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Transcript
Chapter 1: Industry Update Introduction
In this week’s Avid Space Flight Industry Update, SpaceX’s Falcon program joined in on the action for a huge week with several marquee missions. Elsewhere, Blue Origin is making progress toward not just returning to flight, but also towards a great new Glenn launch cadence in their near future. And Rocket Lab continues to leverage their tried and true Electron rocket to keep growing their already booming business. So, let’s dig in and take a closer look.
Chapter 2: SpaceX Mission Recap
Starting off this week with what turned out to be a pretty busy weekend for SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets. The first mission launched on Saturday morning from Space Launch Complex 4E at the Vandenberg Space Force Base. Booster 1100 lofted a classified payload for the Space Force on its way to low Earth orbit before the rocket touched back down on Of Course I Still Love You, successfully completing its 10th mission.
On Tuesday, we learned that SpaceX’s recovery vessel Doug has now arrived at the port of Long Beach in California. With East Coast Falcon 9 launches now reduced, the ship was sent to the West Coast for fairing recovery and other marine support needed in the Pacific Ocean.
A very busy Wednesday for SpaceX started late that morning from Space Launch Complex 40. Booster 1101 lifted off on its third mission as it carried NASA’s Crew 13 members to space for a rendezvous with the International Space Station. And just minutes later, the rocket returned to the pad as it came in for a landing at the relatively new landing zone at the site. Meanwhile, the two NASA astronauts, one Canadian astronaut, and one Russian cosmonaut aboard Dragon capsule Grace continued onward to orbit.
Just under 8 hours after launch, Crew 13 docked with the ISS, setting the record for the quickest an American craft has ever rendezvoused with the station and beating the previous record by over 4 and 1/2 hours. A little over 3 hours later, booster 1082 blasted off on its 25th mission as it launched the Transporter 18 mission from Vandenberg, part of SpaceX’s small sat ride share program. The mission delivered 130 payloads to sun-synchronous orbit.
After stage separation, the first stage performed a boost back to put it on a trajectory back to Vandenberg where it touched down on landing zone 4. In preparation for the week’s final mission on Tuesday evening, SpaceX rolled a Falcon Heavy out to the pad at historic launch complex 39A where it was raised vertical. Then late on Wednesday night and just over 12 hours after the day’s first Falcon launch, 27 Merlin 1D engines lit and the rocket left Florida behind.
The powerful rocket carried a classified payload to an unspecified orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office. The two side boosters both returned to the Space Coast following separation, landing down the coast at landing zones one and two, while the core stage was expended on this mission. With the landing of the side boosters, SpaceX had landed rockets at all four of its Falcon landing zones in just a little over 12 hours.
This was not only a first for the company, but it was also likely the last time this will be possible, as landing zone 1 is expected to be taken out of service with the conclusion of this landing. In other space news, Jonathan McDow posted on Saturday that the Link spacecraft has now deorbited over the South Pacific.
Chapter 3: Blue Origin Progress
Link’s mission failed recently after issues with its control systems. The company attempted to salvage the mission to reorbit NASA’s Swift Observatory, but ultimately was not able to complete their objectives. On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a draft environmental assessment for an increase in the launch cadence for Blue Origin’s new Glenn rocket. The company is seeking to more than quadruple their allowed number of annual launches, increasing from 12 to 50. That same day, Blue Origin also posted that they’ve begun restacking the vehicle access tower at launch complex 36. The first rebuilt module has been lifted back into position, now with two added floors, cryo control hardware, and environmental control system piping. There are five remaining sections to stack as the company works toward a return to flight. Finishing up a busy news day for the company, it was announced the new in-development New Glenn 9x4 variant has been added to NASA’s launch services contract, allowing Blue Origin to compete for more missions with the space agency using this larger and more powerful version of New Glenn.
Chapter 4: Blue Ring and NASA Updates
On Friday, Tory Bruno posted that Blue Origin teams have completed another successful Blue Ring mission simulated mission. The company continues to work on the spacecraft support system as they look to get it operational in the near future. NASA posted on Tuesday that the final fueled segments of the side boosters for the Artemis 3 mission have now been stacked inside the vehicle assembly building at the Cape. The agency also shared several photographs of the now stacked boosters inside the massive facility. They followed this up the next day with a new post showing that the new nose cones for the boosters had since been added, bringing the solid fuel rockets up to their full height.
Chapter 5: Rocket Lab Commercial Growth
On Wednesday, Rocket Lab announced a new contract with Sinspective. Just last week, Rocket Lab launched their 13th mission for the Earth observation satellite operator, and now they have reached an agreement to add another 20 missions to the already existing docket. This is the largest commercial contract to date for the company and will bring their total number of Sinspective launches up to a whopping 47. Avid’s own Joshua C stopped by Rocket Lab’s facilities in Middle River, Maryland again this week and brought us new photos of the mystery article under construction near the structural test stand. Since we last saw it, an arch tent has been added on top and the enclosed sides have been wrapped in a white tarp. We’ll keep checking in, but so far the purpose of this box is still a mystery. If you guys have any ideas of what you think it is, let us know what you think in the comments below.
Chapter 6: Facility and Infrastructure
And finally for this week, at the Crew 13 post-launch press conference on Wednesday, we learned a bit of interesting Starship information from SpaceX and NASA. The construction of the Starship infrastructure at launch complex 39A is now largely complete with teams working through acceptance testing to get the pad online. We also learned that the current plan is for the Artemis 3 Starship to launch from 39A with tankers launching from both Starbase and the Cape to support it. Well, that’s going to do it for this week’s Avid Spaceflight Industry update, but make sure you tune in on Sunday for our upcoming Starship and Starbase update. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next week.
