Enlarge/ SpaceX’s 10th Falcon Heavy rocket climbs into orbit with a new US government weather satellite.
Welcome to Edition 6.50 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX launched its 10th Falcon Heavy rocket this week with the GOES-U weather satellite for NOAA, and this one was a beauty. The late afternoon timing of the launch and atmospheric conditions made for great photography. Falcon Heavy has become a trusted rocket for the US government, and its next flight in October will deploy NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on the way to explore one of Jupiter’s enigmatic icy moons.
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.
Sir Peter Beck dishes on launch business. Ars spoke with the recently knighted Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, on where his scrappy company fits in a global launch marketplace dominated by SpaceX. Rocket Lab racked up the third-most number of orbital launches by any US launch company (it’s headquartered in California but primarily assembles and launches rockets in New Zealand). SpaceX’s rideshare launch business with the Falcon 9 rocket is putting immense pressure on small launch companies like Rocket Lab. However, Beck argues his Electron rocket is a bespoke solution for customers desiring to put their satellite in a specific place at a specific time, a luxury they can’t count on with a SpaceX rideshare.
Ruthlessly efficient … A word that Beck returned to throughout his interview with Ars was “ruthless.” He said Rocket Lab’s success is a result of the company being “ruthlessly efficient and not making mistakes.” At one time, Rocket Lab was up against Virgin Orbit in the small launch business, and Virgin Orbit had access to capital through billionaire Richard Branson. Now, SpaceX is the 800-pound gorilla in the market. “We have a saying here at Rocket Lab that we have no money, so we have to think. We’ve never been in a position to outspend our competitors. We just have to out-think them. We have to be lean and mean.”
Firefly reveals plans for new launch sites. Firefly Aerospace plans to use the state of Virginia-owned launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility for East Coast launches of its Alpha small-satellite rocket, Aviation Week reports. The company plans to use Pad 0A for US military and other missions, particularly those requiring tight turnaround between procurement and launch. This is the same launch pad previously used by Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, and it’s the soon-to-be home of the Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) jointly developed by Northrop and Firefly. The launch pad will be configured for Alpha launches beginning in 2025, according to Firefly, which previously planned to develop an Alpha launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Now, Alpha and MLV rockets will fly from the same site on the East Coast, while Alpha will continue launching from the West Coast at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Hello, Sweden… A few days after the announcement for launches from Virginia, Firefly unveiled a collaborative agreement with Swedish Space Corporation to launch Alpha rockets from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden as soon as 2026. Esrange has been the departure point for numerous suborbital and sounding rocket for nearly 50 years, but the spaceport is being upgraded for orbital satellite launches. A South Korean startup named Perigee Aerospace announced in May it signed an agreement to be the first user of Esrange’s orbital launch capability. Firefly is the second company to make plans to launch satellites from the remote site in northern Sweden. (submitted by Ken the Bin and brianrhurley)
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China hops closer to reusable rockets. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), part of China’s apparatus of state-owned aerospace companies, has conducted the country’s highest altitude launch and landing test so far as several teams chase reusable rocket capabilities, Space News reports. A 3.8-meter-diameter (9.2-foot) test article powered by three methane liquid-oxygen engines lifted off from the Gobi Desert on June 23 and soared to an altitude of about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) before setting down successfully for a vertical propulsive touchdown on landing legs at a nearby landing area. SAST will follow up with a 70-kilometer (43.5-mile) suborbital test using grid fins for better control. A first orbital flight of the new reusable rocket is planned for 2025.
Lots of players … If you don’t exclusively follow China’s launch sector, you should be forgiven for being unable to list all the companies working on new reusable rockets. Late last year, a Chinese startup named iSpace flew a hopper rocket testbed to an altitude of several hundred meters as part of a development program for the company’s upcoming partially reusable Hyperbola 2 rocket. A company named Space Pioneer plans to launch its medium-class Tianlong 3 rocket for the first time later this year. Tianlong 3 looks remarkably like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and its first stage will eventually be made reusable. China recently test-fired engines for the government’s new Long March 10, a partially reusable rocket planned to become China’s next-generation crew launch vehicle. These are just a few of the reusable rocket programs in China. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Spanish launch startup invests in Kourou. PLD Space says it is ready to start construction at a disused launch complex at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. The Spanish launch startup announced this week a 10 million euro ($10.7 million) investment in the launch complex for its Miura 5 rocket, with preparations of the site set to begin “after the summer.” The launch pad was previously used by the French Diamant rocket in the 1970s and is located several miles away from the launch pads used by the European Ariane 6 and Vega rockets. PLD Space is on track to become the first fully commercial company to launch from the spaceport in South America.
Free access to space … Also this week, PLD Space announced a new program to offer space aboard the first two flights of its Miura 5 rocket for free, European Spaceflight reports. The two-stage Miura 5 rocket will be capable of delivering about a half-ton of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. PLD Space will offer free launch services aboard the first two Miura 5 flights, which are expected to take place in late 2025 and early 2026. The application process will close on July 30, and winning proposals will be announced on November 30. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)
Enlarge/ Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on the launch pad for testing earlier this year.
After years of lobbying, protests, and bidding, Jeff Bezos’s space company is now a military launch contractor.
The US Space Force announced Thursday that Blue Origin will compete with United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for at least 30 military launch contracts over the next five years. These launch contracts have a combined value of up to $5.6 billion.
This is the first of two major contract decisions the Space Force will make this year as the military seeks to foster more competition among its roster of launch providers and reduce its reliance on just one or two companies.
For more than a decade following its formation from the merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin rocket programs, ULA was the sole company certified to launch the military’s most critical satellites. This changed in 2018, when SpaceX started launching national security satellites for the military. In 2020, despite protests from Blue Origin seeking eligibility, the Pentagon selected ULA and SpaceX to continue sharing launch duties.
The National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program is in charge of selecting contractors to deliver military surveillance, navigation, and communications satellites into orbit.
Over the next five years, the Space Force wants to tap into new launch capabilities from emerging space companies. The procurement approach for this new round of contracts, known as NSSL Phase 3, is different from the way the military previously bought launch services. Instead of grouping all national security launches into one monolithic contract, the Space Force is dividing them into two classifications: Lane 1 and Lane 2.
The Space Force’s contract announced Thursday was for Lane 1, which is for less demanding missions to low-Earth orbit. These missions include smaller tech demos, experiments, and launches for the military’s new constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites, an effort that will eventually include hundreds or thousands of spacecraft managed by the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency.
This fall, the Space Force will award up to three contracts for Lane 2, which covers the government’s most sensitive national security satellites, which require “complex security and integration requirements.” These are often large, heavy spacecraft weighing many tons and sometimes needing to go to orbits thousands of miles from Earth. The Space Force will require Lane 2 contractors to go through a more extensive certification process than is required in Lane 1.
“Today marks the beginning of this innovative, dual-lane approach to launch service acquisition, whereby Lane 1 serves our commercial-like missions that can accept more risk and Lane 2 provides our traditional, full mission assurance for the most stressing heavy-lift launches of our most risk-averse missions,” said Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration.
Meeting the criteria
The Space Force received seven bids for Lane 1, but only three companies met the criteria to join the military’s roster of launch providers. The basic requirement to win a Lane 1 contract was for a company to show its rocket can place at least 15,000 pounds of payload mass into low-Earth orbit, either on a single flight or over a series of flights within a 90-day period.
The bidders also had to substantiate their plan to launch the rocket they proposed to use for Lane 1 missions by December 15 of this year. A spokesperson for Space Systems Command said SpaceX proposed using their Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and ULA offered its Vulcan rocket. Those launchers are already flying. Blue Origin proposed its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, slated for an inaugural test flight no earlier than September.
“As we anticipated, the pool of awardees is small this year because many companies are still maturing their launch capabilities,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for the Space Force’s assured access to space division. “Our strategy accounted for this by allowing on-ramp opportunities every year, and we expect increasing competition and diversity as new providers and systems complete development.”
Enlarge/ A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica
The Space Force plans to open up the first on-ramp opportunity for Lane 1 as soon as the end of this year. Companies with medium-lift rockets in earlier stages of development, such as Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Firefly Aerospace, and Stoke Space, will have the chance to join ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin in the Lane 1 pool at that time. The structure of the NSSL Phase 3 contracts allow the Pentagon to take advantage of emerging launch capabilities as soon as they become available, according to Calvelli.
In a statement, Panzenhagen said having additional launch providers will increase the Space Force’s “resiliency” in a time of increasing competition between the US, Russia, and China in orbit. “Launching more risk-tolerant satellites on potentially less mature launch systems using tailored independent government mission assurance could yield substantial operational responsiveness, innovation, and savings,” Panzenhagen said.
More competition, theoretically, will also deliver lower launch prices to the Space Force. SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets are partially reusable, while ULA eventually plans to recover and reuse Vulcan main engines.
Over the next five years, Space Systems Command will dole out fixed-price “task orders” to ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin for groups of Lane 1 missions. The first batch of missions up for awards in Lane 1 include seven launches for the Space Development Agency’s missile tracking mega-constellation, plus a task order for the National Reconnaissance Office, the government’s spy satellite agency. However, military officials require a rocket to have completed at least one successful orbital launch to win a Lane 1 task order, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn doesn’t yet satisfy this requirement.
The Space Force will pay Blue Origin $5 million for an “initial capabilities assessment” for Lane 1. SpaceX and ULA, the military’s incumbent launch contractors, will each receive $1.5 million for similar assessments.
ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin are also the top contenders to win Lane 2 contracts later this year. In order to compete in Lane 2, a launch provider must show it has a plan for its rockets to meet the Space Force’s stringent certification requirements by October 1, 2026. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are already certified, and ULA’s Vulcan is on a path to achieve this milestone by the end of this year, pending a successful second test flight in the next few months. A successful debut of New Glenn by the end of this year would put the October 2026 deadline within reach of Blue Origin.
Enlarge/ Firefly Aerospace’s fourth Alpha rocket lifted off December 22 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Welcome to Edition 6.25 of the Rocket Report! We hope all our readers had a peaceful holiday break. While many of us were enjoying time off work, launch companies like SpaceX kept up the pace until the final days of 2023. Last year saw a record level of global launch activity, with 223 orbital launch attempts and 212 rockets successfully reaching orbit. Nearly half of these missions were by SpaceX.
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.
Firefly’s fourth launch puts payload in wrong orbit. The fourth flight of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket on December 22 placed a small Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite into a lower-than-planned orbit after lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. US military tracking data indicated the Alpha rocket released its payload into an elliptical orbit ranging between 215 and 523 kilometers in altitude, not the mission’s intended circular target orbit. Firefly later confirmed the Alpha rocket’s second stage, which was supposed to reignite about 50 minutes after liftoff, did not deliver Lockheed Martin’s satellite into the proper orbit. This satellite, nicknamed Tantrum, was designed to test Lockheed Martin’s new wideband Electronically Steerable Antenna technology to demonstrate faster on-orbit sensor calibration to deliver rapid capabilities to US military forces.
Throwing a tantrum? … This was the third time in four flights that Firefly’s commercial Alpha rocket, designed to loft payloads up to a metric ton in mass, has not reached its orbital target. The first test flight in 2021 suffered an engine failure on the first stage before losing control shortly after liftoff. The second Alpha launch in 2022 deployed its satellites into a lower-than-planned orbit, leaving them unable to complete their missions. In September, Firefly launched a small US military satellite on a responsive launch demonstration. Firefly and the US Space Force declared that mission fully successful. Atmospheric drag will likely pull Lockheed Martin’s payload back into Earth’s atmosphere for a destructive reentry in a matter of weeks. The good news is ground teams are in contact with the satellite, so there could be a chance to complete at least some of the mission’s objectives. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Australian startup nears first launch. The first locally made rocket to be launched into space from Australian soil is scheduled for liftoff from a commercial facility in Queensland early next year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. A company named Gilmour Space says it hopes to launch its first orbital-class Eris rocket in March, pending final approval from Australian regulatory authorities. This would be the first Australian-built orbital rocket, although a US-made rocket launched Australia’s first satellite from a military base in South Australia in 1967. The UK’s Black Arrow rocket also launched a satellite from the same remote Australian military base in 1971.
Getting to know Eris … The three-stage Eris rocket stands 25 meters (82 feet) tall with the ability to deliver up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit, according to Gilmour Space. The company says the Eris rocket will be powered by Gilmour’s “new and proprietary hybrid rocket engine.” These kinds of propulsion systems use a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. We’ll be watching to see if Gilmour shares more tangible news about the progress toward the first Eris launch in March. In late 2022, the company targeted April 2023 for the first Eris flight, so this program has a history of delays. (submitted by Marzipan and Onychomys)
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A commander’s lament on the loss of a historic SpaceX booster. The Falcon 9 rocket that launched NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX’s first crew mission in 2020 launched and landed for the 19th and final time just before Christmas, then tipped over on its recovery ship during the trip back to Cape Canaveral, Florida, Ars reports. This particular booster, known by the tail number B1058, was special among SpaceX’s fleet of reusable rockets. It was the fleet leader, having tallied 19 missions over the course of more than three-and-a-half years. More importantly, it was the rocket that thundered into space on May 30, 2020, on a flight that made history.
A museum piece? … The lower third of the booster was still on the deck of SpaceX’s recovery ship as it sailed into Port Canaveral on December 26. This portion of the rocket contains the nine Merlin engines and landing legs, some of which appeared mangled after the booster tipped over in high winds and waves. Hurley, who commanded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on the booster’s historic first flight in 2020, said he hopes to see the remaining parts of the rocket in a museum. “Hopefully they can do something because this is a little bit of an inauspicious way to end its flying career, with half of it down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,” said Hurley.
SpaceX opens 2024 campaign with a new kind of Starlink satellite. SpaceX has launched the first six Starlink satellites that will provide cellular transmissions for customers of T-Mobile and other carriers, Ars reports. A Falcon 9 rocket launched from California on January 2 carried 21 Starlink satellites overall, including the first six Starlinks with Direct to Cell capabilities. SpaceX says these satellites, and thousands of others to follow, will “enable mobile network operators around the world to provide seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing wherever you may be on land, lakes, or coastal waters without changing hardware or firmware.” T-Mobile said that field testing of Starlink satellites with the T-Mobile network will begin soon. “The enhanced Starlink satellites have an advanced modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration similar to a standard roaming partner,” SpaceX said.
Two of 144 … SpaceX followed this launch with another Falcon 9 flight from Florida on January 3 carrying a Swedish telecommunications satellite. These were the company’s first two missions of 2024, a year when SpaceX officials aim to launch up to 144 rockets, an average of 12 per month, exceeding the 98 rockets it launched in 2023. A big focus of SpaceX’s 2024 launch manifest will be delivering these Starlink Direct to Cell satellites into orbit. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Chinese booster lands near homes. China added a new pair of satellites to its Beidou positioning and navigation system on December 25, but spent stages from the launch landed within inhabited areas, Space News reports. Meanwhile, a pair of the side boosters from the Long March 3B rocket used for the launch appeared to fall to the ground near inhabited areas in Guangxi region, downrange of the Xichang spaceport in Sichuan province, according to apparent bystander footage on Chinese social media. One video shows a booster falling within a forested area and exploding, while another shows a falling booster and later, wreckage next to a home.
Life downrange … Chinese government authorities reportedly issue warnings and evacuation notices for citizens living in regions where spent rocket boosters are likely to fall after launch, but these videos clearly show people are still close by as the rockets fall from the sky. We’ve seen this kind of imagery before, including views of a rocket that crashed into a rural building in 2019. What’s more, the rockets return to Earth with leftover toxic propellants—hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide—that could be deadly to breathe or touch. Clouds of brownish-orange gas are visible around the rocket wreckage, an indication of the presence of nitrogen tetroxide. China built its three Cold War-era spaceports in interior regions to protect them from possible military attacks, while its newest launch site is at a coastal location on Hainan Island, allowing rockets launched there to drop boosters into the sea. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)
Launch date set for next H3 test flight. The second flight of Japan’s new flagship H3 rocket is scheduled for February 14 (US time; February 15 in Japan), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced on December 28. This will come nearly one year after the first H3 test flight failed to reach orbit last March when the rocket’s second stage failed to ignite a few minutes after liftoff. This failure destroyed a pricey Japanese Earth observation satellite and dealt a setback to Japan’s rocket program. The H3 is designed to be cheaper and more capable than the H-IIA and H-IIB rockets it will replace. Eventually, the H3 will launch Japan’s scientific research probes, spy satellites, and commercial payloads.
Fixes since the first flight … Engineers narrowed the likely cause for the first H3 launch failure to an electrical issue, although Japanese officials have not provided an update on the investigation for several months. In August, Japan’s space agency said investigators had narrowed the cause of the H3’s second-stage malfunction to three possible failure scenarios. Nevertheless, officials are apparently satisfied the H3 is ready to fly again. But this time, there won’t be an expensive satellite aboard. A dummy payload will fly inside the H3 rocket’s nose cone, along with two relatively low-cost small satellites hitching a piggyback ride to orbit. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)
India’s PSLV launches first space mission of 2024. The first orbital launch of the new year, as measured in the globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, was the flight of an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on January 1 (December 31 in the United States). This launch deployed an X-ray astronomy satellite named XPoSat, which will measure X-ray emissions from black holes, neutron stars, active galactic nuclei, and pulsars. This is India’s first X-ray astronomy satellite, and its launch is another sign of India’s ascendence among the world’s space powers. India has some of the world’s most reliable launch vehicles, is developing a human-rated capsule to carry astronauts into orbit, and landed its first robotic mission on the Moon last year.
Going lower … After releasing the XPoSat payload, the PSLV’s fourth stage lowered its orbit to begin an extended mission hosting 10 scientific and technology demonstration experiments. These payloads will test new radiation shielding technologies, green propulsion, and fuel cells in orbit, according to the Indian Space Research Organization. On missions with excess payload capacity, India has started offering researchers and commercial companies the opportunity to fly experiments on the PSLV fourth stage, which has its own solar power source to essentially turn itself from a rocket into a satellite platform. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)
Mixed crews will continue flying to the International Space Station. NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, will extend an agreement on flying each other’s crew members to the International Space Station through 2025, Interfax reports. This means SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing’s Starliner capsule, once operational, will continue transporting Russian cosmonauts to and from the space station, as several recent SpaceX crew missions have done. In exchange, Russia will continue flying US astronauts on Soyuz missions.
There’s a good reason for this… Despite poor relations on Earth, the US and Russian governments continue to be partners on the ISS. While NASA no longer has to pay for seats on Soyuz spacecraft, the US space agency still wants to fly its astronauts on Soyuz to protect against the potential for a failure or lengthy delay with a SpaceX or Boeing crew mission. Such an event could lead to a situation where the space station has no US astronauts aboard. Likewise, Roscosmos benefits from this arrangement to ensure there’s always a Russian on the space station, even in the event of a problem with Soyuz. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
SpaceX sets new records to close out 2023. SpaceX launched two rockets, three hours apart, to wrap up a record-setting 2023 launch campaign, Ars reports. On December 28, SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the US military’s super-secret X-37B spaceplane. Less than three hours later, a Falcon 9 rocket took off a few miles to the south with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites. These were SpaceX’s final launches of 2023. SpaceX ended the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets, and two test launches of the giant new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas. It was also the shortest turnaround between two SpaceX flights in the company’s history, and set a modern-era record at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the shortest span between two orbital-class launches there since 1966.
Where’s the X-37B?… The military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane that launched on the Falcon Heavy rocket apparently headed into an unusually high orbit, much higher than the spaceplane program’s previous six flights. But the military kept the exact orbit a secret, and amateur skywatchers will be closely watching for signs of the spaceplane passing overhead in hopes of estimating its apogee, perigee, and inclination. What the spaceplane is doing is also largely a mystery. The X-37B 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.
Elon Musk says SpaceX needs to built a lot of Starships. Even with reusability, SpaceX will need to build Starships as often as Boeing builds 737 jetliners in order to realize Elon Musk’s ambition for a Mars settlement, Ars reports. “To achieve Mars colonization in roughly three decades, we need ship production to be 100/year, but ideally rising to 300/year,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. SpaceX still aims to make the Starship and its Super Heavy booster rapidly reusable. The crux is that the ship, the part that would travel into orbit, and eventually to the Moon or Mars, won’t be reused as often as the booster. These ships will come in a number of different configurations, including crew and cargo transports, refueling ships, fuel depots, and satellite deployers.
Laws of physics… The first stage of the giant launch vehicle, named Super Heavy, is designed to return to SpaceX’s launch sites about six minutes after liftoff, similar to the way SpaceX recovers its Falcon boosters today. Theoretically, Musk wrote, the booster could be ready for another flight in an hour. With the Starship itself, the laws of physics and the realities of geography come into play. As an object flies in low-Earth orbit, the Earth rotates underneath it. This means that a satellite, or Starship, will find itself offset some 22.5 degrees in longitude from its launch site after a single 90-minute orbit around the planet. It could take several hours, or up to a day, for a Starship in low-Earth orbit to line up with one of the recovery sites. “The ship needs to complete at least one orbit, but often several to have the ground track line back up with the launch site, so reuse may only be daily,” Musk wrote. “This means that ship production needs to be roughly an order of magnitude higher than booster production.”
Next three launches
January 5: Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 11: 20 UTC
January 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-35 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21: 00 UTC
January 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 05: 00 UTC
Enlarge/ SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off Thursday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It seems like SpaceX did everything this year but launch 100 times.
On Thursday night, the launch company sent two more rockets into orbit from Florida. One was a Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket in commercial service, carrying the US military’s X-37B spaceplane from a launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 8: 07 pm EST (01: 07 UTC). Less than three hours later, at 11: 01 pm EST (04: 01 UTC), SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 launcher took off a few miles to the south with a payload of 23 Starlink Internet satellites.
The Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters and the Falcon 9’s first stage landed back on Earth for reuse.
These were SpaceX’s final launches of 2023. SpaceX ends the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets, and two test launches of the giant new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, set a goal of 100 launches this year, up from the company’s previous record of 61 in 2022. For a while, it looked like SpaceX was on track to accomplish the feat, but a spate of bad weather and technical problems with the final Falcon Heavy launch of the year kept the company short of 100 flights.
King of ‘upmass’
“Congrats to the entire Falcon team at SpaceX on a record breaking 96 launches in 2023!” wrote Jon Edwards, vice president of Falcon launch vehicles at SpaceX, on the social media platform X. “I remember when Elon Musk first threw out a goal of 100 launches as a thought experiment, intended to unlock our thinking as to how we might accelerate Falcon across all levels of production and launch.
“Only a few years later and here we are,” Edwards wrote. “I’m so incredibly proud to work with the best team on Earth, and so excited to see what we achieve next year.”
It’s important to step back and put these numbers in context. No other family of orbit-class rockets has ever flown more than 63 times in a year. SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have now exceeded this number by roughly 50 percent. SpaceX’s competitors in the United States, such as United Launch Alliance and Rocket Lab, managed far fewer flights in 2023. ULA had three missions, and Rocket Lab launched its small Electron booster 10 times.
Nearly two-thirds of SpaceX’s missions this year were dedicated to delivering satellites to orbit for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, a constellation that now numbers more than 5,000 spacecraft.
SpaceX also launched five missions with the Falcon Heavy rocket, created by aggregating three Falcon 9 rocket boosters together. Highlights from SpaceX’s 2023 Falcon launch schedule included three crew missions to the International Space Station, and the launch of NASA’s Psyche mission to explore a metallic asteroid.
In all, SpaceX’s Falcon rockets hauled approximately 1,200 metric tons, or more than 2.6 million pounds, of payload mass into orbit this year. This “upmass” is equivalent to nearly three International Space Stations. Most of this was made up of mass-produced Starlink satellites.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is seen outside the company’s hangar at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
SpaceX
SpaceX and the US Space Force thought they were ready to launch the military’s mysterious X-37B spaceplane this week, but ground teams in Florida need to roll the Falcon Heavy rocket back into its hangar for servicing.
This is expected to push back the launch until at least late December, perhaps longer. SpaceX and Space Force officials have not divulged details about the problems causing the delay.
SpaceX called off a launch attempt Monday night at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to resolve a problem with a ground system. A senior Space Force official told Ars on Wednesday that additional issues will cause an additional delay in the launch.
“We’re working through a couple of technical glitches with our SpaceX team that just are going to take a little bit more time to work through,” said Col. James Horne, deputy director of the Space Force’s Assured Access to Space directorate. “We haven’t nailed down a specific launch date yet, but we’re going to have to roll back into the HIF (Horizontal Integration Facility) and work through some things on the rocket.”
Horne, a senior leader on the Space Force team overseeing military launches like this one, said the ground equipment problem that prevented liftoff Monday night could be fixed as soon as Wednesday. But it will take longer to resolve other issues he declined to specify. “We found some things that we need to run some analysis on, so that’s what’s driving the delay,” he said.
SpaceX was similarly vague in its explanation for the delay. In a post on the social media platform X, SpaceX said the company was standing down from the launch this week to “perform additional system checkouts.”
There’s a chance the Falcon Heavy might be back on the launch pad by the end of December or early next year. A SpaceX recovery vessel that was on station for the Falcon Heavy launch in the Atlantic Ocean is returning to shore, suggesting the launch won’t happen anytime soon.
“We’ve got to look at the schedule and balance that with all the other challenges,” Horne said. “But I hope we can get it off before the end of the year.”
Lunar launch date in jeopardy
When it’s ready to fly, the Falcon Heavy launch with the military’s X-37B spaceplane will likely get high priority on SpaceX’s launch schedule. The military’s launch ranges, like the one at Cape Canaveral, are primarily there to serve national security requirements, even though they get a lot more use from commercial space missions.
Depending on how long it’s delayed, this military launch could affect several SpaceX missions currently scheduled to fly in January. Most notably, a Falcon 9 rocket is slated to lift off from the same launch pad in January with the first commercial Moon lander from Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company contracted to deliver scientific payloads to the lunar surface for NASA.
This robotic mission is one of the first two US-built spacecraft to attempt a Moon landing since the last Apollo landing in 1972. The Intuitive Machines mission, named IM-1, is scheduled to launch during a narrow window from January 12–16.
A few days earlier, as soon as January 8, another commercial lunar lander from Astrobotic is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on the first test flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. The Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines missions can only launch a few days each month due to limitations imposed by orbital mechanics and lighting conditions at their landing sites. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander was previously supposed to launch on December 24, but ULA pushed back the launch to perform more testing on the Vulcan rocket.
The landers from Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are both at Cape Canaveral, waiting for their turn in the Florida spaceport’s busy launch manifest.
The IM-1 mission has to depart Earth from Launch Complex 39A, the same site previously used by the Saturn V rocket and space shuttle. SpaceX has outfitted the pad to top off the Intuitive Machines lander with cryogenic propellant just before launch, a capability unavailable at SpaceX’s other launch pad in Florida. Likewise, LC-39A is the only launch pad capable of supporting Falcon Heavy missions.
It usually takes a couple of weeks to reconfigure LC-39A between Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 launches. The Falcon Heavy is significantly more powerful, with three Falcon 9 first-stage boosters connected together to haul more massive payloads into orbit.
A private astronaut mission managed by Axiom Space is also in the mix, with a launch date set for January 9. This mission, known as Ax-3, will carry four commercial astronauts aboard a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft on a roughly two-week flight to the International Space Station. Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at SpaceX, said the company hasn’t decided which pad Ax-3 will launch from.
All of SpaceX’s crew missions to date have lifted off from LC-39A, but the company recently constructed a crew access tower and arm to enable astronaut flights to depart from nearby Space Launch Complex 40. This gives SpaceX some flexibility to alleviate launch bottlenecks at LC-39A, which is required for some of the company’s most important missions.
LC-39A will remain the primary launch pad for SpaceX’s crew missions, Walker said Wednesday, but she added: “Having the second pad available enables us to be ultra-responsive to customer needs and growing demand by moving a Dragon over to SLC-40 when the need arises.”
It’s a good problem to have so many interesting payloads vying for a launch slot with SpaceX, but the tyranny of physics and infrastructure constraints could mean one of these missions might have to wait a little longer for a ride to space.
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.
