Small Space News Story Roundup

Last weekend, when I did a similar roundup of small stories, I mentioned that Firefly had joined the club of launch providers that have attained orbit.  This week's Rocket Report from Ars Technica mentions something I haven't run into anywhere else.  

A successful failure? ... The rocket was intended to place the small satellites on board into a circular orbit at an altitude of 300 km. However, independent observations later placed them considerably lower, at approximately 200 km. Due to this underperformance of the vehicle—it is not clear what the precise problem was—the tracking firm Seradata said it was now classifying the mission as a "launch failure," with a provisional capability loss of 90 percent due to the likely life loss for the seven satellites aboard. My less harsh judgment is that reaching orbit on a second flight is a success. Ars has reached out to Firefly for more information.

Ordinarily, if author Eric Berger has a reference he'll link to it.  I did a web search for the company he mentions, Seradata, and found an article where they provide more data. 

Subsequent to the launch, doubts grew about whether the launch truly was a “success” as the satellites, rather than being left in 300 km circular orbit as planned, were instead left in 270 x 210 km orbits inclined at 137 degrees.  The low perigee will mean that the satellites will re-enter much earlier than planned.

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Since this launch brings back thoughts of "The One-Ton-Class Orbital Rocket Race," Rocket Report also talks about another one of the companies in that race: ABL Space Systems.  ABL has updated information on the first attempt at achieving orbit with their RS1 rocket.  Launch is now targeted for no earlier than mid-October, as its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration remains pending.  The launch will not just be a test of their vehicle for their research and data gathering.  Instead, it will carry a commercial payload consisting of two OmniTeq satellites. The mission will seek to demonstrate the successful use of OmniTeq’s Equalizer CubeSat deployer and operation of its Varisat HF payload.

Years of work to reach this point ... After launching from Kodiak spaceport in Alaska, the RS1 rocket will deploy the two satellites near Hawaii and complete its mission over the southern region of the African continent. This week the company also released a four-minute video with behind-the-scenes footage of all the work that has gone into the RS1 vehicle over the last five years. It looks like a lot of hard work by some dedicated people. Certainly, we wish them well.

That video is worth the four minutes to watch.  Not the usual gung ho music and imagery companies put up.  To me, mid-October is from around the 10th to the 20th - so starting in a few days.

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On September 27th, SpinLaunch ran their 10th test Fling - um, test flight.  Remember, as we talked about in the last few weeks, their flings are harder on the payloads than a typical rocket launch.  The quote I can't forget is the one that went, “It’s a very gentle 10,000 gs.”   The purpose of this test was to test payloads that actual customers supplied for this test.  As their press release states,  the test “demonstrated that SpinLaunch partners’ standard satellite components are inherently compatible with the company’s launch environment and provided critical flight data, as all payloads were flown and recovered successfully.” 

The customers were research groups at NASA, AirbusSpace, Outpost Space and Cornell University Engineering.  

As a general rule for these test flights, Spinlaunch doesn't provide much details about the altitude the flight made it to or the test duration, but this was the same suborbital centrifuge they've used on previous launches.  They show their vehicle in their two minute YouTube video of the test and it looks like nothing so much as a shell; not clam shell or conch shell, but artillery or something on the big side, except it has fins that appear fixed and there appears to be no spiraling.  When they fling it out of the centrifuge, it doesn't even look like it has good attitude control.  It wobbles.   

The SpinLaunch test vehicle.  It's hard to get a good scale from this video, but it appears to be on the order of 6' long - about the height of the men digging it out of the ground.  Screen capture from their video (obviously).