SpaceX completes record year with Israeli imaging satellite launch

SpaceX capped off the busiest year in its two-decade history Dec. 30 with a Falcon 9 launch of a commercial Israeli imaging satellite. A Falcon 9 lifted off at 2:38 a.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket’s first stage, flying its 11th mission, landed back at the launch site eight minutes after liftoff. The Falcon 9 upper stage deployed its payload, the EROS C3 imaging satellite, nearly 15 minutes after liftoff. The satellite was released at an altitude of nearly 500 kilometers in an unusual mid-inclination retrograde orbit, rather than the sun-synchronous orbit commonly used for optical imaging spacecraft. EROS C3 was built by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for ImageSat International, a Tel Aviv-based commercial imaging company. The 400-kilogram satellite, based on IAI’s OPTSAT-3000 bus, is designed to take images at a resolution of 30 centimeters. ImageSat International, which went public in February on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, stated in a prospectus filed as part of that process that EROS C3 cost the company $186 million, a figure that included the spacecraft itself, the launch and insurance. The company planned to use part of the $100 million raised from going public to pay some of the remaining costs to build and launch the spacecraft. EROS C3 joins EROS B, launched in 2006, as satellites owned and operated by ImageSat International. The company also offers imagery from two other satellites, which it calls EROS C1 and EROS C2, that are owned by an unnamed third party but have capabilities similar to EROS C3. Those satellites may be part of the Ofeq series of Israeli reconnaissance satellites, also built by IAI, which operate in mid-inclination retrograde orbits similar to EROS C3 because of the limitations of launching from Israel.

A Falcon 9 lifts off Dec. 30 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying the EROS C3 imaging satellite on SpaceX's 61st and final launch of 2022. Credit: SpaceX webcast

EROS C3 is part of ImageSat’s EROS NG constellation, which includes EROS C1 and C2 as well as a planned future imaging satellite, EROS C4, slated for launch in 2026. EROS NG will also incorporate two synthetic aperture radar satellites that will be owned by an unnamed third party and commercialized by ImageSat.

The launch of EROS C3 completed the most active year to date for SpaceX. The company performed 61 launches, all successful, in 2022. All but one, a Falcon Heavy launch for the U.S. Space Force, were of the company’s Falcon 9 vehicle, which has become a workhorse for the global space industry.

SpaceX nearly doubled its launch rate from 2021, when the company performed a then-record 31 Falcon 9 launches. That launch activity was driven by the company’s Starlink constellation, which accounted for 34 of the 61 launches in 2022.

The 61 launches SpaceX performed in 2022 exceeded a goal of 60 set by Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, in a tweet in March. Musk has not publicly stated how many launches he expects SpaceX to conduct in 2023, but SpaceX’s first launch of the new year, the Transporter-6 dedicated rideshare mission, is scheduled for no earlier than Jan. 2 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.

Thales Alenia Space studying reusable spacecraft for in-orbit manufacturing

Uncrewed rather than crewed spacecraft will be key to realizing an emerging in-orbit manufacturing industry, according to a European venture that has tasked Thales Alenia Space to develop a vehicle called REV1 for missions starting in late 2025. Thales Alenia Space signed a first phase contract for the REV1 reusable and pressurized “space factory” in early December with REV, an eight-year-old Luxembourg-based venture seeking funds to develop a microgravity research and manufacturing business. While Texas-based Axiom Space closes in on a sizable investment round to develop a crewed commercial space station, Space Cargo Unlimited says an uncrewed system like REV1 could be more flexible and cheaper by avoiding the numerous safety measures needed to support human activities. “Safety measures on space stations will rightfully always protect human lives to the detriments of the payload at stake,” Space Cargo Unlimited CEO and co-founder Nicolas Gaume told SpaceNews. “To scale in-space manufacturing, we do not believe in multipurpose vehicles with humans on board,” Gaume added. “In fact, we believe that the approach to in-space manufacturing should be driven from the payload, not the vehicle.” Thales Alenia Space is responsible for designing, engineering, and developing REV1, which is about the size of a compact car and would be owned and operated commercially by Space Cargo Unlimited. The first phase contract gets Space Cargo Unlimited up “to the ability to start manufacturing,” a spokesperson for the venture said. REV1 is being designed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms of payload for several months in low Earth orbit, where it would dock with a Reusable Orbiting Service Module that Thales Alenia Space is also developing.

Thales Alenia Space is designing REV1 to spend several months in orbit before returning to Earth. Credit: Space Cargo Unlimited

This service module would have solar panels and electric thrusters to remain in orbit for about 10 years, according to Gaume, or roughly 20 REV-1 missions.

After completing its mission, a heat shield fitted to REV1 would enable it to reenter Earth’s atmosphere for a parachute-assisted landing.

Target markets include biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturers looking to develop new materials from space.

REV1 has “a number of exciting in-space manufacturing payloads from defining customers we will be unveiling as we get closer to launch,” Gaume said.

The spacecraft would also assist agricultural experiments the venture has already been facilitating on the International Space Station for growing vines and maturing wine in microgravity.

Gaume said REV1 has lined up “a number of” other in-orbit development and validation projects, including test beds for propulsion systems.

“The first case for the failure of satellites lies with their propulsion systems,” he said via email. “And if you think about it most of the satellite’s propulsion systems are not tested in Space, and when they are, they do not come back, increasing dramatically the cost and timing of developing a new system.

“By opening the possibility to test rapidly and return, we accelerate and support the whole Space ecosystem.”

Space Cargo Unlimited and Thales Alenia Space hope to build a “space garage” in Turin, Italy, for maintaining, repairing, and overhauling REV1 and other spacecraft.

European private equity firm Eurazeo is Space Cargo Unlimited’s main financial backer and is a shareholder.

Space Cargo Unlimited said it has also secured investments from Thales’ venture capital arm and European early-stage investor Geodesic for its plans.

Other companies developing uncrewed spacecraft for in-orbit manufacturing and other applications include Space Forge, a British startup planning to launch its first satellite on Virgin Orbit’s inaugural mission from the United Kingdom early next year.

James Webb Space Telescope's 1st year in space has blown astronomers away

Just one year after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope is exceeding all expectations, and astronomers are thrilled. Launched on Dec. 25, 2021, the $10 billion infrared observatory was designed to learn how galaxies form and grow, to peer far back into the universe to the era of the first galaxies, to watch stars be born inside their nebulous embryos in unprecedented detail, and to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets and characterize some of the closest rocky worlds. However, the complexity of the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb or JWST), including its fold-out, segmented 21-foot (6.5 meters) mirror and its delicate sun-shield the size of a tennis court, meant that astronomers were on tenterhooks as to whether the JWST would perform as hoped. It turns out, they needn't have worried. "I guess we really weren't expecting the results to be this good," Brenda Frye, an astronomy at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. "It's amazing," Steve Longmore, an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K., told Space.com. "It's delivering at least as well, and better in a lot of circumstances, than what we were expecting." And if it exceeds its own targets, it definitely surpasses those of its predecessors. "It's leaps and bounds better than what we've been able to see before," Susan Mullally, JWST's deputy project scientist from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Maryland, which operates the observatory, told Space.com, adding that she is "blown away by the imagery, honestly. The images are beautiful."

The James Webb Space Telescope launched atop an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana on Dec. 25, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The rings of Neptune

The main reason that JWST is performing so well is because of its superlative optics, which are able to achieve their maximum potential resolution for the majority of infrared wavelengths that the telescope observes in. This success means that JWST's images have a clarity to them that were unobtainable by the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope, or larger telescopes on the ground such as those at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, whose vision is blurred by Earth's atmosphere.

But with JWST, individual stars so close together they were once indistinguishable can now be resolved; the structures of very distant galaxies are now discernible; and even something close by such as the rings of Neptune pop with the most detail seen in decades.

The James Webb Space Telescope's stunning view of Neptune, with its rings clearly visible. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)

"When the JWST's images of Neptune first came out, both Heidi [Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist on JWST and an expert on the outer planets of the solar system] and myself looked at them, and then at each other, and asked, 'are we really looking at Neptune'?" Naomi Rowe-Gurney, an astronomer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com.

Although the Keck Observatory has imaged Neptune's rings, our most impressive view before JWST came from Voyager 2's flyby in 1989. "Heidi had not seen the rings [this well] since Voyager 2, and I had never seen the rings like this because Voyager was before I was born!" Rowe-Gurney said.

Normally, faint details or features around a bright object, such as the dark and tenuous rings around blue Neptune, are difficult to see against the glare of the bright object. To counteract this, an instrument is required to have the characteristic of "high dynamic range" to take in both the faint and the bright at the same time.

"We didn't realize that JWST would have this amazing dynamic range and be able to resolve really faint things like the rings of Neptune and the small moons and rings of Jupiter," Rowe-Gurney said.

Alien atmospheres

It's not only the planets of our solar system that JWST is scrutinizing. A key aim of the telescope is to detect the composition of exoplanets' atmospheres using a technique called transmission spectroscopy. As a planet transits its star, the star's light shines through the planet's atmosphere, but atoms and molecules within that atmosphere can block some of the light at characteristic wavelengths, which gives away the composition of the atmosphere.

The first exoplanet result released from JWST was the transmission spectrum of WASP-39b, which is a "hot Jupiter" exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star located 700 light-years away. JWST detected carbon dioxide in WASP-39b's atmosphere, the first time the gas has ever been detected on an exoplanet. Other gases present included carbon monoxide, potassium, sodium, water vapor and sulfur dioxide, the last of which can only be created through photochemistry when atmospheric gases react with the ultraviolet light from the planet's star — another exoplanet first.

The James Webb Space Telescope's analysis of the atmospheric composition of WASP-39b. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/J. Olmsted (STScI))

"I keep being amazed by what we're able to do with the exoplanet data, like the carbon dioxide and the photochemistry that was found in the atmosphere of WASP-39b," Mullally said. "That was really cool, and I don't remember people talking about [detecting photochemistry] ahead of time. I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can do with the terrestrial exoplanets orbiting the cool M-dwarfs and seeing what their atmospheres are made of."

In particular, the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system of seven worlds orbiting an M-dwarf 40 light-years away is a key target of the JWST. Preliminary results, which failed to detect thick blankets of hydrogen surrounding some of the TRAPPIST-1 worlds, were released during a conference held at STScI in December, but we'll have to be patient for more comprehensive results from these planets, of which up to four could reside in their star's habitable zone.

WASP-39b was an easy first target because its star is bright and the planet's signal is strong. M-dwarfs like TRAPPIST-1 are much fainter, despite being closer.

"We have to wait until we can get enough transits of these guys to build up the signal-to-noise, because you can't do it with just one or two transits," Mullally said. "I think we're going to have to wait until at least the end of the cycle 1 observations [summer 2023] before anybody is going to be in a position to say if they've found anything really spectacular."

Star formation near and far

Another aspect of JWST's mission is to not only observe exoplanets, but to better understand how they, and their stars, form. Star formation in particular is a crucial process to understand it because it connects so many things in the universe both near and far.

Longmore is leading a study to use JWST to observe frantic star formation in a region at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, called the central molecular zone, some 26,000 light-years from us. The center of our galaxy hosts the highest concentration of stars, and at our distance they all appear packed in — indistinguishable to the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope — while copious amounts of dust shroud most of them from view in optical light. Look with a large-aperture infrared telescope like JWST, however, and those two concerns are shoved aside.

"These are the JWST's two capabilities that are going to blow my field apart," Longmore said. The telescope's superb optics are able to resolve individual baby stars in the center of the galaxy, and infrared light will pass right through the dust to reach the observatory.

"Ordinarily, with Hubble, it's like trying to point your telescope at a brick wall and see through it," he added, "But the JWST is looking through a window in that wall and can count individual stars."

The star-forming Pillars of Creation, imaged in mid-infrared by the JWST in what will surely become an iconic picture. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/J. DePasquale (STScI)/A. Pagan (STScI))

It's taking longer to gather all the data from the center of the galaxy, but that's because it's such a complex environment, with bright, diffuse emission everywhere, and all that has to be disentangled from the relevant signal of star formation via determined and careful data processing.

"On all the projects I'm on, people are still fighting with calibration and things, but hopefully in the next six months that will change," Longmore said. He added an amusing story of how one of his team's observations had been blighted by a mysterious circle on the image. After deeper investigation, it turned out that this wasn't some mysterious new phenomenon, but that JWST had previously been looking at bright Jupiter, and the giant planet's after-image had not yet been properly flushed out of the instrument's electronic sensors!

Longmore and his colleagues are targeting the central molecular zone because it is the region in our galaxy that most resembles star-forming conditions in the early universe, when the star-formation rate was high and dense clusters of stars formed. In the Central Molecular Zone, the astronomers intend to measure a property called the initial mass function (IMF), which describes the range of stellar masses in a star-forming nebula.

Currently, astronomers do not understand what determines why stars form with the masses that they have, only that low-mass stars are much more common than luminous high-mass stars, at least in the local universe. Was this still the case over 13 billion years ago in the first galaxies? Answering that question could help explain both how galaxies formed and what ended the universe's dark ages.

Deep fields and the first galaxies

After she saw President Joe Biden reveal the first deep-field image from the JWST, of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, a "gravitational lens" whose massive gravity magnifies objects behind it, Frye and her student, Massimo Pascale at the University of California, Berkeley, raced to analyze the image.

"We didn't sleep for three-and-a-half days, and our paper was one of the first two papers submitted on JWST data," Frye said.

Together, they found 42 new gravitationally lensed images of 14 different high-redshift galaxies, galaxies located so far away that the expanding universe has stretched their light, making them appear redder. Further studies and more deep fields followed, and a host of high-redshift candidates were discovered by Frye's team and others, including some galaxies at record-breaking redshifts of 12, 13 and above; these redshifts mean that we see the galaxies as they existed less than 300 million years after the Big Bang.

These high-redshift galaxies have proven something of a surprise, in that they appear more luminous than models of galaxy formation predicted they should be.

"One possible explanation is that they're producing too many high-mass stars, that they have a top-heavy IMF," Longmore said, noting the importance of measuring the IMF in the central molecular zone to understand stellar masses in young neighborhoods.

Why the IMF would be different over 13.5 billion years ago is not understood, but then again the early universe seems to have been a far more intense place than it is today. "In the present day, galaxies in general are not forming stars so actively, but many galaxies formed stars more actively in the early universe," Frye said.

Frye is a member of the PEARLS (Prime Extragalactic Area for Reionization and Lensing Science) team. PEARLS is a JWST project to image a variety of deep fields, including two apparently sparse regions of sky and a number of galaxy clusters and proto-clusters, to observe the first few billion years of galaxy formation.  

The PEARLS field looking toward the North Celestial Pole. Inset are numerous types of galaxy, from interacting galaxies to ruby-red dusty star-forming galaxies. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Rolf A. Jansen, Jake Summers, Rosalia O'Brien, Rogier Windhorst (ASU)/Aaron Robotham (UWA)/Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI)/Christopher Willmer (University of Arizona)/JWST PEARLS Team)

In December, the PEARLs team released their first dataset, of an extraordinary field of distant galaxies close to the North Ecliptic Pole. This region is directly above the main plane of the Milky Way and so is constantly visible to JWST, and it's also high above interfering features such as zodiacal dust.

Within the image are a whole host of galaxies. Some interact and some show a clear spiral structure; the collection exhibits a whole range of colors, from cobalt blue to ruby red. The latter are of great interest to Frye.

"We can now observe [in the PEARLS image] an abundance of red disk galaxies, which we think might be red spirals," Frye said. "This type of galaxy is very interesting because they are analogs of what the Milky Way might have looked like when it was younger."

The reddening is caused by huge amounts of dust in these galaxies; the dust is the result of rapid formation of massive stars that quickly die in supernova explosions and spill vast amounts of dust into space. Such galaxies are completely hidden from Hubble, but infrared light can pass through the dust and make the galaxies visible to JWST.

"The analogy is a New Year's Eve fireworks display," Frye said. "If you have a lot of fireworks going off then eventually they are obscured by dusty smoke."

The JWST has impressed scientists in the six months that it has been gathering data since becoming fully operational in June, but the real fireworks are still to come with major discoveries awaiting us.

It's slow going, requiring patience, Frye said. "There's too much for any one person to be able to study or understand on really short timescales, it's going to take us a long time to process all the data."

The results, though, will be worth it.

"It's going to completely change our understanding of our place in the universe, how the solar system formed and evolved, and how the very first stars and galaxies formed," Mullally said. "We've made great headway with this telescope, and it's going to do spectacular things."

 

Virgin Orbit receives license for U.K. launch

British regulators have issued a launch license to Virgin Orbit for its first LauncherOne mission from the United Kingdom, now expected to take place in January. The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced Dec. 21 it issued launch and range licenses to Virgin Orbit for its “Start Me Up” mission, which will take off from Spaceport Cornwall in southwestern England. The CAA previously issued a spaceport license for Spaceport Cornwall. The licenses are the first issued by the CAA for commercial launches from the U.K. Virgin Orbit now has all the regulatory approvals needed for its first launch from the U.K. that is now expected for January, although the company has not announced a specific launch date. The launch will carry seven satellites for commercial and government customers, including the U.K. Ministry of Defence, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the government of Oman. “Receiving Virgin Orbit’s range and launch licenses takes us one step closer to the first satellite launch takeoff from U.K. soil,” said Dan Hart, chief executive of Virgin Orbit, in a statement. “This is a major milestone for the CAA and represents the successful completion of an enormous effort, which has included the construction of new regulations, new processes and new teams.” Hart, in a company earnings call in November, had complained that the licensing process was taking longer than expected and requiring more effort by the company. Virgin Orbit had projected conducting the launch before the end of the year, and before that earnings call was still expecting to return the LauncherOne air-launch system to the U.S. for another launch before the end of 2022. However, the company announced Dec. 8 it was postponing the launch, then scheduled for mid-December, “for the coming weeks.” The company blamed the delay in part on a lack of a launch license but also said additional technical work was needed to prepare the vehicle for launch.

Virgin Orbit now has all the licenses needed for its first launch from the United Kingdom, now expected to take place in January. Credit: Virgin Orbit

“This is another major milestone in enabling the very first orbital space launch from U.K. shores and these licenses will assist Virgin Orbit with their final preparations for launch,” Tim Johnson, director for space regulations at the CAA, said in a statement.

“Effective licensing forms an integral part of U.K. space activity, and with public safety at the heart of our decision making, we’ve worked with Virgin Orbit to assess their applications and issue licenses within our expected timelines,” he stated. The CAA has previously estimated the launch licensing process to take 9 to 18 months, and in the statement noted it awarded the license to Virgin Orbit in 15 months.

The delays in the first U.K. launch had added to concerns about Virgin Orbit’s financial condition. The company, which had anticipated performing up to six launches in 2022 when the year started, has performed only two.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Dec. 20, Virgin Orbit announced it had raised an additional $20 million from Virgin Investments Limited, an investment arm of the Virgin Group. The funding came through a convertible note, a loan that can be converted into equity. Virgin Orbit said in the filing that it will use the funding for working capital.

Vega C fails on second launch

The second flight of Arianespace’s Vega C failed to reach orbit Dec. 20 after its second stage malfunctioned, destroying two Pléiades Neo imaging satellites. The Vega C rocket lifted off at 8:47 p.m. Eastern from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying the Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 imaging satellites for Airbus. The liftoff took place on schedule and the initial phases of flight appeared to go as planned. However, on-screen telemetry showed that the rocket was deviating from its planned trajectory within four minutes of liftoff, during the burn of the rocket’s Zefiro-40 second stage. Arianespace said in a later statement that the stage malfunctioned 2 minutes and 27 second after liftoff, seconds after ignition of the stage. The flight continued for several minutes, including separation of the second stage and ignition of the third stage, as well as payload fairing separation, even as the stage reached an apogee of 110 kilometers and started to descend. “After the liftoff and the nominal ignition of the P120C, which is the first stage of the Vega, an underpressure has been observed on the Zefiro-40, which is the second stage of the Vega,” Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, said on the launch webcast a few minutes later. “After this underpressure, we have observed the deviation of the trajectory and very strong anomalies, so unfortunately we can say that the mission is lost.” He did not provide additional details about the problem. “We will now have to work with all of our partners to better understand why the Zefiro-40 has not worked properly tonight, triggering the failure of the mission,” he said, apologizing to Airbus Defence and Space, the customer for the launch. Arianespace then terminated the launch webcast.

The launch was the second for the Vega C after a successful inaugural launch of the rocket July 13 carrying a set of institutional payloads. This was the first commercial launch of the Vega C. The launch was postponed from late November because of a problem with the pyrotechnics in the payload fairing separation system.

The Vega C is an upgraded version of the Vega rocket with increased payload performance. Among the changes is the introduction of the Zefiro-40 solid-fuel second stage, which replaced the less powerful Zefiro-23 used on the Vega. Avio is the prime contractor for the Vega C.

The Vega suffered two failures in three launches in 2019 and 2020. A 2019 Vega launch of the UAE’s Falcon Eye 1 imaging satellite failed because of a problem with the thermal protection system on part of the rocket’s second stage. A Vega launch in November 2020 failed when its Avum upper stage tumbled immediately after ignition because of what Arianespace later determined to be improperly connected cables.

The failure of the Vega C deals another blow to European efforts to maintain autonomy in launch. The Vega C was one of the cornerstones of that strategy, along with the still-in-development Ariane 6, with the European Union awarding Arianespace a contract Nov. 29 for five Vega C launches of Sentinel satellites. That contract brought the Vega C backlog to 13 launches, along with two remaining launches of the original Vega.

The launch failure also hurts Airbus, which had counted on the launch to add to its constellation of high-resolution imaging satellites. Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 were similar to the previously launched Pléiades Neo 3 and 4 but included laser links for faster transmission of imagery. An unspecified “equipment issue” with Pléiades Neo 3 led Airbus to file a partial insurance claim after its April 2021 launch. Airbus said the launch of Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 would allow it to work around the issues with Pléiades Neo 3 and meet all its customer commitments.

Maxar Technologies acquired by private equity firm in $6.4 billion deal

Maxar Technologies, a space company that gained global attention with its high-resolution satellite images of the Ukraine war, is being acquired by the private equity firm Advent International for $6.4 billion. Under the deal announced Dec. 16, Advent is acquiring all outstanding shares of Maxar common stock for $53.00 per share in cash, more than double Maxar’s stock price of $23.10 on December 15, the company’s last full trading day as a public company. The acquisition is expected to be completed in mid-2023. Advent International, based in Boston, Massachusetts, is a global firm with $89 billion in assets. Maxar is headquartered in Westminster, Colorado. The acquisition will help Maxar “to accelerate investment in and development of the company’s next-generation satellite technologies and data insights for its customers,” the company said in a statement. Maxar, with an estimated $2 billion in revenue for 2022, will remain a U.S.-controlled and operated company. The company is the U.S. government’s primary supplier of satellite imagery and in May secured a $3.2 billion agreement with the National Reconnaissance Office to provide imagery over the next 10 years. Separately from its satellite imaging business, Maxar also operates a satellite factory in Palo Alto, California, a business that delivered more than 100 large geostationary communications satellites over the past three decades but has faced headwinds from declining commercial orders and has been pursuing defense and intelligence contracts. As a private company, Maxar said, it will be better positioned to successfully deploy a $600 million next-generation WorldView Legion imaging constellation, a program that has been plagued by delays.

“With approximately $28 billion invested across the defense, security and cybersecurity sectors in the last three years, Advent’s portfolio companies have substantial expertise supporting many satellite and defense platforms which serve the U.S. government and its allies as well as companies across the globe,” the company said.

Daniel Jablonsky, president and CEO of Maxar, called the $6.4 billion acquisition “an exceptional outcome for stockholders” and a validation of the company’s products and reputation.

“As a private company, we will be able to move faster, including in next generation satellite technologies,” Jablonsky told SpaceNews Dec. 16.

He said Advent wants to accelerate the deployment of WorldView Legion seven and eight after the initial six satellites are in orbit. Under the previous plan, “we wouldn’t have started spending on them until the tail end of 2024, maybe the beginning of 2025,” he said. “This allows us to go faster and get those birds up sooner for our customers.”

Jablonsky said Advent also is committed to the satellite manufacturing business. “That’s been part of the turnaround story here at Maxar,” he said, noting the company recently received orders for two new Sirius XM satellites. “We are excited about continuing to do that.”

David Mussafer, chairman and managing partner of Advent, said Maxar is a “uniquely positioned and attractive asset in satellite manufacturing and space-based high-resolution imagery, with an incredible workforce and many opportunities ahead.”

Maxar became a U.S. corporation about two years ago when the company spun off the Canadian subsidiary MDA. The Canadian firm MDA purchased the Palo Alto-based satellite manufacturer Space Systems Loral in 2012 and in 2017 acquired the Westminster-based Earth-imaging firm DigitalGlobe. The combined companies were rebranded Maxar Technologies in 2018, and MDA was sold off in 2020.

NASA and Rocket Lab ready for first Electron launch from Wallops

After more than two years of delays, NASA and Rocket Lab are finally ready to conduct the first Electron launch from Wallops Island in Virginia on Dec. 16. The launch, called “Virginia is for Launch Lovers” by the company, is scheduled from the company’s Launch Complex (LC) 2 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops during a two-hour window that opens at 6 p.m. Eastern Dec. 16. There is an 85% chance of favorable weather for the launch that day as well as on a backup day Dec. 17. The mission will place into orbit three satellites for HawkEye 360, which operates a constellation of spacecraft that perform radio-frequency surveillance. HawkEye 360 signed a contract in April for three Electron launches, including the first Electron launch from Wallops. The scheduled launch comes three years after Rocket Lab declared Launch Complex 2 complete. At that time, it expected to perform the first launch there in the second quarter of 2020 for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program. However, delays in development by NASA of a new autonomous flight termination system (AFTS) required for Electron launches from Wallops delayed that first flight by more than two years. At a Dec. 14 online briefing, David Pierce, director of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, said the final safety certification of what’s called the NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit (NAFTU) was originally scheduled in time to support a mid-2020 first launch from LC-2. During final checks of the software, engineers discovered numerous errors in the code.

NASA and Rocket Lab say that have the FAA approvals needed for a new autonomous flight termination system needed for the first Electron launch from Wallops, now scheduled for Dec. 16. Credit: Rocket Lab/Trevor Mahlmann

In the fall of 2020, NASA established a “cross-agency” team that included the U.S. Space Force and Federal Aviation Administration to fix the software and go through a certification process, he said. It took more than a year to develop the test procedures and scripts needed to ensure the software met range safety requirements.

By early 2022, NAFTU was ready for independent certification testing. “As part of that, as normally happens in I&T [integration and testing], you find errors or bugs that needed to be fixed, and that’s what we did,” he said. “We knocked down each one of those challenges, one by one, and we completed independent testing in the summer of 2022.”

The system completed an independent certification led by the chief engineer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in October. “As soon as we completed that, we turned to supporting Peter [Beck] and the fabulous Rocket Lab team” as the company modified NAFTU for use on Electron.

Rocket Lab’s implementation of NAFTU, which the company calls Pegasus, has received approval from the FAA for the upcoming launch. Pierce said NASA still needs to complete “cleaning up some of the paperwork” for full certification of NAFTU from the FAA, which he expects to be complete by the end of the month.

He said there is some additional final paperwork to complete for the Electron launch, in the form of additional analyses by a joint NASA-Rocket Lab team. “What we’ve been doing over the past couple weeks is following up with answers to questions to show how NASA Wallops validated the combined response to our flight safety plan to the FAA,” he said. That work will be complete before a Dec. 15 launch readiness review.

NAFTU will be available to other range users to reduce the number and cost of traditional range safety assets and support higher flight rates. Eighteen companies have requested access to the software, Pierce said, but Rocket Lab will be the first to use it on the upcoming Electron launch.

Rocket Lab has been using its own AFTS for more than 20 Electron launches from its original launch site, LC-1 in New Zealand. “It is a significant reduction in range costs and range equipment,” Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said at the briefing. “AFTS is a huge game-changer.”

A successful launch would finally bring into service LC-2, which Beck said will enable the company to increase its launch rate, of about one per month for most of 2022, in 2023. He offered few specifics about upcoming launches from Wallops at the briefing, but in an earnings call Nov. 9 executives said they anticipated performing 14 Electron launches in 2023, four to six of which would be at LC-2.

Most customers will be able to use either LC-1 or LC-2, he said, and can move between them. “There are some customers that have a U.S. launch requirement,” primarily U.S. government agencies, he said, requiring them to use LC-2.

Beck said the company set up in Virginia, rather than at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station or Kennedy Space Center in Florida, because of the “quietness of the range” or lack of other launches from Wallops. The site currently hosts two Northrop Grumman Antares launches a year along with an occasional Minotaur launch by that company, as well as about a dozen sounding rocket launches a year.

“KSC is an amazing range, but I think everybody has to agree it’s pretty busy,” he said. The company also plans to use Wallops for its Neutron reusable launch vehicle, which will be produced at a factory just outside the Wallops gates. “We can achieve almost the same trajectories out of Virginia and the range is not nearly as busy. There’s a lot of room to grow.”

Quantum Space raises $15 million for cislunar spacecraft

Quantum Space has raised $15 million to further development of the first in a constellation of satellites intended to provide services in cislunar space. Quantum Space said that Prime Movers Lab invested $15 million in a Series A round in the Rockville, Maryland-based company. The funding will support development of its QS-1 spacecraft the company announced in October it is building for launch in 2024 to cislunar space. Prime Movers Lab is a venture fund that has invested in several space companies, including commercial space station developer Axiom Space, megaconstellation startup E-Space and space tourism company Space Perspective. Both Axiom Space and Quantum Space were founded by Kam Ghaffarian. “Kam is a visionary entrepreneur who we’ve wanted to partner with again since investing in some of his previous endeavors,” Anton Breve, a partner at Prime Movers Lab, said in a statement. “We believe Quantum Space will play a critical role in establishing the infrastructure to support humankind’s expansion beyond Earth.” In an interview, Steve Jurczyk, president and chief executive of Quantum Space, said the funding from Prime Movers Lab will make up most of the Series A round the company expects to close by the end of the year. Two other investors will provide about $1 million each to complete the round. That funding will advance work on the QS-1 spacecraft, being provided by Blue Canyon Technologies, and its space situational awareness payload from GEOST, to the critical design review level. It will also fund purchases of long-lead items needed to keep the mission on track for an October 2024 launch.

QS-1 is first in a series of satellites called QuantumNet that Quantum Space plans to provide services in cislunar space. Credit: Quantum Space

QS-1 is the first spacecraft in a constellation called QuantumNet that the company projects developing in cislunar space, also known as xGEO. The company foresees having more than 40 of what the company calls Scout spacecraft in service by 2032 throughout cislunar space. Those spacecraft will carry a variety of payloads, including communications, navigation and space situational awareness.

QS-1 will launch as a rideshare payload, Jurczyk said, but future spacecraft will be delivered through an in-space transportation vehicle called Ranger that the company is also developing, capable of carrying four Scouts.

“Starting in late ’25, and every year thereafter, we plan on delivering four Scouts via this Ranger vehicle to xGEO and to various locations like Lagrange points and other orbits to provide space domain awareness and other capabilities in that very large volume of space,” he said.

Quantum Space is seeing strong interest in both the Scout satellites for providing various services, and the Ranger transportation vehicle, particularly from governments. That interest includes from those interested in a communications network around the moon to support lunar exploration activities.

Jurczyk said Quantum Space brought in Prime Movers Lab as an investor in part because of that fund’s part work with Ghaffarian but also because of other support it can provide. “They’re also going to help us with recruiting the talent that we need. They’ll help us particularly with some hard-to-recruit skill areas,” he said. The company currently has 20 employees with plans to hire a dozen more by the first quarter of next year.

Prime Movers Lab will also help Quantum Space identify new investors for a Series B round planned for next year, he said, which will support completion of QS-1 and future projects. The company is still determining how much it will seek to raise in that round.

Europe celebrates performance of Orion service module

As the Artemis 1 mission nears its conclusion, European Space Agency and industry officials praised the performance of the Orion spacecraft’s service module, which some see as a step towards a European crewed spacecraft. The Artemis 1 mission is set to conclude Dec. 11 with the reentry and splashdown of the Orion crew capsule, shortly after it separates from the European Service Module. That module provided power, propulsion and other services for the spacecraft since its Nov. 16 launch. “We are coming towards the end of what you might think of as a 100-meter race that’s followed a marathon,” said David Parker, ESA’s director for human and robotic exploration, during a Dec. 9 briefing. “The marathon was the 10 years of effort and preparation needed to build and prepare the first European Service Module for its journey to the moon and back again, and 100-meter race has been that actual mission itself.” During that 100-meter sprint, the service module has not broken stride. “The mission has gone really perfect from our point of view,” said Ralf Zimmermann, head of moon programs and the Orion European Service Module at Airbus, the prime contractor for the module. “We have absolutely flown a perfect mission so far.” There have been minor issues with the module, he noted, “but nothing mission critical.” One persistent issue has been with devices called latching current limiters in one part of the spacecraft’s power system. Those devices, similar to circuit breakers, have opened at least 17 times during the course of the mission without being commanded to do so, NASA officials said at a Dec. 8 briefing, but have not significantly affected spacecraft operations.

A view of the aft section of the European Service Module of the Orion spacecraft taken as the Artemis 1 mission nears its conclusion. Credit: NASA

“It’s not a big deal because they can be recommanded on,” said Philippe Deloo, ESA program manager for the service module. “We don’t have an idea of what is the root cause. We are investigating, looking at all possible options.”

One possibility, he said, is that electromagnetic interference or noise in the power system is causing the latching current limiters to open. Another possibility is they are being affected by transmissions from spacecraft antennas. Engineers are doing as much testing as they can before the end of the mission to identify the cause. “This is going to be a difficult one to troubleshoot.”

Zimmermann emphasized the issue was not serious. “When they open uncommanded, the effect on the mission is not that big,” he said, noting it affects only one of eight power lines on the spacecraft. “It is a glitch, not a mission-critical failure.”

Other parts of the European Service Module have exceeded expectations. The spacecraft is producing more power than expected, yet using less power than planned. Deloo said the reduced power consumption is, in turn, linked to the spacecraft dissipating less heat than expected, meaning it has to use heaters less frequently to maintain its proper temperature. “This is one of the major lessons learned.”

The service module has also produced many of the stunning images and video the mission has returned, thanks to GoPro cameras mounted on the tips of each of the four solar arrays. “We are calling them now four selfie sticks,” quipped Matthias Gronowski, chief engineer for the European Service Module at Airbus.

The Artemis 1 mission, and excellent performance of its service modules, comes as some in Europe advocate for ESA to develop its own human spaceflight capability. Human spaceflight was one of the long-term “inspirator” concepts endorsed by ESA member states a year ago, and remains a topic of debate in Europe.

“We have to see how far politicians are willing to look into this,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a Dec. 1 speech at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here, noting the topic would come up at a second European “space summit” scheduled for late 2023. “Does Europe want to be more independent, more autonomous in human space transportation?”

“In terms of technical capability, can Europe build a human-rated space vehicle? I don’t doubt it,” Parker said, citing the success not just of the Artemis 1 mission but work on International Space Station modules and elements of the future lunar Gateway. What would be needed, he said, was experience in end-to-end operations of a crew spacecraft and development of safety systems, like a launch abort system, as well as a human-rated launch vehicle.

During the International Astronautical Congress in September, ArianeGroup released a concept for a vehicle called Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration (SUSIE). The vehicle is designed to be a new, reusable upper stage for the Ariane 6 rocket, but could be used as a cargo and crew transportation vehicle. Morena Bernardini, head of strategy and innovation at ArianeGroup, said in an interview at the conference that a cargo version of SUSIE could be ready as soon as 2030 followed by a crewed version “immediately after.”

At the briefing, Zimmerman suggested Airbus was more interested in working with others, along the lines of the existing partnership on Orion, than developing a European crewed vehicle. “We need to unite forces and share the costs,” he said, noting he was offering his personal opinion. “This is, to me, much more important than saying its Germany, France, England or Europe in total against the Americans.”

Parker said the success of the service module shows ESA is ready for the next phases of Artemis. “We learned that we can send a crew-rated capsule to the moon and back again on its first flight, and that means it gives us a lot of confidence to go forward in the next steps in Artemis.”

ESA has a contract with Airbus to produce service modules through Artemis 6, at a total value of a little more than two billion euros. ESA’s member states approved plans to produce three more service modules at November’s ministerial meeting, and Parker said the agency will get those under contract some time in 2023.

The Artemis 1 service module will end its mission about 40 minutes before splashdown when it separates from the crew capsule shortly before reentry. The service module will burn up in the atmosphere, with any surviving pieces falling into the Pacific Ocean west of Peru.

“It’s a little sad, but we’ve accomplished the mission,” Zimmerman said of the impending demise of the service module. “We are proud of all that has happened.”

“You cannot be sad when you accomplish your mission,” Deloo said. “Everything has a life. The end of the life is part of the life. As long as the life has been successful, this is a great success. So, I’m happy about it.”

Orion swings by the moon on its way back to Earth

NASA’s Orion spacecraft flew by the moon for a second and final time Dec. 5, performing a maneuver that sets up the spacecraft for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six days. The Orion’s European Service Module fired its main engine for 3 minutes and 27 seconds starting at 11:43 a.m. Eastern. The maneuver, called the Return Powered Flyby, took place during a close approach to the moon that brought Orion within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. NASA officials said at a later briefing that the maneuver, the largest and last major engine burn of the Artemis 1 mission, went as expected, putting the spacecraft on a trajectory that returns it to Earth for a Dec. 11 splashdown. That maneuver “is essentially our deorbit burn,” said Judd Frieling, flight director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, at the briefing. “This sets us up for the landing trajectory that going to occur on Dec. 11.” With the flyby complete, NASA is moving ahead with preparations for splashdown. Mike Sarafin, NASA Artemis 1 mission manager, said the mission management team gave its approval to deploy recovery forces on Dec. 7. That includes a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Portland, that will host the recovery forces and bring the Orion spacecraft onboard to return to the port of San Diego, California. Melissa Jones, landing and recovery director for the mission at NASA, said the recovery team completed a three-day rehearsal for the recovery last week. “We are ready and honored, as an integrated team, to bring Orion home on the last leg of her journey,” she said. Orion, which launched nearly three weeks ago, continues to perform well with only minor problems. That includes continuing issues with latching current limiters in the spacecraft’s power distribution system. Four of those devices had switched off during a test, affecting power to six reaction control thrusters. Controllers were able to restore power to those thrusters.

A view of the Orion spacecraft, moon and Earth during the Dec. 5 return powered flyby of the moon by Orion. Credit: NASA

“What it appears is that they were commanded open, but there were no commands sent,” Debbie Korth, NASA Orion deputy program manager, said of the current limiters at the briefing. “We’re not exactly sure of the root cause yet.”

She said engineers are doing some testing of the power system in a ground-based lab, and will likely propose some tests to do later this week on the spacecraft ahead of the end of the mission. “We discard the service module, so we have a pretty limited window if there’s anything we want to do before that happens.”

She and other agency officials at the briefing downplayed the significance of it, noting there are redundant systems onboard. Had it taken place on a crewed mission, Frieling said, the astronauts would have been informed on their displays, but would not have noticed any other effects.

There was also a communications outage lasting four and a half hours on Dec. 3 that was caused by a hardware problem with a Deep Space Network (DSN) center in Goldstone, California. The outage would have been longer, Sarafin said, but the mission was able to negotiate with other missions using the DSN to get time on the network.

Praise from former agency leaders

The success of the mission to date won praise from two previous top NASA officials who see it as evidence that the overall Artemis effort is now on track after years of development delays.

“I feel really good about it,” former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a SpaceNews event Dec. 5. “I think one of the biggest achievements is that there’s a lot of hardware here that has been under development for a long time. The Artemis program just gave all that hardware a mission, which is what we needed in order to get to where we are today.”

“I think it truly is a great thing to see this mission being so successful, as Jim said. A long time to get here, for sure,” said former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver at the same event.

Bridenstine, who gave the Artemis program its name while in office during the Trump administration, credited the Biden administration for retaining it. “NASA has a long history of programs getting cancelled, and billions of dollars being wasted,” he said. “And in this case, they kept continuity of purpose and moved forward and I’m just very grateful for that.”

Garver, deputy administrator during the Obama administration, noted the program brought together hardware started in various administrations. “I think the timing was right and it was good to do,” she said. However, she expressed skepticism that the technical approach, including use of the Space Launch System, was the right one for the long term.

“I do not believe that the country can or should probably spend the amount of money we are on launch infrastructure over the longer term. I think that when we have private launch capabilities that rival this we should transition, and that will make me feel a lot better about the future and the future success of Artemis,” she said.

She said she had argued against SLS and Orion while at NASA, but lost that argument. “I was clear when I was at NASA that, once that decision had been made, our job was to make it the very best vehicle we could have.”

“You did not lose the argument,” Bridenstine said. “You got the argument started. It is still going forward and it’s transitioning how we do space.”

SpaceX rolls out new business line focused on military satellite services

SpaceX on Dec. 2 revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies. This sector of SpaceX intends to leverage the Starlink internet constellation in low Earth orbit to develop products and services — including secure communications, remote sensing and space surveillance payloads — that are in growing demand by U.S. defense and intelligence organizations. “While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads,” the company said on its website. The Starshield site is heavy on marketing and light on details but conveys SpaceX’s vision to disrupt the national security satellite sector much like it has in launch, commercial broadband and civil space. “SpaceX’s ongoing work with the Department of Defense and other partners demonstrates our ability to provide in-space and on-ground capability at scale,” said the company. These statements suggest that as SpaceX has expanded its reach in the national security launch and satellite broadband markets, it decided it needs to offer more specialized products in order to win big-ticket contracts. Starshield will offer “end-to-end systems,” meaning complete services from launch vehicles to satellites and user terminals. “It appears they have finally understood that going all commercial and asking national security space customers to use it doesn’t always work, so they are going to offer alternative products that are focused on national security but based on Starlink technology and production lines,” an industry analyst told SpaceNews.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches Starlink satellites July 7, 2022. Credit: SpaceX

Starshield products and services will include satellites with sensing payloads that can deliver processed data directly to the user, secure global communications and user equipment, and customized satellite buses.

Satellite communications services offerings would draw from the company’s experience in Ukraine, where Starlink demonstrated its can operate in a combat zone and proved to be more resilient than the U.S. military would have expected from a commercial system. The Air Force has bought Starlink services to support units in Europe and Africa due to the system’s ability to operate in a hostile electronic environment.

Starshield also is capitalizing on SpaceX’s participation in the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency’s missile-tracking and missile-detection constellation, where it partnered with Leidos to develop four classified infrared sensor satellites scheduled to launch before the end of the year.

SpaceX will offer to host “classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements,” the company said.

Starshield satellites would be equipped with laser terminals to make them interoperable with military satellites. Interoperability is a key requirement as DoD wants to use commercial low Earth orbit satellite capacity to transport data collected by remote sensing systems. Defense officials warned the current Starlink network, because of its highly proprietary technology, cannot be integrated into a hybrid architecture that DoD hopes to build.

SpaceX also promises “rapid deployment and development” of capabilities, a pitch that resonates with DoD space buying agencies that for years have been frustrated by the slow pace and high cost of satellite procurements.

Some of the more advanced capabilities advertised by Starshield will probably not be available until SpaceX deploys its second-generation Starlink satellites. These will be larger than the first-generation version and designed with performance features needed to host national security payloads and deliver higher levels of encryption than the commercial Starlink service.

To date SpaceX has launched approximately 3,500 first-generation Starlink satellites and recently won licensing approval to deploy Gen2 spacecraft.

Rocket Lab launches subsidiary focused on national security market

Rocket Lab, a launch services company and space hardware manufacturer, announced Dec. 1 it is creating a separate entity to focus on U.S. defense and intelligence agency customers. The new business sector, called Rocket Lab National Security, also will work with U.S. allies, the company said. Rocket Lab, which went public in August 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, is looking to sign more defense and intelligence customers for its small launch vehicle Electron and its future medium-lift rocket Neutron — expected to debut in 2024. The company decided it needs a separate business dedicated to this market, a spokesperson said in a statement to SpaceNews. “National security missions and payloads on Electron and Neutron, which can have different bureaucratic requirements to commercial launches, will be contracted through the RLNS subsidiary,” the spokesperson said. Having a dedicated national security subsidiary will help understand these customers’ requirements, “which may be dedicated rapid call-up launch, satellite design, build and integration, spacecraft operations, or all of the above.” The establishment of a national security business follows Rocket Lab’s recent introduction of a “responsive space” program aimed at government customers. Rocket Lab USA is based in Long Beach, California. The company operates a launch site in New Zealand and will soon start flying from Wallops, Virginia. Since Electron’s first launch in 2017, Rocket Lab has secured multiple deals with national security agencies, including the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. Space Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

A Rocket Lab Electron in July 2021 launched an Air Force Research Laboratory demonstration satellite called Monolith. Credit: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab’s solar power business supplies solar cells for U.S. Space Force missile-warning satellites. Another sector of the company recently won contracts to provide separation systems for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency satellites.

Rocket Lab also signed a research agreement with the United States Transportation Command to explore the use of rockets for point to point cargo delivery.

“Top of the list for national security is reliability and responsiveness,” said Brian Rogers, senior director of Rocket Lab’s global government launch services.

Shenzhou 15 astronauts arrive at China’s space station for first crew handover

China has six astronauts aboard its recently-completed space station for the first time following the arrival of three crew members aboard Shenzhou-15. Shenzhou-15 launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 10:08 a.m. Eastern Nov. 29. Rendezvous and docking with the Tiangong space station was completed at 4:42 p.m., China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, confirmed. Astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu are to be greeted aboard Tiangong by Shenzhou 14 crew members Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, who have spent the last six months aboard the station and overseen the arrival of two new modules. The Shenzhou 15 crew will be sustained by supplies delivered to Tiangong aboard the Tianzhou-5 cargo mission launched Nov. 11 Eastern time. The Tiangong space station now consists of three roughly 22-ton modules in a 393 by 386-kilometer orbit. The 13.5-ton Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft and two roughly 8.2-ton Shenzhou spacecraft are docked with it. The Shenzhou-14 crew are expected to return to Earth in early December. The first crew rotation marks the start of science operations on Tiangong, which carries 24 experiment cabinets and a payload airlock. China aims to keep the orbital outpost constantly occupied and operational in orbit for at least ten years. China will begin to send international experiments to the station through an initiative with UNOOSA in the near future.

A Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft and crew rises into the sky against a lunar backdrop. Credit: CCTV/framegrab

It is expected that Tiangong will outlast the aging International Space Station and could become the only permanent crewed outpost in orbit. The arrival of Shenzhou-15 at Tiangong signifies the completion of plans approved in 1992 to develop human spaceflight capabilities and build a space station.

The country’s first crewed mission, Shenzhou-5 in 2003, made it only the third to develop independent human spaceflight capabilities. Two Tiangong test labs followed in the 2010s to test rendezvous and docking, life support and on-orbit operations. At the same time China was effectively barred from joining the ISS by U.S. legislation which effectively prevented NASA engagement with Chinese state entities.

China aimed to launch its first proper space station module in 2018 and complete the station with further module launches in 2020 and 2022. A failure of the Long March 5 rocket in July 2017 and subsequent issues with the rocket’s engines and turbopumps delayed this schedule.

With the Long March 5B finally operational, China condensed the construction phase of Tiangong to fit inside 18 months. The Tianhe core module launched in April 2021, and culminated 10 launches later with Shenzhou-15 arriving at the completed T-shaped complex.

Tiangong itself could also be expanded from three to six modules, according to Chinese space officials. Such an expansion may depend upon other countries joining the project.

The Xuntian optical module—a co-orbiting, Hubble-class space survey telescope with a two meter aperture and 2.5 gigapixel camera—is planned to join Tiangong in orbit in late 2023 or 2024.

The decision to embark on a space station program was taken back when the country’s economy represented around 2% of the global economy and seeking a foothold in the international launch market.

China has since become the world’s second largest economy behind the United States, and achieved a number of feats in space, including a Mars rover landing, lunar far side landing, building its Beidou GNSS constellation and more.

The country is also moving forward with a robotic lunar exploration program with the goal of building a lunar base in the vicinity of the south pole of the moon in the 2030s.

This pathway is designed to converge with human spaceflight experience gained from Tiangong and the development of new, large rockets to allow China to send astronauts to the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).

Orion enters lunar distant retrograde orbit

NASA’s Orion spacecraft entered a high-altitude orbit around the moon Nov. 25 in the latest major step in the Artemis 1 uncrewed test flight. The Orion spacecraft fired the main engine in its European Service Module at 4:52 p.m. Eastern for 88 seconds. The maneuver changed the velocity of the spacecraft by about 110 meters per second, placing the spacecraft into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. The use of DRO is unique to Artemis 1. The Artemis 2 mission will fly a free return trajectory around the moon, while Artemis 3 and later missions will go into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon, which will also be used by the lunar Gateway. NASA chose DRO for this mission since it is a stable orbit that enables testing of the spacecraft without requiring much fuel to maintain the orbit. Orion, though, will not remain in DRO for long. The spacecraft will perform a maneuver Dec. 1 to depart DRO, heading back towards the moon. The spacecraft will conduct another burn during a lunar flyby Dec. 5 to put the spacecraft on track for a reentry Dec. 11, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. Since its Nov. 16 launch, the Artemis 1 mission has gone well, with only a few minor issues. “In terms of overall systems failures, we haven’t seen a single thing on the rocket or on the spacecraft that would have caused us to question our reliability or our redundancy,” Mike Sarafin, NASA Artemis 1 mission manager, said at the most recent briefing about the mission Nov. 21.

A view of Earth taken by a camera on an Orion solar array Nov. 24, a day before the spacecraft entered a distant retrograde orbit around the moon. Credit: NASA

At the time of that briefing, NASA said it was looking at two issues with the spacecraft, one involving the spacecraft’s star trackers and what Sarafin called “funny indications” on the power system on the service module, where one of eight units used to distribute power opened without being commanded to do so. Neither issue, he said, were “hard concerns or hard constraints” on the mission.

“We don’t fully understand what the system and the flight hardware is telling us, but we’ve got ample redundancy and we are recovering from these ‘funnies’ that we see,” he said.

On Nov. 23, NASA reported that it lost communications with Orion unexpectedly for 47 minutes starting at 1:09 a.m. Eastern. The loss of signal took place during one of a regular series of reconfigurations of the link between Orion and the Deep Space Network. It was unclear if the problem was with Orion or ground stations, and NASA has not provided an update on the issue since first reporting the glitch.

Sarafin also said at that Nov. 21 briefing that the Space Launch System rocket that launched Orion met or exceeded requirements. “The results were eye-watering,” he said. “Everything was either on predict or off by less than 1%.”

Engineers are also reviewing the status of the mobile launch platform, which sustained some damage from the launch, including having its elevator blast doors blown off and damage to the platform’s deck. “The mobile launcher has a little bit of damage to it, but it will be ready to fly the crewed launch on Artemis 2,” he said. That mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than late 2024.

France, Germany and Italy sign agreement on launch vehicle development

An agreement among three European countries could help secure near-term funding for launch vehicle development but have a bigger effect in the long term on how future projects are financed. The governments of France, Germany and Italy announced Nov. 22 they signed an agreement on “the future of launcher exploitation in Europe” intended, they said, to enhance competitiveness of European vehicles while also ensuring independent European access to space. The agreement includes a timetable that, by June 2024, calls for a new framework to be in place for public financing of vehicles such as the Ariane 6 and Vega C. That includes “a mechanism incentivizing cost reduction” with funding “commensurate to the commercial risks taken” and ability to achieve target prices. The agreement also endorses having new small launch vehicles under development by several European companies be able to compete for European Space Agency missions. That’s considered a priority for Germany in particular, which has supported development of commercial small launch vehicles. The agreement coincides with the ongoing ESA ministerial meeting where member states will allocate funding for projects, including launch vehicle development. ESA is seeking a little more than 3 billion euros ($3.1 billion) for space transportation overall, including 600 million euros for an Ariane 6 “transition program” as the long-delayed rocket, whose first flight has slipped to at least late 2023, enters service. The program has secured two-thirds of its funding going into the ministerial, but faced a gap of 195 million euros as the meeting started. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, speaking to reporters at the end of the first day of the ministerial council meeting Nov. 22, said he was optimistic the agreement announced by France, Germany and Italy would help close that gap.

The agreement among the governments of France, Germany and Italy comes as ESA seeks to secure funding for the "transition program" of the Ariane 6, whose first launch is now no sooner than late 2023. Credit: ESA

“This was quite important because this political understanding and agreement unblocks other discussions that then have an influence on subscriptions,” he said. “That was quite important and significant, and opened the door for a discussion later on.”

However, as of late Nov. 22 that funding gap was not yet closed, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. That was, the source added, to be expected given the nature of negotiations, including the iterative process where countries revise their funding commitments over several rounds.

The agreement will help close that funding gap, the source said, because it united France, Germany and Italy around support for both Ariane 6 and Vega C as well as future launch systems, creating interdependence among the countries given differing priorities. Any long-term agreement requires success in securing funding for launch programs at the ministerial.

However, the agreement appeared to open the door to revisit a long-standing ESA principle of “georeturn,” or apportioning contracts based on the share each country contributes to agency programs. Some larger countries have been critical of georeturn, arguing it makes programs less efficient.

The document stated that, as part of the new launcher framework, “such exercise would involve starting a reflection with concerned states on the conditions for the industrial and geographical distribution of work in exploitation.”

A statement from the French economic ministry was more blunt, stating that competitiveness would be achieved in part by a change in the rules for geographic return.

Any change, an agency source said, would be a long-term effort, and require the approval of ESA’s 22 member states, which would not be easy. The rules for Ariane 6 and Vega C in particular were set at the beginning of those programs year ago, although the source said that the georeturn issue could be examined for future launch vehicle development projects.

There is other pressure on ESA to reform its support of launch vehicle development. “There is no European space policy without autonomous access to space,” said Thierry Breton, European Union commissioner for the internal market, in comments at the opening session of the ministerial meeting Nov. 22.

“The shortage of autonomous launch capacity in the E.U. has a direct impact on the deployment of E.U. space programs like Galileo,” he said, referring to the ongoing pause in launching Galileo satellites because the Soyuz rocket is no longer available and Ariane 6 is delayed. “The situation is not sustainable for long, and there is an urgent need to remedy the situation through a truly European approach to have a fully autonomous, reliable and cost-effective E.U. launch solution, including, of course, backups covering all ranges of launchers.”

Breton said he expected ESA member states to back “sustained financing” of Ariane 6 and Vega C and work on future launch systems. The E.U., he said, “is definitely ready to support all these efforts, and it will.”