NASA and the Private Sector - Page 242

MADRID, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Spanish startup PLD Space will attempt a test launch of its reusable Miura-1 rocket early on Saturday, spearheading a new generation of 'microlaunchers' after an aborted attempt in June.

The rocket is due to lift off on its suborbital test mission at 2 a.m Spanish time on Saturday (0000 GMT) from Huelva in southwest Spain, marking what its designers say will be Europe's first fully private rocket launch.

A first attempt to launch in May was abandoned due to strong high-altitude winds and an attempt in June failed when umbilical cables in the avionics bay did not all release in time, halting the lift off as smoke and flames spewed out from the rocket.

Airspace, areas of the sea and roads have been closed round the high-security site. Public viewing points have been set up.

"The day has arrived," Raul Torres, PLD Space chief executive and co-founder of PLD Space, wrote on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter.

He said earlier this month that exhaustive tests had been carried out on the Miura including areas that failed in June.

Europe's efforts to develop capabilities to send small satellites into space are in focus after a failed orbital rocket launch by Virgin Orbit from Britain in January. That system involved releasing the launcher from a converted Boeing 747.

PLD Space's Miura-1 rocket, named after a breed of fighting bulls, is as tall as a three-storey building and has a 100-kg (220-pound) cargo capacity. It can also be used to carry out zero-gravity experiments.

Saturday's mission on Miura-1 demonstrator is the first of two suborbital missions to be carried out before orbital rides are scheduled to begin on the larger Miura-5 in 2025.

The launch will carry a payload for test purposes but this will not be released, the company said.

If successful, it will be the first time a rocket has lifted off from continental Europe outside Russia, experts say.

Competitors lining up to join the race to launch small payloads include companies in Scotland, Sweden and Germany.

In July, the last launch of Europe's largest rocket, the premier Ariane 5 space launcher, took place at the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Europe has until recently depended on Ariane 5 and its 11-tonne-plus capacity for heavy missions, as well as Russia's Soyuz launcher for medium payloads and Italy's Vega, which is also launched from Kourou, for small ones.

The end of Ariane 5 has left Europe with virtually no autonomous access to space for several months until its successor Ariane 6, is launched.

That milestone has been delayed until 2024 and the European Space Agency said last week that Vega-C, the newest version of the Vega rocket, would not return to service until the fourth quarter of 2024, following a failed mission last December.

At 2:06 p.m. EDT on Friday, October 6, Project Kuiper sent its first two satellites into space on board an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance (ULA). The launch kicked off the Kuiper Protoflight mission, a monthslong series of tests to validate our system design and network performance. Already, our engineers have collected some of the most critical data from the mission.

“There’s plenty of work ahead, but at this point in the mission, I’m thrilled to report that KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 are operating nominally,” said Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology. “The two satellites are stable in orbit, harvesting energy from the sun, and communicating across all links from Earth to space and space to Earth. We’re already learning a lot from this mission that will inform further improvements to our production systems, and the team should be very proud of this milestone.”

In the next phase of the mission, we will test our data network end to end. That involves routing data from the internet, through our Amazon Web Services (AWS)-powered ground network, from a ground gateway antenna up to our prototype satellites, and then down to our customer terminal antennas at our test site, as well as sending data in the other direction.

Making progress on Project Kuiper’s mission

Project Kuiper plans to begin satellite production in Kirkland, Washington, before the end of the year, in parallel with the Protoflight mission. Learnings from the mission will help refine the hardware, software, and infrastructure that underpin the Kuiper System. The first of these production satellites are on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and we expect to enter beta testing with early commercial customers in the second half of 2024.

“It is very encouraging to see this advanced network start to come together,” said Badyal. “It gives me a lot of hope that we can make a real difference in giving unserved and underserved communities access to high speed internet connectivity.”

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX executive used a Senate hearing to express frustration with the slow pace of launch licensing reviews that is holding up the next flight of the company’s Starship vehicle.

At a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee Oct. 18, Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said the next Starship vehicle is ready for flight but is on standby waiting for an updated launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Starship has been ready for its next flight test for more than a month, but we are waiting for an FAA license and accompanying interagency review,” he said in his opening remarks. “The Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, must recognize where the industry is, where the industry is going and its role in regulating this emerging industry.”

The company is continuing additional tests on the vehicle, including recently stacking the Starship upper stage on its Super Heavy booster. Gerstenmaier said the company was planning a fueling test and practice countdown, known as a wet dress rehearsal, in the coming days.

“We’re doing that just because we have the time,” he told reporters after the hearing. “We get the wet dress for free when we load for launch, but if we’re not going to get the launch license, it’s to our advantage to load now and reduce that risk.”

“This is super hard because we have an unknown timeframe for when we’re going to get the license,” he said. Engineers find additional work to do on the vehicle, he noted, “but when we don’t know what the timeframe is, we don’t know how much work to do.”

He said the company is “trying to lean forward” with launch preparations, including maritime notices for potential launches that require two weeks of advance notice. “I can’t stay in limbo forever.”

In an interview last month, Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, who leads AST, said he expected the FAA would close out its review of actions SpaceX must take from the previous Starship launch related to public safety by late October. That will be a key milestone towards updating the launch license.

WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Blue Origin's senior vice president of operations is leaving "for personal reasons," according to an internal email seen by Reuters, the third executive departure to be disclosed in less than a month at Jeff Bezos' space company as it aims to sharpen its competitive footing with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told employees in an email on Friday that Mike Eilola, the company's senior vice president of operations since 2021, "is leaving the company for personal reasons" on Nov. 3 and will have his unit split into two new organizations.

Eilola's departure follows plans announced last month by Bezos to replace Smith, who has been Blue Origin's CEO since 2017, with longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp by the end of the year. And Brent Sherwood, the head of what had been the company's research and development unit, will depart next month, Reuters has reported.

Eilola, a former Honeywell Aerospace executive, oversaw Blue Origin's supply chain, manufacturing apparatus and the company's vast network of facilities across the United States, as the company reaches the late stages of developing its next-generation New Glenn rocket.

"Effective immediately," Smith's email said, the operations unit will split into a new manufacturing and supply chain operations organization and a facilities, maintenance and security team.

Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the vision of having millions of people living and working in space. The Amazon founder has sought to make the company into a formidable rocket launch and human spaceflight business that could rival SpaceX. Bezos hired Smith, also a former Honeywell Aerospace executive, in 2017 to lead that charge.

Blue Origin this year won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to send humans to the moon's surface in the next decade, and more broadly has had success with a suborbital human space tourism business centered on its reusable New Shepard rocket. It also plans to build an Earth-orbiting space station.

But New Shepard has been grounded for more than a year after a 2022 uncrewed mishap. And development of Blue Origin's reusable New Glenn rocket has been delayed for years, setting back the company's long-awaited debut in Earth's orbit and its bid to challenge SpaceX's growing dominance in the global space sector.

In the past several months, Blue Origin's corporate structure has changed substantially as its leadership gets a revamp.

The company this month unveiled a new In-Space Systems unit and brought its development of a new maneuverable spacecraft, Blue Ring, out of the shadows, aiming to capture a slice of a growing market for refueling and deploying spacecraft while in orbit. Blue Origin this year also spun its moon lander program into a new independent business unit.

In replacing Smith with Limp, Bezos told employees in an email last month that "I know we'll remain focused on our customer commitments, production schedules and executing with speed and operational excellence."

It sure sounds like United Launch Alliance is up for sale. Tory Bruno, the rocket builder's CEO, said this week that anyone who purchased ULA would reap the rewards of the company's "transformation" over the last few years, a course change primarily driven by geopolitics and the competitive threat of SpaceX.

While Bruno did not disclose details of any negotiations about a potential sale of ULA, he told Bloomberg News this week that the launch operator is primed for a buyer. Boeing and Lockheed Martin each have a 50 percent stake in the Colorado-based rocket company.

“If I were buying a space business, I’d go look at ULA,” Bruno said. “It’s already had all the hard work done through the transformation. You’re not buying a Victorian with bad plumbing. It’s all been done. You’re coming in at the end of the remodel, so you can focus on your future."

If ULA has undergone a remodel, it will be tested in the next few months. On Tuesday, ULA announced the first test flight of its new Vulcan rocket is scheduled for December 24. This is the rocket ULA needs to narrow the gap with SpaceX's launch prices. ULA's owners started a multibillion-dollar program to develop the Vulcan rocket in 2014, billing it as a replacement for the company's legacy Atlas and Delta rockets.

ULA has also made tentative steps to test technologies needed to reuse the Vulcan rocket's main engines, made by Blue Origin. The Vulcan rocket will still cost more than SpaceX's Falcon 9, but ULA says it will be less expensive than the Atlas V and Delta IV. Importantly, the Vulcan rocket will also end ULA's reliance on Russian-built engines that fly on the Atlas V, meaning the US military will stop launching satellites using technology from an adversary.

It’s complicated

Ars first reported the possibility of a ULA sale in March. At that time, sources said the deal was expected to be closed by the end of this year. It's unclear whether delays in the first Vulcan rocket launch, seen as a critical moment for ULA's future, might have impacted this timeline.

Bruno's statement was the first time ULA has seemed to confirm it is up for sale.

ULA was established in 2006 through a merger of Boeing's Delta rocket program and Lockheed Martin's Atlas launcher family. Since then, ULA has been a profitable enterprise for both aerospace giants, thanks to a steady diet of lucrative sole-source military launch contracts and an approximately $1 billion annual subsidy from the US Department of Defense to maintain "launch readiness."

With SpaceX now certified to launch US military satellites, the days of sole-source contracting are over, and the Defense Department says it is committed to competition in the launch market. The Pentagon has phased out the subsidy, which it said was needed to ensure ULA's workforce and infrastructure were available to assure access to space for military payloads.

In his comments to Bloomberg, Bruno said ULA's ownership structure is "complicated" and has limited the company's agility. One example of this is when ULA's board, comprised of Boeing and Lockheed Martin executives, initially only approved funding for the Vulcan rocket in three-month increments.

While SpaceX dominates the commercial launch market, ULA remains the US military's preferred launch provider. The Pentagon selected ULA in 2020 to launch 60 percent of its large national security space missions through 2027 and tapped SpaceX to launch 40 percent. The military is now in another multi-year launch procurement, and ULA and SpaceX again appear to have the advantage.

United Launch Alliance has also been buoyed by Amazon's purchase of 47 launches for the Kuiper broadband constellation. These missions will carry into orbit the lion's share of Amazon's planned 3,236 Internet satellites to compete with SpaceX's Starlink network.

Amazon is helping fund a big expansion in ULA launch capability to support the Kuiper constellation. Officials say this $2 billion investment will double ULA's launch capacity, allowing it to launch as many as 25 Vulcan

Who’s buying?

Sources have said ULA and its corporate owners have already talked with prospective buyers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sources said a sticking point has been finding a buyer who will agree to pay the owners something close to the roughly $5 billion valuation they have placed on ULA.

Lockheed Martin, already a part-owner of United Launch Alliance, appears to be the leading candidate to take full control of the rocket company. Boeing is looking to recover from sustained financial losses, while Lockheed Martin is on firmer footing, forecasting more than $8.4 billion in profits for this year. Let's not forget that Lockheed Martin developed the Atlas V rocket, the more successful of ULA's two legacy launch vehicle families in terms of price and launch cadence.

Amazon is another possibility. Purchasing ULA would give Amazon ownership of all the critical segments of the supply chain needed to deploy the Kuiper broadband network, akin to SpaceX's control of the Starlink constellation. Amazon is already building its own satellites for Kuiper, and if it bought ULA, it could launch them itself. This is surely an attractive proposition for Amazon that could lead to lower costs and schedule priority on the Vulcan launch manifest.

Jeff Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, might also be in the running. Blue Origin supplies BE-4 engines for ULA's Vulcan rocket, but is also developing its own heavy-lift rocket, the New Glenn, and has a strategic road map that differs from that of ULA, with a greater emphasis on booster reusability.

Two other ULA suppliers, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris, could also be interested. There's also a possibility that a private equity firm could swoop in and buy the company to gain a foothold in the space industry.

Rocket Lab's launch window for its long-awaited mission to Venus opens at the end of 2024 and stretches into 2025.

A spokesperson told The Register that a precise launch date had yet to be set, but the company now has a period to work towards.

The confirmation comes after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the company authorization to resume launches in October following an in-flight anomaly in September that resulted in the loss of the payload.

While the full review is not yet complete, the issue, which occurred shortly after the second stage ignition, appears to be related to the second stage of the Electron rocket.

Venus is of particular interest to the company's founder and CEO, Peter Beck. In 2020, he told The Register that he hoped to launch a mission in 2023. In 2022, the company was still aiming for May 2023, but that date came and went, leaving what was originally the backup date – January 2025 – as the current target.

Rocket Lab's spokesperson confirmed that the instrument carried in the spacecraft's payload would be tasked with detecting phosphine in the planet's atmosphere, a possible indicator of organic matter.

The expedition is being conducted in collaboration with Professor Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seager's Morning Star consortium has teamed with Rocket Lab for the first mission and has published some ambitious concepts for subsequent explorations, including an atmospheric and cloud sample return mission in the 2040s.

There is currently no indication that Rocket Lab will be involved in any follow-up missions. However, the 2025 trip is all about hunting for signs of life in the clouds of Venus by detecting organic chemistry.

An atmospheric probe weighing approximately 20 kg will be sent from Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft into the planet's atmosphere. The sole instrument on the probe will be an Autofluorescence Nephelometer (AFN), weighing in at less than one kilo.

With luck, the five-minute data collection lifespan of the probe will be enough to meet the scientific objectives – a search for organic material and anomalous cloud components, including aspherical particles.

Seager told The Register: "Very little data is collected as we have limited bandwidth for our direct communication to Earth. We aim to detect fluorescence and are spending only 5 minutes taking data in the cloud layers. After launch the probe will reach Venus in May 2025 and it will take us a few months to analyze the data."

According to the Morning Star consortium: "Aspherical particles are not pure liquid and therefore cannot be pure sulfuric acid. Constraining particle composition can support evidence of habitable conditions inside cloud particles."

Launched atop an Electron, the Photon has already taken a trip to the Moon. A Lunar Photon upper stage sent NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) CubeSat on transfer orbit to the Moon in 2022. However, Venus has always been Beck's goal.

In 2022, he told The Register that there were few differences between the Lunar Photon and the Venus Photon. He said: "We designed it to go to Venus."

"It is a very, very challenging mission, and it's very inspirational to go and look for life, but if you have the resources to do it, then it's just unacceptable to not try."

As well as being challenging, the Venus trip also represents a first, being a private interplanetary undertaking – albeit with a public-private partnership at its core. Beck told us in 2020 that he intended to iterate the payload as results came in, launching a multitude of lighter, cheaper spacecraft rather than the hefty billion-dollar beasts often favored by national space agencies.

Seager, who has worked toward this mission since summer 2020 - when things were still in a concept study phase - told The Register that success would be defined by: "Successful entry into the Venus atmosphere. Detection of fluorescence (if it exists). Measurements of backscattered polarized radiation. And motivation for the next mission."

There is no word on what Rocket Lab's involvement might be in future missions, and Seager told us that something a bit more powerful than the Electron would likely be needed, but for now scheduling a launch window is sure sign that things are moving in the right direction.

Struggling space company Astra disclosed in a securities filing late Friday that it defaulted on a recent debt agreement and may not be able to raise needed cash as funds dwindle.

Astra twice last month failed to meet minimum cash reserve requirements associated with a $12.5 million note issuance to New Jersey investment group High Trail Capital.

The debt raise first required that Astra have “at least $15.0 million of cash and cash equivalents” on hand. That liquidity requirement was adjusted after Astra failed to prove compliance a first time, to require “at least $10.5 million of unrestricted, unencumbered cash and cash equivalents.”

Having fallen out of compliance a second time, Astra now owes $8 million on the aggregate principal investment.

While the company is “in continued discussions with a number of other investors,” it warned it “can provide no assurance that it will be able to consummate any additional transaction in a timely manner, or at all.”

Shares of Astra were little changed in after hours trading from their close of about 92 cents a share. The company performed a 1-for-15 reverse stock split in September to avoid a Nasdaq delisting, which temporarily brought Astra stock above $1 a share.

The company cut 25% of its workforce in early August to shift focus from its rocket development to its spacecraft engine production. It’s expected to report third-quarter results after market close on Nov. 13.

The founders of struggling space company Astra have offered to take the company private at a value of about $30 million, according to a securities filing on Thursday.

Chris Kemp, chairman and CEO, and Adam London, chief technology officer, delivered a proposal to the Astra board of directors on Wednesday to acquire all the company’s outstanding stock at a $1.50 a share.

That price is a 103% premium to Wednesday’s closing price at 74 cents a share, which represents a market value of about $16 million.

Astra’s rocket launching business has been on hiatus since a June 2022 mission failure and the company is running out of cash, with its acquired spacecraft propulsion business yet to drive meaningful quarterly revenue. The company cut 25% of its workforce in early August to shift focus from its rocket development to its spacecraft engine production.