Cosmic Log
SpaceX’s Starship and its Super Heavy booster blew through the primary objective for their second test flight today, but both rocket stages blew up sooner than the company hoped.
SpaceX took the day as a win — based not only on a successful liftoff from its South Texas launch pad a little after 7 a.m. CT (5 a.m. PT), but also on the successful execution of a hot-stage separation maneuver two and a half minutes after launch.
NASA says it will collaborate with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture on the development of new space transportation capabilities that will provide high-frequency access to low Earth orbit for astronauts and cargo.
The project is one of seven selected for the second round of NASA’s Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities initiative, or CCSC-2. The first round began in 2014. All of the companies involved in CCSC-2 will work with NASA under the terms of unfunded Space Act Agreements. That means no money will change hands, but NASA will make its expertise available for the companies’ projects.
“It is great to see companies invest their own capital toward innovative commercial space capabilities, and we’ve seen how these types of partnerships benefit both the private sector and NASA,” Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA Headquarters, said today in a news release.
A well-traveled SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket today launched dozens of satellites, including an experimental docking craft created by a Seattle-area startup called Starfish Space.
Starfish Space’s Otter Pup spacecraft was one of 72 payloads that were deployed into low Earth orbit after the launch of SpaceX’s Transporter-8 satellite rideshare mission from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Liftoff came at 2:35 p.m. PT, just hours after SpaceX launched 52 Starlink internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Minutes after the California launch, the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster flew itself back to a landing pad not far from the launch site, marking the ninth successful launch and recovery for that booster. It was the 200th successful recovery of a Falcon 9 booster.
Meanwhile, the rocket’s second stage reached orbit and executed a meticulously choreographed series of deployments that ended nearly an hour and a half after launch. The long list of payloads included small satellites and a re-entry vehicle, as well as an orbital transfer vehicle that carried its own complement of spacecraft.
The second crew to be sent into space as a profit-making proposition for Texas-based Axiom Space came back to Earth tonight in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule after spending nine days on the International Space Station.
The Ax-2 trip came a year after Axiom’s first crewed space mission, and marked several firsts: Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson became the first woman to command a private-sector space mission as Axiom’s director of human spaceflight, and mission specialist Rayyanah Barnawi became the first Saudi woman in space.
Tennessee business executive John Shoffner and Saudi fighter pilot Ali Alqarni rounded out the crew. Shoffner paid his own fare, which was thought to amount to tens of millions of dollars, while Barnawi and Alqarni flew with the backing of the Saudi government.
The trip began on May 21 with the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, and ended today with the crew’s departure from the space station and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast. While crew members waited for a recovery ship to pick up their Dragon capsule, which was dubbed Freedom, Whitson described the descent from orbit as a “phenomenal ride” — the same phrase she used after liftoff.
“We really enjoyed all of it,” she told SpaceX’s Mission Control.
SpaceX and Axiom Space teamed up today to send four spacefliers — including the first Saudi woman in orbit — to the International Space Station for a 10-day trip focusing on zero-gravity research.
SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:37 p.m. ET (2:37 p.m. PT) at the end of a trouble-free countdown, sending a Crew Dragon capsule toward a space station rendezvous.
After stage separation, the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster flew itself back to a landing zone near the launch pad while the second stage pushed the Crew Dragon into orbit. That marked the first time a Falcon 9 booster made a touchdown on land (as opposed to at sea) after launching a crewed mission.
“It was a phenomenal ride,” Axiom mission commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who holds the U.S. record for cumulative time in space, told Mission Control from zero-G.
The mission, which is Texas-based Axiom Space’s second expedition to the space station, combines public and private-sector initiatives: NASA, SpaceX and Axiom are coordinating operations in orbit. Mission pilot John Shoffner, a Tennessee business executive who’s also a race car driver and competitive skydiver, purchased one of the seats on the Crew Dragon at a cost that’s thought to be somewhere in the range of $55 million.
The Saudi government is paying the fare for the Ax-2 mission’s two other crew members: Rayyanah Barnawi, Saudi Arabia’s first female spaceflier, is a biochemist specializing in stem cell research. Ali Alqarni is a Saudi Air Force fighter pilot. Only one other Saudi citizen has previously been to space: Prince Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on the shuttle Discovery in 1985.
Can anyone keep up with SpaceX in the commercial space race?
It might be one of the four companies profiled in “When the Heavens Went on Sale” — a new book written by Ashlee Vance, the tech journalist who chronicled SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s feats and foibles eight years ago.
Or it might be one of the dozens of other space ventures that have risen up to seek their fortune on the final frontier. Or maybe no one.
The space race’s ultimate prizes may still be up for grabs, but in Vance’s view, one thing is clear: There wouldn’t be a race if it weren’t for Musk and SpaceX.
“Elon sort of set this whole thing in motion,” Vance says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “My book is more or less a story of people who want to be the next Elon Musk.”
SpaceX’s Starship launch system lifted off on its first full-scale test flight today, rising majestically from its Texas launch pad but falling short of stage separation.
The uncrewed mission represented the most ambitious test yet for the world’s most powerful rocket — which eventually could send people to the moon and Mars, and even between spaceports on our own planet.
Liftoff from SpaceX’s Starbase complex at Boca Chica on the South Texas coast came at 8:33 a.m. CDT (9:33 a.m. EDT). The Starship system’s Super Heavy booster, powered by 33 methane-fueled Raptor rocket engines, rose into clear skies with a deafening roar and a blazing pillar of flame.
Hundreds of SpaceX employees cheered at the company’s California headquarters, but the crowd turned quiet three minutes into the flight when the Starship upper stage failed to separate from the booster as planned. The entire rocket spun in the air as a ground-based camera watched.
A minute later, SpaceX’s flight termination system destroyed both stages of the rocket as a safety measure. “Obviously, we wanted to make it all the way through, but to get this far, honestly, is amazing,” launch commentator Kate Tice said.
REDMOND, Wash. — This Seattle-area suburb has played a role in the space industry for more than a half-century, but the city of Redmond is shining brighter than ever on the final frontier — and now it has the brand name to prove it.
Welcome to the Redmond Space District.
Redmond Mayor Angela Birney showcased the newly established district in a proclamation issued today during her annual State of the City Summit at City Hall, with representatives of the area’s leading space companies in attendance.
The district designation applies to the entire city rather than to a specific neighborhood. Birney told me she hopes the campaign will draw even more space ventures to Redmond.
“It creates that ecosystem of innovation, technology, knowledge, people — all of that to create that really central place so they can come in and know that they’re going to get different resources for the space industry,” she said.
The Federal Communications Commission plans to set up a new regulatory framework for facilitate hookups between satellite operators and wireless companies, with the objective of connecting smartphone users in remote or underserved areas of the world.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, adopted today, follows up on a string of demonstrations and announcements related to satellite-cellular combinations.
A Virginia-based company called Lynk Global has already shown that its satellite-to-smartphone system works, with the FCC’s blessing. Another satellite venture called AST Spacemobile is setting up partnerships with telecom providers around the world. The heavyweights of the telecom industry are in on the idea as well.
Redmond, Wash.-based Kymeta Corp. says it has completed its first shipment of electronically steered flat-panel antennas to OneWeb for that company’s satellite-based data network.
In a news release timed to coincide with the Satellite 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., Kymeta said its Hawk u8 terminal will be available for OneWeb’s fixed-location applications, and will soon be available for land-based and sea-based mobile communications. OneWeb is putting the finishing touches on its constellation in low Earth orbit, or LEO, and is planning to ramp up commercial broadband service within a few months.