Small Space News Story Roundup 65

This time from Ars Technica's Rocket Report, Space.com and DefenseNews. 

Rocket Lab unveils Neutron launch complex

As Rocket Lab proceeds with design, prototype build and testing of their Neutron rocket, work has also been progressing on having its first launch facility ready, which is on Wallops Island, Virginia, DefenseNews reports. 

The novel booster, called Neutron, is Rocket Lab's newest and the company's first purpose-built reusable rocket to tap into the medium-size satellite launch market. The first flight is expected by the end of 2025 from the company's new pad, Launch Complex 3, which Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck officially opened for business on Thursday (Aug. 28). 

We've been talking about Neutron since Peter Beck first announced the rocket in 2021 and there's lots here if you want to go back and read some older posts.  While he acknowledges it's a big hurdle and there's not a nanosecond worth of slack in the schedule, Beck says they plan to launch the first Neutron mission before the end of this year.  "Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day." 

Rocket Lab's new launch complex at Wallops Island is part of the company's growing footprint in Virginia. (Image credit: Rocket Lab) The launch mount is that large dark-colored hexagon with red trim, center of the image.

Cargo Dragon mission CRS-33 demonstrates lifting the ISS' orbit

As talked about here on Monday, August 25th, the cargo dragon used for mission CRS-33 carried a prototype of system that will be used to turn a Dragon craft into the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV).  You may recall that the contract for the USDV was awarded to SpaceX in June of '24.  The basic problem is that due to various factors, the atmospheric drag on the ISS varies over time which then lowers the orbit.  Various systems have been used to raise the ISS orbit regularly; first the Russian Progress cargo vehicle, then Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus vehicle, launched by their launch vehicle and then their Cygnus capsules lifted into space by SpaceX.  

SpaceX’s first such test happened on Nov. 8, 2024.

And on Wednesday, Dragon's efforts got the station to an orbit of 260.9 by 256.3 miles (419.9 by 412 km), according to NASA. 

"The new boost kit in Dragon will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude through a series of longer burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025," agency officials added in the statement.

(I sure wish they'd given us before and after numbers for that 260.9 by 256.3 mile orbit.  We just know it was supposed to be a low power model of the eventual system.) 

The CRS-33 Dragon is expected to stay at the ISS until late December or early January, at which point it will head back to Earth loaded with experimental data and some discarded items from the ISS. The splashdown zone will be near coastal California.

Rocket Lab's Neutron awarded US Military contract

Rocket Lab's heavier lift platform, Neutron, is under development so it's fitting that the Neutron has been picked for a US Air Force mission that's also under development.  

The mission, slated for no earlier than 2026, will fall under the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) “rocket cargo” program, which explores how commercial launch vehicles might one day deliver materiel to any point on Earth within hours—a vision akin to airlift logistics via spaceflight.

Rocket Lab announced the award May 8. The contract’s value was not disclosed.

Rocket Lab's founder and CEO, Peter Beck, noted the contract award during a first quarter earnings call, and described it this way:

“That program is really at the very beginning of its development within the U.S. government,” Beck said. “So I think we’re very much in the experimental phase. And it’ll be interesting to see if that turns into a full requirement for an operational capability.”

This selection by the US Air Force follows what Beck called "the big news in the first quarter" - that Rocket Lab had been picked to compete for national security launch contracts.  

The Space Systems Command announced on March 27 that Rocket Lab and Stoke Space will be eligible to compete against established players Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program. This indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract structure allows the selected companies to bid on launch service orders through 2029, with at least 30 missions expected to be awarded – totaling an estimated $5.6 billion in task orders.

That's quite a group of companies to be included with - and they've earned their place.  It was under 11 months ago that their Electron light-lift rocket became the first commercially developed rocket to reach 50 launches.  Plus, almost exactly two years ago, they announced their the Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron (HASTE) program that has already completed several missions for the US Space Force.

Illustration of Rocket Lab's Neutron cargo delivery payload.  Image credit: Rocket Lab

Neutron, designed to lift up to 13,000 kg to low Earth orbit, remains on schedule for its inaugural launch in 2025, Beck said. The company reports that both launch pad construction at Wallops Island, Virginia, and rocket development continue to progress as planned.

The problem with AI hardly being talked about

There's a big problem with AI that just isn't getting talked about enough.  The vast majority of stuff we read about AI is how it's going to help with every problem, or take every job, depending on which way they look at it.  We're all going to have an AI servant, or Master, again depending on which way they look at it.

The real issue, the existential problem is that AI sucks so much power, they're going to black out the rest of humanity.  It will never get to the point of being really useful without truly enormous increases in power generation.  Perhaps you've seen the story at Microsoft has repaired and gotten the Three Mile Island nuclear power station back online for their AI power needs - and will get exclusive access to all the power it can generate.  There have been similar stories around the world.  

Friday, we learned that Eric Schmidt - the former CEO of Google - has bought Relativity space apparently in preliminary design for data centers in orbit, to get access to the solar power.  

We know this because Schmidt appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during a hearing in April, speaking on the future of AI and US competitiveness. Among the topics raised then was the need for more electricity—both renewable and non-renewable—to power data centers that will facilitate the computing needs for AI development and applications. Schmidt noted that an average nuclear power plant in the United States generates 1 gigawatt of power.

Then he rattled off some numbers that might blow your mind or cause your eyes to bleed. 

"People are planning 10 gigawatt data centers," Schmidt said. "Gives you a sense of how big this crisis is. Many people think that the energy demand for our industry will go from 3 percent to 99 percent of total generation. One of the estimates that I think is most likely is that data centers will require an additional 29 gigawatts of power by 2027, and 67 more gigawatts by 2030. These things are industrial at a scale that I have never seen in my life."

AI applications consume an enormous amount of computing power. A single ChatGPT query consumes approximately 10 times more energy than a Google search does. The US energy industry is not well prepared for this kind of dramatic growth in energy demand, as power consumption over the last decade has increased by about 0.5 percent a year. Data centers also consume significant amounts of water for cooling.

There is no way our society could get 29 gigawatts more power generation from reactors, burning gas, oil or anything built in two years (by '27).  Which says another 67 more gigawatts in three more years just isn't happening, either.  Which raises the reasonable question of how does Eric Schmidt get there?  First off, he doesn't need to.  He needs to power his business, not the entire AI industry.  

If he's going to try to build power plants and data centers in space, that spawns a bunch of other problems, starting with how to get that much stuff into space - which seems to explain why Schmidt bought Relativity Space.  He needs big, reusable rockets and a lot of flights of them.  The biggest rocket, although not yet operational, is Starship.  I think the odds of him buying a huge number of Starship flights aren't very good, but while it's a small number, it's better than the odds of him buying SpaceX itself.  Yeah, no. 

The Blue Origin's New Glenn is smaller, not a whole lot closer to flying lots of missions than Starship and Blue is also owned by a billionaire.  Again, not likely.  ULA's Vulcan rocket is expensive, and it's already behind its predicted launch manifest.  Rocket Lab's Neutron vehicle is coming soon, but it's the smallest of these and may not be large enough for Schmidt's ambitions.

That leaves the Terran R being developed by Relativity Space, which has appeared here a couple of times.

If fully realized, Terran R would be a beastly launch vehicle capable of launching 33.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode—more than a fully upgraded Vulcan Centaur—and 23.5 tons with a reusable first stage.  If you were a billionaire seeking to put large data centers into space and wanted control of launch, Relativity is probably the only game in town.

I know of no visualization graphics for orbiting power farms that would be powered by photovoltaics and radiate their waste heat into space, although one would be great here.

Solving launch is just one of the challenges this idea faces, of course. How big would these data centers be? Where would they go within an increasingly cluttered low-Earth orbit? Could space-based solar power meet their energy needs? Can all of this heat be radiated away efficiently in space? Economically, would any of this make sense?

These are not simple questions. But Schmidt is correct that the current trajectory of power and environmental demands created by AI data centers is unsustainable. It is good that someone is thinking big about solving big problems.

Relativity Space's current computer rendering of their Terran R, full vehicle and landed booster.  Pretty much impossible to guess the size.  Image Credit: Relativity Space

Small Space News Story Roundup 57

Calling one of these "small" might be underselling it... 

Rocket Lab's CEO Peter Beck sees his market segment as healthy and robust

In an April 7th interview in Colorado Springs and reported in SpaceNews, Beck said his company has found a successful market providing dedicated launches for small satellites — a strategy that he said does not directly compete with SpaceX rideshare missions. 

...Beck said the customers for his company’s Electron rockets are different from those seeking less expensive launches on SpaceX’s Transporter and Bandwagon lines of Falcon 9 rideshare launches.

He explained, “Dedicated small launch is a real market, and it should not be confused with rideshare.  It’s totally different.”  

He said Rocket Lab is experiencing growing demand for Electron from companies who want control over their schedule and orbit, traits that a dedicated launch offers over a rideshare. This has included customers such as Kinéis, a French company that launched its constellation of 25 Internet-of-Things satellites across five Electron missions, and Japanese radar mapping companies iQPS and Synspective.

Something I found particularly interesting is his disdain for the "one ton to orbit" sized boosters that were the subject of headlines just under three years ago.  

That skepticism extends to a new line of European small launch vehicles, like Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum, which crashed less than a minute after liftoff on its inaugural flight March 30. Spectrum and some other vehicles there are targeting about one ton to orbit, which he described as a “no man’s land” of performance: “It’s too small to be a useful rideshare mission, and it’s too big to be a useful dedicated rocket” for smallsats.

We've mentioned Rocket Lab's development of their bigger payload rocket, Neutron. SpaceNews reports development is proceeding and the first Neutron launch looks to be before the end of this year.  Beck remarked that they've used all the lessons they learned getting their Electron to 50 launches faster than any other company's rocket on Neutron, adding, “It’s way easier to build a bigger rocket than it is a little rocket.”

The fight over NASA's budget begins

This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.  Let's just say the opposition can't figure out what to burn, carve a swastika onto, or whom to assassinate. 

In the "big picture" context, the budget is cut by 20 percent, so effectively $5 billion from an overall total of about $25 billion.  What people are upset about is that the cuts seem to be centered on the agency's Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more. 

According to the "passback" documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency's science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
...
Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.

While the Science Mission Directorate continues funding the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes (or HST and JWST), the cuts are seen as killing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, widely considered a more modern version of the Hubble and a possible replacement for the HST rather than the Webb.  The HST was deployed 35 years ago this month: April 25, 1990. Not only has it been in orbit approaching 35 years, it has had many technical problems.  

The kicker is that the Roman Telescope is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.  Saying the cuts are going to kill off an already assembled successor because of budget cuts, instead of not funding other programs that are much closer to their beginnings doesn't make much sense.  

Other significant cuts include ending funding for Mars Sample Return as well as the DAVINCI mission to Venus. The budget cuts also appear intended to force the closure of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the agency has 10,000 civil servants and contractors.

Note that the Mars Sample Return mission doesn't exist as anything beyond very preliminary documents.  I've seen mention of DAVINCI mission to Venus "in the late 2020s to early 2030s," but that's all. 

Naturally, this is seen as handing China the moon - if not the entire solar system - and the end of everything.  Science policy experts have been characterizing such cuts as an "extinction level" event for what is seen as the crown jewel of the space agency.

Nearly all of NASA's most significant achievements over the last 25 years have been delivered by the science programs, including feats such as Ingenuity flying on Mars, New Horizons swooping by Pluto, and Cassini's discovery of water plumes on Enceladus.
...
"This massive cut to NASA Science will not stand," US Rep. George Whitesides, D-California, told Ars. "For weeks we have been raising the alarm about a rumored 50 percent cut to NASA's world-leading science efforts. Now we know it is true. I will work alongside my colleagues on the Science Committee to make clear how this would decimate American leadership in space and inflict great damage to NASA centers across the country."

Since congress hasn't passed a "real" Federal Budget since 2009 (article from 2012 talking about that), I lean toward thinking that they're not likely to pass this one, either.  Instead, we'll get some number of continuing resolutions to authorize some spending or other. 

An illustration of the field of view of Roman Space Telescope vs. the Hubble Space Telescope.  From the NASA Roman mission website.

First Private Mission to Venus Coming Together

Time for a memory jog.  Do you remember that back in 2020, Rocket Lab announced plans to launch the first private mission to Venus.  A search through the blog here shows the mission apparently slipped from it's original 2023 launch goal until 2025 as noted in a report in Space.com published in June 2023.  

The latest news is from today, also at Space.com, and reveals that the current target is in summer of '26.   

"We missed our January 2025 launch window and now wait until the next one summer 2026," said MIT's Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and leader of the Morningstar Missions to Venus team – a series of planned missions designed to investigate the possibility of life in Venus' clouds.

Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, report progress in installing a heat shield on what's the first private spacecraft targeted for Venus.  The mission, originally intended to launch on Rocket Lab's low lift Electron rocket, has now been upgraded to their bigger Neutron.  The Neutron has yet to fly but that's looking to be getting closer to its first flight tests.  

The goal is to survive the hellish temperatures of Venus' atmosphere down to the surface, and use instruments designed to measure autofluorescence and backscattered polarized radiation to detect the presence of organic molecules in the clouds.  

To survive the temperatures that it will be exposed to, the probe will be protected by a shield NASA imaginatively named HEEET, or Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology developed at Ames.

Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center complete a fit check of the two halves of a space capsule that will study the clouds of Venus for signs of life. (Image credit: NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete)

HEET is a textured material covering the bottom of the capsule, a woven heat shield designed to protect spacecraft from temperatures up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit (2482 degrees C).

Much like how the current landers on the moon have short expected lifespans because the temperatures are beyond what semiconductors have typically been rated to survive, the Venus probe (apparently unnamed) has this mission profile published.  Times are in seconds.  The right side of the curve is at 1 hour, 3600 seconds. It seems, though, the observations will be long over by that time.

The science phase of the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus targets the Venus cloud layer between 72 and 97 miles altitude, enabling around 330 seconds - 5-1/2 minutes - of science observations. (Image credit: NASA/Ames Research Center)

How many years and how much money has been spent to get 330 seconds of data from Venus?  I don't know but it's a bit of perspective on space science.  Brings to mind the Ranger lunar probes from the early 1960s, flying into the moon taking pictures and beaming them back down until they crashed into the moon. 

Looks Like There's a Winner in the 1-ton Race

The what?  A couple of years ago there was buzz about who was going to emerge as the winner in a race of small launch vehicles; those that can carry one ton to low Earth orbit.  (In all mentions of "one ton", think metric tons. A metric ton is about 10% bigger than an imperial system ton; since a kg is 2.2lbs, 1000 kg is 2200 pounds - 2204.6 to be a bit more precise but for one ton payloads, 2200 is close enough.)

The leader in the smaller satellite launchers was Rocket Lab, but there are two knocks on them.  First, is the Electron booster they've been using for years doesn't lift a metric ton; it's more like 300kg class. The second knock is that they've been emphasizing work on their Neutron, a more direct competitor to the Falcon 9 in lifting capacity and improving costs by reusing parts of their boosters.  It appears a winner has emerged as other companies in the race fell away. 

One of the companies that was talked about as a contender was ABL Space. Founded in 2017, despite several attempts, they have yet to achieve orbit.  Their last attempt was in January of '23, and failed early in the mission.

Tuesday afternoon at 2:27 PM local time (6:27 PM EST), smallsat launcher ABL Space failed in its first attempt to put its RS1 rocket into orbit.  More than that, it was the first launch of their RS1.

"After liftoff, RS1 experienced an anomaly and shut down prematurely. The team is working through our anomaly response procedures in coordination with PSCA and the FAA," ABL said via Twitter 23 minutes after liftoff. (The acronyms refer to the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.)

They've been going through what seems to be a great deal of financial turmoil, laying off much of their staff and reorganizing.  This week they announced they intend to pursue the military market, missile defense in particular.

Another of the companies frequently mentioned in this race was Relativity Space.  They sorta kinda reached orbit in March of 2023 in what was referred to as "a successful failure" in the first flight of their Terran 1. 

"Successful Failure" is an odd turn of phrase that I borrowed from Eric Berger at Ars Technica.  By the things that count the most, the mission was a failure.  Terran-1 failed to reach orbit, after the second stage failed to ignite properly and stay lit.  Further, their chance of being the first rocket burning methane/oxygen to achieve orbit is pretty much over, barring some strange events happening to all the other engines and platforms.  

Berger argues that the mission was successful, proving out the most important aspects of the mission.  The first stage did a complete burn, going through Max Q (highest aerodynamic pressures on the vehicle) at about 80 seconds into the ascent and burning for over two minutes.  The 3D-printed booster stage seemed to perform completely nominally as did its nine 3D-printed engines.  That has to be a great relief to all involved.   

Still, they didn't make orbit.  Like Rocket Lab, they pivoted to a larger vehicle more in line with the Falcon 9, which they're calling the Terran-R.  

Relativity opted to pour its efforts into developing a larger rocket, the Terran R, sized to compete more directly with medium- and heavy-lift launchers like the Falcon 9, Vulcan, or New Glenn. But developing Terran R is a significantly more expensive undertaking, and while Relativity is well-capitalized with a valuation of nearly $4.3 billion, the company hasn't publicized a fundraising round since 2021. At that time, venture capital firms were more freewheeling with their investments in space startups. Relativity quietly raised an undisclosed amount of money last year, resulting in a slight decline in its valuation.

So who's left? The survivor and therefore apparent winner of the 1-ton race is Firefly Aerospace.  To put it succinctly:

The company's Alpha rocket has reached orbit on multiple occasions, and just this week Firefly announced that it completed a $175 million Series D fundraising round, resulting in a valuation of more than $2 billion. The 1-ton rocket wars are over: Firefly has won.

A Firefly Alpha rocket launched the Victus Nox mission for the U.S. Space Force on Sept. 14, 2023, 7:28 PM PDT from Space Launch Complex 2 West at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

New Glenn's First Launch by Mid-October?

The industry and tons of pundits have been talking about Blue Origin's New Glenn for years and the observation that it still hasn't made Low Earth Orbit. Despite that, there has been a noticeable move toward more hardware in the last year. Are we about to see the first attempt to fly a mission of the heavy lift rocket? It seems the story from last April that we'd see the first launch on September 29th might have been on the money - or no later than mid October. 

The reason is that New Glenn is to launch a pair of identical satellites to Mars and one of those launch windows timed to get the shortest travel time to Mars is coming up.  

The launch period opens on September 29. The two identical Mars-bound spacecraft for the ESCAPADE mission, nicknamed Blue and Gold, are now complete. Rocket Lab announced Friday that its manufacturing team packed the satellites and shipped them from their factory in Long Beach, California. Over the weekend, they arrived at a clean room facility just outside the gates of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians will perform final checkups and load hydrazine fuel into both spacecraft, each a little more than a half-ton in mass.

Wait... Rocket Lab built them? The company launching small satellites on their Electron rocket while they develop the heavier-lift Neutron?  That just became the fastest company in history to make it to orbit 50 times?

Rocket Lab designed, built, and tested the two ESCAPADE spacecraft in a little more than three years. This is relatively fast for an interplanetary science mission. NASA selected the ESCAPADE mission for development in 2019 as part of a new class of small planetary science missions in which scientists can propose concepts for modest probes to explore the Solar System.

The Escapade mission was originally supposed to be launched as a piggyback payload with NASA's Psyche asteroid mission in 2022, but NASA switched that to launching on a Falcon Heavy. That shifted the Psyche launch to October 2023, and forced a redesign of the ESCAPADE pair of spacecraft. 

"So that was the first thing, and then there were certainly challenges on the Rocket Lab side," Lillis told Ars. "The thruster changed. There were also significant problems getting the tanks delivered ... so they really went into hero mode. They went and actually spun up an entire internal 3D tank-printing capability from nothing. Once things started looking shaky with this tank supplier, they came through.

"Those printed tanks are on the spacecraft, and they're all qualified, etc. So that was a huge win," he said. "That could have totally been a mission killer, the tank issue."

The name quoted, Lillis, is Rob Lillis, the ESCAPADE mission's lead scientist from the University of California Berkeley's Space Science Laboratory. 

After the pretty serious Reset when the launch vehicle and mission concept changed, getting the two flight-ready satellites ready in just over three years is impressive. 

As Rocket Lab went into "hero mode," to borrow Lillis' term, it's now Blue Origin's turn to go into full hero mode. A lot of important things that should be tested before trying to launch a mission like this still have to be tested. They've put the New Glenn on the launch pad but they haven't done a wet dress rehearsal in which they fully fuel the rocket and check out all of that system, and they haven't done a static firing of their BE-4 methane/oxygen engines to fully test the fuel delivery system and the engines on that booster.  They have filled the New Glenn with liquid nitrogen, one of the first tests SpaceX does on their Starships and Super Heavy boosters, commonly called a cryo or cryogenics test.

As Stephen Clark at Ars Technica points out, even a heavy lift vehicle the size of New Glenn has to follow the prescribed launch window. At some point in late October or early November, that launch window closes and the two year wait for the next launch window starts ticking.

The two spacecraft for NASA's ESCAPADE mission at Rocket Lab's factory in Long Beach, California. Image credit: Rocket Lab.

Rocket Lab Joins the Elite Club - in First Place!

Rocket Lab had a momentous launch on Thursday afternoon (UTC and EDT) from their launch complex on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula, successfully launching five satellites for France-based internet of things (IOT) company, Kinéis. The launch was at 6:13 a.m. NZST on Friday, June 21 (that was Thursday, June 20 at 2:13 p.m. US EDT, or 1813 UTC on June 20).

The big deal is that this was the 50th successful launch for Rocket Lab's Electron, a number that puts them in elite company. Furthermore, they are the fastest ever to achieve that milestone, just seven years after the vehicle’s debut in May 2017 and months ahead of the time it took SpaceX. 

A graph of commercially-developed, orbital-class rockets and how quickly they reached or approached 50 launches. Image credit: Rocket Lab

Prior to Electron’s 50th launch, Sir Peter Beck, the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, said he and his team are immensely proud of reaching this milestone in the time that they did.

“Out of all the commercially developed rockets in the world, Electron reaching 50, we did it in the fastest amount of time. So, we scaled faster to 50 than anybody else, faster than the Falcon 9, faster than Pegasus, faster than anything else commercially,” Beck said. “And that’s a really hard thing to do because whether it’s a giant rocket or a little rocket, the scaling element is the same and it’s super, super hard.”

Congratulatory tweet about the launch. Dark at 6:13 AM? Don't forget it's the second day of winter there.

It's worth noting that when Peter Beck started down the road to this moment, there not only was no company called Rocket Lab, there was no launch industry, and very little space industry at all in New Zealand. Rocket Lab essentially started the entire space industry in the country. While they've become a multinational corporation and started launching from Virginia, they still do most of their launches from their original launch complex on the Mahia peninsula. 

The Electron is a small rocket, and while they're launching regularly for a group of customers including U.S. agencies like the National Reconnaissance Office and the U.S. Space Force as well as preparing for a planetary mission to Mars with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket as the ride to space, they're also working hard on development of their bigger, booster, Neutron.  

Congratulations to Sir Beck and the entire team at Rocket Lab. 

Reusability Changes Everything - the Next Chapter

In a company news update early this week, Rocket Lab announced that their first booster set to be reused is moving through the final steps of being certified for its flight, although they didn't announce a date.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) (“Rocket Lab” or “the Company”) today announced it is returning a previously flown Electron rocket first stage tank into the Electron production line for the first time in preparation for reflying the stage. The step is a significant milestone in Rocket Lab’s development program to make Electron the world’s first reusable small orbital launch vehicle.

If  you've been following Rocket Lab launches, you'll know that they started trying to recover boosters by catching their parachutes with a helicopter, and actually caught one, but stopped trying after a couple of more attempts. They then switched to essentially what SpaceX is doing, letting it splash into the ocean and having a nearby ship recover it. They say the previously recovered boosters have been used to develop a standardized method of refurbishing and qualifying those boosters for flight again. This booster, originally launched in January of this year.

The stage was successfully launched and recovered as part of the ‘Four of a Kind’ mission on 31 January 2024 and has already passed more acceptance tests than any other recovered Electron stage, including:

• Tank pressurization test – a process that filled the carbon composite tank with inert gas and held it in excess of maximum operating pressure for more than 20x longer than the standard Electron flight duration;
• Helium leak check – a stringent process that determines there are no leaks in the tank; and
• Carbon fiber structural testing – including ultrasonic assessment and other non-destructive tests to confirm no delamination of the carbon composite tank fibers.

...

“This is the exciting final piece of the puzzle before Electron goes reusable,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck. “Our key priority in pushing this stage back into the standard production flow for the first time is to ensure our systems and qualification processes are fit for accepting pre-flown boosters at scale. If this stage successfully passes and is accepted for flight, we’ll consider opportunities for reflying it in the new year.”Rocket Lab has carried out iterative modifications across multiple recovery missions to hone the recovery process ahead of first reflight, including:

• Ensuring Electron’s carbon composite structure survives the intense heat and forces of atmospheric reentry through innovative coatings, heat shields, and advanced reaction control systems to control the angle of reentry;
• Refining the parachute system to ensure reliable deployment and smooth deceleration from more than 2,300 meters per second to 10 meters per second;
• Honing the telemetry and tracking systems so the marine recovery team can locate the stage as soon as it splashes down;
• Streamlining the process of collecting the stage from the water in less than an hour, then ensuring safe transit back to the Rocket Lab production complex; and
• Successful launch of a previously flown Rutherford engine.

The booster immediately before recovery back in January. Image credit: Rocket Lab USA

Bear in mind that Rocket Lab's Electron is in an entirely different market than SpaceX's Falcon 9; the Electron isn't rated to one metric ton to Low Earth Orbit while the Falcon 9 is capable of over 22 metric tons to LEO. Rocket Lab is also working toward a heavier lift booster, the Neutron which is being designed from the start for reuse. I'll speculate that the reason reuse matters for Electron is that SpaceX is sucking up a lot of the market for small satellite launches with their ride sharing missions, Transporter and the new Bandwagon that just had its first flight.  They need to watch their costs.

Small Space News Story Roundup 31

As usual, small stories I found interesting.

Starship could upend the small launch vehicle market

I think Rocket Lab with Neutron, Relativity Space with Terran R and the other small launch companies are seeing it and doing their best to not get destroyed, but Starship with its ability to launch over 100 tons to Low Earth Orbit has the potential to really shake up that market.    

“Starship for sure will disrupt further the launch business and the space business in general,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace, during a panel at the Satellite 2024 conference March 20. “One scenario is that [SpaceX Chief Executive Elon] Musk could really monopolize everything.”
...
Later in the panel, though, he suggested one way Starship could be used to disrupt the smallsat launch markets by pairing the rocket with orbital transfer vehicles, or OTVs. “With Starship, OTVs can become the best option for smallsats,” he said. If Starship is able to achieve the very low per-kilogram launch prices proposed for it, “then it will be difficult for small launch vehicles.”

That certainly seems to be a possibility, but an interesting counter to that view was put forward by Stella Guillen, chief commercial officer of Isar Aerospace, a German company developing the Spectrum small launch vehicle. 

“Starship will open up opportunities for satellites to grow the same way that they shrunk when there was more capacity for smallsats. The industry may shift to launching larger satellites.” 

It's an interesting vision - when Cubesats go down from thousands of dollars to launch to maybe tens of dollars, an alternative is to add more functions. Do more with your payload than the bare minimum. If they get bigger, well, hey, there's room!  

Hard to say, though.  Certainly Moore's law is dead and semiconductors have stopped their exponential growth, but bigger, older chip geometries have advantages; things like being more resistant to the effects of radiation particles (Single Event Upsets).

Astronomers calling for a radio silent zone on the far side of the moon.

It's not uncommon to have radio quiet zones around radio observatories on Earth, like the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory, or for the groups building the observatories to seek out quieter locations because of their small populations.  Ultimately, though, they can't enforce the quiet zones on transmitters far away that end up being heard due to the vagaries of radio signal propagation. 

One of the potential uses for the moon is to use the far side for astronomy.  The moon will act like a giant block to potentially interfering signals. Now it turns out there's a growing international call to establish a radio quiet zone on the far side. 

A first-of-its-kind international symposium is being held this week, turning up the volume to mull over the prospect of protecting real estate on the moon's far side exclusively for dedicated scientific purposes. Despite the moon being surrounding by a vacuum, there's an air of urgency to the meeting. 

Held under the auspices of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), the first IAA Moon Farside Protection Symposium is taking place March 21-22 in Turin, Italy. The goal of the gathering is to set off a wake-up call that engages the global scientific, political, and industrial community to be aware of a growing list of concerns.

It's a fact that the Earth is embedded in a fog of electromagnetic noise that extends into space and radiates outward. Of course it gets weaker as it radiates away, but radio telescopes are extremely sensitive. Imagine building the largest radio telescope in history, partially made possible because of the moon's gravity being 1/6 of Earth's, and having it ruined by radio signals generated by other groups on the moon. 

The IAA established a permanent committee devoted to the moon's far side in December of 2021, chaired by Claudio Maccone of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (National Institute for Astrophysics) as technical director. The IAA contends that the moon's far side is a region of paramount scientific interest as it provides an environment free from the electromagnetic pollution typical on Earth.

Some of the branches of science that would greatly benefit from operating on the farside, Maccone explains, are cosmology, astrobiology, planetary defense, as well as the search for other intelligent life that might populate the heavens.

It's an interesting article that goes over the issues and goals.  

Efforts like Breakthrough Listen could employ the radio silence of the moon's far side to scan the universe for signs of intelligent life. (Image credit: Breakthrough Listen/Danielle Futselaar)

Astra Goes Private - Off the Stock Markets

In last Saturday's (Mar. 2) post we talked about Astra's founders offering to buy up all shares of the company's stock, at a price below the current market price.  On Thursday (today, as I write), they announced the deal was complete. 

"Astra Space, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which the acquiring entity has agreed, subject to customary closing conditions, to acquire all shares of Astra common stock not already owned by it for $0.50 per share in cash," the company stated. The acquiring entity consists of Kemp, London, and other long-term investors.

Kemp and London are the co-founders of Astra.  

Does Astra have a future or is it over?  It's hard to say for sure but it doesn't look very bright.  Recall that back in August of '22, they announced they were dropping everything they'd done and starting development of a new rocket capable of putting bigger payloads in orbit, Rocket 4.0.  Before that announcement they had seven launches of their much smaller payload-rated Rocket 3.0 through 3.3 and only two were successful. 

It's almost a dead certainty that Rocket 4 isn't going to launch this year, and '25 isn't looking like a sure thing, either. On top of that, they're facing fierce competition from companies well in front of them, like Rocket Lab (working on their own bigger launch vehicle, Neutron), smaller companies like Firefly along with new entrants like ABL Space and Stoke Space.  All of them are facing tough competition from SpaceX, of course, with their Transporter missions that put up dozens of small satellites on the workhorse Falcon 9.  The last cost numbers I saw for a ride on a Transporter mission (October '23) were $5500 per kilogram or $2500/lb.  The only number I had for Rocket 3 was $70,000 per kilogram.

Then there's Starship, which will carry an unprecedented amount of payload to Low Earth Orbit.  It's an old estimate (2019) but Casey Handmer had calculated the cost to orbit for Starship/Super Heavy to be $35 per kilogram.

Astra's Rocket 3 launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.  Image credit Astra.  I'm unable to find a date for this launch or coverage here, so I'm guessing it failed.

Rocket Lab's Private Mission to Venus Delayed

Back in 2020, Rocket Lab announced plans to launch the first private mission to Venus.  While it hasn't been talked about - not just "not much", but "not at all" that I can vouch for - the mission has apparently slipped from it's original launch goal until 2025 as noted in a report in Space.com today.  If it had been being prepped we would have known by now because the launch was to have been last month. 

The reason appears to be that they're just too busy with their increasing launch cadence and other plans (Neutron) but that's not sure.

"Our focus right now is on delivering customer missions as a priority," a Rocket Lab spokesperson told the website, without offering a detailed explanation for the delay. January 2025 was the original backup launch window for the Venus probe, according to the MIT Technology Review.

The small probe (40 cm or < 16" diameter) will be propelled to Venus by a Photon upper stage, the same upper stage used to send the CAPSTONE satellite to lunar orbit after last year's June 28th launch (middle story of three here), and reaching lunar orbit in November.   It would take five months to make the trip to Venus with the Photon stage, coincidentally virtually the same amount of time as CAPSTONE took to reach its Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit around the moon.  After all that time and effort to get to Venus, the small probe will have just five minutes left to live as it hunts for life. 

In 2020, researchers discovered signs of phosphine in the clouds of Venus. This created quite a stir, because here on Earth, this colorless, flammable toxic compound is found in swamps and other locations as a byproduct of microbial life. 
...
The purported Venus phosphine find — a claim that remains disputed today — helped renew scientific interest in the second planet from the sun. For example, NASA is developing two Venus missions, DAVINCI and VERITAS, set to launch in the late 2020s and early 2030s.

I should probably note that in addition to arriving at Venus five years or more before those NASA probes, it will be much cheaper than the NASA probes. The mission is funded by Rocket Lab, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and undisclosed philanthropists; estimated to cost just $10 million. This is just 1% of the estimated combined cost for both of NASA's coming Venus missions.  

The probe won't be searching for phosphine, but for other complex organic molecules, measuring their composition, concentration and shapes during its descent through the nightmarish Venusian temperatures.  Data will be sent back to Earth during the descent through the atmosphere.  The probe won't live long in the Venusian environment but is being designed to transmit all the information it can gather. 

Artist's illustration of Rocket Lab's planned Venus probe approaching the planet. The probe is the lighter colored, conical-looking portion in the middle of what appears to be solar panels. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)

Rocket Lab Announced New Hypersonic Testing Program

I happened upon an interesting development while trying to look up information on a recent Rocket Lab mission that I thought must have happened.  The company announced a new program called HASTE (the Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron).  It will provide a suborbital testbed launch vehicle based on Rocket Lab’s well-established Electron rocket. HASTE is intended to provide reliable, high-cadence flight test opportunities needed to advance hypersonic system technology development, with the inaugural launch scheduled to take place in the first half of 2023 for a customer "who shall not be named."  

As that statement leads with, the launch vehicle is essentially their Electron.  It will use the same first and second stages, but it has a modified kick stage that will allow Electron to deploy payloads with a mass of up to 700 kg/1,540 lbs into hypersonic trajectories at five times greater than the speed of sound.  The Electron is limited to putting about half of that, 300 kg, into low Earth orbit; reinforcing that this will be hypersonic, point-to-point tests and not going into orbit. 

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, said, 

"We can do lots of interesting things with throttles and shutdowns and really tailor starting points of trajectories super accurately." ... "The whole purpose of this is a high-cadence flight capability. We all know that China and Russia and others have been doing lots of flights and generating lots of data and really advancing the field in hypersonics. The key to advancing the field here in the United States is to do lots of flights."

It appears these flights will be from their facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.  Beck was reluctant to talk about how many missions they intend to launch this year and per year, but since the commonality with the Electron is so high, it's likely that this will help them increase the launch cadence on their only real launch vehicle (for the moment).  Knowledge is likely to flow back and forth between the HASTE flights and orbital flights of the Electron.  The biggest unknown for this application affects the upper kick stage, because traveling at hypersonic speeds in the atmosphere will generate more heat on that upper stage than they see in space.

“Rocket Lab has a strong track record of delivering tailored and reliable space capabilities for the civil space and national security communities across launch and space systems and HASTE is an extension of this,” says Brian Rogers, Senior Director – Global Launch Services. “Hypersonic and suborbital test capabilities are key priorities for the nation, yet the DoD’s ability to test these systems has been limited. With HASTE, we’ve taken a proven vehicle in Electron and tailored it specifically to deliver highly capable, frequent, and cost-effective hypersonic and suborbital test opportunities from our existing launch site in Virginia. Importantly, HASTE is not the promise of a future capability – it's a completed launch vehicle ready for flight now, with the first one currently preparing for launch at our Integration and Control Facility in Wallops, Virginia, in the coming months.”

Rocket Lab USA Image

It's a bit sobering to think that with nine launches last year and a goal of 15 for this year.  Rocket Lab now flies more boosters than any other company in the world besides SpaceX.  (Last year SpaceX launched 61 missions and the goal for this year is 100.)  That obviously makes Rocket Lab one of the most successful launch companies in the world.  Rocket Lab's cadence has surpassed United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and other major players.  They've seen the industry grow bigger and smaller as they've grown.  Vector and Virgin Orbit have both entered bankruptcy, while Astra and Relativity Space have abandoned smaller launch vehicles to pursue the payload class of the Falcon 9.  As Rocket Lab itself has done with their planned Neutron.  

While HASTE is a big win for Rocket Lab, it's also a big test.  Can they manage the launch cadence of HASTE without causing problems for the Electron side?  Can they manage both of those and continue development of Neutron?  Will the end of next year have SpaceX and Rocket Lab on the top of a pile of launch providers or will "The Big 2" thoroughly dominate the industry?  What about the ULA Vulcan and the Blue Origin New Glenn?  Don't run out of popcorn!

Relativity to Move On to Terran R

Those who watched the Terran-1 first flight that never made it to orbit, the "successful failure," have witnessed the only flight of Terran-1 there will ever be.   

Relativity Space has announced they are proceeding into development of the larger Terran-R, and they're saying it's going to be bigger than they talked about before.  

(I clipped off the time tag, but Twitter says it was posted at 10:20 AM Wednesday - I assume EDT)

Of course, there's that tiny, minor matter of the failure that kept the second stage from firing properly and the first mission from making orbit.  CEO Tim Ellis says that they're not done with their failure analysis but their understanding is improving.  

(W)hen the Aeon engine's main valves were commanded to open, they opened slower than expected. There was also a problem with the oxygen pump, likely due to a "vapor bubble" at its inlet. As a result of all this, the engine's gas generator did not light, and the engine never reached full power.

The second stage would continue to climb along its (now) free-parabolic trajectory, reaching a max height of 134 km before falling back into the Atlantic.  On the whole, though, the company feels good about their first attempt.  After all, they did better than some other companies have done on their first flight, and among their most important goals was to demonstrate the 3D printed rocket could handle all the stresses it would be expected to, which it clearly did.  

So Relativity is dropping any work on the smaller vehicle and moving to the Terran R. Not only that, but they're increasing the size and payload capacity of the Terran R compared to earlier specs.  

• The first stage will be fully reusable with a rated life of 20 missions.  The second stage will be expendable "for now." 
  
• It will be capable of 23.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. Additionally, an expendable version of the Terran R rocket will carry 33.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. The Falcon 9 is rated for 22.8 metric tons to LEO, but in both cases, the actual payloads depend on the desired orbit.  One number doesn't fit all. 
• Falcon Heavy is rated 63.8 metric tons to LEO. 
• Terran R will be powered by 13 Aeon engines. This corresponds to 3.35 million pounds of thrust. This puts it solidly between Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, which has 3.85 million pounds, and the version of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket with four strap-on, solid rocket boosters at 3.1 million pounds of thrust.
• Relativity is dropping the idea of additively manufacturing the entire Terran R rocket. Ellis said the Terran R will still be a "3D printed rocket," but initial versions (at least) will use aluminum alloy straight-section barrels, in response to "overwhelming market demand" for a vehicle of this size.  
• First stage reuse plans look like SpaceX.  The returning boosters will combine grid fins and using different numbers of engines at different times during the return arc.  They'll land on a drone ship off the SE US coast and be refurbished at facilities on Cape Canaveral.
  

This is a major undertaking and while Relativity looks to be well-positioned for it, there's no guarantee, of course.  Relativity has more than $1.3 billion in fundraising, a large factory in Southern California, an engine test site at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, and facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.  It has a staff of about 1,000 people.  In addition, they have a customer backlog of $1.65 billion in launch service agreements and an additional $3.68 billion in the customer pipeline.    

The negative side of this is delaying the first launch of the new Terran R to 2026, from the aspirational date of 2024 they've talked about before.

It's impressive to me that a company as young as Relativity Space can be credibly recognized as likely to accomplish this.  NASA and commercial satellite customers have voiced wanting a second company to step forward and challenge SpaceX on innovation, price, and reliability.  Tim Ellis correctly sees that this lane remains open with questions about Vulcan's long-term future, Blue Origin's slow movement on New Glenn, and Rocket Lab's focus on a smaller medium-lift rocket, Neutron.

Relativity graphic showing the features of Terran.

Weekly Small Space News Story Roundup 3

Arianespace chief plans on rapid Ariane 6 ramp-up

Arianespace had a rough time in 2022. Among the issues they dealt with were the sudden loss of cooperation with Russia for launches via the Soyuz vehicle, the December Vega C launch failure when the second stage failed, dooming the mission, and further delays in readying the Ariane 6 rocket for launch. In a paywalled op-ed published in the French publication Les Echos, Arianespace President Stéphane Israël defended the European launch company saying it would be wrong to criticize them. 

That's a lot to ask ... Rather, he argues that better times are coming for the European launch industry, noting in particular that the Ariane 6 vehicle had won a "historic" contract for 18 of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite launches. To meet this demand, he says, Arianespace plans to be launching a dozen Ariane 6 rockets a year by 2025. This ramp-up is "essential" Israël said. It may indeed be essential, but launching an Ariane 6 rocket a month in 2025, with the booster unlikely to make its debut before early 2024, seems almost like magical thinking.

What's all this NSSL Phase 3 stuff, anyway?

A gold rush.  

The US military recently released a rather mundane-sounding document titled "National Security Space Launch Phase 3 DRAFT Request for Proposals #1." That may be a mouthful of jargon, but it's still a rather consequential document. Effectively, its release is the starting gun for the next round of launch contracts for US spy satellites, secure communications satellites, and more.

The US military issues these requests for proposals from time to time.  Proposals for launch contracts worth billions of dollars—substantially more than $10 billion—as the military seeks to secure launch deals for the late 2020s and early 2030s.  

The bottom line could be that they're finally getting serious about commercial space.  

In 2012, after SpaceX had already successfully flown the Falcon 9 four times, the military nonetheless awarded a block-buy contract exclusively to United Launch Alliance. Commercial launch startup be damned, the Department of Defense stuck with its monopoly.

As the Falcon 9 continued to fly, with prices substantially undercutting United Launch Alliance, this decision came to look pretty silly. So a few years later, the program was modified to allow SpaceX to win a few of these military contracts.

 Blue Origin and Northrup Grumman were told "thanks for playing; try again later." 

The Phase 3 contract is subdivided into subcategories such as Lanes 1, 2 and more.  Lane 1 is for smaller, less critical payloads.

... about 30 "Lane 1" missions will be awarded during a five-year period from fiscal year 2025 to 2029. These satellites will mostly fly into low-Earth orbit, and the missions are more "risk tolerant," meaning that if the rocket blows up and the satellite is lost, it will not have a hugely adverse effect on the military's operations.
...

The goal is to provide an opportunity for companies developing new medium-lift rockets to enter the competition. This includes Rocket Lab (with its Neutron rocket), Relativity Space (with its Terran R vehicle), and ABL Space (which has not named or announced a vehicle), Pentecost said. Companies with larger launch vehicles, like United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, and Blue Origin, are also eligible to compete in Lane 1. There likely will be many potential providers. Pentecost said 27 companies signed up for an "industry day" on February 28 to discuss this opportunity.

Lane 2 is the more traditional procurement strategy. About 40 missions will be awarded during a five-year period beginning in 2025. These are payloads that require the greatest capabilities from launch providers: the ability to deal with difficult orbits, secure rooms for pre-launch processing, and heavier lift capabilities.  Space Systems Command will select only two companies for this lane, which will split the mission awards in a 60-40 ratio; the way the current split between ULA (60) and SpaceX is currently built.  

There are lots of interesting side aspects to this and anyone interested should read the whole thing.  For one, the launch systems don't have to actually have been certified to any required "reference orbits" or not even actually flying.  They simply need to have agreed to complete the certification processes before they're eligible to fly those national security payloads.  That leaves room for companies like Blue Origin.  Space Systems Command expects to issue a "final" request for proposals in the third quarter of 2023 and then announce its two "Lane 2" awardees during the summer of 2024. It's entirely possible, even likely, that New Glenn will not have flown yet when this decision is made.

Perhaps the most interesting little bit is a report that Boeing will propose to use the Space Launch System - SLS.  

No, wait, they're serious ... "We believe the proven SLS capabilities can be an asset for the ... [NSSL] Phase 3 contract," the company told Klotz. While I applaud Boeing's ambition, it is difficult to see the SLS rocket being seriously considered in an open competition. Its price (probably above $2 billion) will easily be five times, or even 10 times that of the rockets it is competing against, and, with a low flight rate, it is unlikely to answer the military's priorities for schedule and reliability.

A Falcon Heavy rocket launches the USSF-67 mission for the US Space Force this past January (2023).  SpaceX photo.

ABL Fails on 1st Orbital Launch Attempt

Tuesday afternoon at 2:27 PM local time (6:27 PM EST), smallsat launcher ABL Space failed in its first attempt to put its RS1 rocket into orbit.  More than that, it was the first launch of their RS1.  In my "Top US Launch Companies" on Monday, Jan. 2nd, I rated them at #9 and said,

Back in August, I reported on speculation ABL would attempt to join the "one metric ton to orbit" club with a launch in early September.  Three months later they still haven't completed that launch and are now talking about a new launch window on January 9th.  Frankly, this launch is getting to the point where it needs to happen. 

I was able to start to watch their launch coverage on YouTube last night but just as coverage was about to start, they added a 75 minute delay, eventually canceling their attempt.  Space.com (first link above) said the launch was not livestreamed today.  

"After liftoff, RS1 experienced an anomaly and shut down prematurely. The team is working through our anomaly response procedures in coordination with PSCA and the FAA," ABL said via Twitter  23 minutes after liftoff. (The acronyms refer to the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.)

"This is not the outcome we were hoping for today, but one that we prepared for. We'll revert with additional information when available. Thanks to all for the support," the company added in another tweet.

I've written several times about the One (metric) Ton to orbit race, and ABL has always figured prominently as a contender.  (For clarity, one metric ton is 1000 kg, which works out to be about 2204 lb.s US) I always thought this was between Relativity, Firefly and ABL.  The race centers on the ability to launch small payloads on ridesharing missions at the lowest costs for the small colleges and companies that need to put something into orbit.  

Rocket Lab is currently the leader in small rocket launches, with over 30 successful missions of their Electron rocket; but the Electron's payload isn't in the one ton class; it can only launch about 300kg.  Their Neutron rocket, which can lift eight metric tons, is still primarily on the drawing boards.  ABL's RS1 should be capable of launching up to 1.35 metric tons, (1350 kg or 2,975 pounds) of payload to LEO.

The RS1 on ABL's test stand on Kodiak Island, Alaska on Nov. 14, 2022.  ABL Space Photo.

ABL is not likely to be in dire financial straits because of this.  In 2021 the company signed a deal with Lockheed Martin for up to 58 missions through 2029.  I can't imagine Lock-Mart would sign a deal without a way out if ABL can't make their system work, but I also can't imagine that a company that has been around and in aerospace as long as the various parts of Lock-Mart have been would cancel the contract over failure of one mission.  First attempts at orbit generally don't make it. 

Rocket Lab CEO on Their Launch Cadence

Too depressing a day in the news.  I need something optimistic.  

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck talked about their launch cadence in a recent interview, and while they could launch faster, they spend more time waiting on customer's payloads to go much beyond their current 10-15 launches per year for the foreseeable future.  Their Electron booster just tied its record for successful launches in one year with August 4th's launch for the National Reconnaissance Office, NROL-199, at six launches.  

It has been a positive year for Electron.  In addition to tying the record, on June 28th, Rocket Lab successfully launched NASA's CAPSTONE project (middle part of this article).  This mission  demonstrated that a small rocket could launch a deep space mission and proved out the capability of the company's Photon satellite bus for complex in-space operations.  

Rocket Lab has been successful, and like 99.99% of all big successes, it has been delivered by tons of hard work.  Beck said these successes and the higher cadence, were possible because of "mature" processes now in place at Rocket Lab and the experience gained over the previous five years.  Developing repeatable ways of manufacturing high quality products is what manufacturing engineering is all about.

Building the first couple of rockets for any launch business is an all-hands-on-deck effort, with engineers and managers closely following the rocket down the production line. Now, Beck said, Electrons are built by technicians with a set of work instructions. "We invested a tremendous amount in all of the systems and processes to be able to do that," Beck said. "All of our production systems are really mature."

Rocket Lab is now ready whenever its customers are, Beck said. With its existing workforce, the company can build an Electron launch vehicle every 18 days. It has two launch pads and three clean rooms for pre-launch processing, and it holds two rockets at its New Zealand launch site at all times. Because of its vertical integration efforts, more than 80 percent of an Electron is built in-house, leaving its production less vulnerable to supply chain issues. "Because you are a dedicated service, you're offering a premium service such that you go when the customer is ready," Beck said.

Beck continued on to say that they expect to fly 10 to 15 launches this year.  In terms of numbers of launches that will make them second in the Western world behind SpaceX. Being a small satellite launcher, though, their total tonnage to space will be behind bigger companies like United Launch Alliance and Arianespace. 

Their facility in New Zealand can launch an Electron once a week.  15 launches/year is one every 3-1/2 weeks.  10 launches/year is one every 5-1/4 weeks.

"The reality is that we built everything to be able to launch once a week," Beck said. "Everything in the factory is designed to be able to process and push through one rocket a week. So from an infrastructure perspective, we can do that. And from a system's perspective, we can do that. It would just require a larger workforce. But the reality is that it's the market that's the driver. For us, our cadence today is 100 percent driven by market demand."

August 4th launch of the NRO payload - Rocket Lab photo.

The problem that Beck describes is that the small satellite launcher business just isn't there.  There aren't enough payloads to support the capacity that the newborn industry expected.  Beck is saying they have the hardware infrastructure to do a launch a week instead of their current, slower cadence.  To increase it, "all they'd really need to do" is add more workers.  It's just that the demand for launches isn't there.  We just read that Astra is aiming for the same market, or put another way, aiming to take at least some of Rocket Lab's business.  

Some commentators have been saying for a couple of years that the small launch business is headed for some sort of thinning of the herd.  This is more evidence.  

That's one reason Beck is pushing for the development of their Neutron rocket.  Neutron is the successor to Electron that's capable of delivering 8 metric tons to low Earth orbit with a fully reusable first stage. That's the direction the market, driven by megaconstellations, is moving toward.

Rocket Lab calls Neutrons fairings and their upper stage deployment system the "Hungry Hippo" fairing and once you've seen that, you can't unsee the little kids' game.

In addition, Rocket Lab continues to work on recovering the Electron boosters, as you might recall from May.  The helicopter pilot briefly captured the first stage but then released, saying the recovered booster didn't feel like any of the practice missions.  Rocket Lab still fished the booster out of the water and Beck said they found it to be in the best condition of any previously recovered first stage.