Tag: Commercial Spaceflight

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Second SpaceShipTwo gets off the ground

Image: VSS Unity
The SpaceShipTwo rocket plane known as VSS Unity and its WhiteKnightTwo mothership are seen from below. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

Virgin Galactic sent its second SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, VSS Unity, into the air for the first time today – tucked securely beneath its WhiteKnightTwo mothership for the entire three-hour-plus flight.

The captive-carry test flight, conducted from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, came nearly two years after the fatal breakup of the first SpaceShipTwo during a flight test in October 2014. One of the test pilots, Michael Alsbury, died in that accident. The other pilot, Pete Siebold, was seriously injured.

It took months to investigate the accident, which was attributed to a variety of design and training shortcomings as well as pilot error. It took much longer to complete construction of VSS Unity, which incorporates design changes based on findings from the investigation.

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Next test should destroy Blue Origin’s booster

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Artwork shows Blue Origin’s crew capsule firing its escape rocket motor. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown the same rocket booster to outer space and back four times over the past year – but the fifth trip, planned for October, will be that booster’s last.

“Our next flight is going to be dramatic, no matter how it ends,” Bezos said in an email.

Bezos said the uncrewed flight will serve as a test of the New Shepard suborbital spaceship’s escape system.

About 45 seconds after New Shepard launches from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site, the capsule that’s designed for cargo and crew will separate from the booster. This will happen at an altitude of 16,000 feet, at a point in the ascent known as “max-Q,” or maximum dynamic pressure, when the spacecraft’s structure comes under maximum stress.

If the test proceeds according to plan, the capsule’s “pusher” rocket motor will fire for two seconds, propelling the capsule away from the booster. Parachutes will deploy to slow down the capsule’s descent, and the capsule will be recovered safe and sound.

The booster will have a rougher time, which Bezos is bummed about.

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Facebook founder bummed over satellite loss

Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg saw the Amos-6 satellite as the first step in Facebook’s plan to provide satellite internet access to underserved regions of the world.

Today’s loss of a Falcon 9 rocket and its satellite payload was a bummer for Facebook billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg as well as for SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk.

“As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post (of course).

This weekend’s scheduled launch of the Amos-6 telecommunications satellite on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket would have marked the first step in Zuckerberg’s vision of providing low-cost internet access via satellite for millions if not billions of people in underserved regions of the world.

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SpaceX rocket and Israeli satellite lost in blast

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Video from Kennedy Space Center shows smoke rising from a SpaceX launch pad blast. (Credit: NASA)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a telecommunications satellite supported by Facebook were destroyed today in a launch-pad explosion at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, during preparations for a pre-launch static fire test.

No injuries were reported.

The explosion occurred at 9:07 a.m. ET (6:07 a.m. PT), the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing said in a tweet. USLaunchReport captured the scene in a dramatic video that showed the Falcon 9’s upper stage exploding. A huge fireball engulfed Launch Complex 40, sending up a pillar of black smoke.

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Concrete poured for Blue Origin space complex

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Workers pour concrete at the site of Blue Origin’s rocket factory in Florida. (Credit: Space Florida)

Work is progressing on the facility in Florida where Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture plans to build its orbital spaceships.

Bezos called attention to the groundbreaking milestone for the 750,000-square-foot rocket factory in June. Today, Space Florida, the state development agency that’s leasing the property and Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 to Blue Origin, tweeted that concrete is being poured for the campus’ first building.

The $200 million manufacturing and launch facility at Kennedy Space Center’s Exploration Park is expected to open by early 2018 and employ about 300 people.

That’s in addition to the folks who work at Blue Origin’s headquarters and production facility in Kent, Wash., and at its suborbital launch complex in West Texas. The company says it has about 700 employees today.

Blue Origin is currently focusing on its suborbital space effort. So far it’s conducted four fully successful uncrewed tests of its reusable, hydrogen-fueled New Shepard spaceship, which is built in Kent and flown in Texas.

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Dragon brings cargo from orbit with a splash

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SpaceX’s Dragon pulls away from the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA TV)

SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, carrying more than 3,000 pounds of cargo and science samples back down to Earth from the International Space Station.

NASA’s Kate Rubins and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi worked with the station’s robotic arm to pull the Dragon away from its berth and set it free at 3:11 a.m. PT. “Dragon depart successfully commanded,” Rubins reported.

Mission Control passed along thanks to the crew for their efforts, “and to the Dragon recovery team, fair winds and following seas.”

Over the five and a half hours that followed, SpaceX confirmed that the capsule successfully executed its deorbiting maneuvers and made a parachute-assisted splashdown, about 300 miles southwest of Baja California.

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Why small satellites are big for startups

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An artist’s conception shows Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 6 prototype Earth-observing satellite, which is due for its maiden launch this year. (Credit: Planetary Resources)

Small satellites, and the startups that make them, are becoming a big deal – and there’s a fresh flurry of industry reports that explain why.

The bottom line is that new types of satellite data can give earthbound businesses an edge.

For example, a hedge-fund manager can estimate how much revenue Walmart will report by counting the cars in the stores’ parking lots. Farmers can use custom-delivered, hyperspectral imaging to monitor how their crops are doing. Petroleum companies can get a quick alert on potential pipeline leaks.

Seattle-area companies like Planetary Resources and Spaceflight Industries are betting millions of dollars on the rapid growth of next-generation satellite services. And then there’s the rush to deliver internet services via satellite: That’s the focus of SpaceX’s Seattle office.

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SpaceX launches satellite, then lands rocket

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A webcast view shows SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on the oceangoing drone ship known as “Of Course I Still Love You.” (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched a satellite for a Japanese communication company tonight, and then made a bull’s-eye landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The two-stage Falcon 9 carried the JCSAT-16 satellite into the night sky from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1:26 a.m. ET Sunday (10:26 p.m. PT Saturday).

After stage separation, the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster relit its engines and went through a series of maneuvers to land on an oceangoing platform christened “Of Course I Still Love You.”

SpaceX’s webcast missed the precise moment of touchdown but showed the booster standing upright on the deck of the drone ship moments afterward – almost exactly on top of the stylized “X” that served as a target.

A little more than a half-hour after launch, SpaceX announced that JCSAT-16 had been deployed into its intended geostationary transfer orbit, reaching a high point of 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers).

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Blue Origin engineers talk rocket science

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Blue Origin software engineers get their picture taken for a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” chat session. (Credit: Blue Origin via Imgur)

Creating a commercial space effort is clearly not a 9-to-5 job: Software engineers from Blue Origin, the space venture that Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos created, reinforced that view today during an “Ask Me Anything” chat session on Reddit.

The issue came up just days after a human-resources executive from SpaceX, one of Blue Origin’s rivals in the commercial space industry, went through a Reddit AMA session and addressed the “myth” that his company’s engineers routinely work 80 hours a week.

“How many hours do you guys work?” the Blue Origin group was asked today.

“When you are passionate about what you do, time becomes relative,” they answered. (The group’s responses were not attributed to individual engineers.)

The questioner, who self-identified as a British teenager, wanted to hear more: “Dammit, a non-answer for that one. … ” But sometimes that’s the way it goes on Reddit.

Blue Origin’s team is hard at work at the company’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., developing a suborbital launch system capable of sending passengers and payloads beyond the 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary line of outer space – as well as an orbital launch system capable of reaching the International Space Station.

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Moon Express wins U.S. green light for moonshot

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An artist’s conception shows the Moon Express MX-1 lander in lunar orbit. (Credit: Moon Express)

BELLEVUE, Wash. – Moon Express says it has received preliminary clearance for the robotic lander that it plans to send to the moon next year, after a voluntary payload review involving the Federal Aviation Administration and other federal agencies.

The clearance doesn’t represent final regulatory approval for the mission, although some reports may be giving that impression. The FAA will still have to grant a launch license before Moon Express can blast off.

Nevertheless, Moon Express’ executives hailed the successful payload review as a significant step toward what could be the first commercial mission to another celestial body. Moon Express CEO Bob Richards called it a “landmark decision.”

“We are now free to set sail as explorers to Earth’s eighth continent, the moon, seeking new knowledge and resources to expand Earth’s economic sphere for the benefit of all humanity,” Richards said in a statement issued today.

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