NASA and the Private Sector - Page 142

On October 07 2017 03:10 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
maybe the "space race" of the 21st century will be "Private Sector Versus Public Sector" as opposed to the 20th Century "Capitalism Versus Communism" space race.

CHANTILLY, Va. — The new chief executive of Blue Origin told the National Space Council his company is in discussions about certifying its New Glenn rocket for government missions, a shift in strategy that could put the company in competition with a customer.

In a presentation to the first meeting of the reconstituted National Space Council at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center here Oct. 5, Bob Smith said that the New Glenn rocket the company is developing could be used for both commercial and government missions, the latter requiring the company to go through a certification process with agencies like NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

“Our New Glenn launch vehicle will be more capable than existing launch vehicles flying today, and can be used not only for human spaceflight and other commercial missions, but also for civil and national security payloads,” he said. “Therefore, we are in early discussions with the national security community and NASA about how to certify New Glenn for their use.”

New Glenn, Blue Origin’s first orbital launch vehicle, is designed to place up to 45 metric tons into low Earth orbit and 13 metric tons into geostationary transfer orbit. That is a larger capacity than the existing Atlas and Delta vehicles by United Launch Alliance, with the exception of the Delta 4 Heavy, which can place nearly 14 metric tons into geostationary transfer orbit. It’s also bigger than SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which, like the Atlas and Delta, is certified by the U.S. Air Force for military missions.

To date, Blue Origin has focused on the commercial market for New Glenn. The company has so far signed up three customers, all developers of commercial communications satellites, for New Glenn. The company announced the third customer, Thai startup mu Space Corporation, Sept. 26 at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia.

New Glenn is powered by seven of its BE-4 engines in its first stage and one BE-4 engine in is second stage, with an optional third stage using the BE-3 engine first developed for its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. Blue Origin is also offering the BE-4 to ULA for its next-generation Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, have suggested in the past that the company would not pursue national security missions, which are a cornerstone of ULA’s business.

“That is ULA’s specialty,” Bezos said of national security missions during a March 2016 media tour of Blue Origin’s headquarters and manufacturing facility in Kent, Washington. “It may be very logical for ULA to continue to be specialized in doing that and we just support them with the engines.”

ULA has not yet made a formal decision on what engine to use in Vulcan, although the company has previously stated that the BE-4 is the leading contender versus Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR1. ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno said in April that he was awaiting the outcome of tests of the BE-4 at Blue Origin’s test site in West Texas before officially selecting the engine.

Testing of the BE-4, though, has been delayed by a mishap in May that destroyed an engine powerpack, a key component of a rocket engine that includes the turbomachinery that pumps propellant through the engine. Smith indicated at the National Space Council meeting that those tests could begin in the near future.

SAN FRANCISCO — Early next year, Solstar Space plans to demonstrate the first commercial internet link in space by connecting experimental payloads traveling in Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital capsules with researchers on the ground.

NASA is covering the cost of flying Solstar’s Schmitt Space Communicator (named for former Apollo astronaut and U.S. Senator Harrison Schmitt) on two New Shepard flights in 2018 through its Flight Opportunities Program, an initiative to support commercial technologies by giving them rides on commercial suborbital vehicles. Solstar, a small business based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has completed ground testing of the Schmitt Space Communicator with the New Shepard crew capsule.

Solstar is developing a line of products to provide internet connections and wireless internet access for people, payloads and machines in commercial and government spacecraft.

Tourists traveling on commercial suborbital flights might someday pay a fee for wireless internet access the same way airline passengers do today, Brian Barnett, Solstar president and chief executive, told SpaceNews. Solstar plans to relay communications from spacecraft through a commercial satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. Barnett declined to name the constellation.

In addition to the Schmitt Space Communicator, Solstar is working under a NASA Small Business Innovative Research grant to design the Slayton Space Communicator (named for Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton) to provide commercial internet access for the International Space Station.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX completed its third launch with a previously used first stage booster Oct. 11, carrying a geostationary satellite for customers EchoStar and SES.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 6:53 p.m. Eastern from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at the beginning of a 2-hour launch window. EchoStar-105/SES-11 separated from the rocket’s upper stage roughly 36 minutes into the mission as planned.

The Falcon 9 booster, separating from the rocket’s upper stage about 2 and a half minutes after liftoff, returned to SpaceX’s drone ship “Off Course I Still Love You” in the Atlantic Ocean. The same booster first flew on a February mission to the International Space Station with a Dragon capsule.

EchoStar-105/SES-11 was originally set to launch in late 2016, but suffered a year-long delay because of SpaceX’s September 2016 Falcon 9 explosion. The satellite will cover the Americas, including Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean, from the 105 degrees west orbital location.

SpaceX is now halfway toward its goal of launching up to six pre-flown first stages this year. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and chief operating officer, said in March that the company would likely use as many as six pre-flown boosters in 2017 to ease pressure on rocket manufacturing for the year.

Luxembourg-based SES, which was the first customer to dare to use a pre-flown Falcon 9 later that month, said it would fly up to three such missions this year. Newcomer satellite operator Bulgaria Sat was the second, with BulgariaSat-1 in June. SES has one more satellite launching this year — a joint venture satellite with the Luxembourg government called GovSat-1 — but has not yet said if it will fly new or pre-flown. The other two pre-flown boosters will launch with the first flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy later this year.

SpaceX has now launched 15 times this year and landed 18 boosters overall. The company’s previous mission was less than three days ago, launching 10 Iridium Next satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

EchoStar-105/SES-11 is a 5,200-kilogram telecommunications satellite from European manufacturer Airbus Defence and Space with 24 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders. Englewood, Colorado-based EchoStar is leasing the Ku-band payload for 10 years, branded as EchoStar-105, while SES uses the C-band payload as SES-11.

EchoStar’s half of the satellite is designed for television broadcast, government and enterprise communications. The company has the option to renew annually after the the 10-year lease has elapsed.

SES-11 is a broadcast-focused payload that replaces the 13-year old AMC-18, and is designed to support high definition and Ultra-HD television.

It’s not often that one can point to a last-minute (from the public side) addition of a mission to a launch manifest – let alone one that manages to stay secret until 30 days before the opening of its launch campaign.

But that is the case for a mystery Falcon 9 mission that is now set to launch between Koreasat-5A and CRS-13/Dragon.

The mystery mission, codename Zuma, is known on its FCC launch license as Mission 1390 and will see a Falcon 9 rocket launch from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center before performing a RTLS (Return To Launch Site) landing at LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral.

The mission is a new addition to SpaceX’s manifest and now appears to be the last flight off Pad 39A before the pad undergoes final configurations for the debut of the Falcon Heavy, which is still slated for NET (No Earlier Than) December 2017.

With such secrecy, the customer candidate for Zuma would normally be the U.S. government/military (i.e.: the National Reconnaissance Office or the Air Force); however, there is industry speculation claiming this is a “black commercial” mission.

Nonetheless, Zuma represents a likely rapid launch response from SpaceX for the satellite’s operator.

(UPDATE: NASASpaceflight.com has confirmed that Northrop Grumman is the payload provider for Zuma through a commercial launch contract with SpaceX for a LEO satellite with a mission type labeled as “government” and a needed launch date range of 1-30 November 2017.)

While nothing is known of the payload, what is known is that Zuma will use Falcon 9 core B1043 – a brand new core that was originally (as understood by NASASpaceflight.com) intended for the CRS-13/Dragon mission.

However, a brand-new booster might not be needed for CRS-13. With Falcon 9 first stage reuse proving highly successful in its first two flights by August, NASA – as confirmed in a press conference following the CRS-12 launch – was actively investigating and reviewing data toward approving a future CRS launch on a flight-proven Falcon 9.

According to information recently obtained by NASASpaceflight.com and available on L2, NASA has completed a technical review for reuse with successful results limited to the second flight of a booster that flew a LEO mission.

Las Vegas, NV and Centennial, Colo. (Oct. 17, 2017) – Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance (ULA) are working together to launch a B330 expandable module on ULA’s Vulcan launch vehicle. The launch would place a B330 outfitted module in Low Lunar Orbit by the end of 2022 to serve as a lunar depot.

“We are excited to work with ULA on this lunar depot project,” said Robert Bigelow, president of Bigelow Aerospace. “Our lunar depot plan is a strong complement to other plans intended to eventually put people on Mars. It will provide NASA and America with an exciting and financially practical success opportunity that can be accomplished in the short term. This lunar depot could be deployed easily by 2022 to support the nation’s re-energized plans for returning to the Moon.

"This commercial lunar depot would provide anchorage for significant lunar business development in addition to offering NASA and other governments the Moon as a new exciting location to conduct long-term exploration and astronaut training.”

The B330 would launch to Low Earth Orbit on a Vulcan 562 configuration rocket, the only commercial launch vehicle in development today with sufficient performance and a large enough payload fairing to carry the habitat. Once the B330 is in orbit, Bigelow Aerospace will outfit the habitat and demonstrate it is working properly. Once the B330 is fully operational, ULA’s industry-unique distributed lift capability would be used to send the B330 to lunar orbit. Distributed lift would also utilize two more Vulcan ACES launches, each carrying 35 tons of cryogenic propellant to low Earth orbit. In LEO, all of the cryogenic propellant would be transferred to one of the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES). The now full ACES would then rendezvous with the B330 and perform multiple maneuvers to deliver the B330 to its final position in Low Lunar Orbit.

“We are so pleased to be able to continue our relationship with Bigelow Aerospace,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. “The company is doing such tremendous work in the area of habitats for visiting, living and working off our planet and we are thrilled to be the ride that enables that reality.”

Bigelow Aerospace is a destination-oriented company with a focus on expandable systems for use in a variety of space applications. These NASA heritage systems provide for greater volume, safety, opportunity and economy than the aluminum alternatives.

The B330 is a standalone commercial space station that can operate in low Earth orbit, cislunar space and beyond. A single B330 is comparable to one third of the current pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station. Bigelow Aerospace is developing two B330 commercial space station habitats that will be ready for launch any time after 2020.

The problem with the RS-68 engine, which powers the Delta IV line of rockets, is that it costs too much. United Launch Alliance, which flies the Delta IV fleet, is seeking to stop flying the launch vehicles because they are so expensive to build. However, the US military has pushed back against this, because it doesn't want to be solely reliant on the Atlas V rocket (and its Russian-made RD-180 engine) to reach some strategic orbits.

Therefore, in recent years, United Launch Alliance has begun developing a new rocket to replace both the Delta and (eventually) the Russian-reliant Atlas vehicle. For the new rocket, dubbed Vulcan, United Launch Alliance has made its preference for Blue Origin's BE-4 engine clear. As a second option, the company is also considering the AR1 engine under development by Aerojet Rocketdyne, which has historically built most US engines.

Aerojet has been heavily lobbying Congress to pressure United Launch Alliance to select the AR1 engine, which has already received more than $200 million in federal funding. One of the Aerojet's principal arguments has been that as a relatively new company Blue Origin is incapable of building such a large, complex engine. In March, several Congressmen wrote to the Air Force to echo these concerns, saying Blue Origin's engine was "unproven at the required size and power." Then, in May, Blue Origin suffered a setback when an engine powerpack exploded on its West Texas test stand.

Wednesday's successful test demonstrates that Blue Origin not only recovered from that accident but has taken the additional step of assembling and hot-fire testing a full engine. In addition, such a test—the first of many to prove out an engine—backs up the claims of Blue Origin that it is significantly ahead of Aerojet in developing a modern rocket engine.