funding for its space-based water monitoring system. (ZebethMedia) Exotrail, a company developing last-mile satellite transportation, signed a launch services agreement with German launch startup Isar Aerospace. (Payload) Firefly Aerospace is seeking to raise up to $300 million in private funding at an undisclosed valuation. (Reuters) NASA’s Space Launch System rocket was rolled back out to the launch pad in advance of the next launch attempt on November 14. (CNN) NASA’s Psyche mission was delayed and an independent review board was assembled to investigate why. The report is back, and it’s not good: The review board identified multiple staffing issues at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab, including burnout and a lack of technical expertise in key positions. (NASA) Orbex, a small rocket startup based in Scotland, will oversee construction of the first spaceport for vertical rocket launches on the U.K. mainland. (Orbex) Rocket Lab was contracted by Inmarsat to develop and manufacture an L-band radio for NASA; it also delivered the final solar panels to Maxar that will end up on the space agency’s lunar Gateway orbital platform. (Rocket Lab/Rocket Lab) Sierra Space and Blue Origin will be participating in Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s feasibility study exploring g opportunities for Japan to participate in commercializing low Earth orbit. (Baker McKenzie) SpaceX is tentatively targeting early December for Starship’s first test flight, a NASA official said. The company is also now building seven Raptor 2 rocket engines a week. (!) (Ars Technica) SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy for the fourth time ever in a mission for the United States Space Force. The double booster landing made more than a few jaws drop. (ZebethMedia) Spire won a DARPA contract for a preliminary design of a satellite that would carry sensors to measure the ionosphere. (Spire) Terran Orbital landed an additional $100 million investment from Lockheed Martin, and announced it built its massive spacecraft manufacturing facility in California, rather than Florida as originally announced. (ZebethMedia) The U.S. Federal Communications Division will undergo a major organizational shakeup in response to the explosion of activity in commercial space by establishing a Space Bureau to separate satellite policy issues from the overall “International Bureau,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. (FCC) Virgin Galactic released its quarterly financial report and released details on how it plans to kickstart its space tourism service. (Space) Wyvern, a startup building satellites that capture hyperspectral imagery using telescopes that unfold in space, has raised $7 million in a seed plus round. (Wyvern) Photo of the week Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine. Image Credits: Blue Origin Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. 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Watch Rocket Lab attempt a mid-air Electron rocket booster recovery live • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Electron, peter beck, Rocket Lab, SpaceNo Comments

Rocket Lab will try to catch a spent Electron rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter in a few hours, a technique that could be central to driving down rocket production costs and increasing launch cadence. The mission will take place just five months after Rocket Lab conducted its first (partly) successful attempt, during which a helicopter managed to catch the booster, but then dropped it shortly after. The launch will take place from Pad B at the company’s launch site on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. The mission, dubbed “Catch Me If You Can,” will carry a single science research satellite for the Swedish National Space Agency, provided by OHB Sweden, to sun synchronous orbit. Rocket Lab will have a 75-minute window to conduct the launch, which opens at 1:15 PM EST. The stream at the top of this story will start around 20 minutes before that. The company’s approach to recovery is a bit different than that of SpaceX. Falcon 9 boosters return to Earth by vertically landing on a pad – it looks like a launch in reverse. Instead, Rocket Lab is equipping its first stage with a parachute. That parachute will slow the booster’s descent, and a waiting helicopter will track the booster’s return before using a capture hook to grip the parachute line. From there, the helicopter will carry the booster straight back to Rocket Lab’s production complex. “Our first helicopter catch only a few months ago proved we can do what we set out to do with Electron, and we’re eager to get the helicopter back out there and advance our rocket reusability even further by bringing back a dry stage for the first time,” Beck said. Let’s see if they can do it.

Rocket Lab will attempt to catch an Electron rocket booster with a helicopter again • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Electron, peter beck, Rocket Lab, SpaceNo Comments

Rocket Lab is gearing up for a second attempt to catch a rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter, a technique the company is hoping to perfect after a partially successful recovery earlier this year. The mission, playfully dubbed “Catch Me If You Can,” is scheduled to take place no earlier than November 4 from the company’s launch site on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. The 75-minute launch window opens at 1:15 PM EST. It will be the 32nd Electron launch to date. The company aims to carry a single science research satellite for the Swedish National Space Agency, provided by OHB Sweden, to sun synchronous orbit. The Mesopheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy satellite will be used to study atmospheric waves and their relationship to wind and weather patterns in different parts of the atmosphere. Catching a rocket booster mid-air is no small feat — even with the parachute that the booster releases to slow its descent to Earth. During the first helicopter recovery attempt on May 2, the Sikorsky S-92 helicopter did manage to grab hold of the parachute line around 6,500 feet above the ocean, but released it almost immediately. The pilot offloaded the booster after noticing “different load characteristics” than had been experienced during testing, a Rocket Lab spokesperson said at the time. Like other recovery attempts, the booster was dropped into the sea and recovered via boat. Once again, Rocket Lab will be deploying its Sikorsky S-92 helicopter shortly before launch. The S-92, built by Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft, is capable of lifting 5,000 kilograms, a capacity that’s more than sufficient for the 1,000-kilogram Electron booster. Rocket Lab outfitted the helicopter with a capture hook, extended range fuel tanks and other features to ensure that the three-person crew — a pilot, co-pilot and rocket spotter — are set up for success. “Our first helicopter catch only a few months ago proved we can do what we set out to do with Electron, and we’re eager to get the helicopter back out there and advance our rocket reusability even further by bringing back a dry stage for the first time,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement. Rocket Lab, which was founded in 2006, has taken a relatively iterative testing approach. It conducted two missions, in November 2020 and May 2021, where the booster was equipped with a parachute (no helicopter present) and the company gathered data on its descent. The company also used booster simulators and studied boosters fished out of the ocean to better understand their condition upon returning to Earth. Beck has said that reusability is key to increasing launch cadence and reducing vehicle manufacturing costs. The heavier-lift Neutron rocket, which is still under development, is also being designed for reusability.

Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab gear up for launches on new continents • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Electron, LauncherOne, Rocket Lab, Space, Virgin OrbitNo Comments

Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab are expanding their launch capacities as each company gears up for inaugural missions from countries that they have never flown from. For Rocket Lab, that’s the United States; for Virgin, that’s the United Kingdom (which has never seen an orbital launch, ever). Rocket Lab said Wednesday that the Electron rocket arrived at Launch Complex 2 (LC-2) at Wallops Island, Virginia; Virgin’s Cosmic Girl 747 airplane touched down at the Newquay Airport in Cornwall, southwest England, early evening yesterday. Virgin’s LauncherOne rocket is expected to arrive in Cornwall later this week. The missions are major milestones for the two companies. Until now, Rocket Lab has exclusively launched Electron from the company’s complex on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. Meanwhile, Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl 747 airplane and LauncherOne rocket have only ever taken off from U.S. soil. Both are commercial missions. Electron will deploy radio frequency satellites for HawkEye 360, the first of a three-launch deal between the two companies. That launch will take place sometime in December. Virgin’s manifest includes payload from the United Kingdom, Poland and the first ever CubeSat from Oman. The Long Beach-based company is planning on a November launch date — the first-ever orbital mission from the United Kingdom — though it is still awaiting a launch license from England’s aviation regulator. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said at the company’s investor day that a second mission from LC-2 is planned for the first quarter of 2023. That mission will carry payload for a commercial customer, who has yet to be announced. Rocket Lab’s substantial investment in Wallops doesn’t end there: The company also plans to use the site for all manufacturing, operations and launch of its medium-lift Neutron rocket. Rocket Lab will attempt its first Neutron launch sometime in 2024. Virgin’s LauncherOne successfully reached space for the first time in January 2021, followed by two more missions, all taking off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Unlike conventional launch systems, Virgin’s 70-foot-long rocket is carried to high altitude under the wing of a 747 airplane and detaches from the plane in midair. While Virgin’s mission will mark the first from the U.K., the British government is hoping it won’t be the last. The country has been making major investments in the space sector post-Brexit (until now the U.K. has relied on European partners for launch), and the domestic space industry has been steadily growing since 2012. Perhaps the government’s most well-known investment is the around £500 million ($553 million) it spent to acquire a 45% stake in satellite operator OneWeb. In February, it also released a plan to invest £1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in military satellites and other space technologies for the defense sector over the next 10 years.

Oh my gourd • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in international space station, Max Q, NASA, Rocket Lab, Space, SpaceXNo Comments

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. Will every October issue have a Halloween/autumn pun as its title? I’LL NEVER TELL. In this issue: Blast off for Crew-5 Russia’s rethinking on the ISS News from Firefly, TK and more By the way…We are a little over ONE WEEK away from ZebethMedia Disrupt, which is returning live and in-person to San Francisco on October 18-20. Use this link to receive 15% off passes (excluding online and expo). SpaceX continues to set the industry standard for launch cadence, successfully completing three separate missions in the span of five days. The first was Crew-5 on Wednesday (more on that below), followed by a Starlink mission a scant eight hours later. To cap it all off, it launched two satellites for Intelsat on Thursday night. Crew-5 was a milestone for a few different reasons. The mission (so named because it’s SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program) took off from launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The crew of four — which includes American astronauts Nicole Mann, mission commander, and Josh Cassada, mission pilot; JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, mission specialist; and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, mission specialist — are traveling to the station in a Crew Dragon dubbed “Endurance.” It separated from the Falcon 9 rocket shortly after launch and arrived at the station on Thursday. SpaceX has now delivered 30 humans to space across eight human spaceflight missions. It also marks the first time that a cosmonaut has flown on a SpaceX Crew Dragon and the first time a cosmonaut has flown on an American spacecraft since 2002. Cosmonaut Kikina’s spot on the spacecraft is part of a recent astronaut transportation deal between the U.S. and Russia. American astronaut Francisco Rubio flew to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz last month as part of the deal. Looking ahead, SpaceX’s next CCP mission, Crew-6, will launch in February of next year. The Ax-2 mission, Axiom Space’s second private mission to the ISS, will follow in May. Image Credits: SpaceX Russia is having internal discussions over continuing its participation in the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2024, despite statements made earlier this summer that the country will pull out of the station program by the middle of the decade. Sergei Krikalev, head of human space programs at Roscosmos, said Monday that the Russian space agency is in discussions to extend its “participation in [the] ISS program with our government and hope to have permission to continue next year.” The about-face comes just a few months after Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov announced Russia’s plans to leave the station after 2024, and instead construct its own orbiting station. The ISS is operated in partnership between the space agencies of U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe. America has committed to operate the station through 2030. However, Krikalev admitted that a new Russian station may not be ready by 2025. “We know that it’s not going to happen very [quickly], so probably we will keep flying [on the ISS] until we have any new infrastructure that will allow us to do continuous human presence on low Earth orbit,” he said. Image Credits: NASA More news from TC and beyond ArianeGroup conducted a successful hot fire test of the Ariane 6 second stage, a key milestone in stage qualification testing. The European Space Agency is hoping to launch the Ariane 6 rocket sometime next year. CAPSTONE, NASA’s orbit-charting satellite, has regained three-axis attitude control and remains on track to enter its target orbit around the moon on November 13. Firefly Aerospace can now count itself amongst a small number of space companies to have reached orbit. The company launched its Alpha rocket from Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 2 on October 1 and declared the mission “100% successful” in achieving its primary objectives. Inmarsat is collaborating with U.K. company Livewire Digital to create a “network of networks” for connectivity across Inmarsat’s geosynchronous satellites, terrestrial 5G and a new constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who bankrolled and flew on the Inspiration4 mission last year, outlined his ambitious plans for the Polaris Dawn series of private human spaceflight missions. The first is expected to launch in partnership with SpaceX in March next year. Redwire is buying QinetiQ Space, a Belgium-based supplier of small satellites and other space infrastructure, for €32 million ($31.1 million). Rocket Lab’s punnily-named “It Argos Up From Here” mission blasted off from the company’s New Zealand launch site on Friday. The dedicated launch carried a General Atomics satellite bus carrying an environmental monitoring payload named Argos-4. Skyrora’s head of government affairs, Alan Thompson, expressed concern over the ongoing vacancy of a key science minister position in the British government. “The new Tory administration has yet to recognize and prioritise the massive opportunities held within the UK Space sector, a truth echoed in 80 days of absence despite the previous incumbent’s commitment and readiness to champion UK Space and Science,” he said in a statement. Space billboards could turn a profit despite costing up to $65 million, according to a new study from Russian researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will see its first launch in over three years. The mission, scheduled for October 28, will deploy two satellites to GEO for the U.S. Space Force. SpinLaunch completed its tenth successful flight test using its suborbital accelerator. Unlike other tests, this one carried test customer payloads from NASA, Outpost and others. SpinLaunch said the test “demonstrated that SpinLaunch partners’ standard satellite components are inherently compatible” with the company’s unique kinetic launch system. United Launch Alliance launched two SES satellites aboard its Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission is part of SES’ effort to collect almost $4 billion in government payouts to clear the C-band. Virgin Orbit has completed a full launch rehearsal for its next flight from Spaceport Cornwall. It will be the first orbital space launch to ever take place from