Month: August 2023

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Virgin Galactic flies its first private space tourists

Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity fires up rocket motor
Virgin Galactic's VSS Eve lights up its rocket motor for the climb to the edge of space. (Virgin Galactic Photo)

Virgin Galactic sent its first privately funded adventurers — and its first space sweepstakes winners — past the 50-mile space boundary today.

The tourists on the suborbital space trip known as Galactic 02 included Keisha Schahaff, who won two tickets in an online contest organized by the Omaze charity sweepstakes platform and a nonprofit group called Space for Humanity in 2021. She and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, became the first mother-and-daughter duo to share a spaceflight, and the first spacefliers from the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda.

“I kind of feel like I was born in this life for this,” Schahaff, a wellness coach, told NBC’s “Today” show. Her daughter is a college student who aims to become an astrobiologist.

Jon Goodwin — an 80-year-old British adventurer who competed as a canoeist in the 1972 Olympics — also broke barriers on today’s Galactic 02 flight. In 2005, he was one of the first customers to reserve a spot with Virgin Galactic, back when the price was $200,000. Then, almost a decade ago, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Today he became only the second person with Parkinson’s to take a space trip. (The first was NASA shuttle astronaut Rich Clifford.)

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Artemis workers celebrate past and future moonshots

NASA's Carlos Garcia-Galan points out Aerojet Rocketdyne's engines in an image from the Artemis 1 mission. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

REDMOND, Wash. — Space industry contractors in the Seattle area had their turn in the spotlight this week during a nationwide “victory lap” celebrating last year’s successful Artemis 1 round-the-moon mission.

“Without your engines … we can’t go anywhere,” Carlos Garcia-Galan, an integration manager for NASA’s Orion spacecraft, told employees and VIPs at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Redmond facility today. “We can’t get to the orbit of the moon, we can’t get out of the orbit of the moon, we can’t do any orbital adjustments.”

Aerojet’s Redmond operation provides the auxiliary engines for the Orion moonship’s European-built service module — as well as the reaction control thrusters for the crew module and for the upper stage of NASA’s Space Launch System, the rocket that sends Orion into space. All that hardware goes to Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for Orion.

Lockheed Martin’s Orion program manager, Tonya Ladwig, said Aerojet leads the list of Washington state subcontractors for the space capsule development effort. General Dynamics OTS’ Bothell facility and Mukilteo-based Systima are also high on the list. Ladwig said celebrations took place at all three businesses this week.

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Starfish Space wins $1.8M for satellite software

Illustration: Cephalopod guidance software at work
An illustration shows one satellite closing in to rendezvous with another satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Kent, Wash.-based Starfish Space says it’s been awarded $1.8 million by AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, to support continued development of the company’s Cephalopod software for satellite guidance, navigation and control.

The award builds on previous collaborations between Starfish and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Technically speaking, the contract is known as a Tactical Funding Increase, or TACFI. Ari Juster, strategy and operations lead at Starfish, said it was awarded as a follow-up to a $1.7 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract that the startup received in 2021. In a news release, Starfish co-founder Austin Link said he was “excited to continue our collaboration with AFRL.”

“Cephalopod can serve as a key technology enabling future servicing missions to benefit satellite operators, and we have found the AFRL team to be great partners in supporting its development,” Link said.

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Amazon revises Project Kuiper satellite plans … again

Atlas V with Amazon satellites
An illustration shows an Atlas V rocket launching Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites. (ULA / Amazon)

Amazon’s plans to launch the first prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation have changed for the second time in a year — and once again, rocket development snags are the reason.

The revised plans call for KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 to be sent into low Earth orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, with launch set for no earlier than Sept. 26 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The spacecraft are meant to test the systems and processes that Amazon will use for thousands of satellites designed to provide global internet access. Production of those satellites is scheduled to begin this year at a 172,000-square-foot factory in Kirkland, Wash.

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LeoStella will be supersizing its small satellites

Illustration: Satellite based on LeoStella's LS-300 bus
An artist’s conception shows a satellite based on LeoStella’s LS-300 bus. (LeoStella Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based LeoStella is unveiling its latest, greatest platform for small satellites, which should hit a sweet spot for future manufacturing contracts.

LeoStella, which is a joint venture co-owned by European satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space and a geospatial data analysis company called BlackSky, started out in 2018 building Earth observation satellites for BlackSky’s Global constellation.

LeoStella’s LS-100 spacecraft platform, which is known in the space industry as a bus, was right-sized for those 120-pound (55-kilogram) satellites. But that was about as much mass as the LS-100 bus could accommodate.

When BlackSky came up with a more capable payload for its Gen3 satellites, LeoStella boosted its bus design to handle the added mass. Its LS-200 bus is suitable for satellites with a total weight of 330 pounds (150 kilograms), including 130 pounds (60 kilograms) of payload.

Now there’s a growing demand for a bigger class of small satellites, and LeoStella’s LS-300 bus is designed to serve that demand. The LS-300 design, unveiled in conjunction with this week’s Small Satellite Conference in Utah, can be used for satellites weighing 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms), with half of that mass available for the satellite’s payload.

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