Rocket Report: A dark day for Blue Origin; Pentagon eyes new launch site - Ars Technica
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Welcome to Edition 8.43 of the Rocket Report! A disclaimer: No one yet fully appreciates the ramifications of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explosion Thursday night on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. What we know as of this writing is that much of Blue’s sole orbital-class launch pad has been destroyed, and the New Glenn rocket will be grounded for an extended period of time. It is too soon for any hot takes, at least until the Sun rises at the Cape on Friday morning. One thing I am sure of is that we will be writing about this event for weeks, months, and years to come. 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.
Charting China’s contribution to space junk. There’s a problem with the drastic uptick in Chinese space launches over the last decade. China appears to be ignoring long-established norms about disposing of the upper stages of rockets, Ars reports. These are the parts of the vehicle that separate from the first stage of a rocket and push a satellite or spacecraft into orbit. In the early decades of spaceflight, launch operators routinely left upper stages in orbit after they released their payloads. But most launch companies today reserve enough propellant in their rockets to remove them from orbit to avoid the risk of spent upper stages becoming a source of space debris. But China is not following this trend. There has been striking growth in China’s rocket body mass. In the past five years, the mass of Chinese rocket bodies in long-lived orbits has risen from less than 100 metric tons to 252, according to a new analysis by Space Domain Awareness expert Jim Shell.
Worst practices… The recent growth of Chinese upper stages has been driven by the country’s increased launch rate as it begins to deploy satellite megaconstellations, Shell said. China’s space industry is just at the beginning of launching megaconstellations to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service, suggesting that if the country does not curb this practice, it will deteriorate an already congested space environment. Chinese constellations such as Guowang and Spacesail are typically at higher altitudes, above 800 km, and China may launch 1,000 or more rockets over the next decade to support these constellations. That’s a lot of new junk if the trend continues.
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DARPA, Voyager team up on solid rocket motors. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Voyager Technologies a $16.5 million contract to continue development of a solid rocket motor thrust-control technology designed to make missile propulsion systems more adaptable across different missions and weapons programs, Space News reports. The contract is part of DARPA’s “Burn n’ Go” program. Solid rocket motors are used for a wide range of applications, from tactical missiles to space launch vehicles. The upside for solid rocket motors is their reliability and manufacturability. Solid rocket motors can vary their thrust, but these thrust profiles are predetermined by propellant grain patterns and the dimensions of the motor. In other words, the thrust profiles are locked in once the motor is manufactured. Unlike liquid-fueled rocket engines, solid-fueled rockets typically can’t be throttled up or down on the fly. It’s in the propellant… Voyager is working with DARPA on a new “propellant-embedded” method of controlling the thrust of solid rocket motors after they are manufactured. The recent contract is for Phase 2 of the Burn n’ Go program. During Phase 1, Voyager worked on architecture concepts and preliminary designs. Voyager’s Phase 2 contract will culminate in “tailorable SRM hot-fire demonstrations,” the company said in a press release. “This award reflects confidence in our ability to translate advanced propulsion technologies into field-ready capabilities that support US national readiness and deterrence,” said Matt Magaña, president of space, defense, and national security programs at Voyager. “Our approach is designed not only to demonstrate performance gains at the system level, but to establish a credible path to industrialization that can reshape how solid rocket motors are produced, mission tailored and controlled.”
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity vehicle returns to flight, kinda. With its first Delta-class suborbital spaceship expected to debut this summer, Virgin Galactic has returned its first-generation SpaceShipTwo vehicle Unity to flight for pilot and ground team training, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Grounded since its seventh and final operational mission on June 8, 2024, VSS Unity and its quad-jet carrier aircraft took to the skies over New Mexico on Wednesday. The jet released the unpowered spaceplane, and its two pilots steered Unity to a runway landing at Spaceport America. This was the first of several anticipated glide flights with Unity to help prepare Virgin Galactic’s pilots for the first glide test flights of the Delta-class ship. Managing energy... “Unity‘s glide characteristics and energy-management profile provide an outstanding real-world proxy for our new spaceship,” said Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic Spaceline. “Using a proven vehicle in this way prepares our pilots and operations teams to move through flight testing for our new spaceship more efficiently and with greater confidence than simulator training alone could provide.” The latest schedule provided by Virgin Galactic calls for glide flights of the first Delta-class ship to begin before the end of September, followed by the first rocket-powered test flights by the end of the year.
German launch startup tests upgraded engine. Rocket Factory Augsburg, based in Germany, has developed and tested its Helix engine for use on the company’s light-class RFA One satellite launcher. RFA is working on an upgrade to the power pack, a critical piece of the Helix engine responsible for delivering propellants from the rocket’s storage tanks to the engine combustion chamber. This new power pack design recently completed a series of tests in Sweden through a partnership between RFA and the European Space Agency, ESA announced this week. RFA says the power pack will allow the company’s souped-up kerosene-fueled Helix 2.0 engine to provide double the thrust for the RFA One rocket with the same mass and cost of the already-developed Helix 1.0. “The result for our customers: more payload for a lower budget!” said Stefan Brieschenk, RFA’s chief operating officer.
But what about that launch?... All of this work to upgrade the RFA One launcher is happening before the company has even flown the basic configuration of the rocket. Nine Helix 1.0 engines will power the first RFA One booster off its launch pad in Scotland. RFA has applied for a marine license to launch its first RFA One rocket no earlier than July 1. There is still much work to do to prepare for the rocket’s first launch. The original booster RFA planned to use for the first test flight was destroyed during a test firing in 2024. “This is a legally required step for planning, and a good sign of how far we’ve come—but it’s not a launch date just yet,” RFA said. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Fresh crew launches to China’s Tiangong space station. China launched the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft Sunday with three astronauts heading to its space station, including one set to stay in space for a year, The Associated Press reports. The spacecraft blasted off on a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The astronauts on the mission are Zhu Yangzhu, the commander, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying, also identified by Chinese authorities as Li Jiaying using the Mandarin transliteration of he