Spirit was initially spun out from Boeing Commercial Airplanes in 2005, and Boeing had planned to keep it that way. Last year, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun sought to dispel rumors that Boeing might reacquire Spirit as federal regulators launched investigations into both companies. But now Calhoun appears to be “softening that stance,” the WSJ reported.
According to the WSJ’s sources, no deal has formed yet, but Spirit has initiated talks with Boeing and “hired bankers to explore strategic options.” Sources also confirmed that Spirit is weighing whether to sell its operations in Ireland, which manufactures parts for Boeing rival Airbus.
Perhaps paving the way for these talks, Spirit replaced its CEO last fall with a former Boeing executive, Patrick Shanahan. In a press release noting that Spirit relies “on Boeing for a significant portion of our revenues,” Spirit touted Shanahan as a “seasoned executive” with 31 years at Boeing, and Shanahan promised to “stabilize” Spirit’s operations.
If Boeing reacquired Spirit, it might help reduce backlash over Boeing outsourcing manufacturing of its planes, but it likely wouldn’t help Boeing escape the ongoing scrutiny. While the WSJ reported that “Spirit parts frequently arrive” at the Boeing factory “with defects,” it was “a snafu at Boeing’s factory” that led Alaska Airlines to ground 65 Boeing aircraft over safety concerns after a mid-aircraft door detached mid-flight, endangering passengers and crew.
Sources later revealed that it was Boeing employees who failed to put bolts back in when they reinstalled a door plug, reportedly causing the malfunction that forced Alaska Airlines to make an emergency landing. As a result, Boeing withdrew from a safety exemption that it had requested “to prematurely allow the 737 Max 7 to enter commercial service.” At that time, US Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) accused Boeing of a “bold-face attempt to put profits over the safety of the flying public.”
Purchasing Spirit would appear to be a last resort for Boeing, the WSJ reported, noting that so far, “Boeing has done everything short of acquiring Spirit in an effort to gain control over the supplier.”
But Reuters confirmed the WSJ’s report with an industry source, so it seems like perhaps Boeing increasingly feels it has no other options left despite working closely with Shanahan for the past few months to keep Spirit’s troubles from impacting Boeing’s bottom line. One industry source told Reuters that in the time since Boeing spun off Spirit, “the optics of buying at a higher price were among the factors that discouraged such a move.”
For Spirit, which attributes nearly two-thirds of its revenues to Boeing, the WSJ reported, being brought back into the Boeing fold could be the only way to survive these turbulent times. Currently valued at about $3.3 billion, Spirit has struggled for months to shore up a commercial agreement with Airbus and notably failed to stabilize after receiving a “$100 million cash infusion from Boeing” last year, the WSJ reported.
But for Boeing, the obvious downside of the purchase would be taking on Spirit’s mess at the same time Boeing is trying to clean up its own image.
Enlarge/ The first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test.
United Launch Alliance
Welcome to Edition 6.32 of the Rocket Report! I’m writing the report again this week as Eric Berger is in Washington, DC, to receive a well-earned honor, the 2024 Excellence in Commercial Space Journalism Award from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Cape Canaveral is the world’s busiest spaceport, and this week, three leading US launch companies were active there. SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and a few miles away, Blue Origin raised a New Glenn rocket on its launch pad for long-awaited ground testing. Nearby, United Launch Alliance began assembling an Atlas V rocket for the first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in April. 2024 is shaping up to be a truly exciting year for the spaceflight community.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Astroscale inspector satellite launched by Rocket Lab. Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, has launched a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space, Ars reports. This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit on February 18 by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm’s reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).
This is a first … Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission is the first satellite designed to approach and inspect a piece of space junk in orbit. This is a public-private partnership between Astroscale and the Japanese space agency. Of course, space agencies and commercial companies have demonstrated rendezvous operations in orbit for decades. The difference here is the H-IIA rocket is uncontrolled, likely spinning and in a slow tumble, and was never designed to accommodate any visitors. Japan left it in orbit in January 2009 following the launch of a climate monitoring satellite and didn’t look back. ADRAS-J is a technology demonstration that could pave the way for a follow-on mission to actually link up with this H-IIA rocket and remove it from orbit. Astroscale eventually wants to use these technologies for satellite servicing, refueling, and further debris removal missions. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)
Software error blamed for Firefly launch malfunction. Firefly Aerospace released an update Tuesday on an investigation into an upper stage malfunction on the company’s Alpha rocket in December. The investigation team, consisting of membership from Firefly, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the US Space Force, determined a software error in the rocket’s guidance, navigation, and control software algorithm ultimately caused the Alpha rocket to release its payload into a lower-than-planned orbit following a launch from California.
Upper stage woes… The software error prevented the rocket from sending the “necessary pulse commands” to control thrusters on the upper stage before its main engine was supposed to reignite. This second burn by the upper stage was supposed to circularize the rocket’s orbit, but it didn’t happen as planned. Still, the Alpha rocket safely released its commercial satellite payload for Lockheed Martin. Although the lower orbit caused the satellite to reenter the atmosphere earlier this month, Lockheed Martin said it was able to achieve many of the objectives of the technology demonstration mission, which focused on testing an electronically steered antenna. This was the fourth launch of an Alpha rocket, and two of them have suffered from upper stage malfunctions during engine restart attempts. Firefly says it is preparing the next Alpha rocket to fly “in the coming months.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)
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A good fundraising round for Gilmour Space. Australian startup Gilmour Space Technologies has raised $55 million Australian dollars ($36 million) in a Series D funding round announced Monday, Space News reports. The funding supports the small launch vehicle startup’s campaign to manufacture, test, and begin launching rockets and satellites from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland. Gilmour Space, founded in 2012, is developing a three-stage rocket called Eris. The first Eris test flight is expected “in the coming months, pending launch approvals from the Australian Space Agency,” according to the Gilmour Space news release.
Launching from down under… Gilmour Space is aiming to launch the first Australian-built rocket into orbit later this year. The Eris rocket is powered by hybrid engines, and Gilmour says it is capable of delivering about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. The $36 million fundraising round announced this week follows a $46 million fundraising round in 2021. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gilmour Space is aiming for the first flight of Eris in April, and this latest fundraising should give the company enough money to mount four test flights. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Enlarge/ A hole is covered where a door plug blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane used by Alaska Airlines.
Getty Images
Boeing is withdrawing an application for a safety exemption related to its 737 Max 7 aircraft as more details emerge on the cause of a near-disaster involving a 737 Max 9 plane used by Alaska Airlines.
While initial inspections of Alaska Airlines’ fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9s turned up “many” loose bolts, a Wall Street Journal report yesterday said it now appears that “bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing’s factory.”
“Boeing and other industry officials increasingly believe the plane maker’s employees failed to put back the bolts when they reinstalled a 737 Max 9 [door plug] after opening or removing it during production, according to people familiar with the matter,” the article said.
In the incident on January 5, a Boeing 737 Max 9 lost a passenger door plug while in flight, causing decompression of the passenger cabin and forcing an emergency landing (a door plug is used instead of an emergency exit door in some planes). The Federal Aviation Administration subsequently grounded 171 Boeing planes and informed Boeing that the agency “will not grant any production expansion of the Max, including the 737-9 Max.”
737 Max 7 application withdrawn
With the 737 Max 9 investigation continuing, Boeing confirmed this week that it withdrew an application for a safety exemption for the 737 Max 7. Boeing was facing pressure from US Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who chairs a subcommittee on aviation safety and operations. Duckworth last week urged the FAA to reject Boeing’s request for “an exemption from safety standards to prematurely allow the 737 Max 7 to enter commercial service.”
“The exemption Boeing seeks involves an anti-ice system that can overheat and cause the engine nacelle to break apart and fall off,” Duckworth wrote. “This could generate fuselage-penetrating debris, which could endanger passengers in window seats behind the wing and/or result in a loss of control of the aircraft.”
Even though a permanent fix is not expected until 2026, Boeing “is asking the FAA to allow the Max 7 to fly with merely a warning to flight crews to remember to manually turn off the anti-ice system when the aircraft emerges from icy conditions,” Duckworth wrote. “This is a request for the FAA to certify a commercial aircraft with a single point of failure subject to human error with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
In a statement provided to Ars and other media outlets, Boeing said it is withdrawing the request for an exemption. “We have informed the FAA that we are withdrawing our request for a time-limited exemption relating to the engine inlet deicing system on the 737-7,” Boeing said. “While we are confident that the proposed time-limited exemption for that system follows established FAA processes to ensure safe operation, we will instead incorporate an engineering solution that will be completed during the certification process.
“As always, the FAA will determine the timing of certification and we will follow their lead every step of the way,” Boeing added. “We’re committed to being transparent, listening to all our stakeholders and taking action to strengthen safety and quality at Boeing.”
Duckworth also met Thursday with Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun. “After this bold-face attempt to put profits over the safety of the flying public with the Max 7 and this month’s horrific Alaska Airlines incident aboard the Max 9, I am as committed as ever to doing everything I can to ensure Boeing aircraft meet all safety standards—and I made that clear in today’s meeting,” Duckworth said.
Details suggest missing bolts on Max 9
The Wall Street Journal report about the Max 9 investigation said that an “apparent absence of markings” on the door plug is one factor suggesting that bolts were missing when the plane left Boeing’s factory. The WSJ said its sources “also pointed to paperwork and process lapses at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory.”
“The National Transportation Safety Board has been conducting metallurgical analysis of the [door plug] but hasn’t released the results of the testing. Laboratory tests might show whether the bolts were in place or not there at all,” the article said.
When contacted by Ars today, the NTSB said the agency’s preliminary report is slated to be released on Wednesday and “will include all of the factual information that we have developed at this point in the investigation.” (Update at 3: 38pm ET: The NTSB now says the report will not be issued on Wednesday, and a new date for its release has not been set.)
Boeing said it was unable to comment on the probe because “only the US National Transportation Safety Board can release information about the investigation.”
Enlarge/ The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282, discovered by Seanathan Bates under a bush on the side of the road.
On Sunday, game developer Seanathan Bates discovered a working iPhone that fell 16,000 from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday. Flight 1282 suffered an explosive decompression event when a door plug blew off the plane. No one was injured during the incident. The iPhone wasn’t injured, either—still unlocked and with a torn charging cable connector plugged in, it appeared largely undamaged and displayed information that matched the flight.
“Found an iPhone on the side of the road,” wrote Bates in a post on X. “Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!”
Enlarge/ The discovery location of the iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282.
After the discovery, Bates contacted the NTSB, who took possession of the device and told him the iPhone was actually the second phone that had been found from the flight. During a press conference on Sunday, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendyconfirmed that two people had discovered cell phones that fell from flight 1281. The other cell phone was discovered in someone’s yard.
The decompression event started when a door plug used to cover an unused exit door on the Boeing 737 Max 9 unexpectedly detached from the plane. Rapid decompression can suck passengers and objects violently out of an aircraft due to air pressure differences. While no people fell out of the plane, the loose iPhone apparently got ripped away while charging. “In case you didn’t see it, there was a broken-off charger plug still inside it! Thing got *yankedout the door,” wrote Bates in his X post.
Enlarge/ The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 had a ripped charging connector still plugged into it.
iPhones surviving harrowing drops from sky-heights aren’t unheard of. In May, AppleInsider reported on a skydiver’s iPhone that survived a 14,000 fall from a plane. Given air resistance that limits an object’s descent speed and landings in a soft spot like moist dirt or mud, the survivals aren’t entirely surprising. Landing on a hard surface would likely be a different story, however.
At the time of the iPhone’s discovery, the search was still on for the missing door plug, but the plug has since been found. Compared to the apparent ease of discovering two small cell phones first, a Hacker News commenter quipped, “Boeing needs ‘Find My Door.'”
No word yet on whether the iPhone has been reunited with its owner.
United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket prepares to emerge from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
United Launch Alliance
ULA’s fully stacked Vulcan rocket is clearly visible for the first time during rollout from its vertical hangar.
Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
This version of ULA’s Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall.
Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
The Vulcan rocket was positioned on top of a mobile launch platform for the third-of-a-mile trek to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral.
For its first flight, the Vulcan rocket is emblazoned with a red flame-like insignia, a US flag, and the logos of United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic, which owns the lunar lander nestled inside the rocket’s payload fairing.
Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
The Vulcan rocket passes the halfway point on its journey to the launch pad Friday.
United Launch Alliance
Technicians gather as ULA’s Vulcan rocket nears the launch pad.
United Launch Alliance
Two “trackmobile” locomotives propelled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to the launch pad, riding along dual rail tracks.
United Launch Alliance
It took about a half-hour for the Vulcan rocket to complete its rollout to the launch pad.
Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
Liftoff is scheduled for 2: 18 am EST (07: 18 UTC) Monday.
Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket emerged from its hangar Friday for a 30-minute trek to its launch pad in Florida, finally moving into the starting blocks after a decade of development and testing.
This was the first time anyone had seen the full-size 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket in its full form. Since ULA finished assembling the rocket last month, it has been cocooned inside the scaffolding of the company’s vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
On Friday, ULA’s ground crew rolled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to its seaside launch pad. It was one of the last steps before the Vulcan rocket is cleared for liftoff Monday at 2: 18 am EST (07: 18 UTC). On Sunday afternoon, ULA engineers will gather inside a control center at Cape Canaveral to oversee an 11-hour countdown, when the Vulcan rocket will be loaded with methane, liquid hydrogen, and liquid oxygen propellants.
ULA has a 45-minute launch window to get the mission off the ground on Monday, and there is an 85 percent chance of good weather.
If the rocket doesn’t take off Monday, ULA has backup launch opportunities Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Then, the company would have to stand down until January 23, a gap in launch availability constrained by the trajectory of the Vulcan rocket’s payload. A commercial robotic Moon lander, developed by a Pennsylvania company named Astrobotic, is the primary passenger on the inaugural flight of Vulcan.
In the wild
This is a big moment for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture formed in 2006 by the merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s launch divisions. The Vulcan rocket, quite literally, is the embodiment of the company’s future, said Mark Peller, ULA’s vice president of Vulcan development. It will replace ULA’s fleet of Atlas and Delta rockets, with lineages dating back to the early years of the Space Age.
“There was an opportunity to develop a new rocket that can do everything Atlas and Delta could do, but do it with even greater performance, and taking advantage of the latest technology,” Peller said Friday. “The system that we’ve developed, and we’re about to fly, is really positioning us for a very bright, prosperous future for many, many years to come.”
Facing stiff competition from SpaceX, still an upstart in the launch business a decade ago, ULA officials decided they needed a new rocket that was cheaper to build and fly than the Atlas V and Delta IV. Ars has traced the history of Vulcan, a timeline that includes lawsuits, a change in corporate leadership, delays and setbacks, and, most recently, reports that Boeing and Lockheed Martin have put ULA up for sale.
ULA has sold dozens of Vulcan missions to the US military and Amazon for its Project Kuiper broadband network. In the military’s case, the Pentagon wants to have at least two independent launch providers capable of hauling national security satellites into orbit, so ULA has been able to count on a steady diet of government contracts.
Amazon booked launches with almost every major Western launch company besides SpaceX, its competitor in the broadband satellite business. This also ensured ULA a hefty cut of work for Amazon’s $10 billion Kuiper satellite constellation.
The Vulcan rocket “has proven to already be an extremely competitive product in the marketplace, having an order book of over 70 missions before first flight, which is really unheard of,” Peller said. “So it is the future of our company, and we’re off to a great start on a really solid trajectory with Vulcan.”
But it still needs to fly, and ULA is putting its record of 100 percent mission success on the line with the Vulcan test flight slated for Monday.
“We have very rigorously gone through a qualification of Vulcan,” Peller said. “That stretched over several years, involved rigorous testing of the components, the subsystems, and the major elements of the rocket as well as testing here at the launch site, extensive simulation using the latest tools to do everything we can to fly the rocket in simulation before we actually fly it.
“Many of the new systems that are flying on Vulcan had the benefit of being introduced on Atlas and Delta in recent years. So many of the systems that we’re flying here actually have a fair amount of flight experience under their belts,” he continued. “But … this is still the first time the vehicle has flown, and we will watch this very carefully and see what we learn from this. We’re going into this very high confidence. If there are any observations with the first flight, we’re prepared to respond and address those, and turn around quickly to fly again.”
The new rocket’s first stage is powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines from Blue Origin. While they’ve been tested on the ground countless times, these engines have never flown before.
Vulcan’s upper stage, called the Centaur V, is an upgraded twin-engine version of the single-engine upper stage that flies on the Atlas V rocket. The hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines on the Centaur upper stage are similar in design to the ones flown on every Atlas V and Delta IV rocket, but the Centaur V is much larger. One of the upgraded upper stages for Vulcan exploded during a ground test last year, forcing ULA to push back the rocket’s debut flight for months while engineers strengthened the Centaur’s stainless steel hydrogen tank.
This version of the Vulcan rocket is fitted with two strap-on solid-fueled boosters from Northrop Grumman. These are higher-thrust boosters than the strap-on rockets used on ULA’s previous rockets. In the future, Vulcan rockets will come in variants with zero, two, four, or six solid rocket boosters, allowing ULA to match the vehicle’s lift capability with each mission’s requirements.
The most powerful version of Vulcan will outlift the largest rocket in ULA’s current fleet, the Delta IV Heavy. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket can handle heavier payloads flying to low-Earth orbit and has a similar lift capability to higher-altitude orbits.
ULA’s Vulcan, though, will enter service as a fully expendable rocket. The company plans to gradually introduce an upgrade to recover and reuse the two BE-4 engines, although Peller said Friday that it will take a “few years” to begin reusing engines.
According to ULA, the initial focus is to fully certify the Vulcan rocket to launch US military satellites later this year. The first Vulcan flight, which ULA calls “Cert-1,” will be followed by a “Cert-2” mission as soon as April to launch Sierra Space’s commercial Dream Chaser spaceplane on a resupply mission to the International Space Station.
If those two launches go flawlessly, the Space Force could sign off on launching national security payloads on Vulcan in the second half of this year.
Enlarge/ SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket stands on Launch Complex 39A in Florida, hours before its scheduled liftoff with the military’s X-37B spaceplane.
Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is poised for launch as soon as Tuesday night from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the US military’s mysterious X-37B spaceplane is fastened atop the heavy-lifter for a ride into orbit.
Although the Space Force is keeping details about the military spaceplane’s flight under wraps, we know it’s heading into an unusual orbit, probably significantly higher than the X-37B’s previous sojourns that stayed within a few hundred miles of Earth’s surface.
SpaceX’s launch team called off a launch attempt Monday night “due to a ground side issue” and reset for another launch opportunity as soon as Tuesday night at 8: 14pm EST (01: 14 UTC). When it lifts off, the Falcon Heavy will light 27 kerosene-fueled engines to power the rocket off its launch pad overlooking the Atlantic coastline.
The exact altitude the X-37B will be flying through is unclear, but hobbyists and amateur sleuths who use open source information to reconstruct trajectories of top-secret military spacecraft suggest the Falcon Heavy will haul the winged vehicle into an orbit that could stretch tens of thousands of miles above the planet.
What’s more, the Falcon Heavy will apparently take a flight path toward the northeast from Florida’s Space Coast, then ultimately release the X-37B on a trajectory that will take it over Earth’s polar regions. This is a significant departure from the flight profile for the military spaceplane’s six previous missions, which all flew to space on smaller rockets than the Falcon Heavy.
In a statement, the Space Force said this flight of the X-37B is focused on “a wide range of test and experimentation objectives.” Flying in “new orbital regimes” is among the test objectives, military officials said.
“It seems to me like it might be a much higher orbit that it’s going to,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, which promotes sustainable and peaceful uses of outer space. “Otherwise, I don’t know why they would use a Falcon Heavy, which is a pretty big thing.”
Covering more ground
The X-37B spaceplane has attracted a lot of attention and speculation since its first mission in 2010. Across multiple administrations, Pentagon officials have consistently walked a narrow line between acknowledging the existence of the spaceplane, and divulging limited information about its general purpose, while treating some details with the utmost secrecy. The military does not talk about where in space it flies. With a few exceptions, defense officials haven’t publicly discussed specifics of what the X-37B carries into orbit.
The military has two Boeing-built X-37B spaceplanes, or Orbital Test Vehicles, in its inventory. They are reusable and designed to launch inside the payload fairing of a conventional rocket, spend multiple years in space with the use of solar power, and then return to Earth for a landing on a three-mile-long runway, either at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California or at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It resembles a miniature version of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiter, with wings, deployable landing gear, and black thermal protection tiles to shield its belly from the scorching heat of reentry. It measures 29 feet (about 9 meters) long, roughly a quarter of the length of NASA’s space shuttle, and it doesn’t carry astronauts. The X-37B has a cargo bay inside the fuselage for payloads, with doors that open after launch and close before landing.
The Space Force made a surprise announcement on November 8 that the next flight of the X-37B, sometimes called OTV-7, would launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. All six of the spaceplane’s past flights launched on smaller rockets, either United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V or SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
