Tag: jaxa

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Max Q: Only a matter of time

Hello and welcome back to Max Q!

In this issue:

  • Intuitive Machines enters the public market
  • Silicon Valley goes to war
  • News from Transcelestial, Umbra and more

Intuitive Machines’ public market debut marked by large shareholder redemptions but sharp stock highs

Lunar technology company Intuitive Machines received far less cash from its merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) than it forecasted, but despite this rocky start the stock price saw major highs last week.

Although Intuitive Machines said the SPAC trust could furnish the company with as much as $301 million in dry powder, shareholders opted to redeem a staggering $279.8 million prior to the transaction closing. The redemptions could reflect a relative weariness amongst investors of SPACs, which saw a huge upswing in popularity in the past few years but have more recently fallen out of favor as post-SPAC companies struggle to stay afloat in the public market.

But perhaps those shareholders are regretting getting their money back. The company’s stock closed at $10.03 on its first day of trading Tuesday, and surged to $39.73, up 211%, on Thursday.

Intuitive Machines' rendering of lunar lander

Intuitive Machines rendering lunar lander. Image Credits: Intuitive Machines

Silicon Valley goes to war

For TC+, I wrote about the uptick in defense tech investments over the past few years.

Just a few years ago, many investors thought that cutting a check for a defense-first startup was a proposition that simply didn’t make sense. The tides have clearly shifted, and PitchBook data supports this warming to defense tech. From January to October last year, VC-backed firms injected $7 billion into aerospace and defense companies, a massive growth that stands in sharp contrast to the relative sluggishness in other sectors.

There are many reasons for this uptick in interest in defense tech, but driving all of them is a new, realist vision that’s spread among some technologists and venture capitalists. It sees global antagonisms threatening the stability of Pax Americana; it sees the United States rotting from the inside out due to bloat and lethargy. As a result, the Silicon Valley mentality has returned to its defense roots, embracing the role that venture-funded startups can play in maintaining America’s military dominance and technological supremacy around the world.

“If you believe in democracy, democracy demands a sword,” a16z general partner David Ulevitch said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. And Silicon Valley will be where it is forged.

Image Credits: Kiyoshi Tanno / Getty Images

More news from TC…

  • Near Space Labs CEO Rema Matevosyan sat down with TechCrunch to explain what, exactly, was up with that alleged Chinese spy balloon. (TC)
  • SpaceX faces a $175,000 fine to the Federal Aviation Administration for not reporting certain data to the agency prior to a Starlink launch last August. (TC)
  • Transcelestial, a startup based in Singapore, scored $10 million to expand its wireless laser communications system across parts of Southeast Asia. (TC)
  • Virgin Orbit’s Start Me Up mission was bungled by a faulty fuel filter and fuel pump in the second stage’s engines. (TC)

…and beyond

  • Astranis was awarded a $4.5 million Phase III SBIR contract with the U.S. Space Force to integrate tactical waveform technology into its spacecraft, with a $6 million option for an orbital demonstration using a future Astranis satellite. (Astranis)
  • Blue Origin quietly announced a program, Blue Alchemist, that’s been at work for at least two years developing tech to turn lunar regolith into solar cells and electricity transmission wires. (Blue Origin)
  • India successfully launched the new SSLV rocket, six months after the first launch attempt ended in failure. (NASA Spaceflight)
  • Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency scrubbed a launch of its new H3 rocket at T-0. (Reuters)
  • Launcher’s first spacecraft, Orbiter SN-1, stopped operating after the craft was unable to generate power from its solar panels. (Launcher)
  • Maxar and Umbra announced a new partnership this week, which will see Umbra’s synthetic aperture radar data combine with Maxar’s optical imagery in a combined offering for customers. (Maxar)
  • SpaceRyde, a Canadian launch company that was developing a vehicle that used a balloon first stage, has filed for bankruptcy. (Payload)
  • SpaceX has sold the two oil rigs it purchased back in 2020, which were to be converted into offshore launch platforms for Starship. (SpaceNews)

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

Max Q: Only a matter of time by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

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SpaceX successfully launches astronauts with a re-used Dragon spacecraft for the first time

SpaceX has another successful human space launch to its credit, after a good takeoff and orbital delivery of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on Friday morning. The Dragon took off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 5:49 AM EDT (2:49 AM EDT). On board were four astronauts, including NASA’s Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, as well as JAXA’s Akihiko Hoshide and the ESA’s Thomas Pesquet.

This was Spacex’s second official astronaut delivery mission for NASA, after its Crew-1 operation last year. Unlike Crew-1, Crew-2 included use of two re-flown components in the spacecraft system, including the first stage booster, which was used during the Crew-1 launch, and the Dragon capsule, which was used for SpaceX’s first ever human spaceflight, the final demonstration mission of its spacecraft certification program for NASA, which flew Bob Behnken (side note: this mission’s pilot, McArthur, is Behnken’s wife) and Doug Hurley to the ISS. SpaceX has characterized the use of re-flown elements as arguably even safer than using new ones, with CEO Elon Musk noting that you wouldn’t want to be on the “first flight of an airplane when it comes out of the factory” during a conversation with XPRIZE’s Peter Diamandis on Thursday evening.

Now that the Crew Dragon is in its target transfer orbit, it’ll be making its way to rendezvous with the Space Station, which will take just under 24 hours. It’ll be docking with the station early tomorrow morning, attaching to a docking port that was just cleared earlier this month when SpaceX’s other Crew Dragon relocated to another port on the ISS earlier this month.

This launch also included a recovery attempt for the booster, with a landing at sea using SpaceX’s drone landing pad. That went as planned, meaning this booster which has already flown two different sets of human astronauts, could be used to fly yet another after refurbishment.

SpaceX’s Commercial Crew program with NASA continues to be the key success story in the agency’s move to partner with more private companies for its research and space exploration missions. NASA also recently tapped SpaceX to develop the human landing system for its Artemis program, which will return humans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo program, and which will use SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft. For SpaceX’s human spaceflight program, the next big milestone will be its first flight of a mission made up entirely of paying private citizens, which is currently set to take place this fall.

Last two crewmembers named for SpaceX’s first all-civilian human spaceflight mission

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Watch SpaceX launch its second crew of Space Station astronauts on a flight-proven Falcon 9 live

SpaceX is set to launch its second operational commercial crew mission to the International Space Station for NASA, with a liftoff time of 5:49 AM EDT (2:49 AM PDT) on Friday morning. The flight will carry four astronauts, including two from NASA, one from JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and one from the ESA (European Space Agency), to the station, where they will begin a regular tour of duty conducting science experiments, and maintaining and upgrading the orbital platform.

This is the second commercial crew mission for SpaceX, which officially qualified its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket for human flight last year. NASA then launched four astronauts using SpaceX’s human-certified launch system later that year in November, becoming the first private company to deliver people to the ISS, and the first American vehicle to do so since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Since the end of that program, NASA has relied on buying rides aboard Russian Soyuz rockets to keep up its representation on the ISS.

There’s already a SpaceX Crew Dragon at the Space Station from that Crew-1 launch last year, and it was relocated to another port on the station earlier this month in preparation for the arrival of the one flying for Crew-2. The Crew-1 Dragon capsule is set to return back to Earth with astronauts on board once they’re relieved by this flight’s crew, likely later this month on April 28.

SpaceX and NASA successfully launch four astronauts to space for first operational Dragon crew mission

One major notable change for this launch is the use of a flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket booster. SpaceX has previously used new boosters fresh from the factory for its human launches, though it has a spotless track record when it comes to booster re-use for its cargo flights. It’s also the first re-use of a dragon spacecraft, and both components of this launch system actually previously supported human launches, with the first stage serving during Crew-1, and the Dragon capsule providing the ride for Demo-2, which flew astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

The astronauts on today’s flight are Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur from NASA, as well as Akihiko Hoshide from JAXA and Thomas Pesquet from the ESA. As mentioned, liftoff time is set for 5:49 AM EDT, but SpaceX will begin streaming live hours in advance at approximately 1:30 AM EDT on Friday (10:30 PM PDT on Thursday).

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Astroscale launches its ELSA-d orbital debris removal satellite

Space startup Astroscale has launched ELSA-d, the demonstration mission for its End-of-Life Services by Astroscale (ELSA) technology, which aims to dock with, and then safely remove, orbital debris. Astroscale’s demonstrator package includes two separate payloads, a servicer that represents its future production spacecraft, and a ‘client’ satellite that’s meant to represent the debris satellites it’ll be de-orbiting on behalf of customers in future.

The Astrocale payload was launched via a Soyuz rocket that took off early this morning from Kazakhstan carrying 38 commercial satellites from 18 countries. It’s the first Astroscale spacecraft to reach orbit, since the startup’s founding in 2013 by Japanese entrepreneur Nobu Okada. Astroscale had launched a micro satellite designed to measure small-scale debris in 2017, but all 18 of the satellites on that particular mission failed to reach orbit, due to human error in the launch vehicle’s programming.

This ELSA-d mission is a much more ambitious effort, and involves what amounts to an active on-orbit demonstration of the technology that Astroscale ultimately hopes to commercialize. The mission profile includes repeat docking and release maneuvers between the servicer satellite and the simulated client satellite, which is equipped with a ferromagnetic plate to assist the servicer with its magnetic docking procedure.

Why Maxar CTO Walter Scott thinks now is the time to address the orbital traffic boom

Astroscale hopes to prove out a range of its advertised capabilities with this demonstration, including the servicer’s ability to search out and located the client satellite, inspect it for damage, and then dock with it as mentioned, in both non-tumbling and tumbling scenarios (ie., a payload that’s maintaining a stable orbit, and one that’s spinning end-over-end in space with no ability to control its own attitude).

There’s a lot riding on this mission, which will be controlled from a ground center established by Astroscale in the UK. Aside from its long-term commercial ambitions, the startup is also contracted to partner with JAXA on the Japanese space agency’s first orbital debris removal mission, which aims to be the first in the world to remove a large object from orbit, representing the spent upper stage of a launch rocket.

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Feast your eyes on the space rocks Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission harvested from asteroid Ryugu

Japan’s ambitious second asteroid return mission, Hayabusa 2, has collected a wealth of material from its destination, Ryugu, which astronomers and other interested parties are almost certainly champing at the bit to play with. Though they may look like ordinary bits of charcoal, they’re genuine asteroid surface material — and a little something shiny, too.

Hayabusa 2 was launched in 2014, and arrived at the asteroid named Ryugu in 2018, at which point it deployed a couple landers to test surface conditions. It touched down itself in the next year, blasting the surface with a space gun so that it could collect not just the surface gravel but what might lie beneath it. After a long trip home it reentered the atmosphere on December 5 and was collected in the Australian desert.

Although everything worked perfectly, the team could never really be sure they would truly get the samples they hoped for until they opened the sample collection containers in a sealed room back at headquarters. The materials inside have been teased in a few tweets, but today JAXA posted all of the public images along with some new explanations and discoveries.

For one thing, the “sample catcher” itself had grains of sediment from Ryugu. Perhaps this material, exposed to different conditions than that of the containers, will prove different when analyzed.

Image Credits: JAXA

For another, sample container C appears to have an “artificial object” in it! But don’t get excited — as the team writes on their blog, “the origin is under investigation, but a probable source is aluminium scraped off the spacecraft sampler horn as the projectile was fired to stir up material during touchdown.”

In other words, it’s probably a bit of the probe that came off during the not-so-gentle process of shooting the asteroid and crashing into it.

GIF of the Hayabusa probe crashing into the asteroid Ryugu.

Image Credits: JAXA

But the most important bit is all the rocks collected as planned. As you can see by the scale bar, these are little more than pebbles, but they’re large enough to show evidence of all kinds of processes leading to their particular shape and makeup. There’s also plenty of smaller-scale dirt and dust from below the surface that scientists hope could show signs of organic materials and water, the building blocks of life as we know it.

The success of the mission is worth celebrating, and the team has only just begun studying the materials brought back from Ryugu — so we can expect more information soon as they perform the painstaking work of analysis on these priceless samples. The Hayabusa 2 Twitter account is probably the best way to stay up to date day to day.

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NASA, ESA and JAXA team up on Earth observation dashboard for monitoring the impact of COVID-19

NASA is working with two other of its largest global space agency partners, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on a combined effort to collect satellite-based Earth observation data and provide it via a dashboard in order to help monitor the impacts of COVID-19. The dashboard combines data collected by Earth observation satellites operated by each of the agencies, which monitor photographic, air quality, temperature, climate and other indicators.

The COVID-19 Earth Observation Data provides views into changes globally in water quality, climate change, economic activity and also agriculture. It’s intended to provide policymakers, health authorities, city planners and others with key information that they can use to study both short- and long-term impacts of the ongoing global COVID-19 crisis, which is definitely changing the way that cities and the people within them work and live.

The agencies involved in the project formed a project for the purposes of building this in April, so it came together rather quickly for a cross-agency, international collaboration. Data so far indicates significant changes, including positive environmental ones around air and water quality due to decreased activity – but also significant slowdowns in key economic activity including shipping activity in ports, the number of cars in shopping mall parking lots, and more.

While the project is specifically intended to provide data around COVID-19 and its impacts, and the current plan only includes the pandemic within its scope, on a call discussing the initiative, ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes Josef Aschbacher said that the agencies are already considering whether to extend he dashboard beyond the scope of COVID-19 since it could be useful in addressing any number of global-scale problems that we collectively face.

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Watch Mitsubishi Heavy Industries launch a milestone Space Station resupply mission live

Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is launching a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H-IIB rocket carrying the last of its H-II transfer vehicles. This cargo spaceship has enjoyed a long career of delivering supplies, payloads and experiments to the International Space Station, but MHI is working on a successor that will aim to begin flying in 2022, with advanced capabilities including automated docking. This vehicle will also be designed to make it all the way to NASA’s planned lunar Gateway for long-distance cargo delivery.

This launch is important not just because it’s a milestone for the MHI launch vehicle family, and an ending of sorts before the next phase, but also because it’s carrying some very interesting cargo. There are a number of different experiments, but one in particular stands out: It’s a “space avatar” – essentially a remote-controlled robot that a user on Earth can use effectively as a telepresence bot on the ISS, to allow them to remotely experience what it’s like to be on board the station in orbit.

The launch is set to take place at 2:31 AM local time from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, which translates to 1:31 PM EDT (10:30 AM PDT).

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NASA, ESA and JAXA launch virtual hackathon for COVID-19 solutions

In an impressive display of international collaboration, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have come together to launch a virtual hackathon running between May 30 and May 31, with the aim of using open data to develop innovative solutions to problems arising from the global COVID-19 pandemic.

All three space agencies obviously work together on a regular basis, but this effort, cubed the ‘Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge,’ aims to pool their resources for a 48-hour concentrated sprint to employ Earth observation data gathered by satellites, info which should provide useful in examine how the virus spreads, and what kind of impacts it’s having on the Earth, ecosystems and cites.

Each agency involved is providing access to data gathered from satellites they respectively operate, and while Space Apps has run previously as a regular challenge offered by NASA to encourage use of its data for innovative problem-solving and product development. This is the first time that all agencies are collaborating on a global virtual hackathon, however.

NASA has also used its own internal crowdsourcing platform to seek ideas for ways that the agency can address the COVID-19 crisis and issues stemming from the coronavirus and its spread. The Space Apps Challenge is open to outside participants, however, and often sees participation from student, science and engineering teams around the world.

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Japanese mission to land a rover on a Martian moon and bring back a sample is a go

A bold mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to Mars’ two moons, including a lander component for one of them, is all set to enter the development phase after the plan was submitted to the Japanese government’s science ministry this week.

Dubbed the ‘Martian Moons Exploration’ (MMX) mission, the goal is to launch the probe in 2024, using the new H-3 rocket being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which is expected to launch for the first time sometime later in 2020. The probe will survey and observe both Phobos and Deimos, the two moons that orbit the red planet, which are both smaller and more irregularly shaped than Earth’s Moon.

The MMX lander will park on Phobos, while the probe studies the two space-based bodies from a distance. This is the first ever mission that seeks to land a spacecraft on one of the moons of Mars, and it’ll include a rover that is being developed by JAXA in partnership with teams at German space agency DLR, and French space agency CNES.

The mission will include an ambitious plan to actually collect a sample of the surface of Phobos and return it to Earth for study, too – which will mean a round-trip for the MMX spacecraft that should see it make its terrestrial return by 2029.

NASA is also planning a Mars sample return mission, which would aim to bring back a sample from the red planet itself using the Mars 2020 six-wheels rover that its planning to launch later this year.

Both of these missions could be crucial stepping stones for eventual human exploration and colonization of Mars. It’s possible that Phobos could act as an eventual staging ground for Mars missions, since its lower gravity makes it an easier body from which to depart for eventual astronauts. And Mars is obviously the ultimate goal for NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to first establish a more permanent human scientific presence on the Moon before heading to the red planet.

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Max Q: Spacex gets ready for first human flight

Max Q is a new weekly newsletter all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Sundays in your inbox.

This week turned out to be a surprisingly busy one in space news – kicked off by the Trump administration’s FY 2021 budget proposal, which was generous to U.S. space efforts both in science and in defense.

Meanwhile, we saw significant progress in SpaceX’s commercial crew program, and plenty of activity among startups big and small.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon arrives in Florida

The spacecraft that SpaceX will use to fly astronauts for the first time is now in Florida, at its launch site for final preparations before it takes off. Currently, this Crew Dragon mission is set to take place sometime in early May, and though that may still shift, it’s looking more and more likely it’ll happen within the next few months.

NASA taps Rocket Lab for Moon satellite launch

Rocket Lab will play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to get humans back to the surface of the Moon by 2024. NASA contracted Rocket Lab to launch its CAPSTONE CubeSat to a lunar orbit in 2021, using Rocket Lab’s new Proton combined satellite and long-distance transportation stage.

Astronomers continue to sound the alarm about constellations

Starlink satellites streak through a telescope’s observations.

Astronomers and scientists that rely on observing the stars from Earth are continuing to warn about the impact on stellar observation from constellations that are increasingly dotting the night sky.

Meanwhile, SpaceX just launched another 60 satellites for its Starlink constellation, bringing the total on orbit to 300. SpaceX founder Elon Musk says that the ‘albedo’ or reflectivity of satellites will drop “significantly” going forward, however.

Blue Origin is opening its new rocket factory

Blue Origin is opening its new rocket engine production facility in Huntsville, Alabama on Monday. The new site will be responsible for high-volume production of the Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine, which will be used on both the company’s own New Glenn orbital rocket, as well as the ULA’s forthcoming Vulcan heavy-lift launch vehicle.

Virgin Galactic’s first commercial spacecraft moves to its spaceport

Virgin Galactic is getting closer to actually flying its first paying space tourists – it just moved its SpaceShipTwo ‘VSS Unity’ vehicle from its Mojave manufacturing site to its spaceport in New Mexico, which is where tourists will board for their short trips to the edge of outer space.

Astranis raises $90 million

Satellite internet startup Astranis has raised a $90 million Series B funding round, which includes a mix of equity ($40 million) and debt facility ($50 million). The company will use the money to get its first commercial satellites on orbit as it aims to build a next-generation geostationary internet satellite business.

Astroscale will work on JAXA on an orbital debris-killing system


Orbital debris is increasingly a topic of discussion at events and across the industry, and Japanese startup Astroscale is one of the first companies dedicated to solving the problem. The startup has been tapped by JAXA for a mission that will seek to de-orbit a spent rocket upper stage, marking one of the first efforts to remove a larger piece of orbital debris.

Register for TC Sessions: Space 2020

Our very own dedicated space event is coming up on June 25 in Los Angeles, and you can get your tickets now. It’s sure to be a packed day of quality programming from the companies mentioned above and more, so go ahead and sign up while Early Bird pricing applies.

Plus, if you have a space startup of your own, you can apply now to participate in our pre-event pitch-off, happening June 24.