Tag: Falcon Heavy

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ULA and SpaceX win shares of Space Force launches

The U.S. Space Force has given its stamp of approval to United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, shown in the artist’s conception at left; and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, shown at right. (ULA Illustration for Vulcan / GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota for Falcon Heavy)

The U.S. Space Force designated United Launch Alliance and SpaceX as the winners of a multibillion-dollar competition for national security launches over a five-year period, passing up a proposal from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture in the process.

Northrop Grumman and its OmegA rocket also lost out in the Phase II competition for the National Security Space Launch program.

ULA will receive a 60% share of the launch manifest for contracts awarded in the 2020-2024 time frame, with the first missions launching in fiscal 2022, said William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics.

SpaceX will receive the other 40%.

The competition extended through the creation of the U.S. Space Force, whose Space and Missile Systems Center will be in charge of executing the launches in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office.

The five-year Phase II program provides for fixed-price but indefinite-delivery contracts, which means there isn’t a specified total payout. But Roper said it’d be reasonable to estimate that somewhere around 32 to 34 launches would be covered, which would translate to billions of dollars in business.

Three launches were assigned today: ULA is scheduled to launch two missions known as USSF-51 and USSF-106 for the Space Force in 2022, while SpaceX has been assigned USSF-67 in mid-2022.

ULA’s two contracts amount to $337 million, and SpaceX’s contract is worth $316 million. Roper said details about the payloads are classified.

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Falcon Heavy puts solar sail and much more in orbit

Launch pad video shows the Falcon Heavy liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket had its first night launch tonight, sending 24 different spacecraft toward three different types of orbit to test a wide range of technologies.

The triple-barreled rocket rose into the sky from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 2:30 a.m. ET Tuesday (11:30 p.m. PT Monday), kicking off the Defense Department’s Space Test Program-2 mission, or STP-2.

Minutes after launch, the Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters separated and flew themselves to two landing pads set up at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, not far from the launch pad. The twin touchdowns were greeted with raucous cheers from SpaceX employees watching the webcast at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

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SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster falls over at sea

The Falcon Heavy center core booster lands on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. (SpaceX via YouTube)

Mother Nature has splashed cold water over SpaceX’s triumphant triple booster landing in the wake of last week’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch. Literally.

After sending the Arabsat-6 telecommunications satellite on the first leg of its journey to geostationary orbit on April 11, the three first-stage rocket cores went their separate ways.

Two side boosters touched down safely at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, not far from their launch pad. The center core landed on a drone ship christened “Of Course I Still Love You,” stationed several hundred miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.

The center core’s landing was a first. During the Falcon Heavy’s maiden launch in February 2018, the center core missed its target.

SpaceX was planning to reuse all three cores — as well as the two halves of the rocket’s nose cone, or fairing — on future launches. Unfortunately, the center core didn’t make the trip back to shore intact.

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Falcon Heavy rocket aces a triple landing

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida. (SpaceX via YouTube)

More than a year after SpaceX sent its Falcon Heavy rocket on a majestic test launch, the second Falcon Heavy put a satellite in orbit today for its first customer.

Then, for the first time, all three of the rocket’s reusable booster cores landed safely and successfully. SpaceX also recovered both halves of the rocket’s nose cone and intends to reuse those components as well.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk celebrated the day’s successes with a string of exuberant tweets, punctuated with hearts and rocket emojis.

“The Falcons have landed,” he wrote.

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Year in Space: From launch pad to beyond Pluto

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket clears the tower in February 2018. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Launches, launches, launches! 2018 was a big year for liftoffs, particularly for SpaceX and its billionaire CEO, Elon Musk. The past year also saw a number of notable trips to interplanetary destinations, including the Martian surface and two asteroids. What’s up for next year? More of the same, only way different.

For more than two decades, I’ve been writing year-end roundups of the top stories in space science and exploration, with a look-ahead to cosmic coming attractions. 2019 could well bring about developments I’ve been predicting on an annual basis going as far back as a decade, such as the rise of commercial human spaceflight.

Other trends are easier to predict, because they’re based on the cold, hard facts of celestial mechanics. Check out these tales from 2018, expected trends for 2019 and my year-end space roundups going back to 2001 (with lots of failed predictions). Then feel free to weigh in with your comments to tell me what I missed.

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Elon Musk and Mars take the TV spotlight

SpaceX founder Elon Musk watches February’s ascent of the Falcon Heavy rocket in a scene from National Geographic’s “Mars: Inside SpaceX.” (National Geographic / RadicalMedia via YouTube)

Science fiction blends with fact in tonight’s double dose of Mars from National Geographic’s TV channel.

Truth to tell, there’s more fact than fiction: The first show in the double feature is “Mars: Inside SpaceX,” which wraps a tale of past and future space exploration around an inside look at SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch in February.

Then there’s the season premiere of “Mars,” the semi-scripted, semi-documentary series that’s serving up a second set of six episodes.

Both shows are eye-openers.

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Air Force contract marks a first for Falcon Heavy

An automated camera documents the Falcon Heavy rocket’s first ascent from Kennedy Space Center in February with SpaceX’s hangar in the foreground. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $130 million firm-fixed-price contract to SpaceX for the launch of its classified AFSPC-52 satellite on a Falcon Heavy rocket.

It’s the first national security contract won for SpaceX’s heavy-lift rocket, which had its first test flight in February. AFSPC-52 is tue to lift off in 2020 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The launch will support the Air Force Space Command’s “mission of delivering resilient and affordable space capabilities to our nation while maintaining assured access to space,” Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Air Force program executive officer for space and commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said today in a news release.

In an emailed statement, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said her company was “honored by the Air Force’s selection of Falcon Heavy to launch the competitively awarded AFSPC-52 mission.”

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The tangled tale behind Falcon Heavy’s Tesla

Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver hears from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. (Lori Garver via Twitter)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk makes it sound as if he always wanted to put a Tesla Roadster, and not much else, on top of the Falcon Heavy rocket for this week’s historic maiden launch. But NASA’s former deputy administrator, Lori Garver, says the story behind Starman and the Roadster is more complicated.

In an op-ed written for The Hill, Garver says that SpaceX offered NASA the opportunity to put a payload on the launch — but that NASA refused the offer.

And in follow-up tweets, Garver says she was told by an unnamed SpaceX executive in advance of the launch that the Air Force turned down the offer as well.

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Zillow CEO talks about his SpaceX investment

Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff reflects on his investment strategy. (GeekWire Photo)

Zillow Group has just reported an eye-popping $1 billion in annual revenue — but the Seattle-based real estate data company’s CEO, Spencer Rascoff, has another milestone to celebrate.

One of the private ventures that he invests in, California-based SpaceX, pulled off a successful maiden launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket on Feb. 6. The test launch put a Tesla Roadster into deep space, and put the Falcon Heavy into the record books as the world’s most powerful rocket in operation.

“Awesome to see the private sector step in to fill the void in space exploration left by our government,” Rascoff said in a tweet. (In fairness, we should note that NASA’s Space Launch System is due to surpass the Falcon Heavy on the power scale when it launches for the first time in 2019 or 2020.)

In a follow-up email exchange, Rascoff told GeekWire that he invested in SpaceX in a private funding round last year. (The total raised during last year’s Series H round amounted to nearly $450 million.)

Rascoff declined to go into further detail about the investment, which is typical in such situations. However, he provided additional insight about the kinds of companies he invests in, and why.

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Spacefaring Roadster will miss Mars and asteroids

A camera mounted on the spacefaring Tesla Roadster shows Starman in the driver’s seat with Earth essentially in the rear-view mirror. (SpaceX Photo via Instagram / Elon Musk)

It took a day or two, but astronomers have figured out where the Tesla Roadster launched into deep space aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is going. And it’s not the planet Mars or the asteroid belt.

Observations of the Roadster, which has a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman riding in the driver’s seat, indicate that it’s in an elliptical orbit around the sun that will take it just outside the orbit of Mars and then back to slightly within Earth’s orbital distance.

If you run out the orbit over the foreseeable future, it’s not on a path to run into Earth, or Mars, or any asteroids.

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