SCIENCE

Rocket Report: NASA buys a SpinLaunch, Space Force brass visits Starbase

"It’s an amazing facility that gives you a lot of ideas of what the future could be."

2022-04-08 07:04

Welcome to Edition 4.38 of the Rocket Report! We're already in the second quarter of 2022, hard as it is to believe. This means that many companies with aspirations to debut new rockets this year, including United Launch Alliance, ABL Space Systems, Relativity Space, and Arianespace, are down to less than nine months to work with. 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.

Rocket Lab ready for helicopter grab. After several experimental tests, Rocket Lab announced it will attempt a mid-air capture of the Electron rocket's first stage for the first time. The company will make this attempt during its next flight, with a launch window that opens on April 19 for the "There and Back Again" mission to deploy 34 small satellites. After the first stage completes its boost phase, at 2 minutes and 30 seconds, it will separate and begin descending at speeds up to 8,300 km per hour. Falling, spinning, catching? ... Nominally, a drogue parachute should deploy at 13 km altitude, followed by the rocket's main parachute at around 6 km altitude to dramatically slow the stage to 10 meters per second. As the stage enters the capture zone, Rocket Lab's Sikorsky S-92 helicopter will attempt to rendezvous with the returning stage and capture the parachute line via a hook. If this is successful, Rocket Lab engineers and technicians will conduct a thorough analysis of the stage and assess its suitability for re-flight. Happy hunting, Rocket Lab! (submitted by Ken the Bin and Tfargo04) Georgia spaceport back from the dead? In March, voters in Camden County, Georgia, overwhelmingly voted 78 to 22 percent to block the local government from buying 4,000 acres of land for a vertical launch spaceport. But some county officials apparently didn't get the message. Now, says Steve Howard, Camden County's administrator and project manager of Spaceport Camden, officials from Spearhead Capital will host a public workshop session with the county commission. During this session on April 7 they will discuss creating a special fund to collect money from private investors, a local television station reports. Ignoring the public will ... "We're excited about hearing from this company next week; what their vision is and how they can align nicely with this public-private partnership opportunity that we think would be amazing to leverage," Howard said. So far, the county has spent more than seven years and more than $10 million developing the Spaceport project. It does strike me as somewhat odd that local officials would pursue this project so vigorously after the public so greatly opposed it. (submitted by zapman987) UAE leaning into the space sector. Over the next decade, the United Arab Emirates plans to invest more than $800 million in the private space sector to grow the country's capabilities in space. Economic zones dedicated to space activities will be set up across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah to allow startups and established businesses to set up operations, The National News reports. The country seeks to support its commercial space industry through a series of public-private partnerships. Suborbital launch, at least ... "Some of the greatest private companies in space today, for example, SpaceX, wouldn't have achieved the amazing success that they have today and pushed the boundaries of innovation if it wasn't for the support of NASA and government contracts," said Ibrahim Al Qasim, executive director of the UAE Space Agency. While it's not clear if the country has any orbital launch ambitions, it is already working with Blue Origin to support the New Shepard suborbital space tourism system. (submitted by EllPeaTea) SpinLaunch to fly NASA payload on test flight. NASA signed on to launch a payload using a suborbital kinetic energy-based system developed by California-based company SpinLaunch. The test flight, which is expected later this year, will "provide valuable information to NASA for potential future commercial launch opportunities," SpinLaunch representatives told Space.com. That NASA is inking this mission through its Flight Opportunities Program is interesting because there is a fair amount of skepticism in the space industry about SpinLaunch's approach. Spin to win? ... The company's strategy involves accelerating rockets to tremendous speeds on Earth, using a rotating arm, and then flinging them skyward (great background here from Scott Manley). The launch vehicles will then light up their engines when they're already high in the sky, greatly reducing the amount of fuel and hardware—and, by extension, money—needed to reach orbit. However, video of a test flight released by the company last November was not overly impressive. The company claims it will be ready for orbital flights by 2025. (submitted by Tfargo04 and Ken the Bin) Astra reports operational progress. Fresh off the first successful delivery of commercial satellites into low Earth orbit, small-launch company Astra published a blog post on Thursday that aims to demonstrate its increasing operational efficiency. "This is our ultimate measurement that enables us to deliver for our customers," wrote Bryson Gentile, the company's vice president of operations. "We've been working toward decreasing the number of days between launches and we hope that this trend will continue." More rockets, fewer delays ... In its post, the company showed both an increased launch cadence and higher rate of production of its Rocket 3 vehicle. Astra said it is currently producing a rocket a month and aims to increase this rate later in 2022. Astra also released other metrics showing that it is getting the hang of operations, noting that whereas its LV0007 attempt required 10 days for static fire and countdown activities, these activities were completed in two days for its most recent LV0009 mission. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Axiom-1 mission on tap for Friday. NASA officials met with SpaceX and Axiom on Thursday to clear the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for launch to the International Space Station. Following the Launch Readiness Review meeting, NASA confirmed that the Ax-1 mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than 11:17 am ET (15:17 UTC) on Friday, April 8. It will be the first all-private mission to the space station. NASA will provide live coverage of the mission beginning about an hour before launch. It's about the science, right? ... Ax-1 crew members Commander Michael López-Alegría of Spain and the United States, Pilot Larry Connor of the United States, and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe of Israel and Mark Pathy of Canada will spend about 10 days in space and a little more than a week on the station. They are visiting as space tourists but say they also plan to conduct scientific research while aboard the station.

Amazon signs blockbuster launch deal. Amazon on Tuesday announced the largest commercial launch deal ever. The company said it finalized agreements with three rocket companies—United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Blue Origin—for a total of 83 launches. The rockets will deploy a majority of Amazon's low Earth orbit constellation of 3,236 broadband satellites, Ars reports. Amazon's "Project Kuiper" seeks to bring fast and affordable broadband Internet access to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world. Amazon has not set a date for when deployment of its operational constellation will begin, but this could happen next year. Huge implications for launch market ... With this deal, Amazon acquired an extraordinary amount of medium- and heavy-lift launch capacity over the next five years, procuring launches from every major Western provider except for its direct satellite competitor, SpaceX. Aside from SpaceX, this purchase represents the vast majority of any "spare" launch capacity for larger rockets in the United States or Europe over the next half-decade. It is really difficult to overstate the significance of this deal, which throws a huge lifeline to two companies, United Launch Alliance and Arianespace, that had been struggling with the rise of SpaceX. ULA, in particular, has already said it will now press ahead with a plan to reuse BE-4 engines and will invest in infrastructure. SLS test delayed after issues. NASA halted the wet dress rehearsal for the Space Launch System rocket at Kennedy Space Center on Monday after three days of operations. The decision to stop the test came after controllers could not open a vent valve on the mobile launcher required to start loading liquid hydrogen into the rocket's core stage, Space News reports. Technicians later found that the way in which the valves were physically closed prevented remote commands from being able to open them. Two days, or two weeks? ... This fueling of the vehicle had already been delayed from Sunday when the test was stopped. During a briefing on Tuesday, NASA officials said that they made progress through some of the milestones of the overall test process, including filling the core stage liquid oxygen tank to about 50 percent. "A significant amount of our objectives have been completed," said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA Artemis launch director. The space agency said Thursday it is working toward completing the wet dress test on Monday, April 11. NASA officials originally said the wet dress test would take two days. (submitted by Tfargo04) Army Corps stalls Starbase expansion plan. SpaceX's application for an expansion of its South Texas launch site was suspended by the US Army Corps of Engineers after the company failed to provide requested information, Bloomberg reports. The Army Corps informed SpaceX in a letter dated March 7 that it has closed the review of an application for a secondary launch and landing pad, along with other launch support infrastructure, for the Boca Chica site. Focus likely on first pad at this point ... This is the permitting process for a second orbital launch pad in South Texas and is separate from the Federal Aviation Administration's review of SpaceX's plan to use its existing launch pad for orbital tests of Starship and Super Heavy. This probably is not a huge issue, as SpaceX likely is focused on getting the first pad in operation in Texas, as well as working on a Florida launch site. Moreover, the Army Corps said the permit process could continue once SpaceX provides the requisite information about its plans. (submitted by Ken the Bin) Head of Space Force launch "watching Starship closely." Brig. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the commander of Florida's Eastern Range and also the Space Force's program executive officer for assured access to space, was in South Texas last month visiting Starbase. "I did get a chance to go down to Boca Chica and see it in person. It's an amazing facility that gives you a lot of ideas of what the future could be," Purdy told SpaceNews this week. Uncertainty remains, of course ... "The question is 'how does it work?'" said Purdy. "Since they haven't done it yet, there's not a lot to go on, but we're watching it closely." Purdy said it's too early to project how the Space Force might employ Starship. "We're absolutely looking at that to see what comes about and how we might use it," Purdy added. There are still too many unknowns, "but the generic concept of putting a satellite into low Earth orbit, and then moving it somehow into high Earth orbit is attractive and interesting."

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