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Rocket Report: “No man’s land” in rocket wars; Isaacman lukewarm on SLS

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China’s approach to space junk is worrisome as it begins launching its own megaconstellations.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rolls to its launch pad in Florida in preparation for liftoff with 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 7.39 of the Rocket Report! Not getting your launch fix? Buckle up. We’re on the cusp of a boom in rocket launches as three new megaconstellations have either just begun or will soon begin deploying thousands of satellites to enable broadband connectivity from space. If the megaconstellations come to fruition, this will require more than a thousand launches in the next few years, on top of SpaceX’s blistering Starlink launch cadence. We discuss the topic of megaconstellations in this week’s Rocket Report.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

So, what is SpinLaunch doing now? Ars Technica has mentioned SpinLaunch, the company that literally wants to yeet satellites into space, in previous Rocket Report newsletters. This company enjoyed some success in raising money for its so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea of catapulting rockets and satellites into the sky, a concept SpinLaunch calls “kinetic launch.” But SpinLaunch is now making a hard pivot to small satellites, a move that, on its face, seems puzzling after going all-in on kinetic launch and even performing several impressive hardware tests, throwing a projectile to altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. Ars got the scoop, with the company’s CEO detailing why and how it plans to build a low-Earth orbit telecommunications constellation with 280 satellites.

Traditional versus kinetic … The planned constellation, named Meridian, is an opportunity for SpinLaunch to diversify away from being solely a launch company, according to David Wrenn, the company’s CEO. We’ve observed this in a number of companies that started out as rocket developers before branching out to satellite manufacturing or space services. Wrenn said SpinLaunch could loft all of the Meridian satellites on a single large conventional rocket, or perhaps two medium-lift rockets, and then maintain the constellation with its own kinetic launch system. A satellite communications network presents a better opportunity for profit, Wrenn said. “The launch market is relatively small compared to the economic potential of satellite communication,” he said. “Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center. Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry.”

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Peter Beck suggests Electron is here to stay. The conventional wisdom is that the small launch vehicle business isn’t a big moneymaker. There is really only one company, Rocket Lab, that has gained traction in selling dedicated rides to orbit for small satellites. Rocket Lab’s launcher, Electron, can place payloads of up to a few hundred pounds into orbit. As soon as Rocket Lab had some success, SpaceX began launching rideshare missions on its much larger Falcon 9 rocket, cobbling together dozens of satellites on a single vehicle to spread the cost of the mission among many customers. This offers customers a lower price point than buying a dedicated launch on Electron. But Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, says his company has found a successful market providing dedicated launches for small satellites, despite price pressure from SpaceX, Space News reports. “Dedicated small launch is a real market, and it should not be confused with rideshare,” he argued. “It’s totally different.”

No man’s land … Some small satellite companies that can afford the extra cost of a dedicated launch realize the value of controlling their schedule and orbit, traits that a dedicated launch offers over a rideshare, Beck said. It’s easy to blame SpaceX for undercutting the prices of Rocket Lab and other players in this segment of the launch business, but Beck said companies that have failed or withdrawn from the small launch market didn’t have a good business plan, a good product, or good engineering. He added that the capacity of the Electron vehicle is well-suited for dedicated launch, whereas slightly larger rockets in the one-ton-to-orbit class—a category that includes Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha and Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rockets—are an ill fit. The one-ton performance range is “no man’s land” in the market, Beck said. “It’s too small to be a useful rideshare mission, and it’s too big to be a useful dedicated rocket” for smallsats. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

ULA scrubs first full-on Kuiper launch. A band of offshore thunderstorms near Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday night forced United Launch Alliance to scrub a launch attempt of the first of dozens of missions on behalf of its largest commercial customer, Amazon, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission will use an Atlas V rocket to deploy 27 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper network. It’s the first launch of what will eventually be more than 3,200 operational Kuiper satellites beaming broadband connectivity from space, a market currently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink. As of Thursday, ULA hadn’t confirmed a new launch date, but airspace warning notices released by the FAA suggest the next attempt might occur Monday, April 14.

What’s a few more days? … This mission has been a long time coming. Amazon announced the Kuiper megaconstellation in 2019, and the company says it’s investing at least $10 billion in the project (the real number may be double that). Problems in manufacturing the Kuiper satellites, which Amazon is building in-house, delayed the program’s first full-on launch by a couple of years. Amazon launched a pair of prototype satellites in 2023, but the operational versions are different, and this mission fills the capacity of ULA’s Atlas V rocket. Amazon has booked more than 80 launches with ULA, Arianespace, Blue Origin, and SpaceX to populate the Kuiper network. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Space Force swaps ULA for SpaceX. For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance’s launch schedule, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, which oversees the military’s launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force’s fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world. The move allows the GPS satellite to launch as soon as the end of May, the Space Force said. The military executed a similar rocket swap for a GPS mission that launched on a Falcon 9 in December.

Making ULA whole … The Space Force formally certified ULA’s Vulcan rocket for national security missions last month, so Vulcan may finally be on the cusp of delivering for the military. But there are several military payloads in the queue to launch on Vulcan before GPS III SV-08, which was already completed and in storage at its Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. Meanwhile, SpaceX is regularly launching Falcon 9 rockets with ample capacity to add the GPS mission to the manifest. In exchange for losing the contract to launch this particular GPS satellite, the Space Force swapped a future GPS mission that was assigned to SpaceX to fly on ULA’s Vulcan instead.

Russia launches a former Navy SEAL to space. Jonny Kim, a former Navy SEAL, Harvard Medical School graduate, and now a NASA astronaut, blasted off with two cosmonaut crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket early Tuesday, CBS News reports. Three hours later, Kim and his Russian crewmates—Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky—chased down the International Space Station and moved in for a picture-perfect docking aboard their Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft. “It was the trip of a lifetime and an honor to be here,” Kim told flight controllers during a traditional post-docking video conference.

Rotating back to Earth … Ryzhikov, Zubritsky, and Kim joined a crew of seven living aboard the International Space Station, temporarily raising the lab’s crew complement to 10 people. The new station residents are replacing an outgoing Soyuz crew—Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Wagner, and Don Pettit—who launched to the ISS last September and who plan to return to Earth aboard their own spacecraft April 19 to wrap up a 219-day stay in space. This flight continues the practice of launching US astronauts on Russian Soyuz missions, part of a barter agreement between NASA and the Russian space agency that also reserves a seat on SpaceX Dragon missions for Russian cosmonauts.

China is littering in LEO. China’s construction of a pair of communications megaconstellations could cloud low Earth orbit with large spent rocket stages for decades or beyond, Space News reports. Launches for the government’s Guowang and Shanghai-backed but more commercially oriented Qianfan (Thousand Sails) constellation began in the second half of 2024, with each planned to consist of over 10,000 satellites, demanding more than a thousand launches in the coming years. Placing this number of satellites is enough to cause concern about space debris because China hasn’t disclosed its plans for removing the spacecraft from orbit at the end of their missions. It turns out there’s another big worry: upper stages.

An orbital time bomb … While Western launch providers typically deorbit their upper stages after dropping off megaconstellation satellites in space, China does not. This means China is leaving rockets in orbits high enough to persist in space for more than a century, according to Jim Shell, a space domain awareness and orbital debris expert at Novarum Tech. Space News reported on Shell’s commentary in a social media post, where he wrote that orbital debris mass in low-Earth orbit “will be dominated by PRC [People’s Republic of China] upper stages in short order unless something changes (sigh).” So far, China has launched five dedicated missions to deliver 90 Qianfan satellites into orbit. Four of these missions used China’s Long March 6A rocket, with an upper stage that has a history of breaking up in orbit, exacerbating the space debris problem. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX wins another lunar lander launch deal. Intuitive Machines has selected a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch a lunar delivery mission scheduled for 2027, the Houston Chronicle reports. The upcoming IM-4 mission will carry six NASA payloads, including a European Space Agency-led drill suite designed to search for water at the lunar south pole. It will also include the launch of two lunar data relay satellites that support NASA’s so-called Near Space Network Services program. This will be the fourth lunar lander mission for Houston-based Intuitive Machines under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Falcon 9 has the inside track … SpaceX almost certainly offered Intuitive Machines the best deal for this launch. The flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket is reliable and inexpensive compared to competitors and has already launched two Intuitive Machines missions, with a third one set to fly late this year. However, there’s another factor that made SpaceX a shoe-in for this contract. SpaceX has outfitted one of its launch pads in Florida with a unique cryogenic loading system to pump liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the Intuitive Machines lunar lander as it sits on top of its rocket just before liftoff. The lander from Intuitive Machines uses these super-cold propellants to feed its main engine, and SpaceX’s infrastructure for loading it makes the Falcon 9 rocket the clear choice for launching it.

Time may finally be running out for SLS. Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, said Wednesday in a Senate confirmation hearing that he wants the space agency to pursue human missions to the Moon and Mars at the same time, an effort that will undoubtedly require major changes to how NASA spends its money. My colleague Eric Berger was in Washington for the hearing and reported on it for Ars. Senators repeatedly sought Isaacman’s opinion on the Space Launch System, the NASA heavy-lifter designed to send astronauts to the Moon. The next SLS mission, Artemis II, is slated to launch a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon next year. NASA’s official plans call for the Artemis III mission to launch on an SLS rocket later this decade and attempt a landing at the Moon’s south pole.

Limited runway … Isaacman sounded as if he were on board with flying the Artemis II mission as envisioned—no surprise, then, that the four Artemis II astronauts were in the audience—and said he wanted to get a crew of Artemis III to the lunar surface as quickly as possible. But he questioned why it has taken NASA so long, and at such great expense, to get its deep space human exploration plans moving. In one notable exchange, Isaacman said NASA’s current architecture for the Artemis lunar plans, based on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, is probably not the ideal “long-term” solution to NASA’s deep space transportation plans. The smart reading of this is that Isaacman may be willing to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions as conceived, given that much of the hardware is already built. But everything that comes after this, including SLS rocket upgrades and the Lunar Gateway, could be on the chopping block.

Welcome to the club, Blue Origin. Finally, the Space Force has signaled it’s ready to trust Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, for launching the military’s most precious satellites, Ars reports. Blue Origin received a contract on April 4 to launch seven national security missions for the Space Force between 2027 and 2032, an opening that could pave the way for more launch deals in the future. These missions will launch on Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, which had a successful debut test flight in January. The Space Force hasn’t certified New Glenn for national security launches, but military officials expect to do so sometime next year. Blue Origin joins SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in the Space Force’s mix of most-trusted launch providers.

A different class … The contract Blue Origin received last week covers launch services for the Space Force’s most critical space missions, requiring rocket certification and a heavy dose of military oversight to ensure reliability. Blue Origin was already eligible to launch a separate batch of missions the Space Force set aside to fly on newer rockets. The military is more tolerant of risk on these lower-priority missions, which include launches of “cookie-cutter” satellites for the Pentagon’s large fleet of missile-tracking satellites and a range of experimental payloads.

Why is SpaceX winning so many Space Force contracts? In less than a week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk’s space company the Pentagon’s leading launch provider, replacing United Launch Alliance in the top position. Then, the Space Force assigned most of this year’s most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX. As we mentioned earlier in the Rocket Report, the military also swapped a ULA rocket for a SpaceX launch vehicle for an upcoming GPS mission. So, is SpaceX’s main competitor worried Elon Musk is tipping the playing field for lucrative government contracts by cozying up to President Trump?

It’s all good, man … Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, doesn’t seem too worried in his public statements, Ars reports. In a roundtable with reporters this week at the annual Space Symposium conference in Colorado, Bruno was asked about Musk’s ties with Trump. “We have not been impacted by our competitor’s position advising the president, certainly not yet,” Bruno said. “I expect that the government will follow all the rules and be fair and follow all the laws, and so we’re behaving that way.” The reason Bruno can say Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration so far hasn’t affected ULA is simple. SpaceX is cheaper and has a ready-made line of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets available to launch the Pentagon’s satellites. ULA’s Vulcan rocket is now certified to launch military payloads, but it reached this important milestone years behind schedule.

Two Texas lawmakers are still fighting the last war. NASA has a lot to figure out in the next couple of years. Moon or Mars? Should, or when should, the Space Launch System be canceled? Can the agency absorb a potential 50 percent cut to its science budget? If Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz get their way, NASA can add moving a space shuttle to its list. The Lone Star State’s two Republican senators introduced the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” on Thursday, CollectSpace reports. If passed by Congress and signed into law, the bill would direct NASA to take the space shuttle Discovery from the national collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and transport it to Space Center Houston, a museum and visitor attraction next to Johnson Space Center, home to mission control and NASA’s astronaut training base. Discovery has been on display at the Smithsonian since 2012. NASA awarded museums in California, Florida, and New York the other three surviving shuttle orbiters.

Dollars and nonsense … Moving a space shuttle from Virginia to Texas would be a logistical nightmare, cost an untold amount of money, and would create a distraction for NASA when its focus should be on future space exploration. In a statement, Cruz said Houston deserves one of NASA’s space shuttles because of the city’s “unique relationship” with the program. Cornyn alleged in a statement that the Obama administration blocked Houston from receiving a space shuttle for political reasons. NASA’s inspector general found no evidence of this. On the contrary, transferring a space shuttle to Texas now would be an unequivocal example of political influence. The Boeing 747s that NASA used to move space shuttles across the country are no longer flightworthy, and NASA scrapped the handling equipment needed to prepare a shuttle for transport. Moving the shuttle by land or sea would come with its own challenges. “I can easily see this costing a billion dollars,” Dennis Jenkins, a former shuttle engineer who directed NASA’s shuttle transition and retirement program more than a decade ago, told CollectSpace in an interview. On a personal note, the presentation of Discovery at the Smithsonian is remarkable to see in person, with aerospace icons like the Concorde and the SR-71 spy plane under the same roof. Space Center Houston can’t match that.

Next three launches

April 12: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-17 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 01: 15 UTC

April 12: Falcon 9 | NROL-192 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 12: 17 UTC

April 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-73 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 59 UTC

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Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: “No man’s land” in rocket wars; Isaacman lukewarm on SLS Read More »

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A military satellite waiting to launch with ULA will now fly with SpaceX

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For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance’s launch schedule.

Space Systems Command, which oversees the military’s launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force’s fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world.

The Space Force booked the Vulcan rocket to launch this spacecraft in 2023, when ULA hoped to begin flying military satellites on its new rocket by mid-2024. The Vulcan rocket is now scheduled to launch its first national security mission around the middle of this year, following the Space Force’s certification of ULA’s new launcher last month.

The “launch vehicle trade” allows the Space Force to launch the GPS III SV-08 satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as soon as the end of May, according to a press release.

“Capability sitting on the ground”

With Vulcan now cleared to launch military missions, officials are hopeful ULA can ramp up the rocket’s flight cadence. Vulcan launched on two demonstration flights last year, and ULA eventually wants to launch Vulcan twice per month. ULA engineers have their work cut out for them. The company’s Vulcan backlog now stands at 89 missions, following the Space Force’s announcement last week of 19 additional launches awarded to ULA.

Last year, the Pentagon’s chief acquisition official for space wrote a letter to ULA’s owners—Boeing and Lockheed Martin—expressing concern about ULA’s ability to scale the manufacturing of the Vulcan rocket.

“Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays,” Frank Calvelli, the Pentagon’s chief of space acquisition, wrote in the letter.

Vulcan may finally be on the cusp of delivering for the Space Force, but there are several military payloads in the queue to launch on Vulcan before GPS III SV-08, which was complete and in storage at its Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado.

Col. Jim Horne, senior materiel leader of launch execution, said in a statement that the rocket swap showcases the Space Force’s ability to launch in three months from call-up, compared to the typical planning cycle of two years. “It highlights another instance of the Space Force’s ability to complete high-priority launches on a rapid timescale, which demonstrates the capability to respond to emergent constellation needs as rapidly as Space Vehicle readiness allows,” Horne said.

A military satellite waiting to launch with ULA will now fly with SpaceX Read More »

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With new contracts, SpaceX will become the US military’s top launch provider

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The military’s stable of certified rockets will include Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, and New Glenn.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off on June 25, 2024, with a GOES weather satellite for NOAA. Credit: SpaceX

The US Space Force announced Friday it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin for $13.7 billion in contracts to deliver the Pentagon’s most critical military to orbit into the early 2030s.

These missions will launch the government’s heaviest national security satellites, like the National Reconnaissance Office’s large bus-sized spy platforms, and deploy them into bespoke orbits. These types of launches often demand heavy-lift rockets with long-duration upper stages that can cruise through space for six or more hours.

The contracts awarded Friday are part of the next phase of the military’s space launch program once dominated by United Launch Alliance, the 50-50 joint venture between legacy defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

After racking up a series of successful launches with its Falcon 9 rocket more than a decade ago, SpaceX sued the Air Force for the right to compete with ULA for the military’s most lucrative launch contracts. The Air Force relented in 2015 and allowed SpaceX to bid. Since then, SpaceX has won more than 40 percent of missions the Pentagon has ordered through the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, creating a relatively stable duopoly for the military’s launch needs.

The Space Force took over the responsibility for launch procurement from the Air Force after its creation in 2019. The next year, the Space Force signed another set of contracts with ULA and SpaceX for missions the military would order from 2020 through 2024. ULA’s new Vulcan rocket initially won 60 percent of these missions—known as NSSL Phase 2—but the Space Force reallocated a handful of launches to SpaceX after ULA encountered delays with Vulcan.

ULA’s Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets will launch the remaining 42 Phase 2 missions over the next several years, then move on to Phase 3, which the Space Force announced Friday.

Spreading the wealth

This next round of Space Force launch contracts will flip the script, with SpaceX taking the lion’s share of the missions. The breakdown of the military’s new firm fixed-price launch agreements goes like this:

  • SpaceX will get 28 missions worth approximately $5.9 billion
  • ULA will get 19 missions worth approximately $5.4 billion
  • Blue Origin will get seven missions worth approximately

That equates to a 60-40 split between SpaceX and ULA for the bulk of the missions. Going into the competition, military officials set aside seven additional missions to launch with a third provider, allowing a new player to gain a foothold in the market. The Space Force reserves the right to reapportion missions between the three providers if one of them runs into trouble.

The Pentagon confirmed an unnamed fourth company also submitted a proposal, but wasn’t selected for Phase 3.

Rounded to the nearest million, the contract with SpaceX averages out to $212 million per launch. For ULA, it’s $282 million, and Blue Origin’s price is $341 million per launch. But take these numbers with caution. The contracts include a lot of bells and whistles, pricing them higher than what a commercial customer might pay.

According to the Pentagon, the contracts provide “launch services, mission unique services, mission acceleration, quick reaction/anomaly resolution, special studies, launch service support, fleet surveillance, and early integration studies/mission analysis.”

Essentially, the Space Force is paying a premium to all three launch providers for schedule priority, tailored solutions, and access to data from every flight of each company’s rocket, among other things.

New Glenn lifts off on its debut flight. Credit: Blue Origin

“Winning 60% percent of the missions may sound generous, but the reality is that all SpaceX competitors combined cannot currently deliver the other 40%!,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, posted on X. “I hope they succeed, but they aren’t there yet.”

This is true if you look at each company’s flight rate. SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets 140 times over the last 365 days. These are the flight-proven rockets SpaceX will use for its share of Space Force missions.

ULA has logged four missions in the same period, but just one with the Vulcan rocket it will use for future Space Force launches. And Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, launched the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket on its first test flight in January.

“We are proud that we have launched 100 national security space missions and honored to continue serving the nation with our new Vulcan rocket,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, in a statement.

ULA used the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets for most of the missions it has launched for the Pentagon. The Delta IV rocket family is now retired, and ULA will end production of the Atlas V rocket later this year. Now, ULA’s Vulcan rocket will take over as the company’s sole launch vehicle to serve the Pentagon. ULA aims to eventually ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence to fly up to 25 times per year.

After two successful test flights, the Space Force formally certified the Vulcan rocket last week, clearing the way for ULA to start using it for military missions in the coming months. While SpaceX has a clear advantage in number of launches, schedule assurance, and pricing—and reliability comparable to ULA—Bruno has recently touted the Vulcan rocket’s ability to maneuver over long periods in space as a differentiator.

“This award constitutes the most complex missions required for national security space,” Bruno said in a ULA press release. “Vulcan continues to use the world’s highest energy upper stage: the Centaur V. Centaur V’s unmatched flexibility and extreme endurance enables the most complex orbital insertions continuing to advance our nation’s capabilities in space.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn must fly at least one more successful mission before the Space Force will certify it for Lane 2 missions. The selection of Blue Origin on Friday suggests military officials believe New Glenn is on track for certification by late 2026.

“Honored to serve additional national security missions in the coming years and contribute to our nation’s assured access to space,” Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, wrote on X. “This is a great endorsement of New Glenn’s capabilities, and we are committed to meeting the heavy lift needs of our US DoD and intelligence agency customers.”

Navigating NSSL

There’s something you must understand about the way the military buys launch services. For this round of competition, the Space Force divided the NSSL program into two lanes.

Friday’s announcement covers Lane 2 for traditional military satellites that operate thousands of miles above the Earth. This bucket includes things like GPS navigation satellites, NRO surveillance and eavesdropping platforms, and strategic communications satellites built to survive a nuclear war. The Space Force has a low tolerance for failure with these missions. Therefore, the military requires rockets be certified before they can launch big-ticket satellites, each of which often cost hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

The Space Force required all Lane 2 bidders to show their rockets could reach nine “reference orbits” with payloads of a specified mass. Some of the orbits are difficult to reach, requiring technology that only SpaceX and ULA have demonstrated in the United States. Blue Origin plans to do so on a future flight.

This image shows what the Space Force’s fleet of missile warning and missile tracking satellites might look like in 2030, with a mix of platforms in geosynchronous orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit. The higher orbits will require launches by “Lane 2” providers. Credit: Space Systems Command

The military projects to order 54 launches in Lane 2 from this year through 2029, with announcements each October of exactly which missions will go to each launch provider. This year, it will be just SpaceX and ULA. The Space Force said Blue Origin won’t be eligible for firm orders until next year. The missions would launch between 2027 and 2032.

“America leads the world in space launch, and through these NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 contracts, we will ensure continued access to this vital domain,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. “These awards bolster our ability to launch critical defense satellites while strengthening our industrial base and enhancing operational readiness.”

Lane 1 is primarily for missions to low-Earth orbit. These payloads include tech demos, experimental missions, and the military’s mega-constellation of missile tracking and data relay satellites managed by the Space Development Agency. For Lane 1 missions, the Space Force won’t levy the burdensome certification and oversight requirements it has long employed for national security launches. The Pentagon is willing to accept more risk with Lane 1, encompassing at least 30 missions through the end of the 2020s, in an effort to broaden the military’s portfolio of launch providers and boost competition.

Last June, Space Systems Command chose SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin for eligibility to compete for Lane 1 missions. SpaceX won all nine of the first batch of Lane 1 missions put up for bids. The military recently added Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket and Stoke Space’s Nova rocket to the Lane 1 mix. Neither of those rockets have flown, and they will need at least one successful launch before approval to fly military payloads.

The Space Force has separate contract mechanisms for the military’s smallest satellites, which typically launch on SpaceX rideshare missions or dedicated launches with companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace.

Military leaders like having all these options, and would like even more. If one launch provider or launch site is unavailable due to a technical problem—or, as some military officials now worry, an enemy attack—commanders want multiple backups in their toolkit. Market forces dictate that more competition should also lower prices.

“A robust and resilient space launch architecture is the foundation of both our economic prosperity and our national security,” said US Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. “National Security Space Launch isn’t just a program; it’s a strategic necessity that delivers the critical space capabilities our warfighters depend on to fight and win.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

With new contracts, SpaceX will become the US military’s top launch provider Read More »

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ULA’s Vulcan rocket still doesn’t have the Space Force’s seal of approval

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ULA crews at Cape Canaveral have already stacked the next Vulcan rocket on its mobile launch platform in anticipation of launching the USSF-106 mission. But with the Space Force’s Space Systems Command still withholding certification, there’s no confirmed launch date for USSF-106.

So ULA is pivoting to another customer on its launch manifest.

Amazon’s first group of production satellites for the company’s Kuiper Internet network is now first in line on ULA’s schedule. Amazon confirmed last month that it would ship Kuiper satellites to Cape Canaveral from its factory in Kirkland, Washington. Like ULA, Amazon has run into its own delays with manufacturing Kuiper satellites.

“These satellites, built to withstand the harsh conditions of space and the journey there, will be processed upon arrival to get them ready for launch,” Amazon posted on X. “These satellites will bring fast, reliable Internet to customers even in remote areas. Stay tuned for our first launch this year.”

Amazon and the Space Force take up nearly all of ULA’s launch backlog. Amazon has eight flights reserved on Atlas V rockets and 38 missions booked on the Vulcan launcher to deploy about half of its 3,232 satellites to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network. Amazon also has launch contracts with Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, along with Arianespace and SpaceX.

The good news is that United Launch Alliance has an inventory of rockets awaiting an opportunity to fly. The company plans to finish manufacturing its remaining 15 Atlas V rockets within a few months, allowing the factory in Decatur, Alabama, to focus solely on producing Vulcan launch vehicles. ULA has all the major parts for two Vulcan rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral.

“We have a stockpile of rockets, which is kind of unusual,” Bruno said. “Normally, you build it, you fly it, you build another one… I would certainly want anyone who’s ready to go to space able to go to space.”

Space Force officials now aim to finish the certification of the Vulcan rocket in late February or early March. This would clear the path for launching the USSF-106 mission after the next Atlas V. Once the Kuiper launch gets off the ground, teams will bring the Vulcan rocket’s components back to the hangar to be stacked again.

The Space Force has not set a launch date for USSF-106, but the service says liftoff is targeted for sometime between the beginning of April and the end of June, nearly five years after ULA won its lucrative contract.

ULA’s Vulcan rocket still doesn’t have the Space Force’s seal of approval Read More »

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Rocket Report: Sneak peek at the business end of New Glenn; France to fly FROG

astra, blue origin, china, Commercial space, launch, new glenn, new shepard, rocket report, Science, Space, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

“The vehicle’s max design gimbal condition is during ascent when it has to fight high-altitude winds.”

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket, with seven BE-4 engines installed inside the company’s production facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.17 of the Rocket Report! Next week marks 10 years since one of the more spectacular launch failures of this century. On October 28, 2014, an Antares rocket, then operated by Orbital Sciences, suffered an engine failure six seconds after liftoff from Virginia and crashed back onto the pad in a fiery twilight explosion. I was there and won’t forget seeing the rocket falter just above the pad, being shaken by the deafening blast, and then running for cover. The Antares rocket is often an afterthought in the space industry, but it has an interesting backstory touching on international geopolitics, space history, and novel engineering. Now, Northrop Grumman and Firefly Aerospace are developing a new version of Antares.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

Astra gets a lifeline from DOD. Astra, the launch startup that was taken private again earlier this year for a sliver of its former value, has landed a new contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the development of a next-gen launch system for time-sensitive space missions, TechCrunch reports. The contract, which the DIU awarded under its Novel Responsive Space Delivery (NRSD) program, has a maximum value of $44 million. The money will go toward the continued development of Astra’s Launch System 2, designed to perform rapid, ultra-low-cost launches.

Guarantees? … It wasn’t clear from the initial reporting how much money DIU is actually committing to Astra, which said the contract will fund continued development of Launch System 2. Launch System 2 includes a small-class launch vehicle with a similarly basic name, Rocket 4, and mobile ground infrastructure designed to be rapidly set up at austere spaceports. Adam London, founder and chief technology officer at Astra, said the contract award is a “major vote of confidence” in the company. If Astra can capitalize on the opportunity, this would be quite a remarkable turnaround. After going public at an initial valuation of $2.1 billion, or $12.90 per share, Astra endured multiple launch failures with its previous rocket and risked bankruptcy before the company’s co-founders, Chris Kemp and Adam London, took the company private again this year at a price of just $0.50 per share. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin debuts a new New Shepard. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture successfully sent a brand-new New Shepard rocket ship on an uncrewed shakedown cruise Wednesday, with the aim of increasing the company’s capacity to take people on suborbital space trips, GeekWire reports. The capsule, dubbed RSS Karman Line, carried payloads instead of people when it lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. But if all the data collected during the 10-minute certification flight checks out, it won’t be long before crews climb aboard for similar flights.

Now there are two … With this week’s flight, Blue Origin now has two human-rated suborbital capsules in its fleet, along with two boosters. This should allow the company to ramp up the pace of its human missions, which have historically flown at a cadence of about one flight every two to three months. The new capsule, named for the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, features upgrades to improve performance and ease reusability. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

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China has a new space tourism company. Chinese launch startup Deep Blue Aerospace targets providing suborbital tourism flights starting in 2027, Space News reports. The company was already developing a partially reusable orbital rocket named Nebula-1 for satellite launches and recently lost a reusable booster test vehicle during a low-altitude test flight. While Deep Blue moves forward with more Nebula-1 testing before its first orbital launch, the firm is now selling tickets for rides to suborbital space on a six-person capsule. The first two tickets were expected to be sold Thursday in a promotional livestream event.

Architectural considerations … Deep Blue has a shot at becoming China’s first space tourism company and one of only a handful in the world, joining US-based Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic in the market for suborbital flights. Deep Blue’s design will be a single-stage reusable rocket and crew capsule, similar to Blue Origin’s New Shepard, capable of flying above the Kármán line and providing up to 10 minutes of microgravity experience for its passengers before returning to the ground. A ticket, presumably for a round trip, will cost about $210,000. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

France’s space agency aims to launch a FROG. French space agency CNES will begin flight testing a small reusable rocket demonstrator called FROG-H in 2025, European Spaceflight reports. FROG is a French acronym that translates to Rocket for GNC demonstration, and its purpose is to test landing algorithms for reusable launch vehicles. CNES manages the program in partnership with French nonprofits and universities. At 11.8 feet (3.6 meters) tall, FROG is the smallest launch vehicle prototype at CNES, which says it will test concepts and technologies at small scale before incorporating them into Europe’s larger vertical takeoff/vertical landing test rockets like Callisto and Themis. Eventually, the idea is for all this work to lead to a reusable European orbital-class rocket.

Building on experience … CNES flew a jet-powered demonstrator named FROG-T on five test flights beginning in May 2019, reaching a maximum altitude of about 100 feet (30 meters). FROG-H will be powered by a hydrogen peroxide rocket engine developed by the Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation in Poland under a European Space Agency contract. The first flights of FROG-H are scheduled for early 2025. The structure of the FROG project seeks to “break free from traditional development methods” by turning to “teams of enthusiasts” to rapidly develop and test solutions through an experimental approach, CNES says on its website. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 sweeps NSSL awards. The US Space Force’s Space Systems Command announced on October 18 it has ordered nine launches from SpaceX in the first batch of dozens of missions the military will buy in a new phase of competition for lucrative national security launch contracts, Ars reports. The parameters of the competition limited the bidders to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA). SpaceX won both task orders for a combined value of $733.5 million, or roughly $81.5 million per mission. Six of the nine missions will launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, beginning as soon as late 2025. The other three will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Head-to-head … This was the first set of contract awards by the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 procurement round and represents one of the first head-to-head competitions between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and ULA’s Vulcan rocket. The nine launches were divided into two separate orders, and SpaceX won both. The missions will deploy payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office and the Space Development Agency. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX continues deploying NRO megaconstellation. SpaceX launched more surveillance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office Thursday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. While the secretive spy satellite agency did not identify the number or exact purpose of the satellites, the Falcon 9 likely deployed around 20 spacecraft believed to be based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite bus, a derivative of the Starlink spacecraft platform, with participation from Northrop Grumman. These satellites host classified sensors for the NRO.  This is the fourth SpaceX launch for the NRO’s new satellite fleet, which seeks to augment the agency’s bespoke multibillion-dollar spy satellites with a network of smaller, cheaper, more agile platforms in low-Earth orbit.

The century mark … This mission, officially designated NROL-167, was the 100th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket this year and the 105th SpaceX launch overall in 2024. The NRO has not said how many satellites will make up its fleet when completed, but the intelligence agency says it will be the US government’s largest satellite constellation in history. By the end of the year, the NRO expects to have 100 or more of these satellites in orbit, allowing the agency to transition from a demonstration mode to an operational mode to deliver intelligence data to military and government users. Many more launches are expected through 2028. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

ULA is stacking its third Vulcan rocket. United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon’s most precious national security satellites, Ars reports. Space Force officials expect to approve ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem on the rocket’s second demonstration flight earlier this month, when one of Vulcan’s two strap-on solid-fueled boosters lost its nozzle shortly after liftoff.

Pending certification … Despite the nozzle failure, the Vulcan rocket continued climbing into space and eventually reached its planned injection orbit, and the Space Force and ULA declared the test flight a success. Still, engineers want to understand what caused the nozzle to break apart and decide on corrective actions before the Space Force clears the Vulcan rocket to launch a critical national security payload. This could take a little longer than expected due to the booster problem, but Space Force officials still hope to certify the Vulcan rocket in time to support a national security launch by the end of the year.

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn has all its engines. Blue Origin published a photo Thursday on X showing all seven first-stage BE-4 engines installed on the base of the company’s first New Glenn rocket. This is a notable milestone as Blue Origin proceeds toward the first launch of the heavy-lifter, possibly before the end of the year. But there’s a lot of work for Blue Origin to accomplish before then. These steps include rolling the rocket to the launch pad, running through propellant loading tests and practice countdowns, and then test-firing all seven BE-4 engines on the pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Seven for seven … The BE-4 engines will consume methane fuel mixed with liquid oxygen for the first few minutes of the New Glenn flight, generating more than 3.8 million pounds of combined thrust. The seven BE-4s on New Glenn are similar to the BE-4 engines that fly two at a time on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, said three of the seven engines on the New Glenn first stage have thrust vector control capability to provide steering during launch, reentry, and landing on the company’s offshore recovery vessel. “That gimbal capability, along with the landing gear and Reaction Control System thrusters, are key to making our booster fully reusable,” Limp wrote on X. “Fun fact: The vehicle’s max design gimbal condition is during ascent when it has to fight high-altitude winds.”

Next Super Heavy booster test-fired in Texas. SpaceX fired up the Raptor engines on its next Super Heavy booster, numbered Booster 13, Thursday evening at the company’s launch site in South Texas. This happened just 11 days after SpaceX launched and caught the Super Heavy booster on the previous Starship test flight and signals SpaceX could be ready for the next Starship test flight sometime in November. SpaceX has already test-fired the Starship upper stage for the next flight.

Great expectations … We expect the next Starship flight, which will be program’s sixth full-scale demo mission, will include another booster catch back at the launch tower at Starbase, Texas. SpaceX may also attempt to reignite a Raptor engine on the Starship upper stage while it is in space, demonstrating the capability to steer itself back into the atmosphere on future flights. So far, SpaceX has only launched Starships on long, arcing suborbital trajectories that carry the vehicle halfway around the world before reentry. In order to actually launch a Starship into a stable orbit around Earth, SpaceX will want to show it can bring the vehicle back so it doesn’t reenter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner. An uncontrolled reentry of a large spacecraft like Starship could pose a public safety risk.

Next three launches

Oct. 26: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-8 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21: 47 UTC

Oct. 29: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-9 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 11: 30 UTC

Oct. 30: H3 | Kirameki 3 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 06: 46 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: Sneak peek at the business end of New Glenn; France to fly FROG Read More »

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ULA’s second Vulcan rocket lost part of its booster and kept going

launch, military space, Science, Space, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

The US Space Force says this test flight was critical for certifying Vulcan for military missions.

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, under contract for dozens of flights for the US military and Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network, lifted off from Florida on its second test flight Friday, suffered an anomaly with one of its strap-on boosters, and still achieved a successful mission, the company said in a statement.

This test flight, known as Cert-2, is the second certification mission for the new Vulcan rocket, a milestone that paves the way for the Space Force to clear ULA’s new rocket to begin launching national security satellites in the coming months.

While ULA said the Vulcan rocket continued to hit its marks during the climb into orbit Friday, engineers are investigating what happened with one of its solid rocket boosters shortly after liftoff.

After a last-minute aborted countdown earlier in the morning, the 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket lit its twin methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two side-mounted solid rocket boosters to climb away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7: 25 am EDT (11: 25 UTC) Friday.

A little tilt

As the rocket arced east from Cape Canaveral, a shower of sparks suddenly appeared at the base of the Vulcan rocket around 37 seconds into the mission. The exhaust plume from one of the strap-on boosters, made by Northrop Grumman, changed significantly, and the rocket slightly tilted on its axis before the guidance system and main engines made a steering correction.

Videos from the launch show the booster’s nozzle, the bell-shaped exhaust exit cone at the bottom of the booster, fall away from the rocket.

“It looks dramatic, like all things on a rocket,” Bruno wrote on X. “But it’s just the release of the nozzle. No explosions occurred.”

During the ascent of the Vulcan rocket on the #Cert2 mission, there appeared to be an issue with the solid rocket booster on the right side of the vehicle as seen from the KSC Press Site. However, the Centaur was able to reach orbit.https://t.co/3iwWLVWZHp

📹: @ABernNYC pic.twitter.com/5h06ffNMXr

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) October 4, 2024

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial space launches in the United States, said in a statement that it assessed the booster anomaly and “determined no investigation is warranted at this time.” The FAA is not responsible for regulating launch vehicle anomalies unless they impact public safety.

The Vulcan rocket comes in several configurations, with zero, two, four, or six solid-fueled boosters clustered around the liquid-fueled core stage. ULA can tailor the configuration based on the parameters of each mission, such as payload mass and target orbit.

The boosters, which Northrop Grumman calls graphite epoxy motors, are 63 inches (1.6 meters) in diameter and 72 feet (22 meters) long. Their nozzles are made of a composite heat-resistant carbon-phenolic material.

Bruno added that the rest of the damaged booster’s composite casing held up fine during its roughly 90-second burn, but the anomaly caused “reduced, asymmetric thrust” that the rocket compensated for during the rest of its ascent into space.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial space launches, is not immediately requiring an investigation into the booster anomaly. The FAA said it is “assessing the operation and will issue an updated statement if the agency determines an investigation is warranted.”

Remarkably, the Vulcan rocket soldiered on and jettisoned both strap-on boosters to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. They’re not designed for recovery, so ULA and Northrop Grumman engineers will have to piece together what happened from imagery and performance data beamed down from the rocket in flight.

The BE-4 main engines, supplied by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin, appeared to work flawlessly for the first five minutes of the flight. The core stage shut down its engines and separated from Vulcan’s Centaur upper stage, which ignited two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engines to propel the rocket into orbit.

The second Vulcan rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two solid rocket boosters.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

The second Vulcan rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two solid rocket boosters. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Live data displayed on ULA’s webcast of the launch suggested the RL10 engines fired for approximately 20 seconds longer than planned, apparently to compensate for the lower thrust from the damaged booster during the first phase of the flight. The Centaur upper stage completed a second burn about a half-hour into the mission.

The rocket did not carry a real satellite. Earlier this year, ULA decided to launch a dummy payload to simulate the mass of a spacecraft, when it became clear the original payload for Vulcan’s second flight—Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane—would not be ready to fly this fall. ULA says it self-funded most of the cost of the Cert-2 test flight, which Bruno suggested was somewhere below $100 million.

Bullseye insertion

“Orbital insertion was perfect,” Bruno wrote on X.

The Centaur engines were supposed to fire a third time later Friday to send the rocket on a trajectory to escape Earth orbit and head into the Solar System. ULA also planned to perform experiments with the Centaur upper stage to demonstrate technologies and capabilities for longer-duration missions that could eventually last days, weeks, or months. The company did not provide an update on the results of these experiments.

Friday morning’s launch follows the debut test flight of the Vulcan rocket on January 8, which sent a commercial lunar lander from Astrobotic on a trajectory toward the Moon. The launch in January was nearly perfect.

ULA is a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which merged their rocket divisions to form a single company in 2006. SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, is ULA’s main competitor in the market for launching large US military satellites into orbit.

In 2020, the Pentagon awarded ULA and SpaceX multibillion-dollar “Phase 2” contracts to share responsibilities for launching dozens of national security space missions through 2027. Defense officials selected ULA’s Vulcan rocket to launch 25 national security missions, the majority of the launches up for competition. The rest went to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which started delivering on its Phase 2 contract in January 2023.

Later this year, the Space Force is expected to select up to three companies—almost certainly ULA, SpaceX, and perhaps Blue Origin with its soon-to-debut New Glenn rocket—in a fresh competition to be eligible for contracts to launch the military’s largest spacecraft through 2029.

The Space Force required ULA to complete two successful Vulcan test flights before clearing the new rocket for launching military satellites. Despite the booster malfunction, ULA officials clearly believe the Vulcan rocket did enough Friday for the Space Force to certify it.

“The success of Vulcan’s second certification flight heralds a new age of forward-looking technology committed to meeting the ever-growing requirements of space launch and supporting our nation’s assured access to space,” Bruno said in a statement. “We had an observation on one of our solid rocket boosters (SRBs) that we are reviewing, but we are overall pleased with the rocket’s performance and had a bullseye insertion.”

A closer view of the Vulcan rocket’s BE-4 main engines and twin solid-fueled boosters.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

A closer view of the Vulcan rocket’s BE-4 main engines and twin solid-fueled boosters. Credit: United Launch Alliance

In a press release after Friday’s launch, the Space Force hailed the test flight as a “certification milestone.”

“This is a significant achievement for both ULA and an important milestone for the nation’s strategic space lift capability,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, Space Systems Command’s program executive officer for assured access to space. “The Space Force’s partnership with launch companies, such as ULA, are absolutely critical in deploying on-orbit capabilities that protect our national interests.

“We are already starting to review the performance data from this launch, and we look forward to Vulcan meeting the certification requirements for a range of national security space missions,” Panzenhagen said in a statement.

The Space Force is eager for Vulcan to become operational. Some of the military’s most critical reconnaissance, communications, and missile warning satellites are slated to fly on Vulcan rockets.

Ramping up

Going into Friday’s test flight, ULA and the Space Force hoped to launch one or two more Vulcan rockets by the end of the year, both with US Space Force payloads. The timing of the next Vulcan launch, assuming the Space Force certifies the new rocket, will likely hinge on the outcome of the investigation into the booster anomaly.

ULA has already transported all major components of the next Vulcan rocket from its factory in Alabama to Cape Canaveral for final launch preparations. The company has a backlog of 69 Vulcan flights, counting missions for the Space Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, Amazon’s Kuiper network, and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane to resupply the International Space Station.

In a prelaunch briefing with reporters, Bruno said ULA aims to launch up to 20 times next year. Roughly half of that number will be Vulcan flights, and the rest will be Atlas V rockets, which ULA is retiring in favor of Vulcan.

There are 15 Atlas V rockets left to fly, primarily for Amazon and Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule. The nozzle failure Friday may also affect the schedule for Atlas V launches because the soon-to-retire rocket uses a similar booster design from Northrop Grumman.

ULA eventually wants to launch up to 25 Vulcan rockets per year from its launch pads at Cape Canaveral and at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The launch provider is outfitting a second assembly building in Florida to stack Vulcan rockets, a capability that will shorten the time between liftoffs. ULA is modifying its Atlas V launch pad in California to support Vulcan flights there next year.

ULA announced the Vulcan rocket in 2015 to replace the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, which had stellar success records but were not cost-competitive with SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9. The Atlas V also uses a Russian main engine, a situation that became politically untenable after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and more so after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The final Russian engines for the Atlas V arrived in the United States in 2021.

The Vulcan rocket is somewhat less expensive than the Atlas V, and significantly cheaper than the Delta IV, but still more costly than SpaceX’s Falcon 9. There is a closer price parity between Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

Bruno hinted at the cost of developing the rocket in his roundtable discussion with reporters earlier this week.

“Developing a rocket, and then the infrastructure to develop a new space launch vehicle, the rule of thumb is it costs you somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion,” Bruno said. “Vulcan is not outside the rule of thumb.”

Updated at 5: 15 pm EDT (21: 15 UTC) with new FAA statement.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

ULA’s second Vulcan rocket lost part of its booster and kept going Read More »

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ULA hasn’t given up on developing a long-lived cryogenic space tug

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On Friday’s launch, United Launch Alliance will test the limits of its Centaur upper stage.

United Launch Alliance’s second Vulcan rocket underwent a countdown dress rehearsal Tuesday. Credit: United Launch Alliance

The second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, planned for Friday morning, has a primary goal of validating the launcher’s reliability for delivering critical US military satellites to orbit.

Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters Wednesday that he is “supremely confident” the Vulcan rocket will succeed in accomplishing that objective. The Vulcan’s second test flight, known as Cert-2, follows a near-flawless debut launch of ULA’s new rocket on January 8.

“As I come up on Cert-2, I’m pretty darn confident I’m going to have a good day on Friday, knock on wood,” Bruno said. “These are very powerful, complicated machines.”

The Vulcan launcher, a replacement for ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, is on contract to haul the majority of the US military’s most expensive national security satellites into orbit over the next several years. The Space Force is eager to certify Vulcan to launch these payloads, but military officials want to see two successful test flights before committing one of its satellites to flying on the new rocket.

If Friday’s test flight goes well, ULA is on track to launch at least one—and perhaps two—operational missions for the Space Force by the end of this year. The Space Force has already booked 25 launches on ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military payloads and spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. Including the launch Friday, ULA has 70 Vulcan rockets in its backlog, mostly for the Space Force, the NRO, and Amazon’s Kuiper satellite broadband network.

The Vulcan rocket is powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines produced by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin, and ULA can mount zero, two, four, or six strap-on solid rocket boosters from Northrop Grumman around the Vulcan’s first stage to propel heavier payloads to space. The rocket’s Centaur V upper stage is fitted with a pair of hydrogen-burning RL10 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne.

The second Vulcan rocket will fly in the same configuration as the first launch earlier this year, with two strap-on solid-fueled boosters. The only noticeable modification to the rocket is the addition of some spray-on foam insulation around the outside of the first stage methane tank, which will keep the cryogenic fuel at the proper temperature as Vulcan encounters aerodynamic heating on its ascent through the atmosphere.

“This will give us just over one second more usable propellant,” Bruno wrote on X.

There is one more change from Vulcan’s first launch, which boosted a commercial lunar lander for Astrobotic on a trajectory toward the Moon. This time, there are no real spacecraft on the Vulcan rocket. Instead, ULA mounted a dummy payload to the Centaur V upper stage to simulate the mass of a functioning satellite.

ULA originally planned to launch Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane on the second Vulcan rocket. But the Dream Chaser won’t be ready to fly its first mission to resupply the International Space Station until next year. Under pressure from the Pentagon, ULA decided to move ahead with the second Vulcan launch without a payload at the company’s own expense, which Bruno tallied in the “high tens of millions of dollars.”

Heliocentricity

The test flight will begin with liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, during a three-hour launch window opening at 6 am EDT (10: 00 UTC). The 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket will head east over the Atlantic Ocean, shedding its boosters, first stage, and payload fairing in the first few minutes of flight.

The Centaur upper stage will fire its RL10 engines two times, completing the primary mission within about 35 minutes of launch. The rocket will then continue on for a series of technical demonstrations before ending up on an Earth escape trajectory into a heliocentric orbit around the Sun.

“We have a number of experiments that we’re conducting that are really technology demonstrations and measurements that are associated with our high-performance, longer-duration version of Centaur V that we’ll be introducing in the future,” Bruno said. “And these will help us go a little bit faster on that development. And, of course, because we don’t have an active spacecraft as a payload, we also have more instrumentation that we’re able to use for just characterizing the vehicle.”

The Centaur V upper stage for the Vulcan rocket.

The Centaur V upper stage for the Vulcan rocket. Credit: United Launch Alliance

ULA engineers have worked on the design of a long-lived upper stage for more than a decade. Their vision was to develop an upper stage fed by super-efficient cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants that could generate its own power and operate in space for days, weeks, or longer rather than an upper stage’s usual endurance limit of several hours. This would allow the rocket to not only deliver satellites into bespoke high-altitude orbits but also continue on to release more payloads at different altitudes or provide longer-term propulsion in support of other missions.

The concept was called the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES). ULA’s corporate owners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, never authorized the full development of ACES, and the company said in 2020 that it was no longer pursuing the ACES concept.

The Centaur V upper stage currently used on the Vulcan rocket is a larger version of the thin-walled, pressure-stabilized Centaur upper stage that has been flying since the 1960s. Bruno said the Centaur V design, as it is today, offers as much as 12 hours of operating life in space. This is longer than any other existing rocket using cryogenic propellants, which can boil off over time.

ULA’s chief executive still harbors an ambition for regaining some of the same capabilities promised by ACES.

“What we are looking to do is to extend that by orders of magnitude,” Bruno said. “And what that would allow us to do is have a in-space transportation capability for in-space mobility and servicing and things like that.”

Space Force leaders have voiced a desire for future spacecraft to freely maneuver between different orbits, a concept the military calls “dynamic space operations.” This would untether spacecraft operations from fuel limitations and eventually require the development of in-orbit refueling, propellant depots, or novel propulsion technologies.

No one has tried to store large amounts of super-cold propellants in space for weeks or longer. Accomplishing this is a non-trivial thermal problem, requiring insulation to keep heat from the Sun from reaching the liquid cryogenic propellant, stored at temperatures of several hundred degrees below zero.

Bruno hesitated to share details of the experiments ULA plans for the Centaur V upper stage on Friday’s test flight, citing proprietary concerns. He said the experiments will confirm analytical models about how the upper stage performs in space.

“Some of these are devices, some of these are maneuvers because maneuvers make a difference, and some are related to performance in a way,” he said. “In some cases, those maneuvers are helping us with the thermal load that tries to come in and boil off the propellants.”

Eventually, ULA would like to eliminate hydrazine attitude control fuel and battery power from the Centaur V upper stage, Bruno said Wednesday. This sounds a lot like what ULA wanted to do with ACES, which would have used an internal combustion engine called Integrated Vehicle Fluids (IVF) to recycle gasified waste propellants to pressurize its propellant tanks, generate electrical power, and feed thrusters for attitude control. This would mean the upper stage wouldn’t need to rely on hydrazine, helium, or batteries.

ULA hasn’t talked much about the IVF system in recent years, but Bruno said the company is still developing it. “It’s part of all of this, but that’s all I will say, or I’ll start revealing what all the gadgets are.”

A comparison between ULA’s legacy Centaur upper stage and the new Centaur V.

A comparison between ULA’s legacy Centaur upper stage and the new Centaur V. Credit: United Launch Alliance

George Sowers, former vice president and chief scientist at ULA, was one of the company’s main advocates for extending the lifetime of upper stages and developing technologies for refueling and propellant depot. He retired from ULA in 2017 and is now a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and an independent aerospace industry consultant.

In an interview with Ars earlier this year, Sowers said ULA solved many of the problems with keeping cryogenic propellants at the right temperature in space.

“We had a lot of data on boil-off, just from flying Centaurs all the way to geosynchronous orbit, which doesn’t involve weeks, but it involves maybe half a day or so, which is plenty of time to get all the temperatures to stabilize at deep space levels,” Sowers said. “So you have to understand the heat transfer very well. Good models are very important.”

ULA experimented with different types of insulation and vapor cooling, which involves taking cold gas that boiled off of cryogenic fuel and blowing it on heat penetration points into the tanks.

“There are tricks to managing boil-off,” he said. “One of the tricks is that you never want to boil oxygen. You always want to boil hydrogen. So you size your propellant tanks and your propellant loads, assuming you’re going to have that extra hydrogen boil-off. Then what you can do is use the hydrogen to keep the oxygen cold to keep it from boiling.

“The amount of heat that you can reject by boiling off one kilogram of hydrogen is about five times what you would reject by boiling off one kilogram of oxygen. So those are some of the thermodynamic tricks,” Sowers said. “The way ULA accomplished that is by having a common bulkhead, so the hydrogen tank and the oxygen tank are in thermal contact. So hydrogen keeps the oxygen cold.”

ULA’s experiments showed it could get the hydrogen boil-off rate down to about 10 percent per year, based on thermodynamic models calibrated by data from flying older versions of the Centaur upper stage on Atlas V rockets, according to Sowers.

“In my mind, that kind of cemented the idea that distribution depots and things like that are very well in hand without having to have exotic cryocoolers, which tend to use a lot of power,” Sowers said. “It’s about efficiency. If you can do it passively, you don’t have to expend energy on cryocoolers.”

“We’re going to go to days, and then we’re going to go to weeks, and then we think it’s possible to take us to months,” Bruno said. “That’s a game changer.”

However, ULA’s corporate owners haven’t yet fully bought into this vision. Bruno said the Vulcan rocket and its supporting manufacturing and launch infrastructure cost between $5 billion and $7 billion to develop. ULA also plans to eventually recover and reuse BE-4 main engines from the Vulcan rocket, but that is still at least several years away.

But ULA is reportedly up for sale, and a well-capitalized buyer might find the company’s long-duration cryogenic upper stage more attractive and worth the investment.

“There’s a whole lot of missions that enables,” Bruno said. “So that’s a big step in capability, both for the United States and also commercially.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

ULA hasn’t given up on developing a long-lived cryogenic space tug Read More »

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NASA is ready to start buying Vulcan rockets from United Launch Alliance

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Full stack —

The second test flight of the Vulcan rocket is scheduled for liftoff on October 4.

–

The first stage of ULA's second Vulcan rocket was raised onto its launch platform August 11 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / The first stage of ULA’s second Vulcan rocket was raised onto its launch platform August 11 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

United Launch Alliance is free to compete for NASA contracts with its new Vulcan rocket after a successful test flight earlier this year, ending a period where SpaceX was the only company competing for rights to launch the agency’s large science missions.

For several years, ULA was unable to bid for NASA launch contracts after the company sold all of its remaining Atlas V rockets to other customers, primarily for Amazon’s Project Kuiper Internet network. ULA could not submit its new Vulcan rocket, which will replace the Atlas V, for NASA to consider in future launch contracts until the Vulcan completed at least one successful flight, according to Tim Dunn, senior launch director at NASA’s Launch Services Program.

The Vulcan rocket’s first certification flight on January 8, called Cert-1, was nearly flawless, demonstrating the launcher’s methane-fueled BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin and an uprated twin-engine Centaur upper stage. A second test flight, known as Cert-2, is scheduled to lift off no earlier than October 4 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Assuming the upcoming launch is as successful as the first one, the US Space Force aims to launch its first mission on a Vulcan rocket by the end of the year.

The Space Force has already booked 25 launches on ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military payloads and spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. But these missions won’t launch until Vulcan completes its second test flight, clearing the way for the Space Force to certify ULA’s new rocket for national security missions.

Back in the game

NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP) is responsible for selecting and overseeing launch providers for the agency’s robotic science missions. NASA’s near-term options for launching large missions include SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, ULA’s Vulcan, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher.

However, only SpaceX’s rockets have been available for NASA bids since 2021, when ULA sold all of its remaining Atlas V rockets to Amazon. For example, ULA did not submit proposals for the launch of a GOES weather satellite or NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, two of the more lucrative launch contracts the agency has awarded in the last couple of years. NASA selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the only eligible rocket, for both missions.

This is a notable role reversal for SpaceX and ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that was the sole launch provider for large NASA science missions and military satellites for nearly a decade. SpaceX launched its first mission for NASA’s Launch Services Program in January 2016.

The situation changed with the first flight of the Vulcan rocket in January.

“They certainly demonstrated a huge success earlier this year flying Cert-1,” Dunn told Ars in an interview. “They needed a successful flight to then bid for future missions, so that allowed them to be in a position to bid on our missions.”

NASA has not yet formally certified the Vulcan rocket to launch one of the agency’s science missions, but that would not stop NASA from selecting Vulcan for a contract. Some of NASA’s next big science missions up for launch contract awards include the nuclear-powered Dragonfly mission to explore Saturn’s moon Titan and an asteroid-hunting telescope named NEO Surveyor.

The second Vulcan flight next month will move ULA’s rocket toward certification by the Space Force and NASA.

“A second Cert flight that will then demonstrate a few other capabilities of the rocket allows more data for our certification team that is working in concert with the US Space Force’s certification team,” Dunn said. “We’re doing a lot of shared, intergovernmental collaborations in the certification work, so it allows us all more data, more confidence in that launch vehicle to meet all the needs that we believe we will have in the coming decade-plus.”

Two strap-on solid-fueled boosters and twin BE-4 main engines on ULA's second Vulcan rocket.

Enlarge / Two strap-on solid-fueled boosters and twin BE-4 main engines on ULA’s second Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn could also compete for contracts to launch NASA’s larger, more expensive missions after it completes at least one successful flight. Blue Origin is currently eligible for bids to launch NASA’s smaller missions, such as the ESCAPADE mission to Mars already assigned to New Glenn. NASA is willing to accept more risk for launching these types of lower-cost missions.

ULA capped off the assembly of its second Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral on Saturday when technicians lifted the launcher’s payload fairing atop Vulcan’s first-stage booster and Centaur upper stage. For its second launch, Vulcan will carry a dummy payload instead of a real satellite. The second Vulcan flight was initially supposed to launch Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane to the International Space Station, but Dream Chaser isn’t ready, and the Space Force is eager for ULA to get moving and finish the certification process.

The head of Space Systems Command, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, told Ars last week that he is “optimistic” ULA will be in a position to launch its first Space Force missions with the Vulcan rocket by the end of this year. ULA has already delivered Vulcan rocket parts for the next two missions to Cape Canaveral, but the Cert-2 launch needs to go off without a hitch.

“We’re working very closely with ULA on that, as well as the manifest for the following missions,” Garrant said. “All of the rocket parts are at the launch locations, ready to go, but clearly the priority is the certification flight and making sure that the launch vehicle is certified. But we are optimistic that we’re going to get those launches off.”

NASA is ready to start buying Vulcan rockets from United Launch Alliance Read More »

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Rocket Report: China flies reusable rocket hopper; Falcon Heavy dazzles

china, european space agency, falcon 9, falcon heavy, Firefly Aerospace, launch, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance, vulcan / /
SpaceX's 10th Falcon Heavy rocket climbs into orbit with a new US government weather satellite.

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)

Rocket Report: China flies reusable rocket hopper; Falcon Heavy dazzles Read More »

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Blue Origin joins SpaceX and ULA in new round of military launch contracts

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Playing with the big boys —

“Lane 1 serves our commercial-like missions that can accept more risk.”

–

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on the launch pad for testing earlier this year.

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.”

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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.

Blue Origin joins SpaceX and ULA in new round of military launch contracts Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden

atlas v, blue origin, Commercial space, human spaceflight, launch, rocket report, Science, Space, spaceport Camden, spacex, starliner, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan / /
On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas.

Enlarge / On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket’s next test flight from South Texas.

Welcome to Edition 6.44 of the Rocket Report! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It looks like this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two-and-a-half months after the previous Starship test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.

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.

Blue Origin launch on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will launch six passengers on a flight to suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) over West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, has not flown people to space since a New Shepard rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.

Historic flight … This will be the 25th flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, and the seventh human spaceflight mission on New Shepard. Before Blue Origin’s rocket failure in 2022, the company was reaching a flight cadence of about one launch every two months, on average. The flight rate has diminished since then. Sunday’s flight is important not only because it marks the resumption of launches for Blue Origin’s suborbital human spaceflight business, but also because its six-person crew includes an aviation pioneer. Ed Dwight, 90, almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. Dwight will become the oldest person to ever fly in space.

Spaceport Camden is officially no more. With the stroke of a pen, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill that dissolved the Camden County Spaceport Authority, Action News Jax reported. This news follows a referendum in March 2022 where more than 70 percent of voters rejected a plan to buy land for the spaceport on the Georgia coastline between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. County officials still tried to move forward with the spaceport initiative after the failed referendum, but Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled in February that the county had to abide by the voters’ wishes.

$12 million for what?… The government of Camden County, with a population of about 55,000 people spent $12 million on the Spaceport Camden concept over the course of a decade. The goal of the spaceport authority was to lure small launch companies to the region, but no major launches ever took place from Camden County. State Rep. Steven Sainz, who sponsored the bill eliminating the spaceport authority, said in a statement that the legislation “reflects the community’s choice and opens a path for future collaborations in economic initiatives that are more aligned with local needs.” (submitted by zapman987)

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Polaris Spaceplanes moves on to bigger things. German startup Polaris Spaceplanes says it is progressing with construction of its MIRA II and MIRA III spaceplane prototypes after MIRA, a subscale test vehicle, was damaged earlier this year, European Spaceflight reports. The MIRA demonstration vehicle crash-landed on a test flight in February. The incident occurred on takeoff at an airfield in Germany before the vehicle could ignite its linear aerospace engine in flight. The remote-controlled MIRA prototype measured about 4.25 meters long. Polaris announced on April 30 that will not repair MIRA and will instead move forward with the construction of a pair of larger vehicles.

Nearly 16 months without a launch … The MIRA II and MIRA III vehicles will be 5 meters long and will be powered by Polaris’s AS-1 aerospike engines, along with jet engines to power the craft before and after in-flight tests of the rocket engine. Aerospike engines are rocket engines that are designed to operate efficiently at all altitudes. The MIRA test vehicles are precursors to AURORA, a multipurpose spaceplane and hypersonic transporter Polaris says will be capable of delivering up to 1,000 kilograms of payload to low-Earth orbit. (submitted by Jay500001 and Tfargo04)

Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden Read More »

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With payload questions, it’s likely Vulcan will not launch again until fall

Space, vulcan / /

LLAP —

United Launch Alliance may seek certification from the Space Force after one flight.

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The first Vulcan rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

After the impressive debut of the Vulcan rocket in January, it is unclear when the heavy lift vehicle will fly again. The uncertainty is due to a couple of factors, including the rocket’s readiness and, perhaps more critically, what will fly on top of it.

United Launch Alliance, which assembles and launches the Vulcan rocket, has long maintained that it would launch the Dream Chaser spacecraft for Sierra Space on the rocket’s second mission. This would allow the rocket company to obtain enough data about the performance of Vulcan to earn certification for national security payloads.

An indication of the emphasis the company has put on earning certification from the Space Force—launching military payloads is the primary justification for the existence of Vulcan—comes from the names it chose for the first two launches, Cert-1 and Cert-2.

But what happens if the payload is not ready for Cert-2, as increasingly looks likely to be the case?

Chasing Dreams

After a long development period, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser vehicle is making credible progress toward the launch pad. It is currently undergoing environmental testing at a NASA facility in Ohio, including vibration tests.

On NASA’s internal schedule for missions to the International Space Station, the Dream Chaser mission to supply cargo to the orbiting laboratory currently has a “planning” date of September. However, this is not a firm date and is subject to slippage.

In fact, there is skepticism within the space agency about a fall launch. According to one source, during a recent meeting to integrate planning for space station activities, there were significant inconsistencies in the schedule that Sierra Space officials laid out for NASA.

It is possible that Dream Chaser will not be ready to launch until 2025, and then its flight will be subject to the space station schedule, which must coordinate arriving crew and cargo vehicles from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Russia.

Vulcan wants to fly sooner

United Launch Alliance would very much like to fly the Vulcan rocket sooner, in order to exit the certification phase and begin flying contracted missions for the US Space Force. Immediately after the Cert-1 mission, the launch of an Astrobotic lunar lander on January 8, the company was keeping open the possibility of a spring launch.

The company planned to set aside 60 days to review data from the “Cert-1” certification mission. If the data looked good from that flight, the plan was to move into preparations for the next launch. United Launch Alliance Vice President Gary Wentz said the earliest opportunity to launch the Cert-2 mission was “April-ish.”

As is commonplace in the launch industry, that schedule proved optimistic. However, given that Vulcan appeared to perform very well on its debut launch, a midsummer target seems realistic for the rocket’s readiness. That leaves three or four months to complete production of the core stage, which still lacks engines.

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4,” United Launch Alliance chief executive Tory Bruno said about Vulcan during a conference call with reporters in March. The BE-4 rocket engines, two of which power Vulcan’s first stage, are manufactured by Blue Origin. “The reason the BE-4 is a little bit behind everyone else is because it took a little bit longer to get it developed and finished. It is now. We have wonderful facilities at the BE-4 factory in Huntsville, which was just built and expanded, they literally doubled their factory size to do this. So they have to catch up now to everyone else in building ahead.”

United Launch Alliance did not respond to a request for comment for this story about the Vulcan rocket’s readiness or a potential shuffling of the launch manifest. A source said the company is willing to wait until September to launch Dream Chaser. But if the vehicle is not ready by then, Vulcan will likely seek out alternatives.

One-flight certification

Two sources said United Launch Alliance had asked Space Systems Command, the Los Angeles-based unit responsible for military access to space, for at least a partial certification of Vulcan based on data from its initial launch. This would potentially allow Vulcan to carry national security payloads on its second flight or perhaps Defense Innovation Unit payloads such as Blue Origin’s DarkSky-1 mission.

A spokesperson for Space Systems Command declined to respond to questions from Ars about an expedited certification process.

Previously, Col. Douglas Pentecost of the Space Force said United Launch Alliance had chosen the Vulcan certification path requiring the least amount of launches: two. By contrast, Blue Origin has agreed to a three-flight certification process, which requires less paperwork. There is also a six-flight option and even a 14-flight option for certification. The latter option essentially means that if your rocket flies 14 times, it earns certification.

Nevertheless, there is a precedent for a single-flight certification. In 2018, the Air Force agreed to certify SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket after its debut launch in February of that year. That decision was controversial enough that it generated a review by the Department of Defense Inspector General, which found that the military had “generally complied” with its procurement rules.

It’s worth noting, however, that the Falcon Heavy did not carry a military payload on its next two flights. The initial certification appears to have been conditional on the success of the next two commercial missions.

With payload questions, it’s likely Vulcan will not launch again until fall Read More »