Expedition Space: Space Launch, Events, News

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched a set of Starlink satellites May 9 on a Falcon 9 whose first stage was making its tenth flight, a long-awaited goal in the company’s reusability efforts. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:42 a.m. Eastern. The rocket’s upper stage deployed its payload of 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit nearly 65 minutes later. The launch, the third in less than two weeks for SpaceX, brings the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to more than 1,550. The company is gradually expanding its beta test program for the broadband internet service as the constellation grows. SpaceX noted on the launch webcast that it opened up that beta test program in the last week to people in Austria and France. The launch itself was noteworthy as it marked the first time a Falcon 9 first stage had flown 10 times. The booster first launched the Demo-1 commercial crew test flight in March 2019. It...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — NASA has increased the prices it will charge for future private astronaut missions to the International Space Station, saying the new prices reflect the true costs of supporting those missions. A revised price list , posted April 29, updates the prices NASA charges to private missions flying to the ISS for cargo, station resources, crew time and other services. NASA said earlier this year it would update the pricing after revising its charges for commercial and marketing activities on the station . Under the original pricing policy released in June 2019, as part of NASA’s low Earth orbit commercialization strategy, the agency charged $11,250 per person per day for life support and toilet capabilities, and $22,500 per person per day for other crew supplies, including food and air. There were additional, smaller changes for stowage, power and data. The new pricing policy charges $5.2 million per person for ISS crew time to support a private astronaut miss...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — The blank-check company proposing to merge with in-space transportation company Momentus is going down to the wire in its effort to convince shareholders to give it more time to close the deal. Stable Road Acquisition Corporation, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), said May 6 it adjourned a special meeting of its shareholders convened that day because it didn’t have enough votes to approve one measure on the ballot. That measure is not the approval of Stable Road’s merger with Momentus, announced in October, but instead a three-month extension of the deadline for Stable Road to complete the deal. SPACs traditionally have a limited period of time for which to use the funding raised by going public to merge with a company, or else the proceeds are returned to shareholders. Stable Road sought to extend that deadline for completing the merger with Momentus from May 13 to Aug. 13. At the time of the shareholder meeting May 6, the vast majority of ...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is taking a novel approach to publicizing the spinoff of its space business: buying ads linked to Elon Musk’s appearance on the television show “Saturday Night Live.” SNC will run “pre-roll” ads on clips from Musk’s appearance on the show May 8 on YouTube. The ads won’t appear on the live television broadcast itself but instead be shown before videos of individual segments of the 90-minute show available on YouTube starting May 9 for one week. The company produced two ads, one 15 seconds long and the other 30 seconds , promoting its new Sierra Space spinoff. The ads show videos and animations of its Dream Chaser vehicle and proposed commercial space station made of inflatable modules. The ads feature a soundtrack but no narration. The ads include the Sierra Space logo and the line “Launched by Sierra Nevada Corporation June 2021.” A company spokesperson told SpaceNews that date is when the spinoff of Sierra Nevada’s spac...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit has scheduled its next LauncherOne mission for June, carrying a mix of defense and commercial cubesats. Virgin Orbit said May 6 that it will launch six cubesats on its next flight of its LauncherOne vehicle in June, flying out of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The air-launched rocket will deploy the payloads into orbits at an altitude of 500 kilometers and inclination of 60 degrees. The launch will be the first since its successful Launch Demo 2 mission in January, which carried 10 cubesats for NASA’s Venture Class Launch Services program. That launch was the first successful mission for LauncherOne, after a failed launch of the vehicle in May 2020. Three of the cubesats will be from the Defense Department through the Space Test Program’s Rapid Agile Launch Initiative, under a contract awarded to Virgin Orbit subsidiary VOX Space. The company did not disclose which satellites will fly on LauncherOne under that contract. A fo...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing have scheduled a second uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft for July 30. In separate statements, the agency and the company said they were planning to launch the Starliner on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at 2:53 p.m. Eastern July 30 on the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission. A launch that day would allow the spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station on the evening of July 31. The new launch date comes after NASA and Boeing completed an “integrated mission dress rehearsal” for the mission using a simulator at a Boeing facility in Houston. The five-day simulation covered activities starting 26 hours before launch and going through landing, including docking and undocking from the station. “It provided another opportunity to run the software end to end with the highest-fidelity hardware and mission controllers in the loop to simulate as close to an actual flight as possible,” John Voll...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Starship prototype successfully carried out a brief suborbital flight May 5 after four previous vehicles were destroyed during or shortly after landing. The Starship SN15 vehicle lifted off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, test site at 6:24 p.m. Eastern. The vehicle flew to an altitude of approximately 10 kilometers before descending and landing back at the test site six minutes after liftoff. There was a fire at the base of the vehicle after landing, similar to what happened with the flight of the Starship SN10 vehicle March 3. That vehicle exploded less than 10 minutes later . On this flight, remotely-operated fire suppression systems appeared to extinguish the fire within several minutes. SN10 was one of four Starship prototypes destroyed in test flights between December and March. The most recent vehicle, SN11, exploded when a Raptor engine suffered a “hard start” as it reigniting for its landing burn on a March 30 flight. Starship SN15 ...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Blue Origin announced May 5 that it will fly people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for the first time July 20, and will auction off one of the seats on that launch. The company said that, after years of test flights without anyone on board, it will start flying people on New Shepard. The announcement took place 60 years to the day after the vehicle’s namesake, Alan Shepard, became the first American space on the suborbital Mercury 3 launch. The scheduled date of the flight is the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. The company hinted during its most recent test flight of the vehicle April 14 that it was ready to start flying people on the vehicle. The company used the flight to test procedures for future crew flights, including having company personnel, playing the role of customers, boarding the vehicle during prelaunch preparations, and also practicing exiting the vehicle after landing. “We have flown this vehicle 15 times and, after th...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — SpaceX continued the deployment of its Starlink broadband megaconstellation May 4 with the second launch of 60 satellites in less than a week. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 3:01 p.m. Eastern. The rocket’s second stage released its payload of 60 Starlink satellites 64 minutes later. The rocket’s first stage landed on the center of a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its ninth flight. The booster previously launched the Telstar 18 Vantage communications satellite, a set of Iridium satellites, and six other Starlink missions. This is the second booster SpaceX has flown nine times. SpaceX had previously suggested Falcon 9 boosters could fly up to 10 times, but more recently indicated those stages could have longer lifetimes. “I don’t think the number 10 is a magic number,” Hans Koenigsmann, senior adviser for build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said in February . Once a booster reaches the 10-flight mi...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Firefly Aerospace, nearing the first launch of its Alpha rocket, announced May 4 it raised $75 million in a Series A round that values the company at more than $1 billion. The company said the Series A round was led by DADA Holdings, with participating from Astera Institute, Canon Ball LLC, Reuben Brothers Limited, SMS Capital Investment LLC, Raven One Ventures, The XBTO Ventures and other investors. In addition, Noosphere Ventures, Firefly’s largest investor, sold $100 million of its holdings to some of the Series A investors through secondary transactions to satisfy what the company called “overwhelming demand” in the funding round. In January, Tom Markusic, chief executive of Firefly, said the company was looking to raise $350 million to fund the ramp-up of its operations over the next five years and development of a larger, medium-class launch vehicle. That remains the goal, he said in a recent interview, but the company decided to split the funding...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Former senator Bill Nelson formally became NASA’s 14th administrator in a short ceremony May 3. Vice President Kamala Harris gave the oath of office to Nelson at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington. Only a handful of guests and a media pool were in attendance, and the swearing-in ceremony was not broadcast live on NASA TV. In brief remarks, Nelson thanked Harris and President Joe Biden, also former senators, for demonstrating “this kind of confidence in an old buddy from the Senate” by nominating him for the position. “It is indeed one of the high honors that anyone could have.” Nelson didn’t discuss his plans for NASA either in those remarks or an agency statement later that day. “I want to thank Steve Jurczyk for his leadership as acting administrator over the past few months, helping to carry out the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities and ensure the success of NASA’s goals and missions,” he said in that statement. “You’ve see...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — The head of NASA’s Johnson Space Center is stepping down from his post because of health issues, but will remain with the agency as an adviser. In a three-minute video published May 3 , Mark Geyer announced that he would leave the position of director of the Houston-based center in order to focus on treatment for an unspecified cancer diagnosed a year ago. “I’ve been dealing with cancer for about 12 months, the symptoms and mitigations, and given that the treatment has no clear end in sight, I made the decision that it was time to step down,” he said. “This job is more than a full-time job, and even though [deputy director] Vanessa [Wyche] and my staff and others in the leadership have backed me up when necessary, it’s really clear now that I need to focus on the treatment.” Geyer became director of JSC in May 2018 after serving as acting deputy associate administrator for technical in NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA ...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico May 2, returning four astronauts from a five-and-a-half-month stay on the International Space Station. The Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience undocked from the station at 8:35 p.m. Eastern May 1. After departing the vicinity of the station and performing a 16-minute deborbit burn, the spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast from Panama City, Florida, at 2:57 a.m. Eastern May 2. On board the spacecraft were NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. The splashdown marked the end of the Crew-1 mission, the first operational commercial crew mission. That mission started with a Nov. 15 launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 , with the spacecraft docking with the station a day later. The splashdown was the first at night by an American crewed spacecraft since Apollo 8, which splashed down in the Pa...

by Jeff Foust Updated 1:55 p.m. Eastern with Nelson statement. WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will put her “personal stamp” on the National Space Council as it takes on both existing and new priorities under the Biden administration. Senior administration officials, speaking on background in a call with reporters May 1, confirmed that the administration will retain the National Space Council, an interagency body used to coordinate space policy across the federal government. The vice president chairs the council by statute. The White House announced March 29 that the council, revived by the Trump administration in 2017 after a hiatus of almost a quarter-century, would continue under the new administration . At the time, though, they offered few details about how it would operate. In the call, officials said they are in the process of hiring a new executive secretary who handles the day-to-day operations of the council. The hiring process is “well underway,” said one se...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — With four flights now complete, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter will transition from being strictly a technology demonstration to a test of its ability to work in cooperation with the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity performed its fourth flight April 30, staying aloft for 117 seconds. The helicopter flew to an altitude of 5 meters, then went 133 meters downrange and back before landing. The flight set records for duration in the air and distance traveled. The flight was scheduled for April 29, but telemetry returned later that day showed that the helicopter never took off. Project engineers believe that a timer issue, similar to one discovered during a preflight test in early April, kept the helicopter grounded. They developed a way to get around the timer glitch without updating the helicopter’s software, a method they previously said should work 85% of time the time. “There is a bug, and this is a workaround for the bug,” Bob Balaram, Ingenuity chief en...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — NASA should have revised its approach to the Human Landing System (HLS) program or withdrawn the solicitation entirely once it was clear the agency didn’t have the funding to support two companies, one of the losing bidders argues in its protest of the award. Dynetics, who filed a protest April 26 with the Government Accountability Office over NASA’s decision to make a single HLS “Option A” award to SpaceX, argued NASA chose “the most anti-competitive and high risk option available” when it decided to proceed with a single award despite receiving only about one fourth of the $3.3 billion it requested for the program in fiscal year 2021. “In light of this new budget constraint and schedule change, the HLS program as originally conceived and as set forth in the Solicitation is no longer executable,” Dynetics said in its protest , a copy of which was obtained by SpaceNews. “Accordingly, NASA had several reasonable (and lawful) alternatives to choose from in...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch flew its giant aircraft for the first time in more than two years April 29, marking the start of a new test flight campaign to prepare the plane to serve as a platform for hypersonic vehicles. The aircraft, nicknamed Roc, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 10:28 a.m. Eastern, landing back at the airport three hours and 14 minutes later. The plane achieved a maximum altitude of nearly 4,300 meters and top speed of 320 kilometers per hours during the flight. “Today’s flight was very successful. We accomplished all of our test objectives,” Zachary Krevor, chief operating officer of Stratolaunch, said in a call with reporters after the flight. “We have not seen anything anomalous, and we are very pleased with the condition of the aircraft upon landing.” The flight was the first since the plane’s inaugural flight in April 2019 , also in Mojave. Since then, the company, established by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul A...

by Jeff Foust Updated 8 p.m. Eastern with NASA statement. WASHINGTON — The Senate unanimously confirmed Bill Nelson to be NASA’s next administrator, wrapping up a whirlwind confirmation process that was vastly different from that experienced by his predecessor. The Senate confirmed Nelson’s nomination to be NASA administrator late April 29 via unanimous consent, a mechanism used for the expedited passage of bills and nominations where no senator disapproves. The confirmation came just a day after the Senate Commerce Committee favorably reported his nomination to the full Senate. “I am honored by the president’s nomination and the Senate vote,” Nelson said in a NASA statement. “I will try to merit that trust. Onward and upward!” The confirmation, one of several nominations passed by the Senate by unanimous consent or voice vote, comes less than six weeks after the White House announced it would nominate Nelson , the former Democratic senator from Florida, to lead the space agenc...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House space subcommittee says he is working to secure funding for NASA as part of what could be a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package proposed by the White House. Speaking at a Washington Space Business Roundtable webinar April 28, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), named earlier this year to lead the House Science Committee’s subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said he is working with both the White House and members of Congress to see that NASA gets funding as part of any infrastructure bill that Congress takes up in the coming weeks. “Making sure NASA has the infrastructure it needs” is a priority, he said. “A lot of these infrastructure pieces are 40 years old. The maintenance backlog is estimated at $2.6 billion.” A November 2020 report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General estimates that NASA has a “deferred maintenance backlog” of $2.66 billion. The White House proposed March 31 an infrastructure package called the American J...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched another set of Starlink satellites April 28, its first since the FCC approved a modification that allows the company to operate more satellites in lower orbits. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:44 p.m. Eastern. The rocket’s upper stage deployed its payload of 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit nearly 65 minutes later. The launch took place a day after the Federal Communications Commission approved SpaceX’s request to modify its Starlink constellation . The modification will move 2,814 satellites originally approved for launch in orbits of 1,100 to 1,300 kilometers to orbits of 540 to 570 kilometers, similar to the 550-kilometer orbits used by existing Starlink satellites. SpaceX did not mention the FCC’s decision in its webcast. However, it did discuss how it chose lower orbits for spaceflight safety, ensuring that satellites will deorbit within se...