Max Q: Anomalous

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week wasn’t the most successful for spaceflight missions. We’ll get into that a bit more below.

In this issue:

  • First up, a botched launch from Virgin Orbit…
  • …followed by one from ABL Space Systems
  • News from Rocket Lab, World View and more

Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future

After Virgin Orbit’s launch failure last Monday, during which the mission experienced an “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit, I went back over the company’s financials — and things aren’t looking good.

For Virgin Orbit, this year has likely been completely turned on its head. The company was aiming for three launches this year, but everything will remain grounded until the cause of the anomaly has been identified and resolved. It’s unclear how long that will take, but likely at least three months. Add this delay to Virgin’s dwindling cash reserves and you have a foundation that’s suddenly much shakier than before.

virgin orbit cosmic girl and the launcherone rocket

Image Credits: Virgin Orbit/Greg Robinson

ABL Space Systems’ rocket experiences simultaneous engine shutdown shortly after lift-off

Launch startup ABL Space Systems’ first orbital launch attempt ended in failure last Tuesday after all nine engines on the RS1 rocket’s first stage shut down simultaneously. The rocket subsequently hit the launch pad and was destroyed on impact.

ABL President Dan Piemont told TechCrunch that while the investigation into the failure is still in its early stages, “The simultaneity of the shutdown is a strong piece of evidence but it will take more time for the team to narrow down contributing factors and a root cause.”

“The Flight 2 vehicle is fully assembled and ready to begin it’s flight campaign, so we’re champing at the bit to get going on that as soon as the Flight 1 investigation is complete,” Piemont said.

ABL Space RS1 rocket shortly after launch

Image Credits: ABL Space RS1 rocket

More news from TC and beyond

  • Capella Space added $60 million in growth equity financing to its Series C through investor Thomas Tull’s US Innovation Technology Fund. (Capella)
  • Elon Musk said that SpaceX has a “real shot” at attempting Starship’s first orbital flight test as soon as next month. (Twitter)
  • Europe’s first spaceport on the mainland, in Sweden, was inaugurated by Swedish dignitaries and other officials. (High North)
  • ispace’s HAKUTO-R lander completed its second orbital control maneuver, and has now been in deep space for over one month. (ispace)
  • Israel’s Air Force will set up its own “space administration,” similar to the U.S. Space Force. (i24)
  • Planet Labs completed acquisition of Salo Sciences, a climate tech company. (Planet)
  • Rocket Factory Augsburg and the U.K.’s SaxaVord Spaceport have signed a multi-year launch agreement, which includes RFA conducting its first launch from that site as soon as the end of this year. (RFA)
  • Rocket Lab is now targeting January 23 for its inaugural Electron launch from Virginia. The launch will carry three satellites for HawkEye 360. (Rocket Lab)
  • Russia will send an uncrewed Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station to bring three astronauts back to Earth, after a coolant leak was discovered on the Soyuz currently attached to the ISS. (The New York Times)
  • Slingshot Aerospace has brought on Thomas Arend, who was most recently VP and head of product management at Astra, as its new chief product officer. (Slingshot)
  • The Federal Communications Commission voted to establish a brand-new Space Bureau that will handle all business related to satellite communications and more. (TechCrunch)
  • The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and SpaceWERX are backing a Space Regulatory Bootcamp for founders and regulatory professionals looking for guidance on navigating the complex world of space regulation. The Bootcamp will be held in February. (ACSP)
  • United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket is starting to make its way to the launch pad prior to its first test flight. (ULA)
  • World View, a startup that uses stratospheric balloons for earth observation (and soon…tourism?!) is going public via SPAC merger. (TechCrunch)

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend. 

Max Q: Anomalous by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

ABL Space Systems’ rocket experiences simultaneous engine shutdown shortly after lift-off

Launch startup ABL Space Systems’ first orbital launch attempt ended in failure Tuesday after all nine engines on the RS1 rocket’s first stage shut down simultaneously. The rocket subsequently hit the launch pad and was destroyed on impact.

The rocket took off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island at around 6:27 PM EST. It’s unclear how soon after lift-off the engines failed. The rocket was carrying a technology demonstration CubeSat for data analytics company OmniTeq. While the payload was lost, no personnel were injured by the rocket impact.

As is customary with anomalous rocket launches, the company is working with officials from the spaceport and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to investigate the cause of the engine shutdown.

ABL President Dan Piemont told TechCrunch that while the investigation is still in its early stages, “The simultaneity of the shutdown is a strong piece of evidence but it will take more time for the team to narrow down contributing factors and a root cause.”

ABL’s 88-foot-tall expendable rocket RS1 is capable of carrying up to 1,350 kilograms to low Earth orbit, similar to Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha vehicle. The company has previously said that each launch would cost around $12 million, putting it in a growing field of competitors looking to provide rapid launch services at low cost.

The failure on Tuesday comes just one day after a Virgin Orbit mission experienced its own anomaly, which ended the mission prematurely. Two other rockets also experienced failures in the past month: Arianespace’s Vega-C and Chinese company Landspace’s Zhuque-2, which would’ve been the first methane-fueled rocket to reach orbit.

ABL has raised $420 million since its founding in 2017, including a $200 million Series B extension round in December 2021 at a valuation of $2.4 billion. Its investors include Lockheed Martin, which purchased a block of up to 58 launches from the startup last April.

“The Flight 2 vehicle is fully assembled and ready to begin it’s flight campaign, so we’re champing at the bit to get going on that as soon as the Flight 1 investigation is complete,” Piemont said.

ABL Space Systems’ rocket experiences simultaneous engine shutdown shortly after lift-off by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

Max Q: Insertion burn

Hello and welcome back to Max Q.

In this issue:

  • Boeing’s make it or break it launch
  • Fresh funding for SpaceX
  • News from Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab and more

Don’t forget to sign up to get the free newsletter version of Max Q delivered to your inbox.

Boeing’s make it or break it Starliner launch

Nearly two and a half years after the first botched flight test, Boeing successfully launched its Starliner capsule on Thursday, and docked it to the International Space Station on Friday night. It’s a major achievement for the company’s astronaut transportation program, which until now has been plagued with setbacks and technical snafus.

It was a high-stakes mission, to put it mildly. Starliner’s closest analogue is SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, and indeed both were developed under a NASA program called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). The agency (read: the taxpayer) awarded both SpaceX and Boeing billions of dollars to develop capsules capable of transporting astronauts to and from the ISS.

Boeing was awarded a total of $4.82 billion for a commercial crew transportation system, and so far that money has yet to yield a single successful mission. That’s contrasted with SpaceX, which has already started ferrying astronauts to and from ISS with the Crew Dragon capsule. SpaceX’s tech has been so successful that NASA extended SpaceX’s contract to include three more crewed missions at a cost of $900 million.

But with this successful mission, it appears that Boeing is back on track toward becoming another astronaut transportation provider. The Starliner that flew on Thursday was uncrewed, as it was just a test flight, and it will spend fived-10 days docked to ISS before returning to Earth.

Watch Starliner’s docking below.

SpaceX raising funds at a valuation of $127 billion, sources say

A big piece of news that caught my eye this week: SpaceX is reportedly raising a fresh round of funding, to the tune of a staggering $1.725 billion, with the share price at $70, CNBC reported. This would mark a 25% increase from the previous share tender at $56 per share. The round would value the company at $127 billion, according to sources, making it the highest-valued startup in the country.

In a separate piece of reporting, The New York Post also quoted unnamed sources on a potential share sell, including Elon Musk himself sharing sells. The Post suggested that the billionaire could sell shares to help fund his $44 billion purchase of Twitter.

The last time SpaceX raised funds, it was back in December, when the space company raised more than $337 million at a valuation of around $100 billion.

elon musk

Image Credits: Getty Images

More news from TC and beyond

  • ABL Space Systems completed acceptance testing of the second stage of its rocket, roughly four months after a testing accident caused the loss of the original second stage, CEO Harry O’Hanley said.
  • Blue Origin scrubbed the fifth crewed mission of the New Shepard rocket on Wednesday, due to one of the back-up systems “not meeting [the company’s] expectations for performance,” a spokesperson said. The new date for the NS-21 launch has yet to be announced.
  • Elon Musk was accused of sexual harassment by a former SpaceX corporate jet flight attendant; the flight attendant and the company reached a $250,000 severance agreement in 2018, but the details of her allegation are just coming to light.
  • Launcher announced the customers for the first flight of its space tug, Orbiter. They include Skyline Celestial, Innova Space, NPC Spacemind, Bronco Space/Cal Poly Pomona, Stanford Student Space initiative and an undisclosed customer. Orbiter will launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission in October.
  • Phase Four is opening a new factory to scale production of its Maxwell radio-frequency plasma propulsion system. The new facility will be able to churn out 100 Maxwells per year, the company told Payload.
  • NASA said there are 72 launch opportunities for Artemis I through the end of 2022. Artemis is the agency’s grand project to return humans to the moon; Artemis I will mark the inaugural uncrewed launch, but NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) mega-moon rocket will need to be ready first.
  • Relativity Space completed key tests for its second stage of the Terran 1 3D-printed rocket, as well as all nine Aeon 1 engines for the first stage, at NASA facilities in Mississippi. Rewatch the test here.
  • Rocket Lab reported first quarter revenues of $40.7 million, with the lion’s share of that coming from the company’s space systems division rather than launch. While launch only composed $6.6 million in revenue (that’s just a single launch), Rocket Lab estimated higher earnings from launch in the next quarter.
  • Rocket Lab also said this week that it began payload integration of the CAPSTONE spacecraft, which will head to lunar orbit in advance of NASA’s Artemis uncrewed mission later this year (fingers crossed).
  • Seraphim, a U.K.-based investment firm, announced the next cohort of its 11-week Space Camp accelerator; startups include Ntention; Lunasa Space; ODIN Space; Smart IR; AIRMO; Cislunar Industries; and Deep Planet.
  • Skyroot Aerospace, an Indian startup developing what would be the country’s first fully private rocket, successfully completed a full-duration test of the rocket’s third stage.
  • SpaceX launched another 53 Starlink satellites on Wednesday. It marked the 21st overall orbital flight for SpaceX so far this year. Whew.
  • Speaking of which, SpaceX is now 85% vertically integrated, sources told Eric Berger. At least some of that is due to supply chain issues, rather than internal strategy, he said.

Photo of the week

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti posted this image on Twitter, taken by her from the International Space Station. That little dot near the center of the frame is Starliner! She posted some pretty epic follow-up photos, too. Image Credits: Samantha Cristoforetti (opens in a new window)

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend.