July 12, 2018

Rocket Company Eyes Cape Canaveral Spaceport for Launch Pad (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The first U.S.-based rocket launch by a relative newcomer in the space industry could come from Florida’s Space Coast, as early as next year. Rocket Lab has listed Cape Canaveral as one of four potential locations for a launchpad that would send into orbit its lightweight, two-stage Electron rocket in the second quarter of 2019. The Huntington Beach, Calif.,-based company also listed the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as finalists.

Pad construction cost, regulatory hurdles and anticipated operational costs are among the factors the company will consider as it determines where to build the pad, which will be dubbed Launch Complex 2. The site will be announced in August, company officials said. Construction is expected to begin immediately after site selection with the first launch expected in the second quarter of next year. The Electron is a 56-foot-long, 23,000-pound two-stage expendable rocket that first launched an unsuccessful test flight May 25, 2017. Its second launch, the first to successfully deploy satellites, was Jan. 21.

Space Florida, which promotes the space industry in Brevard County, has already begun wooing Rocket Labs. The agency will coordinate with the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Space Wing to put together a proposal. Editor's Note: The fast-track plan for this new launch pad means Space Florida's planned Shiloh launch site, several miles north of LC-39, would not be an option. (7/12)

Why Georgia's Spaceport Isn't on Rocket Lab's Shortlist (Source: Spaceport Facts)
Residents organized in opposition to Georgia's proposed spaceport offer their thoughts on why Rocket Lab did not include Spaceport Camden on their shortlist of potential U.S. launch sites. "Spaceport Camden has unique and expensive problems that will bear on the profitability of launch operators," they say. They point to the size of Rocket Lab's New Zealand launch hazard zone (12 miles wide, 35 miles downrange, directly over water and a "cooperating sheep farm") compared with the 5 mile wide, 3.5 mile downrange zone established in the Camden environmental impact report.

"Rocket Lab understands Camden will have much higher MPL insurance costs because rockets will launch over more than 100 private properties, at least 42 homes and their residents and visitors, plus campers and hikers in a National Seashore and Wilderness Area that lies just 3.5 to 10 miles downrange. The FAA cannot compel evacuation from private property and the NPS has called the Proposed Action a constructive taking. So, it is not unreasonable to expect that even if a site license is granted, launches will face T-1 day injunctions. Can startups take the chance?"

"There are also far higher costs associated with securing near-downrange real estate and managing people instead of a stray boat on the ocean. The FAA cannot require people to shelter like they do for downrange staff at Kwajalein or by agreement with Vandenberg’s offshore oil rigs. Will Boy Scouts and backcountry campers who made their reservations six months in advance be expected to shelter for hours in their tents? ….for several days in a row while delays are worked through? Most importantly, the launch provider cannot control or even know how many people will be in the near-downrange hazard area at T-0 making all MPL calculations irrelevant." (7/11)

Electric Satellite Propulsion Company Raises $10 Million (Source: Space News)
A Silicon Valley startup developing electric propulsion systems for satellites has raised $10 million and added the billionaire founder of LinkedIn to its board. Apollo Fusion announced the $10 million Series B round July 11, bringing the total the company has raised to date to more than $18 million. The round was led by venture fund Greylock Partners, with one of the fund’s partners, Reid Hoffman, joining the board. Apollo Fusion will use the funding to scale up manufacturing and testing facilities for its electric propulsion system, called the Apollo Constellation Engine (ACE). The company believes that ACE is well-suited to serve the growing demand for smallsats with onboard propulsion. (7/11)

Tariff War Threatens Aerospace Industry (Source: Space News)
The aerospace industry, a bright spot for U.S. trade, could be threatened by tariffs. A report Wednesday by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) found that the industry, including both aviation and space, generated $143 billion in exports and a positive trade balance of $86 billion in 2017. While AIA said in its report that 2018 should be an even stronger year for the industry, it warned of unintended consequences as a result of trade wars, arguing that "having access to global markets and supply chains through trade allows U.S. manufacturers to stay competitive." (7/12)

China's Tariff War Advantage: Profit is a Secondary Concern for Some Aerospace Companies (Source: Space News)
A state-owned Chinese satellite operator is making investments in new systems motivated more by concerns about keeping up with other countries than those systems' business cases. China Satcom is considering ordering more high-throughput satellites and is part of a joint venture for a low Earth orbit constellation called Hongyan. A company executive said at a conference last week that those efforts are driven in large part by concerns that China will be left behind other nations rather than whether those systems make economic sense. "In our case, we need to do first, then we consider how to earn money," said Yao Fahai, vice president of China Satcom. (7/12)

Intelsat Goes With SpaceLogistics Approach to Satellite Servicing (Source: Space News)
Intelsat is taking a more conservative approach to satellite servicing. The operator has a contract with SpaceLogistics, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK) to use its Mission Extension Vehicle to attach to and extend the life of Intelsat-901. Intelsat said it saw the SpaceLogistics approach as a simpler and more conservative approach than other proposals to refuel satellites, but added it's open to more ambitious satellite servicing concepts in the future. (7/12)

Cygnus Boosts ISS Orbit (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
A Cygnus cargo spacecraft raised the space station's orbit slightly. The Cygnus spacecraft fired its main thruster for 50 seconds Tuesday, raising the station's orbit by about 90 meters. The reboost, the first performed by a commercial cargo vehicle, was a test of the ability of those spacecraft to adjust the station's orbit as an alternative to Progress spacecraft and the station's own thrusters. The Cygnus, which has been at the station since late May, is scheduled to depart on Sunday. (7/12)

Canadian Spaceport Projects Gets Environmental Assessment (Source: Canadian Press)
A company planning a Canadian spaceport has submitted an environmental assessment of the facility. The report by Maritime Launch Services addresses the environmental impacts of the proposed launch site near the community of Canso, Nova Scotia, that will be used for launches of Cyclone-4 rockets. A public comment period on the report runs until early August, and the provincial government is expected to make a decision by Aug. 23. (7/12)

SpaceX Begins Infrastructure Deliveries to Texas Launch Site (Source: Brownsville Herald)
Infrastructure for SpaceX's South Texas launch site is starting to arrive. A 360,000-liter liquid oxygen tank was delivered to the site Wednesday, which a company spokesperson said "represents the latest major piece of launch hardware to arrive at the site for installation." SpaceX broke ground on the site, at Boca Chica Beach on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in 2014, but has spent much of the time since then working to prepare the site for construction. SpaceX plans to use the spaceport for tests of its Big Falcon Rocket as soon as next year. (7/12)

Giant Next-Generation Space Telescope That Could Launch on a SpaceX BFR (Source: Next Big Future)
NASA had funded a study that would examine SpaceX’s next-gen BFR rocket as an option for launching LUVOIR. The Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR) is a concept for a highly capable, multi-wavelength space observatory. On June 1, 2018, NASA HQ instructed the Decadal Mission studies (HabEx, LUVOIR, Lynx, and OST) to produce versions of their concepts that fit into the $3-5 billion cost box. LUVOIR was exempt from this instruction.

On June 14, 2018, NASA HQ withdrew the aforementioned June 1 memo and replaced it with new directions. The new memo acknowledges that all four studies are planning to design less costly second mission concepts, and notes that the LUVOIR-B architecture already under development has a roughly 50% size reduction compared to LUVOIR-A. HabEx, Lynx, and OST are given the goal of developing a second concept with an estimated cost less than about $5 billion.

The LUVOIR study team is considering two architectures, one with a 15-m mirror (Architecture A), and another with a ~8-m mirror (Architecture B). Architecture A is designed for launch on NASA’s planned Space Launch System (SLS), while Architecture B is being designed to launch on a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a 5-m diameter fairing, similar to those in use today. A third version for launch be the SpaceX BFR should be similar to the 15-meter mirror. The new under $5 billion cost directive could change the size and design. (7/9)

Commercial Crew Delays Threaten Access to ISS, GAO Warns (Source: Space News)
Amid growing concerns about commercial crew delays, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report recommended NASA share more schedule information with Congress and develop contingency plans to maintain access to the ISS. In a July report, the GAO said that Boeing and SpaceX could miss their current schedules for having their commercial crew vehicles certified by NASA by a year or more, creating a gap in access to the station when the agency’s use of Soyuz seats ends late next year.

Current public schedules call for Boeing and SpaceX to make uncrewed test flights in August, followed by crewed test flights by Boeing in November and SpaceX in December. On that schedule, Boeing would be certified by NASA to transport astronauts to the ISS in January 2019, followed by SpaceX in February. However, those dates are expected to slip, perhaps significantly, according to NASA’s own schedule risk analysis assessments.

The GAO said that NASA needs to develop a contingency plan for continued ISS access should commercial crew certification slip to 2020. The risk analysis found "zero percent chance that either contractor would achieve its current proposed certification milestone." (7/11)

NASA Believes Boeing Ahead of SpaceX in Commercial Crew (Source: Ars Technica)
One of the biggest rivalries in the modern aerospace industry is between Boeing and SpaceX. Despite their radically different cultures, the aerospace giant and the smaller upstart compete for many different kinds of contracts, and perhaps nowhere has the competition been more keen than for NASA funds.

In 2014, both Boeing and SpaceX received multibillion awards (Boeing asked for, and got, 50 percent more funding for the same task) to finalize development of spacecraft to carry astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the commercial crew program. Since then, both companies have been locked in a race to the launchpad, not just to free NASA from its reliance on Russia to reach space but also for the considerable esteem that will accompany becoming the first private company in the world to fly humans into orbit. (

Blue Origin Plans to Start Selling Tickets in 2019 for Suborbital Spaceflights (Source: Space News)
Blue Origin expects to start flying people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle “soon” and start selling tickets for commercial flights next year, a company executive said June 19. “We plan to start flying our first test passengers soon,” he said after showing a video of a previous New Shepard flight at the company’s West Texas test site. All of the New Shepard flights to date have been without people on board, but the company has said in the past it would fly its personnel on the vehicle in later tests. (7/11)

Rocky Planet Neighbor Looks Familiar, But is Not Earth's Twin (Source: Space Daily)
Last autumn, the world was excited by the discovery of an exoplanet called Ross 128 b, which is just 11 light years away from Earth. New work from a team led by Diogo Souto of Brazil's Observatorio Nacional and including Carnegie's Johanna Teske has for the first time determined detailed chemical abundances of the planet's host star, Ross 128. Understanding which elements are present in a star in what abundances can help researchers estimate the makeup of the exoplanets that orbit them, which can help predict how similar the planets are to the Earth. (

Like the exoplanet's host star Ross 128, about 70 percent of all stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs, which are much cooler and smaller than our Sun. Based on the results from large planet-search surveys, astronomers estimate that many of these red dwarf stars host at least one exoplanet. Several planetary systems around red dwarfs have been newsmakers in recent years, including Proxima b, a planet which orbits the nearest star to our own Sun, Proxima Centauri, and the seven planets of TRAPPIST-1, which itself is not much larger in size than our Solar System's Jupiter. (7/11)

Here’s Why Space Engineers Come to Seattle … and Why Some of Them Leave (Source: GeekWire)
A new employment study indicates that roughly 3,000 people are directly employed by Washington state’s space industry, and roughly half of them are at Blue Origin, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture. Most of Blue Origin’s 1,500 employees work at the company’s headquarters and production facility in Kent, Wash. So Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s payload sales director, has a good grasp on what draw space-savvy engineers to the Seattle area.

“When we ask our new employees why they’re coming … I’m going to guess that about half of them tell us that Seattle is part of the reason they say yes,” said Erika Wagner. Seattle’s blend of the great outdoors and a vibrant cultural scene adds to the region’s legacy in engineering, software and aerospace, fueled by Boeing, Microsoft and more recently Amazon.

Most of Blue Origin’s employees stick around: Wagner said the turnover rate amounts to less than 4 percent of the workforce annually. But what is it that motivates the ones who leave? There’s a bit of irony in Wagner’s answer to that question. “A significant percentage of them say the reason they leave is Seattle,” Wagner said. “It’s the rising cost of living, it’s the weather, it’s the traffic, it’s the whatever. It’s very much both one of our strongest assets, and one of our biggest challenges.” (7/11)

Giant Satellite Fuel Tank Sets New Record for 3-D Printed Space Parts (Source: Lockheed Martin)
Lockheed Martin has embraced a 3-D printed titanium dome for satellite fuel tanks so big you can't even put your arms around it. The 46-inch  diameter vessel completed final rounds of quality testing this month, ending a multi-year development program to create giant, high-pressure tanks that carry fuel on board satellites.

The titanium tank consists of three parts welded together: two 3-D printed domes that serve as caps, plus a variable-length, traditionally-manufactured titanium cylinder that forms the body. Satellite fuel tanks must be both strong and lightweight to withstand the rigors of launch and decade-long missions in the vacuum of space. That makes titanium an ideal material, but procuring 4-foot-diameter, 4-inch-thick titanium forgings can take a year or more, making them the most challenging and expensive parts of the tank. (7/11)