Blue Origin's morning launch of their New Glenn was looking like an unqualified success when the launch coverage shutdown on YouTube. The second flight of the booster named, Never Tell Me the Odds, started late due to a countdown hold for unknown reasons; starting at 7:25 AM instead of the expected 6:45 AM. The flight itself looked to be by the numbers and recovery of the booster on their recovery drone, Jacklyn, looked like it was exactly on the mark.
The problem didn't show up for more than another hour, when the upper stage was to ignite to put the payload into the desired orbit. The payload was the second "Block 2" satellite in the internet constellation of Texas-based company AST SpaceMobile, called BlueBird 7. Its predecessor, BlueBird 6, is a phased array of antennas on a large plane. It's one of the largest satellites in space, with an antenna that spans 2,400 square feet. BlueBird 7 has the same dimensions. While not actually square in shape, for reference, that would be a square almost 49 feet on a side. The purpose is "direct to cell" coverage from orbit.
BlueBird 7 was to be deployed into orbit one hour and 15 minutes after launch. Nothing was said or streamed until about two hours after liftoff, when Blue Origin reported that something appeared to go wrong.
"We have confirmed payload separation. AST SpaceMobile has confirmed the satellite has powered on," Blue Origin wrote in a social media update. "The payload was placed into an off-nominal orbit. We are currently assessing and will update when we have more detailed information."
A little later on Sunday, AST SpaceMobile provided its own update, and the news was not good.
"While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited," the company said in a statement. "The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy."
An artist's concept of a giant AST SpaceMobile BlueBird mobile broadband
satellite for smartphone connectivity. (Image credit: AST SpaceMobile)
In my mind any mission that ends with a statement like, "the cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy" was a failure - so even though the booster performed remarkably well, that's not the point of the mission. The point of the mission, what the customer is paying for, is to put their payload into its assigned orbit. Reusability is tremendously important but that's after the primary mission has been completed.
The drive to increase the pace of the Artemis moon missions could quite possibly be affected by this second stage failure. It was mentioned recently that Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander was being shipped across the Gulf of America to the space coast here for testing to continue. The goal is to test that lander and SpaceX's Human Landing System on next year's Artemis 3 mission. There are many, many ways to delay that and only one way to accelerate it; to be perfect all the time.
That sucks for BO. Though I pretty much hate the bastards due to being more interested in lawfare than actually producing a working product, I still don't want them to fail when carrying someone else's stuff.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it? Is SpaceX the only company that makes space seem relatively easy? And celebrates their failures as a learning moment?
When you look at pure numbers, SpaceX has an insurmountable lead in their number of successful launches over the rest of the world combined. Out of 181 US launches last year, 165 were SpaceX. China and the rest of the world combined added up to 148.
DeleteSo SpaceX is literally ahead of everybody else in the world combined. Blue Origin is so far behind, they can't even see them.
AST stock (ASTS) declined about 10% or about $3 billion. AST expects to have a replacement, the next production satellite ready in about 30 days. Satellite cost about $20 million. Blue will have to start providing insurance as part of launch. Do you have to pay launch costs if the satellite does not get to the correct / useable orbit?
ReplyDeleteVery strange the rocket did not reach to correct orbit. It was flying only one satellite to test the launch capability with future launches supposed to be about 8 satellites at a time; so, there should have been plenty of fuel.
This would be a great opportunity for all the presumptive space tugboat companies to send a little booster up. Satellite cost $20 million, launch costs about $60 million. A Rocket Lab launch is about $10 million. How much for the little booster? How much could you charge AST / Blue and the insurance company?
If the satellite separated from the upper stage and powered on into an unusable orbit, clearly something died in the upper stage, since the booster appeared to perform nominally. Do they not have enough telemetry to know what it was, or are they embarrassed to publicize that they forgot about needing a valve someplace or another? I certainly haven't heard anything about what died.
ReplyDeleteThe booster performed quite well, as far as I can tell, but the whole mission seemed to go wrong after stage separation. I checked Space.com and Ars Technica about 2 - 2-1/2 hours ago and there was no new info.
DeleteI didn't watch the launch live, it was one of my one or two days/week when the cat will let me sleep in, but when I opened the mission video from NASA Spaceflight, and went looking for the launch, I ran into the countdown hold that delayed the launch 40 minutes. I've yet to find an explanation for that. If they thought something was wrong with the second stage and some "upper level manager" told them to go, that would be A Very Bad Thing.
Going from the way they describe what went on, it sounds like the 2nd stage didn't work properly - too little thrust, shut off too early, something like that.
All we can do is wait for more info. And hope it's not bullcrap.
"off-nominal"
ReplyDelete