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.
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, 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.
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 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.
