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Space Force gives a boost to Blue Origin and Stoke Space

Illustrations: Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and Stoke Space's Nova rocket
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Stoke Space’s Nova rocket. (Blue Origin / Stoke Space Illustrations)

The U.S. Space Force has added Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture and Stoke Space, a startup that’s headquartered nearby in Kent, Wash., to a list of eligible providers for rapid-response, small-satellite launch services.

The designation means the two rocket companies are cleared to compete for launches under the terms of the Space Force’s Orbital Services Program 4.

“OSP-4 is available to our partners across the DoD [Department of Defense] with an emphasis on small orbital launch capabilities and launch solutions for Tactically Responsive Space mission needs,” Lt. Col. Steve Hendershot, chief of the Space Systems Command’s Small Launch and Targets Division, said in a news release.

The OSP-4 contract has a $986 million ceiling for tasks to be awarded through October 2028. Seven missions have been awarded to date, amounting to more than $190 million. Last year’s Victus Nox mission, conducted in partnership with Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems, serves as an example of an OSP-4 project. Victus Nox was aimed at testing the Space Force’s ability to replace a damaged satellite in a short time frame.

Neither Blue Origin nor Stoke Space has launched an orbital mission yet, but the OSP-4 program is open to emerging providers that expect to be able to send payloads to orbit within a year or so.

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GeekWire

Tech Hubs win $504M in grants, but Spokane loses out

The leaders of Spokane's Tech Hub hoped to make use of a 386,000-square-foot facility near the city's airport. (ATC Manufacturing Photo)
The leaders of Spokane's Tech Hub hoped to make use of a 386,000-square-foot facility near the city's airport. (ATC Manufacturing Photo)

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration today awarded $504 million in grants to 12 regional Tech Hubs across the country, but Spokane’s Tech Hub for developing advanced aerospace materials missed out.

Leaders of the Inland Northwest Tech Hub said they’d keep looking for ways to implement their ambitious plans — and the Department of Commerce is planning a field trip to help them fine-tune their strategy.

“No region is better equipped than ours to meet the unprecedented global demand for equipping 40,000 new airplanes with lightweight aerospace parts that reduce carbon emissions. Within a few years, the Inland Northwest Tech Hub can have prototypes ready for high-rate production, enabling thousands of new domestic manufacturing jobs to lessen our growing reliance on foreign technology and foreign labor,” the consortium said in an emailed statement.

“Missing this opportunity will increase our reliance on foreign labor, threatening our national and economic security,” the consortium said. “We will be working on every possible opportunity to make new American jobs and supply chains a reality.”

The Spokane-based American Aerospace Materials Manufacturing Center is one of 31 consortiums that won Tech Hub designation last October as part of the Biden administration’s effort to fire up engines of innovation in places that are typically off the beaten tech track.

“Every American deserves the opportunity to thrive, no matter where they live,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in today’s announcement of the Phase 2 Tech Hub grants. She said the federal funding “will ensure that the benefits of the industries of the future – from artificial intelligence and clean energy, to biotechnology and more – are shared with communities that have been overlooked for far too long, including rural, tribal, industrial and disadvantaged communities.”

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GeekWire

Universal Hydrogen shuts down a year after first flight

Universal Hydrogen plane in flight
Universal Hydrogen’s prototype plane takes flight in Moses Lake, Wash., in March 2023. (Universal Hydrogen Photo)

California-based Universal Hydrogen — which put a hybrid prototype for a hydrogen-fueled airplane into the air last year in Moses Lake, Wash. — has run out of money and is shutting down operations.

The shutdown was first reported June 29 by The Seattle Times, citing a letter that was sent to shareholders on June 27 by Mark Cousin, the startup’s chairman and CEO. Cousin’s letter said the company’s executives were “unable to secure sufficient equity or debt financing to continue operations and similarly were unable to secure an actionable offer for a sale of the business or similar strategic exit transaction,” according to the newspaper.

Universal Hydrogen co-founder Jon Gordon confirmed the closure in a LinkedIn posting. “Despite everyone’s best efforts, UH2 proved unable to secure additional funding to move forward,” Gordon wrote. “Perhaps we were just too early. Perhaps we couldn’t convince the world that hydrogen, and not just SAF [sustainable aviation fuels], are necessary for the future of aviation. Time will tell.”

Universal Hydrogen made its mark in March 2023 when it flew a modified De Havilland Dash 8-300 turboprop with a hydrogen-fueled electric propulsion system mounted on the plane’s right wing. The system incorporated a megawatt-class motor built by Everett, Wash.-based MagniX. The engine on the left side was left unconverted to serve as a backup.

Less than four months after that initial flight, Universal Hydrogen relocated its test program from Moses Lake to the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. In February, the company announced a successful on-the-ground test of its hydrogen storage module and fuel-cell powertrain — and said it planned to have the system used in passenger airplanes by 2026.

Universal Hydrogen’s shutdown serves as one more sign that if hydrogen is to become a widely used energy option, it’s likely to take longer than its proponents had hoped.

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Universe Today

Schweickart Prize boosts new way to find killer asteroids

2013 Chelyabinsk meteor trail
This vapor trail was left behind by an asteroid that zoomed over the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. (Credit: Alex Alishevskikh via NASA)

Every year on June 30, Asteroid Day marks the anniversary of a meteor airburst in 1908 that leveled hundreds of square miles of Siberian forest land. But a more recent meteor blast — and a new plan for getting advance warning of the next one — is receiving some added attention for this year’s Asteroid Day.

The first-ever Schweickart Prize, named in honor of Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, is going to a researcher who has proposed a system for spotting potentially threatening asteroids coming at us from a difficult-to-monitor zone between Earth and the sun. It was just such an asteroid that blew up over the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, spraying debris that injured about 1,500 people and caused an estimated $33 million in property damage.

The proposal from astronomy Ph.D. student Joseph DeMartini calls for setting up a consortium of ground-based observatories, anchored by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, to focus on the twilight sky just after sunset and just before sunrise. Those are the times of day when astronomers have the best chance of finding sunward near-Earth objects (NEOs) that spend much of their time within Earth’s orbit.

“It’s a very interesting proposal that we hope gets picked up,” Rusty Schweickart said.

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GeekWire

Get a peek at Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite factory

Vacuum chambers in the space simulation lab. (Amazon Photo)
Vacuum chambers are lined up in the space simulation lab at Amazon's satellite factory. (Amazon Photo)

KIRKLAND, Wash. — Amazon gave U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and other VIPs a sneak peek at the company’s Project Kuiper satellite factory, where thousands of spacecraft are to be manufactured for a global broadband network.

Today’s event included remarks by local officials as well as a ribbon-cutting ceremony — but access to sensitive areas of the 172,000-square-foot facility was limited due to concerns about confidentiality and export control requirements.

The factory, which quietly began operations in April, serves as the manufacturing hub for Amazon’s satellite project. Work is also being done at Project Kuiper’s 219,000-square-foot headquarters in nearby Redmond.

Last year, Amazon successfully tested two Redmond-built prototype satellites in orbit. Now full-scale manufacturing is ramping up in Kirkland, with the first completed production satellites due to be shipped to Florida this summer.

Cantwell noted that the state’s aerospace sector is a $70 billion industry that supports 250,000 jobs, and said that the Project Kuiper factory will add to Washington’s technological prowess.

“We like to say we’re the Silicon Valley of space here in Puget Sound,” she said. “And Kirkland now is joining the fight, helping us deliver not just better service, but a skilled workforce and great attention to how the United States is going to be very competitive in space communication.”

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Cosmic Space

NASA picks SpaceX to create a space station killer

Illustration: U.S. Deorbit Vehicle
An artist's conception shows SpaceX's Deorbit Vehicle in action. (Credit: SpaceX)

Spacecraft built by SpaceX have been servicing the International Space Station since 2012, and now NASA has chosen SpaceX to build the spacecraft that’ll take the station down to its doom in 2030.

The space agency announced today that SpaceX has been selected to develop and deliver the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle that will provide the capability to push the station into a fiery but controlled descent through the atmosphere. The deed will have to be done in a way that makes sure any debris falls harmlessly in an unpopulated area — for example, a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo.

NASA laid out its plan for deorbiting the space station at the end of its operating life two years ago. At the time, mission planners suggested that Russian Progress supply ships or Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft might play a part in the denouement.

Today’s announcement makes clear that a SpaceX craft will take on the curtain-closing role. However, NASA will take ownership of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle once it’s developed, and operate it through the final mission. No astronauts will be aboard the station during the robotically guided re-entry, and the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle is expected to break up along with the rest of the space station.

NASA said the single-award contract has a total potential value of $843 million. Launch service will be covered in a future procurement.

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GeekWire

Starfish Space signs a deal to service an Intelsat satellite

Illustration: Starfish's Otter spacecraft in space
An artist’s conception shows Starfish’s Otter satellite servicing spacecraft. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space has signed a contract with Intelsat to provide on-orbit life extension services to a geostationary satellite beginning in 2026.

It’s the first commercial contract for Starfish’s Otter satellite servicing spacecraft, which is currently under development. The deal follows up on Starfish’s $37.5 million contract with the U.S. Space Force for a satellite docking demonstration.

“Starfish Space is delighted to be supporting Intelsat with services provided by Otter,” Starfish Space co-founder Trevor Bennett said today in a news release. “They are an incredible team at the forefront of the industry, and the Otter will help them deliver even more to their customers. We’re also excited that this will be the first of many Otters that will make on-orbit servicing a standard part of satellite operations.”

Jean-Luc Froeliger, Intelsat’s senior vice president of space systems, said the Otter contract serves as a “perfect example” of Intelsat’s commitment to innovation and new technologies. “We look forward to utilizing the services provided by their Otter satellite to maximize the value the world’s largest geostationary satellite fleet can deliver for our customers,” Froeliger said.

Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed, and Intelsat isn’t saying exactly which satellite will be serviced.

The plan calls for Otter to begin by docking with and maneuvering a retired Intelsat satellite in geostationary graveyard orbit. Then Otter would move on to dock with an operational Intelsat satellite. Otter would use its onboard propulsion system to keep that satellite in an operational orbit for additional years of life.

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Universe Today

How satellites could spot spy balloons and other UFOs

Satellite imagery with X's showing apparent position of Chinese spy balloon in different spectral bands
Crosses indicate the apparent position of a spy balloon over Missouri as seen in different spectral bands. (Credit: Planet Labs / Keto and Watters)

It turns out that you don’t need the Men in Black to spot unidentified anomalous phenomena, which are also known as UAPs, unidentified flying objects or UFOs. Researchers have shown how the task of detecting aerial objects in motion could be done by analyzing Earth imagery from commercial satellites.

They say they demonstrated the technique using one of the most notorious UAP incidents of recent times: last year’s flight of a Chinese spy balloon over the U.S., which ended in a shootdown by an Air Force jet above the Atlantic Ocean. They also analyzed imagery of a different spy balloon that passed over Colombia at about the same time.

“Our proposed method appears to be successful and allows the measurement of the apparent velocity of moving objects,” the researchers report.

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Universe Today

Chinese probe drops off samples from moon’s far side

Chang'e-6 sample return capsule with Chinese flag
A Chinese flag flies next to the Chang'e-6 sample return capsule after its landing in Inner Mongolia. (Credit: CCTV / CNSA via Weibo)

Three weeks after it lifted off from the far side of the moon, China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft dropped off a capsule containing first-of-its-kind lunar samples for retrieval from the plains of Inner Mongolia.

The gumdrop-shaped sample return capsule floated down to the ground on the end of a parachute, with the descent tracked on live television. After today’s touchdown, at 2:07 p.m. local time (11:07 p.m. PT June 24), members of the mission’s recovery team checked the capsule and unfurled a Chinese flag nearby.

Chang’e-6, which was launched in early May, is the first robotic mission to land and lift off again from the moon’s far side — the side that always faces away from Earth. It’s also the first mission to bring dirt and rocks from the far side back to Earth.

“The Chang’e-6 lunar exploration mission achieved complete success,” Zhang Kejian, director of the China National Space Administration, said from mission control. Chinese President Xi Jinping extended congratulations to the mission team, the state-run Xinhua news service reported.

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Cosmic Science

3,300-year-old shipwreck wows Israeli archaeologists

Jacob Sharvit and Karnit Bahartan examine ancient jars
Recovery team members examine jars brought up from an ancient shipwreck. (Israel Antiquities Authority Photo)

Israeli archaeologists say the world’s oldest known deep-sea shipwreck has been discovered about 55 miles off the coast of northern Israel, lying on the mile-deep bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The 3,300-year-old cargo vessel was found during a routine survey conducted by Energean E&P, a natural gas company that operates several offshore drilling fields, the Israel Antiquities Authority said today. The shipwreck, which is about 42 feet long, contained hundreds of intact clay storage jars known as amphorae. Such jars were typically used for transporting oil, wine, fruit or other agricultural products.

The Israeli Antiquities Authority dated the jars to 1300 to 1400 B.C., during the Late Bronze Age — an era traditionally associated with the biblical tale of the Exodus. The jars are said to reflect the style of ancient Canaanite culture.

Jacob Sharvit, head of the authority’s marine unit, said the find is “a world-class, history-changing discovery.”

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