Japanese Earth observation company Axelspace has raised nearly $44 million to both expand its satellite constellation and provide smallsats for other applications. The Tokyo-based company announced Dec. 21 that it raised 6.24 billion yen ($43.9 million) in a Series D round from several Japanese companies and venture funds. The company, which last raised 2.58 billion yen in a Series C round in 2021, has brought in 14.3 billion yen since its founding in 2008. The company currently operates five microsatellites that provide medium-resolution imagery through a service it calls AxelGlobe. Four of those satellites launched in 2021, three years after its first satellite. Axelspace said the new funding will support expansion of its satellite constellation but did not provide details about the plans. The Series D round will also go towards an initiative Axelspace announced in 2022 called AxelLiner, where the company will produce microsatellites for other customers. The goal of the service is to provide a “one-stop service” for the production, launch and operations of smallsats for other customers. At the time of the AxelLiner announcement, the company said it would work with two other Japanese firms, Misumi Group Ltd. and Yuki Holdings Inc., in an alliance for mass production of smallsats. The first demonstration satellite of that effort is scheduled for launch in early 2024. “With this financing, we hope to further solidify the business foundations of both AxelGlobe and AxelLiner services and to establish ourselves as a leading player in providing comprehensive microsatellite solutions,” Yuya Nakamura, president and chief executive of Axelspace, said in a statement about the financing round.
In addition to building satellites for its own Earth observation constellation, Axelspace is offering satellites for other customers. Credit: Axelspace
Axelspace is part of a trend of companies that initially built satellites for their own businesses but now offer them to others. Spire, which operates a large cubesat constellation for weather and tracking data, has won several customers for its “space as a service” business line, offering satellites and related capabilities.
Several Axelspace investors cited that move into satellite manufacturing and services as a key factor in their decisions to participate in the round. “We have decided to invest in the space industry, a new growth engine for Japan, and specifically in Axelspace,” said Jun Takahashi, president of SMBC Venture Capital Management Co., lead investor in the round. “We are impressed by its achievement in pioneering the space industry and hold high expectations for their future global contributions as a satellite manufacturer and a data service provider.”
“We have decided to invest in Axelspace, a pioneer in the field of microsatellites, in the hope that they will become a global unicorn company from Japan and take the company to the next level,” said Yasuhiko Yurimoto, chief executive of Global Brain Corporation, another investor in Axelspace.
The funding round is the latest sign of growing investor interest in Japan for entrepreneurial space companies. Satellite servicing company Astroscale, based in Tokyo with operations in several countries, has raised more than $376 million, including a $76 million Series G round in February. That round included a strategic investment from Japanese satellite manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric.
In April, Japanese lunar lander developer ispace went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange shortly before its first lander crashed on final approach to the lunar surface. It is working on a second lander scheduled to launch in 2024.
Another Japanese company, iQPS, went public on the same exchange Dec. 6, raising $24 million. The company said the funding would support its development of a constellation of synthetic aperture radar imaging satellites.
Japan’s SLIM robotic spacecraft entered lunar orbit Dec. 25, setting up a moon landing attempt scheduled for Jan. 19. SLIM completed a roughly three-minute-long lunar orbit insertion burn at 2:51 a.m. Eastern (0751 UTC), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced Christmas Day. SLIM is now in a 600 x 4,000-kilometer polar lunar orbit, as planned. The spacecraft is currently in a normal condition, JAXA stated. It will soon begin gradually lowering its orbit in preparation for landing. The landing attempt is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. Eastern (1500 UTC) Jan. 19, landing around 20 minutes later. The lander will aim to set down within a 100 meters of its target point on the slope of the mid-latitude Shioli crater. SLIM launched Sept. 6 on a H-2A rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center along with the XRISM space telescope. SLIM spacecraft entered low Earth orbit and began a series of orbit-raising maneuvers as part of its circuitous voyage to the moon. It made a translunar injection burn Sept. 30, making a lunar flyby Oct. 4. This set the spacecraft on a long, looping, propellant-saving journey to the moon, leading to lunar orbit insertion on Christmas Day. SLIM will next gradually lower its apolune, or farthest point from the moon, and enter a circular orbit at an approximately 600-kilometer-altitude in mid-January, according to JAXA.
Perilune will then be lowered, reaching a 15-km-altitude orbit Jan. 19 Japan time, ready for the Jan. 19 landing. SLIM will begin to decelerate from a speed of around 1,700 meters per second at that point.
Five crushable, 3D-printed aluminum lattice landing legs will help the lander absorb the of impact of touch down and settle on the sloped rim of the 300-meters-wide Shioli crater.
A successful SLIM landing would make Japan the fifth country to soft land on the moon. In August India became the fourth nation to achieve the feat with its high latitude Chandrayaan-3 mission landing.
The main objective of SLIM is to demonstrate a highly-accurate lunar soft-landing with a lightweight architecture. It will use a vision-based navigation system and carries observational data from Japan’s SELENE orbiter launched in 2007. This system will be used to identify its landing zone during its autonomous descent and landing. It also carries a laser range finder for the final stages of descent.
Beyond the landing attempt itself, the spacecraft is designed to spend the remainder of the lunar day on the surface conducting experiments. SLIM carries a Multi-Band Camera (MBC) to assess the composition of Shioli crater by analyzing the spectra of sunlight reflected off its surface. Teams are particularly looking for the presence of the mineral olivine, which may have been ejected from beneath the moon’s crust.
SLIM is also carrying a pair of small, innovative rovers. Lunar Excursion Vehicle 1 (LEV-1) uses a hopping mechanism, while LEV-2 is a baseball-sized, spherical rover. Both carry cameras and science payloads.
The mission could lead to lower cost exploration efforts in the future, according to JAXA. The accuracy of landings will be useful for accessing areas of high scientific interest instead of more general, safer landing zones.
The spacecraft has a dry mass of 200 kilograms and 700-730 kg wet mass at launch. The expected development cost was 18 billion yen ($120 million).
A delegation from the French Space Agency CNES visited Colorado and Texas last week to expand ties between French and American aerospace companies. The officials, who jokingly refer to themselves as France’s NewSpace Musketeers, plan to establish virtual hubs in Denver and Houston for Connect by CNES, a government initiative to spur space-related innovation. “We want to create jobs in the U.S. and jobs in France,” Francois Alter, CNES deputy chief strategy officer, told SpaceNews. “We want to be the wedding planner to support this growing ecosystem with strong partnerships between U.S. and French companies.” France and the United States have longstanding civil and military space ties, which have deepened in recent years. In addition, France’s vibrant NewSpace sector is growing with an average of one startup established per week. Government support for the NewSpace ecosystem is strong. The national investment plan France 2030 directs 1.5 billion euros ($1.64 billion) towards investment in space technologies over five years.
Connect by CNES leaders pose with a replica of an International Space Station module at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Credit: Connect by CNES
“We have ammunition to make this ecosystem go,” said Emmanuel de Lipkowski, CNES senior advisor and a French Space Command Reserve officer.
Space Symposium France Booth
Connect by CNES was established in 2018 to provide startups with technical expertise, funding, software, incubators, accelerators and introductions to prime contractors and government space agencies. With many French startups maturing, Connect by CNES is looking for international partners, beginning in the United States.
To help French startups establish ties in the U.S., a French delegation met in Denver Dec. 11 and 12 with representatives of Colorado companies, government agencies and academic institutions. The visit paves the way for some 30 to 40 French entrepreneurs to meet with potential partners in April during the National Space Foundation’s 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
“There is already a lot of collaboration between French and U.S. companies,” Alter said. “We met companies that already have French suppliers, French partners or French customers. Some of them want to make more business in Europe.”
Connect by CNES can help U.S. companies by serving as the “point of entrance to the European ecosystem,” Alter said.
Business France, which has seven offices in the United States, also helps U.S. companies “understand the French market and identify French and European market incentives,” said Nicolas Maubert, CNES representative and space attaché for the French Embassy in Washington.
Speed and Resiliency
Through international partnerships, CNES seeks to improve the resiliency of its space sector.
“We have to make our supply chain much more resilient,” Lipkowski said, citing geopolitical tensions.
The French Air and Space Force and French Space Command “have excellent collaboration with the U.S. military,” Lipowski said. “The collaboration is growing. We are here to make it better and to find better opportunities.”
Partnerships also help space companies keep up with the rapid pace of innovation, Alter said. “In this NewSpace era, you need to move fast. That means that you must find the best suppliers, the best off-the-shelf components and the best equipment.”
Connect by CNES’ Houston hub will be oriented toward human spaceflight and moon programs including Artemis. The Denver hub will focus on military space, cybersecurity, space medicine and educational exchanges.
China sent the classified Yaogan-41 optical satellite towards the geostationary belt Friday using the country’s largest launch vehicle. The sixth Long March 5 rocket lifted off from the coastal Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 8:41 a.m. Eastern (1341 UTC) Dec. 15. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced launch success around an hour later. CASC revealed the payload to be the Yaogan-41 (“remote sensing-41”) satellite. A new, elongated 18.5-meter-long, 5.2-meter-diameter payload fairing shrouded the spacecraft. Previous fairings were 12.3 meters long. CASC revealed that its China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) subsidiary built Yaogan-41 but provided no images nor further details. State news agency Xinhua described the satellite as an optical remote sensing satellite. “The satellite will be used in land survey, crop yield estimation, environmental management, meteorological warning and forecasting, and comprehensive disaster prevention and reduction,” Xinhua stated. Outside observers however assess Yaogan series satellites to be designated for military purposes. The classified nature of the mission suggests Yaogan-41 is for at least partial military use.
The sixth Long March 5 lifts off from Wenchang, Dec. 15, sending Yaogan-41 into GTO. Credit: Ourspace
U.S. Space Force space domain awareness cataloged the spacecraft in a 195 by 35,815-kilometer orbit inclined by 19.51 degrees.
The successful launch adds to growing Chinese on-orbit remote sensing capabilities. Should Yaogan-41 take up a position in geostationary orbit, at about 35,786 kilometers above the equator, it will remain in a fixed position relative to the Earth’s surface. This will allow it to conduct continuous observation of the same geographic area.
This vantage point would allow it to constantly view about one-third of the Earth’s surface. Geostationary optical data would be useful for security, meteorology, climate studies and environmental monitoring purposes.
The mission could be a military follow-up to the civilian Gaofen-4 satellite launched in 2015. The Gaofen-4 GEO optical satellite launched on the much smaller Long March 3B and provides 50-meter-resolution images.
CAST produces the DFH-5 large satellite bus for GEO communications and remote sensing. Its size and mass requires the Long March 5—which can carry 14,000 kg to GTO—to launch it. The DFH-5 Shijian-20 satellite has a mass of up to 8,000 kilograms. DFH-5 satellites have a lifetime of up to 15 years.
The Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has produced four-meter-diameter aspheric silicon carbide (SiC) mirrors. SiC mirrors actively serve in space remote sensing.
CIOMP is also involved in developing Xuntian, a Hubble-class space telescope, expected to join the Tiangong space station in orbit in 2025.
In August CASC launched a geosynchronous orbit radar satellite, further adding to its GEO observation capabilities.
The Long March 5 launched for the first time in late 2016. Its second flight in 2017 failed. The rocket was grounded for 900 days as further testing setbacks required a redesign of troublesome turbopumps. The rocket has since successfully launched Shijian-20, China’s first independent interplanetary mission—the Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover mission to Mars—and the 2020 Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission.
The five-meter-diameter, 874-ton rocket is currently China’s largest. Its 5B low Earth orbit variant constructed the country’s space station. The Long March 5 is also the basis for the under-development Long March 10, which will use upgraded versions of its YF-100 kerosene-liquid engines and three five-meter-diameter cores.
The Yaogan-41 launch followed a day after China sent its experimental reusable spacecraft into orbit for the third time. The spacecraft entered a 333 to 348 kilometer altitude orbit, inclined at 50 degrees.
Friday’s launch was China’s 61st of 2023, with worldwide orbital launches numbering close to 200. Notable Chinese launches include crew and cargo missions to Tiangong, satellite internet test satellites and the first commercial liquid propellant launches.
CASC aimed to launch more than 60 times this year but, with commercial launch providers accounting for 15 launches, appears to be falling someway short of this stated goal. However CASC has not suffered a launch failure since 2020.
The first NASA-funded small satellite for exoplanet science is continuing to gather data well beyond its expected lifetime. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, known as CUTE, a six-unit cubesat equipped with a telescope to funnel data to a spectrograph, traveled to sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit in September 2021 as a secondary payload on the NASA- U.S. Geological Survey Landsat 9 Earth-observation mission. CUTE was designed to operate in space for at least eight months. Twenty-seven months later, the satellite’s onboard instruments still are observing the dramatic atmospheric loss of “hot jupiters,” gas giants orbiting very close to bright stars. “This atmospheric escape is incredibly fast,” said Kevin France, CUTE principal investigator at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), which assembled, tested and operates the satellite. “The materials are coming out so fast that they are dragging all the heavy elements out of the atmosphere with them.” Based on CUTE’s success, two additional NASA-funded, LASP-led missions have adopted similar mission and instrument designs. “CUTE’s been a great success, particularly given that we didn’t really know if we could do it for the amount of money that we proposed,” France told SpaceNews at the American Geophysical Union conference here. Lessons learned from CUTE are helping researchers “figure out how to build small spacecraft, how to build small instruments and how to have a student-led team,” France said.
The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, known as CUTE, is a cubesat launched in 2021 to characterize the composition and mass-loss rates of exoplanet atmospheres. Credit: University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
Smallsat Astronomy
The budget for developing, assembling and operating CUTE through the summer of 2024 is about $5.5 million.
“At this cost, we’re still figuring out how to make things work,” France said. “So, working and doing science is batting above your average.”
The missions mimicking CUTE are 12-unit cubesats Sprite and Mantis.
Sprite, which stands for Supernova remnants Proxies for Reionization and Integrated Testbed Experiment, is scheduled for launch in 2024. The $4 million mission will study how gas and dust is processed in galaxies and how energetic ionizing radiation is transported from stars to the intergalactic medium between galaxies.
Mantis, short for Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy, is an $8.5 million campaign to observe how high-energy radiation from stars influences the habitability of planets.
Ingenuity and Chance
CUTE remains operational more than two years after launch thanks to ingenuity and luck.
The tiny satellite was sent into orbit at a higher altitude than mission planners expected. As a result, CUTE is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in 2027, instead of late this year as originally scheduled.
Additional time in orbit means extra wear and tear on hardware.
“Every time we have a problem, we figure out a new way to operate the spacecraft,” France said.
When the satellite’s primary and backup memory storage cards failed, for example, mission operators learned to communicate directly with CUTE’s scientific payload.
“We send the data down directly from the science payload to the ground and we bypass the spacecraft altogether,” France said.
Distant Galaxies
Cubesats have been widely adopted for civil and commercial space missions since LASP researchers proposed CUTE in 2016.
At the time, “we were beginning to believe we could study the sun and Earth’s upper atmosphere with cubesats,” France said. “But the idea that we could be pointed at targets that are 300, 400 light years away and do high-precision astronomical measurements from the cubesat was ambitious.”
Now that CUTE has shown the potential, small satellites could play key roles in observing distant galaxies, black holes “and all the other things that we’re interested in studying,” France said.
Australian in-space servicing startup Space Machines Company announced plans Dec. 5 to work with U.S. on-orbit refueling startup Orbit Fab to validate and demonstrate key technologies. SMC is the first non-U.S. customer to use Orbit Fab’s fiducial alignment markers. The markers are painted on SMC’s Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle, which is set to launch in early 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare flight. Orbit Fab’s fiducial markers are designed to act like a QR code, ensuring, for example, that a fuel shuttle replenishes the correct client. The fiducial markers also ensure proper spacecraft alignment for docking. “Without these fiducials, mission operators would need much more complex computer vision systems, more compute power, and you might even need artificial intelligence,” Orbit Fab CEO Daniel Faber told SpaceNews by email. “You’ve got to deal with very difficult lighting effects. These fiducial markers really simplify the process of having our Orbit Fab fuel shuttles approach a spacecraft and prepare and align for secure docking and refueling in space.” SMC’s work with Orbit Fab “will serve as a pioneering example of in-space validation of these groundbreaking technologies,” Rajat Kulshrestha, SMC co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
Space Machines Company's Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle painted with Orbit Fab's fiducial markers. Credit: Space Machines Company
Bundles with RAFTI
Orbit Fab has bundled its fiducial marker system with the company’s refueling port known as RAFTI, or Rapidly Attachable Fuel Transfer Interface.
“We’ve provided RAFTI and fiducials to a number of government and commercial companies to make their spacecraft refuelable and safe for rendezvous and docking procedures and missions in space,” Faber said.
Orbit Fab fiducial markers installed on Space Machine Company’s Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle manufactured in Sydney, Australia. Credit: Space Machine Company
Orbit Fab, SMC and a third company launching a satellite on Transporter 10 rely on Orbit Fab’s fiducial markers, Orbit Fab Chief Commercial Officer Adam Harris said by email.
“Having these fiducials on missions like the SMC Optimus mission allows us to test the rendezvous-docking capabilities and really prove that out,” Faber said.
Orbit Fab has three launches set for 2025 to deliver fuel for U.S. government customers. In one of the demonstration missions, Orbit Fab plans to supply the U.S. Space Force Tetra-5 spacecraft with hydrazine.
“And those government customers will have RAFTI and fiducial markers to make this critical fuel delivery missions possible,” Faber said. “Orbit Fab must demonstrate that our refueling systems work, and we need to demonstrate the effectiveness of our fuel delivery on orbit. This drives our confidence in our own technology and the customers’ confidence in our technology and breakthrough refueling services.”
ITAR Issue
A hurdle for international cooperation in satellite servicing is ITAR, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
The list of military technologies strictly controlled for export includes systems related to docking and grappling objects in space.
Orbit Fab is advocating for an ITAR exception for cooperative docking technologies, “so that we can have more cooperation with ally countries like Australia and the UK and vehicles like SMC’s Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle,” Harris said. “If spacecraft are doing business together and using solutions like fiducial markers to ensure safe, sustainable, and responsible rendezvous and docking, we’re pushing for an agreement where this can happen outside of ITAR controls. These ITAR regulations were initially designed to limit non-cooperative docking in space.”
The Defense Innovation Unit issued a new solicitation for proposals from private companies for a project known as the Hybrid Space Architecture, an initiative launched in 2021 to mesh commercial satellite broadband innovations with military networks. DIU is working with the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Research Laboratory on efforts to connect satellite networks and ground communications systems so military users can get data faster and more securely than is currently possible. Based in Mountain View, California, DIU was established in 2015 to help DoD access and integrate commercial technologies from startup companies and other non-traditional defense contractors. The organization serves as a bridge between defense agencies and commercial tech companies. The Hybrid Space Architecture aims to take advantage of commercial satellite broadband services, in-space laser communication, cloud computing, quantum-secure encryption and other innovations.
Aalyria's Spacetime is a software platform for orchestrating networks of ground stations, aircraft, satellites, ships, and urban meshes. Credit: Aalyria
Eight vendors so far selected
DIU in 2022 selected eight companies to work on the project: Aalyria, Anduril, Atlas Space Operations, Enveil. SpiderOak Mission Systems, Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s Project Kuiper and Microsoft Azure Space. Companies get contracts to prototype concepts so their value can be evaluated.
The new solicitation released Nov. 29 focuses on four key areas: persistent sensing, data transport, high-performance edge computing and data fusion. Proposals are due Dec. 11.
Persistent sensing includes commercial solutions for space-based sensing, for routing and managing commercial collection requests, and for accessing commercial sensor data.
Data transport focuses on free space optical components that are scalable to enable low latency, persistent communications.
High performance edge computing includes commercial solutions necessary for the autonomous processing of advanced analytics and algorithms at the edge, for more timely delivery of information to users.
Data fusion focuses on secure ways to aggregate data to enable modeling, simulation and mission planning.
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has received an eight-year extension to a contract it has held since 2002 for technical services in support of U.S. military communications satellites’ ground systems. The company, based in San Diego, California, was awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $579 million, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command said Nov. 22. The contract is for a program named C-SAR, short for Command-and-Control System-Consolidated Sustainment and Resiliency. The new agreement with Kratos runs through November 2031. The company will maintain and develop satellite ground systems for the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command. The satellites covered under the contract include the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) III, the Milstar Satellite Communications System, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF), and the Wideband Global Satellite Communications (WGS) systems. The Command-and-Control System-Consolidated system provides “planning, processing and information assurance measures,” the Space Systems Command said. It is designed to interface with existing constellations and also to support future satellites. As new constellations are deployed, Kratos will be responsible for information technology infrastructure upgrades.
Contract supports 26 satellites
Program director George Gonzales, of the Space Systems Command’s military communications satellite office, said the new contract with Kratos supports command-and-control operations of four constellations and 26 military communication satellites, “as well as the integration of new satellites and future constellations.”
According to a DoD contract announcement Nov. 6, the work will be performed at Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado; Vandenberg Space Force Base, California; and Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. The C-SAR award was a competitive acquisition but only one offer was received.
Chinese launch startup Landspace has unveiled plans to develop a reusable stainless steel rocket. The Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird 3) will use stainless propellant tanks and clusters of Tianque methane-liquid oxygen propellant rocket engines, according to a presentation by Landspace CEO Zhang Changwu at the Mingyue Lake Aerospace Information Industry International Ecosystem Event in Chongqing, China, Nov. 21. The two-stage launcher will have a payload capacity of 20 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO) when expendable. Recovery of the first stage downrange will allow 16.5 tons to LEO, while a landing back at the launch site will offer a capacity of 11 tons to LEO. A render of the rocket shows grid fins and deployable landing legs on the first stage. The announcement came just days after SpaceX performed its second Starship/Super Heavy launch test. Details such as a tentative test launch date and the dimensions of the rocket were not stated, suggesting the plan is at a very early stage. Developing the rocket will pose numerous challenges related to the weight and properties of steel, including manufacturing and fabricating complexities. The launcher, once operational, will also face competition domestically. Fellow startup Space Pioneer is planning to launch its Tianlong-3 rocket next year. That rocket will be capable of lifting 17 tons to LEO, or 14 tons to 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. The emergence of both rockets also illustrates that commercial launch plans in China are growing in terms of payload capabilities. The early days of commercial launch companies in China saw plans for light-lift, solid-fueled launchers targeting launches of small commercial or science satellites.
Now, further Chinese firms including iSpace, Galactic Energy, Space Pioneer and Deep Blue Aerospace are working on reusable liquid propellant rockets. A number of these have now stated that they are targeting contracts to launch batches of satellites for China’s national satellite internet megaconstellation project, named Guowang.
Landspace is one of China’s first commercial launch companies. It was established in 2015 after the Chinese government opened up parts of the space sector to private capital in late 2014. The development is seen to be a reaction to developments in the U.S.
Landspace is currently preparing to launch its third Zhuque-2 methane-liquid oxygen rocket on Dec. 4 Eastern. Its first Zhuque-2 launch failed in December 2022, before a second attempt successfully reached orbit in July.
That launch made the firm the first to reach orbit with a methalox launcher. It is also the second Chinese commercial firm to reach orbit with a liquid propellant launcher. This followed Space Pioneer’s kerolox Tianlong-2 in April.
The company has set up an intelligent manufacturing base in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province. It also established a $1.5 billion medium and large-scale liquid rocket assembly and test plant at Jiaxing, also in Zhejiang.
Landspace is not the only Chinese launch firm interested in stainless steel rockets. Another, much newer Chinese startup, Space Epoch, performed hot fire tests earlier this year as part of development of a planned reusable stainless-steel launcher.
The tests used a 4.2-meter-diameter stainless steel propellant tank combined with methalox engines developed by Jiuzhou Yunjian.
China’s main space contractor, the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), has also stated its plans for the super heavy-lift Long March 9 will eventually see it become fully reusable.
China launched the first of a new series of Haiyang ocean observation satellites late Wednesday. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off into clear skies above Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 10:55 p.m. Eastern, Nov. 15 (0355 UTC, Nov. 16). The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success within an hour of liftoff, also revealing the payload to be Haiyang-3 (01). Haiyang-3 (01) will operate in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit. It will provide all-weather ocean observation using an X-band SAR payload over a planned mission lifetime of eight years. CASC says the new high-precision ocean water color observation satellite will target various water bodies around the world using multiple detection methods, providing insights into various environmental and biological processes. It will be able to provide continuous dynamic monitoring of water color, water temperature, sea ice and other variables, to deliver timely remote sensing information. The Haiyang-3 series will complement the Haiyang-2 satellites with SAR observations. The earlier series focus on variables including wind speed, sea level and sea surface temperature. The satellite was developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). It will be operated by China’s National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS).
Ocean monitoring satellites are valuable for providing data for weather models for forecasting and monitoring climate change. They also deliver information helpful for tracking pollution and marine navigation and safety.
The Haiyang-3 (01 launch was China’s 53rd orbital launch of the year. CASC stated early in the year it would aim to launch more than 60 times, and has so far completed 39 launches.
Galactic Energy, a commercial launch service provider, announced Thursday that it would soon resume launches of its Ceres-1 solid rocket. The company had suffered its first failure in late September. Galactic Energy enjoyed a run of nine consecutive successful launches before the setback.
The company released results of its investigation into the failure in late October. The report stated that abnormal ablation of a first stage engine nozzle occurred, causing the rocket to lose attitude control just over a minute into the flight.
Virgin Galactic will reduce the frequency of flights of its current suborbital vehicle and stop them entirely by mid-2024 as it concentrates resources on the next generation of vehicles. In a Nov. 8 earnings call, company executives said flights of VSS Unity, which completed its fifth commercial suborbital mission Nov. 2, would move to a quarterly frequency starting with its next mission, Galactic 06 in January. That would be followed by Galactic 07 early in the second quarter. There could be a third mission, Galactic 08, around the middle of the year, but Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive, said the company had not decided yet whether to fly that mission before moving personnel and other resources to work on its Delta-class of vehicles. Virgin Galactic announced Nov. 7 it would be laying off staff and reducing other expenses to concentrate resources on the Delta class, which Colglazier said was key to the company’s future. The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it would be cutting 185 jobs, or about 18% of its current workforce. That announcement did not provide any indications about the future of Unity, but Colglazier suggested in the earnings call that the company had learned what it needed about spaceflight operations and the experience of its customers over the five commercial flights it carried out between June and November. “Unity’s flight objectives are to demonstrate our system, showcase our astronaut experience and provide learnings for our Delta program,” he said. “The total costs to support Unity’s flights surpass the relatively modest monthly revenues.”
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane, VSS Unity, on the Unity 25 test flight May 25. Credit: Virgin Galactic
“The big move we’re making here is pivoting the resources that have been put into the Unity flights and redirecting them over to get the Delta ships done with the cash we have on hand,” he said later in the call.
Colglazier said that for the remaining flights, Virgin Galactic will concentrate on higher revenue opportunities. That includes research, which offers more revenue per seat than private astronauts. He said some seats might be sold to private astronauts who are willing to pay a “premium price” of up to $1 million each, versus the current price of $450,000.
Once Unity flights end, he said company staff who work on the vehicles at Spaceport America in New Mexico will go to a new factory near Phoenix the company expects to complete in the second quarter of 2024 to help with the assembly of the first Delta-class vehicles. Doing so, he said, will help with company resources and give personnel experience with the spaceplanes before test flights begin in 2025.
Those layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, along with a sale of stock in an “at-the-market” deal in the third quarter, should give the company enough funding to complete development of the first two Delta vehicles and begin commercial flights in 2026, the company concluded. Virgin Galactic ended the quarter with $1.1 billion of cash and equivalents on hand.
He said the company projected that the Delta-class vehicles will be able to fly twice a week, versus the monthly cadence of Unity flights. With the Delta vehicles able to carry six customers versus four on Unity, each Delta vehicle will be able to produce 12 times as much revenue per month as Unity.
That is key, executives said, in enabling the company to achieve a positive cash flow in 2026, with the increased revenues from Delta flights and a reduction in expenses from the end of the vehicles’ development.
“We project we have sufficient capital to build the revenue-generating assets necessary to achieve positive free cash flow,” said Doug Ahrens, the chief financial officer of Virgin Galactic. He added there is still $113 million available in its at-the-market stock offering it can sell for additional funding.
Virgin Galactic reported $1.7 million in revenue in the third quarter from its spaceflight as well as “membership fees” from customers, and projects $3 million in revenue in the fourth quarter. The company had a net loss of $105 million in the third quarter.
Dwindling cash reserves caused launch vehicle and spacecraft propulsion company Astra Space to default on a loan at the end of October, adding to doubts about the company’s future. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the markets closed Nov. 3, Astra disclosed that it had triggered a default on a $12.5 million loan it secured in August from an unnamed institutional investor when its cash on hand fell below minimums required by the loan agreement. According to the filing, that loan required the company to have at least $15 million of cash and cash equivalents or else be in default of the agreement, but fell below that threshold on Oct. 11. The investor agreed to waive the default provide the company kept at least $10.5 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand and made a $2.1 million payment. The interest rate on the loan also went from 9% to 15%. However, Astra said it fell below that lower cash threshold on Oct. 30, which led to a default. Astra paid the investor $3.1 million on Nov. 1. It did not disclose how much cash it had remaining but said $8 million remains on the loan with that investor. Astra had been working to raise additional funding. The company said in a separate Oct. 23 SEC filing that it had signed a non-binding term sheet with JMCM Holdings LLC to be the lead investor in a loan of up to $25 million. The funds, Astra said, would be used to pay off the August loan and for “general corporate purposes.”
In the new SEC filing, Astra said it is in “continued discussions” with other investors about financing, but could not guarantee it could close any deal, or that the terms of any funding would be the same as what it disclosed in October.
In an Aug. 14 earnings call, Astra executives said they were working to identify strategic investors for both its Astra Spacecraft Engines spacecraft propulsion business as well as its Rocket 4 launch vehicle in development. The company had laid off a quarter of its workforce between the beginning of July and early August and shifted others from rocket to satellite propulsion work, delaying work on Rocket 4.
In that call, the company projected having $15 million to $20 million of cash on hand by the end of the third quarter Sept. 30. Company executives said both the August loan and a planned “at-the-market” sale of stock would help buy the company time to secure a strategic investment.
Shares in Astra fell nearly 19% in aftermarket trading Nov. 3. The company performed a 1-for-15 reverse stock split in September to get the company’s shares above a $1 threshold required by Nasdaq, but those shares have since fallen back below $1.
Astra is scheduled to release its third quarter financial results and hold an earnings call after the markets close Nov. 13.
The Space Development Agency awarded Northrop Grumman a $732 million contract for 38 communications satellites that will be part of the U.S. military’s low Earth orbit space architecture, the company announced Oct. 30. These satellites are for the portion of SDA’s mesh network known as Transport Layer Tranche 2 Alpha that will have a total of 100 satellites. The agency selected York Space Systems to build the other 62 spacecraft. Northrop Grumman’s contract includes ground systems and five years of operations and sustainment. The agreement includes an incentive payment for on-time delivery. The Alpha satellites are projected to launch in late 2026. Northrop won order for Alpha and Beta satellites. SDA, an organization under the U.S. Space Force, is building a layered network of military satellites. The Transport Layer will serve as a tactical network to move data to users around the world, transmitting classified data such as early warnings of missile launches. Alpha satellites carry optical communications terminals, Ka-band communications and Link 16 data transmission payloads. Transport Layer Tranche 2 also includes 72 Beta satellites that SDA recently ordered from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. These carry more complex communications payloads.
Rendering of Space Development Agency's Transport Layer Tranche 2 Alpha satellites. Credit: Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman to date has won orders from SDA for 132 satellites for the Transport and the Tracking Layer. Both layers are designed to interoperate in space using a common data standard allowing satellites made by various manufacturers to communicate with one another.
Intuitive Machines announced Oct. 27 that is has pushed back the launch of its first lunar lander mission by two months to mid-January. In a statement issued after the markets closed, the company said its IM-1 mission is now scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 in a “multi-day” window that opens Jan. 12 from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The mission had been scheduled to launch in a six-day window that opened Nov. 16. “There are inherent challenges of lunar missions; schedule changes and mission adjustments are a natural consequence of pioneering lunar exploration,” Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said in a statement. “Receiving a launch window and the required approvals to fly is a remarkable achievement, and the schedule adjustment is a small price to pay for making history.” The company did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay. However, executives warned at a media event Oct. 3 that “pad congestion” at LC-39A could delay their launch. The mission has to launch from that pad, rather than nearby Space Launch Complex 40, because only LC-39A is equipped to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants on the pad shortly before liftoff. That pad is used for Falcon 9 crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station as well as Falcon Heavy launches. The pad is scheduled to host the Falcon 9 launch of the CRS-29 cargo mission Nov. 5 followed by a Falcon Heavy mission for the Space Force in late November. Converting the pad between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches can take up to three weeks.
The Nova-C lander built by Intuitive Machines seen during a media day Oct. 3 for the upcoming IM-1 mission. Credit: SpaceNews/Jeff Foust
In its statement, Intuitive Machines did not provide an update on the status of the lander. The company said at its Oct. 3 event that the lander was complete and had passed a “pre-ship review” the day before.
IM-1 is the first flight of the company’s Nova-C lander. The 675-kilogram lander is carrying five payloads for NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and six commercial payloads, ranging from artwork to a camera that will detach during the lander’s final descent to take images as the lander touches down.
IM-1 is targeted to land seven days after launch in the vicinity of Malapert A, a crater in the south polar region of the moon. The spacecraft will operate for nearly two weeks, until the end of the lunar day deprives the lander of power.
The delay means that the first CLPS mission scheduled to launch is now Astrobotic’s Peregrine. That lander is scheduled to launch Dec. 24 on the inaugural flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. Astrobotic said Oct. 27 that Peregrine has left its Pittsburgh headquarters and its on its way to Florida for pre-launch processing.
Cognitive Space, a startup focused on satellite automation, announced two Space Development Agency contracts Oct. 19 with a combined value of $3.22 million. Under a $1.25 million Direct-to-Phase 2 award, Cognitive Space will delve into topology and link management for dynamic satellite networks. With a second $1.97 million Small Business Innovation Research contract, the Houston-based startup will explore routing for communications resiliency in space-based mesh networks. In a news release, Cognitive Space said securing two SDA phase 2 awards in a matter of weeks underscores the value of the company’s Cognitive Inference Tasking (CNTIENT) software platform. CNTIENT will “serve as the software backbone that complements and enhances” SDA’s Transport Layer, a tactical network to move data around the world, according to the news release. Frank Turner, Chief Architect of the Space Development Agency, said in a statement, “The mission of ensuring communication resiliency and the dynamic management of satellite networks is crucial for the warfighter’s success. Cognitive Space’s work is meeting this need today and plays a pivotal role in enhancing our nation’s defense capabilities.” Guy de Carufel, Cognitive Space CEO and founder, said in a statement “Our collaboration with the Space Development Agency is a testament to the technical excellence we bring to the table. CNTIENT isn’t just a technically capable product suite; it plays a pivotal role in enhancing our nation’s defense capabilities. We are proud to be at the forefront of innovation in satellite automation and communication.”
Cognitive Space developed a software tool called CNTIENT to manage a hybrid architecture of remote-sensing satellites. Credit: Cognitive Space
In recent days, Cognitive Space revealed additional funding news. During the second quarter of 2023, the startup raised $4 million in “seed+” funding from York IE, Draper Associates and Dolby Family Ventures. With the funds, Cognitive Space will “further advance its groundbreaking AI-powered software-as-a-service platform, designed to help satellite constellations grow and scale,” according to an Oct. 16 news release.
Cognitive Space is working with Air Force Research Laboratory to use its CNTIENT platform to prototype a hybrid architecture of government and commercial remote-sensing satellites.
A NASA spacecraft is finally on its way to a metallic main belt asteroid after a successful Falcon Heavy launch Oct. 13. The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:19 a.m. Eastern. Its payload, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, separated from the upper stage 62 minutes after liftoff. The launch was the eighth for the Falcon Heavy but the first by that rocket for NASA. In a statement, NASA said controllers established two-way communications with the spacecraft at 11:50 a.m. Eastern, confirming the spacecraft was in good condition as it goes through initial post-launch commissioning. Psyche is a Discovery-class planetary science mission whose destination is an object in the main asteroid belt also called Psyche. That asteroid is made primarily of metal and could be the core of a larger object whose outer layers were stripped away. On its way to the asteroid, the Psyche spacecraft will conduct a technology demonstration. The Deep Space Optical Communications payload on the spacecraft will test the ability of lasers to provide high-bandwidth communications at interplanetary distances. The launch took place more than a week into a three-week launch period. In late September NASA delayed the launch, once scheduled for Oct. 5, by a week after a review found concerns with the operating temperature of cold-gas thrusters used to maneuver the spacecraft. Engineers had to revise the operating parameters of the thrusters to avoid overheating.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy lifts off Oct. 13 carrying NASA's Psyche spacecraft. Credit: Jordan Sirokie
“There would have been a potential risk of overheating the thrusters and damaging them” if the parameters were not changed, Henry Stone, Psyche project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at an Oct. 11 briefing. “It was a serious issue that we had to deal with.”
The changes involve a “select subset of parameters” to the thrusters, he said, but did not elaborate on the changes. Those changes, he said, will not affect Psyche’s operations once at the asteroid. “The changes affected some of the timeline margins that we already had, but we’ll conduct the same operations when we get to the body.”
NASA rescheduled the launch for Oct. 12, but postponed it another day because of poor weather. The launch period ran through Oct. 25, with instantaneous launch windows each day. Earlier problems
Psyche was originally scheduled to launch in August 2022. Delays in testing the flight software, though, forced NASA to skip launch opportunities in August and October 2022. An independent review found that those testing delays were symptoms of broader institutional issues at JPL.
While the problems with both Psyche and JPL have been corrected, they affected several NASA science missions. The 14-month launch delay pushed back the spacecraft’s arrival at the asteroid from 2026 to August 2029. The mission’s cost also increased 20% from $1 billion to $1.2 billion.
Psyche’s delay also affected Janus, an asteroid smallsat mission that was to fly as a secondary payload on the launch. The delay meant that Janus could not fly its original mission to go by two pairs of binary asteroids, and the mission could not find suitable alternative targets with its revised trajectory. NASA announced in July it was canceling Janus and putting the completed spacecraft in storage.
The institutional issues at JPL uncovered in the independent review of Psyche’s delays led NASA to delay the next Discovery-class mission under development at JPL, the Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy, or VERITAS. That mission, selected in 2021 for launch in 2028, is now scheduled for launch no earlier than 2031.
The Psyche delay and budget increase added stress to the overall NASA planetary science program already dealing with challenges like Mars Sample Return. In the agency’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, NASA said it was postponing a heliophysics mission, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, citing “high budgetary requirements” from other programs.
The Psyche spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid of the same name in 2029. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
“A new kind of world”
NASA, and scientists involved with Psyche, said the mission is worth the wait and the additional cost. The spacecraft will spend 26 months orbiting at Psyche in four different orbits, studying the largest solar system body made primarily of metal.
“This will be our first time visiting a world that has a metal surface,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator at Arizona State University, at a pre-launch briefing.
A key goal of the mission is to determine Psyche’s origins, said Ben Weiss, Psyche deputy principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We have two leading ideas about how Psyche formed,” he said, either as the core of a planetesimal that failed to become a planet, or as a primordial body enriched in metal for some reason.
“We are going to go into orbit around Psyche and measure its various properties at lower and lower altitudes,” he said. The spacecraft is equipped with a camera, gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer and magnetometer.
“It’s primary exploration of a new kind of world,” said Elkins-Tanton. “There aren’t that many completely unexplored types of worlds in our solar system to go see, so that is what is so exciting about this.”
A Vega rocket successfully launched a dozen small satellites Oct. 8 while its more powerful version remains grounded for another year. The Vega rocket lifted off from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, at 9:36 p.m. Eastern. The launch was originally scheduled for Oct. 6 but scrubbed in the final minute of the countdown. Arianespace said the delay was due to “a measurement slightly above its maximum threshold” but did not elaborate. The company rescheduled the launch to Oct. 7 but pushed it back an additional day to complete checks on the vehicle. The two largest payloads on the launch were THEOS-2 and FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON, both placed in sun-synchronous orbits between 600 and 617 kilometers nearly 55 minutes after liftoff. The 417-kilogram THEOS-2 was built by Airbus Defence and Space for Thailand’s Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency. It will provide imagery at resolutions of up to 0.5 meters, providing service continuity for the 15-year-old THEOS-1, also built by Airbus. FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON was built and will be operated by the Taiwan Space Agency. The 241-kilogram satellite will collect radio occultation data from navigation satellites for use in weather forecasting. The Vega carried 10 secondary payloads, cubesats ranging in size from 3U to 12U. The satellites come from a variety of European developers, including those supported by the European Space Agency and European Union, primarily for technology demonstration purposes. Those satellites were released 1 hour and 44 minutes after liftoff, although Arianespace said in an Oct. 9 statement that it was still awaiting confirmation of the deployment of two of the cubesats.
A Vega rocket lifts off Oct. 8 on the first launch for that family of vehicles since a December 2022 failure of a larger Vega C rocket. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace
The launch, designated VV23 by Arianespace, was the first for the Vega family of vehicles since the December 2022 failure of the more powerful Vega C on its second launch. That failure was blamed on the Zefiro 40 motor used as the second stage of the Vega C. The original Vega, flown on this launch, uses the smaller Zefiro 23 motor as its second stage.
The Vega C remains grounded after an anomaly during a static-fire test of the upgraded Zefiro 40 motor in June. The investigation into that incident found problems with the design of the motor’s nozzle after its carbon-carbon throat insert was replaced to address the cause of the December launch failure.
ESA said Oct. 2 that the return to flight of the Vega C, previously projected to take place before the end of this year, has been pushed out to the fourth quarter of 2024 to given engineers time to make changes in the motor and conduct two static-fire tests.
Arianespace said a final launch of the original version of Vega is planned for the second quarter of 2024. The customer for that launch, as well as the return to flight of Vega C, has not been announced.
Rocket Lab has opened a new engine development center in a building that, six months earlier, was the headquarters of a competing launch company, Virgin Orbit. Rocket Lab held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Oct. 4 for its Engine Development Center here. The 13,400-square-meter facility will be used for production of both the Rutherford engines used on its Electron rocket and larger Archimedes engines it is developing for the Neutron rocket. The facility had previously been the headquarters for Virgin Orbit, where that company built its LauncherOne rockets. Virgin Orbit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and Rocket Lab acquired the lease on the building, along with the machinery and equipment inside, for $16.1 million in a bankruptcy auction in May. Rocket Lab previously estimated the value of the facility and its contents at about $100 million. However, Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer, said in an interview that the biggest impact of the purchase is “de-risking” the schedule for scaling up engine production. “Things that we were thinking we could probably get done in 12 to 18 months, well, it’s done. So really it was more of a timeline and uncertainty shrinker, if you will,” he said. “Getting stuff for 16 cents on the dollar didn’t hurt as well.” Before the bankruptcy sale, Rocket Lab has planned to produce engines in its existing headquarters just a few blocks away. “We could have done that, but that wouldn’t have allowed for the expansion of our space systems business,” he said, which produces satellites. “It’s freed up a tremendous amount of ability to scale up our space systems business. It’s probably a bigger enabler for space systems than it is for the rocket part of our business.”
Rocket Lab will use the former headquarters of Virgin Orbit for producing Rutherford and Archimedes engines. Credit: Rocket Lab/Austin Adams
The proximity of the new engine facility to Rocket Lab’s existing headquarters is another benefit, he added. “We really lucked out.”
Rocket Lab began moving into the building days after the bankruptcy sale closed. Employees started setting up equipment for engine production while organizing the items left behind by Virgin Orbit. Company employees said on a tour that they are still cataloging the inventory of items in the building, which ranged from advanced industrial equipment to large stockpiles of furniture and office equipment.
Spice said the company is already producing parts for the Archimedes engine, and over the previous weekend started moving the production line for the Rutherford engine into the new building. Full-scale engine production will ramp up over the next few months.
The new Rocket Lab facility also benefits the city of Long Beach, which has made a concerted effort in recent years to attract space companies to the city, including Rocket Lab as well as Relativity Space, SpinLaunch and Vast, under an initiative called “Space Beach”. Virgin Orbit had been the first, setting up that facility when it was still a division of Virgin Galactic.
“We were bummed about that,” Rex Richardson, mayor of Long Beach, said of Virgin Orbit’s bankruptcy at the dedication ceremony. “That was our first Space Beach company.”
He thanked Rocket Lab for taking over the facility and working with the city on job fairs for former Virgin Orbit employees. “What that means is that this burgeoning space cluster we have in Long Beach is resilient,” he said.
Rocket Lab, meanwhile, is continuing to investigate the Sept. 19 Electron launch failure. Spice said the investigation is still in its “early days” and didn’t offer a specific timetable for completing it or returning Electron to flight.
“Nothing right now would indicate anything different” for a return to flight compared to the two previous Electron launch failures in July 2020 and May 2021, he said. Those two previous failures both involved the upper stage, which also appeared to be the case with the latest failure, and the company resumed Electron launches within a few months.
“We’re confident we’ll get back relatively soon,” he said.
China has laid out details of its planned Chang’e-8 mission to test in-situ resource utilization on the moon, while also opening the project to international cooperation. Chang’e-8 is slated to launch in 2028 on a Long March 5 rocket from Wenchang spaceport. It will serve as a basis for China’s future, larger-scale International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, China National Space Administration (CNSA) officials stated at the 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Oct. 2. The mission will consist of a lander, rover and robot. Science objectives include investigating the local geology, moon-based Earth observation, analyzing in-situ lunar samples and experimenting with resource utilization. Testing an enclosed terrestrial ecosystem in the lunar environment is also noted. The mission builds on China’s progress and achievements over the past decade and will verify key technologies for future missions. Li Guoping, chief engineer at CNSA, announced that China is open to international cooperation for the mission at different levels, from mission, to system and payload-levels. This was later clarified to include 200 kilograms of payload capacity for piggyback missions. CNSA set a deadline of Dec. 31 for letters of intent, with preliminary and final selections to be completed by April and September 2024 respectively. Wang Qiong, deputy chief designer of Chang’e-8, provided further details on the mission.
Artist impression of China's Chang'e-8 moon lander. Credit: CNSA
Regions around Leibnitz Beta, Amundsen crater, Cabeus crater and the Shackleton-de Gerlache Ridge are cited as preliminary landing sites. Three of these, including the latter connecting ridge, are being considered for the Artemis 3 crewed landing mission.
The Chang’e-8 lander will carry 10 science payloads with a further four on the rover. The lander will carry landing and topography cameras, a seismometer, moon-based Earth radiometer and multispectral imager, a soft X-ray telescope and other payloads along with the ecosystem and ISRU instruments.
The rover is equipped with 4 scientific payloads. These include a panoramic camera and lunar penetrating radar, as with rovers from the Chang’e-3 and -4 missions. It will also feature an infrared spectrum mineral analyzer and in-situ lunar sample analysis and storage device.
The mission will follow Chang’e-7 in 2026. That mission will also target the lunar south pole. Together with Chang’e-8 these missions will lay the groundwork for the grander ILRS project in the 2030s.
Chang’e-6, a first-ever lunar far side sample return, will launch in the first half of 2024 according to CNSA officials. This will follow the deployment of the Queqiao-2 relay satellite to support the mission.
The ILRS will be constructed using super heavy-lift rocket launches in the 2030s, according to Yu Dengyun, chief designer of the fourth phase of China’s lunar exploration project.
Yu stated that the ILRS would also, in its later utilization phase around 2040, serve as validation of technology and capabilities for a crewed mission to Mars.
The American subsidiary of Japanese company Ispace has revised the design of a lunar lander it is providing for a NASA mission, pushing back the launch of that mission by a year. The company, ispace technologies U.S., unveiled the new lander design, called APEX 1.0, at a Sept. 28 event at its new headquarters in the Denver suburb of Centennial, Colorado. The lander will be used on a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission awarded to Draper in July 2022 that, at the time, planned to use a lander called Series-2. The lander redesign was driven by the needs of the NASA payloads. “The environmentals didn’t close on the Series-2 design, particularly in the area of vibration,” said Ron Garan, chief executive of ispace U.S., in an interview. “We needed to do a complete redesign of the vehicle in order to accommodate that.” The redesign, he said, ensures that the lander can accommodate the widest possible range of payloads. APEX 1.0 will be able to host up to 300 kilograms of payloads, with the ability to expand to 500 kilograms. The lander also supports the ability to release satellites in lunar orbit, which will be used for the CLPS mission to relay communications from its landing site on the lunar farside. Garan said there is strong interest from other customers in flying payloads both on the CLPS mission, called Mission 3 by ispace and CP-12 by NASA, and subsequent ones. That includes rovers as well as experiments in in situ resource utilization (ISRU). “We’re going after both commercial and government contracts to supplement CP-12. We have payload capacity right now,” he said.
The APEX 1.0 lander from ispace U.S. was designed to better accommodate payloads such as those flying on a NASA CLPS mission in 2026. Credit: ispace U.S.
The APEX 1.0 design has completed preliminary design reviews, with ispace projecting it will pass its critical design review (CDR) by March 2024. Garan said CDR is currently scheduled for December.
The revised lander, though, will delay the mission. When NASA selected the Draper-led team for the mission last year, it projected launch in 2025. That launch has now slipped to 2026, ispace said, because of the lander design.
That has financial implications for the company. In a Sept. 28 statement, ispace, traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, said it was lowering its sales forecast for the current fiscal year, which runs through March 2024, by more than 50% to 3.05 billion yen ($20.4 million) because the delays in Mission 3 mean payload sales will be recognized in later years.
Separately, ispace said it was lowering its projected net loss for the year by 3.385 billion yen to 4.5 billion yen, citing the payout from an insurance policy on its HAKUTO-R M1 lander that crashed attempting to land on the moon in April.
The company anticipates growing demand for lunar landers, which motivated the decision to move into a new 4,600-square-meter U.S. headquarters. “If we win some more contracts, we’re going to take off on a steeper exponential curve of growth, and so we need a facility that will enable that,” Garan said.
The facility will be able to support production of future landers, although other partners will handle the assembly, integration and testing of the Mission 3 lander. It will also host a growing engineering workforce. Garan said that ispace U.S. had about 50 employees when he joined three and a half months ago, and has now grown to 85. He projected the company will have more than 100 employees by the end of the year.
“It took ispace U.S. a little bit of time to get off the ground, to get going. We are firing on all cylinders now,” he said. “Out goal is to be a significant player, to make a significant contribution to the establishment of lunar infrastructure.”
Chinese commercial rocket firm Galactic Energy experienced its first failure Thursday with its 10th launch attempt. Airspace closure notices pointed to a launch attempt from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China at around 1:00 a.m. Eastern, Sept. 21. The window passed without notification of a launch, which would typically follow within an hour of liftoff. Galactic Energy published an article confirming the loss of a Ceres-1 rocket and its payload via its WeChat social network account roughly six hours after launch. The company stated a four-stage Ceres-1 solid rocket lifted off from Jiuquan at 12:59 a.m. Eastern, carrying the Jilin-1 Gaofen-04B satellite for commercial remote sensing firm Changguang Satellite Technology (CGST). The specific reasons are being further analyzed and investigated, according to the Galactic Energy statement. The firm also expressed sincere apologies to its customers.The launch was the firm’s first major setback. All of its nine previous launches were successful, starting in November 2021. Galactic Energy had been executing a high-density period of launches, carrying out four missions between July 22 and Sept. 5, including a first launch from a mobile sea platform off the coast of Shandong province. Ceres-1 has a diameter of 1.4 meters, a length of about 20 meters, a mass at take-off of about 33 tons and a liquid propellant upper stage. It can deliver 400 kg to low Earth orbit (LEO) or 300 kg to a 500-kilometer-altitude sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). This was the first launch to 800 kilometers.
The company, which was founded in February 2018, is meanwhile also preparing for the first launch of its Pallas-1 kerosene-liquid oxygen launcher.
The reusable two-stage Pallas-1 will be capable of carrying 5,000 kilograms to LEO or 3,000 kilograms to 700-km SSO. The first expendable launch is slated for the third quarter of 2024.
CGST is an offshoot from the state-owned Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Established in 2014, CGST has more than 100 satellites in orbit.
The company announced last year that it intends to expand its Jilin-1 constellation from a planned 138 satellites to 300 satellites by 2025.
Galactic Energy’s impressive record up to today appears to have secured it vital contracts to launch Jilin-1 satellites.
The launch was China’s 44th orbital mission of 2023 and the first failure. China’s state-owned main contractor has carried out 30 launches so far of a planned 60 or more, suggesting an intense period of launch activity in the remaining months of the year. The breakdown also highlights the growing role of commercial launch service providers in China.
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