It’s no secret that there are plenty of big egos in the spaceflight industry. While the key players typically refrain from roasting their rivals in public, that wasn’t the case at this year’s Berkeley Space Symposium. At least, not for Astra CEO Chris Kemp.
During a talk he gave at the event on September 5, Kemp threw some serious shade at SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly, and Rocket Lab, Ars Technica reports. While some of his remarks spoke to legitimate shortcomings amongst his competitors, they came off harsh, especially given Astra’s history of financial troubles and its rocky launch record.
Kemp co-founded Astra in 2016 alongside CTO Adam London. Five of the company’s seven operational rocket launches between September 2020 and June 2022 resulted in failure. Astra retired its “Rocket 3” in August 2022, and by March 2024, the company’s valuation had fallen from $2.6 billion to about $11.25 million, Reuters reported. Kemp and London took the company private at 50 cents per share to avoid bankruptcy.
Now, Astra is focused on developing Rocket 4, targeting summer 2026 for its inaugural launch. It’s possible that this new chapter could help Astra rejuvenate its reputation and capital, but Kemp’s recent remarks may create more problems for the struggling company. Here’s what he had to say about four of his biggest competitors.
Gizmodo reached out to each of them for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. You can watch Kemp’s full talk here.
SpaceX
In his closing remarks, Kemp attempted to appeal to prospective interns in the audience by arguing that Astra provides a better work environment than SpaceX’s Starbase in south Texas.
“It’s more fun than SpaceX, because we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn,” he said. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day. It’s appreciated if you do, but not required.”
Yikes. Up until this moment, Kemp generally spoke respectfully about SpaceX, drawing fair comparisons between Elon Musk’s approach and his own. To end on this sour note felt like an unnecessary jab. Needless to say, no SpaceX interns have ever been beheaded.
Blue Origin
At the start of his talk, Kemp described two approaches to innovation in today’s space industry: the fail-fast iterative design method and the more traditional long-term development of a single rocket.
“I call it the Blue Origin and NASA approach, where you spend tens of billions of dollars, and in 20 or 30 years you build a rocket and it works the first time,” he said. “This is super important if what you’re trying to optimize is [that] it works the first time. And for a program run by a nation-state or a billionaire that doesn’t want to have a rocket blow up, this is prudent. But it does take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars for you to do the analysis and testing.”
Astra, like SpaceX, uses iterative design. While Kemp is correct in saying that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, has taken the more traditional approach, neither New Shepherd nor New Glenn costs “tens of billions” of dollars. What’s more, Astra’s Rocket 3 launch record pales in comparison to New Shepherd’s.
Firefly Aerospace
In 2021, Astra signed a deal with rival Firefly to purchase its Reaver engines. Neither company ever acknowledged the agreement publicly, but during Kemp’s talk, he was eager to discuss it.
“We have a new rocket engine. There is a company called Firefly. They went public,” he said with a mocking giggle. “We bought the engine from them, and it was garbage. We literally could not get the same engine twice from them. And none of them matched the CAD. And if you’re in engineering, you know that just doesn’t work. So we basically had to start from scratch with this engine.”
In response to Kemp’s comments, a Firefly spokesperson told Ars, “Reaver engines built by Firefly have powered our Alpha launch vehicle to orbit multiple times and have performed flawlessly. In addition, our patented tap-off engine technology used across our family of engines has been hot-fired more than a thousand times and counting. Firefly has full confidence in our engineering and the design of our flight-proven Alpha systems.”
Firefly did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Rocket Lab
In the late 2010s, while Astra was developing Rocket 3, Rocket Lab was racing to build Electron, a rival small-lift rocket. This set the stage for fierce competition that still persists today, but comparatively, Kemp’s remarks toward Rocket Lab were mild at the Berkeley event.
Kemp admitted that both Rocket 3 and Electron were not large enough to serve the booming market for satellites. “That little rocket is too small,” he said of Rocket 3. “And so is Electron.”
This may be true, but Electron’s launch record far surpasses that of Rocket 3, and it continues to generate significant revenue for Rocket Lab.
Between his snide remarks, Kemp’s talk offered valuable insight into Astra’s past, present, and future. Whether his bark will stand up to his bite remains to be seen with the upcoming debut of Rocket 4.
NASA is apparently giving its ice-scouting moon rover mission another try. The space agency has announced that the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) project — which was called off last year after a series of delays and mounting costs — could catch a ride to the moon with Blue Origin in 2027 under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Blue Origin must first plan and demonstrate how the delivery at the lunar surface would work, and if it’s all to NASA’s liking, VIPER will be ferried by the company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander.
Blue Origin hasn’t yet attempted a moon landing, but the first opportunity for its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander is expected to launch later this year as part of another CLPS delivery. That mission will also help to inform NASA’s decision about VIPER’s rideshare, which would use a second Mark 1 lander that the agency says is already in production. If VIPER does eventually make it to the moon, it’ll be deployed in the extreme environment of the lunar South Pole to search for water ice and other resources that could support future missions.
“This delivery could show us where ice is most likely to be found and easiest to access, as a future resource for humans,” said Joel Kearns, Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. “And by studying these sources of lunar water, we also gain valuable insight into the distribution and origin of volatiles across the solar system, helping us better understand the processes that have shaped our space environment and how our inner solar system has evolved.”
For billions of years, solar winds have bombarded the Moon. Over time, this constant onslaught of charged particles has caused helium-3 to accumulate in the lunar surface. This isotope is rare on Earth, and rising demand from several industries—including quantum computing—has incentivized some companies to explore the possibility of lunar mining.
One such company is Interlune, a Seattle-based startup that aims to extract natural resources—primarily helium-3—from the lunar surface. Interlune eventually hopes to sell its harvested helium-3 to government and commercial customers in the national security, medical imaging, fusion energy, and quantum computing industries—and it just struck a major commercial deal.
The largest purchase of lunar resources yet
On Tuesday, Interlune announced a partnership with Bluefors, a leading manufacturer of dilution refrigerators and one of the world’s largest consumers of helium-3. Its continuous cooling systems use helium-3 to keep quantum computers running at the ultra-low temperatures required for maintaining qubit stability and reliable operation.
As the quantum computing industry moves toward commercialization—with tech giants such as Google, IBM, and Microsoft reporting progress in scaling—the demand for helium-3 is set to rise. Bluefors agreed to purchase up to 10,000 liters of helium-3 annually from Interlune between 2028 and 2037. This substance trades at around $2,500 per liter, according to a 2024 estimate from The Edelgas Group. The deal is the largest purchase of lunar resources to date.
“A majority of the quantum technology industry relies on Bluefors systems to operate and accelerate development,” Rob Meyerson, Interlune co-founder and CEO, said in a company release. “We are excited to help Bluefors continue advancing companies toward unlocking scientific and medical discoveries made possible only by near-absolute-zero temperatures.”
How Interlune plans to mine the Moon by 2028
Meyerson, former president of Blue Origin, founded Interlune in 2020 alongside former chief architect Gary Lai and Harrison Schmitt, the only living member of Apollo 17. Ever since that mission, Schmitt—a geologist—has advocated for humanity to harness the Moon’s helium-3 reserves.
Interlune has spent the past five years working toward that goal. The company has raised over $18 million in venture funding to develop robotic harvesters and launch a demonstration mission in 2027 as well as a pilot plant by 2029, according to SpaceNews.
This funding and the clearly laid-out roadmap are promising, but it remains to be seen whether Interlune will overcome the steep technological, logistical, and financial challenges of lunar mining by 2028. Though the prospect has garnered plenty of buzz in recent years, very few companies have made real progress toward achieving it.
What’s more, some experts argue that the value of mining the Moon’s helium-3 is overblown. The fact is, we don’t know for sure how much is up there. And although the highest concentrations measured in the Apollo and Luna samples are greater than Earth’s, they’re still very low.
For now, the Moon’s helium-3 is more promise than product, but Interlune’s deal with Bluefors signals rising demand from the quantum computing industry—and could mark a major step toward a new era of space resource extraction.
NASA and Blue Origin are preparing for the agency’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission, which begins on the inaugural launch of the company’s New Glenn rocket.
The mission will study the solar wind’s interaction with the magnetosphere on Mars.
Blue Origin is targeting no earlier than Sunday, October 13th, for the launch of New Glenn-1 from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Central Florida.
The ESCAPADE mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with the hybrid magnetosphere on Mars and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.
ESCAPADE is the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet. Its twin orbiters will take simultaneous observations from different locations around Mars. According to NASA, the observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.
The mission is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division and is part of the NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program.
The ESCAPADE mission is led by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, and the spacecraft is designed by Rocket Lab. The agency’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, secured the launch service under the VADR (Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) contract.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars’ atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per .
The mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The twin spacecraft of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission (Escapade) on August 19 to begin preparations and integration with the launch vehicle.
Now, the pressure is really on for Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin to get New Glenn ready in time. reported on Wednesday that the company recently suffered two failures at its factory that resulted in damage to hardware for its second and third New Glenn flights. But, a spokesperson told the publication that it’s still on track for this year’s inaugural launch.
Over billions of years, the surface of the Moon has been bombarded by solar wind, carrying high-energy particles that include a highly coveted resource, helium-3. Although the element is scarce on Earth, it has recently become in demand by several industries, including those working on quantum computing and nuclear fusion reactors.
Moon Knight Gives Us Hope
Helium-3 has been deemed so precious that one company is willing to go all the way to the Moon to get it. Seattle-based startup Interlune recently announced that it raised $15 million in funding as part of its plan to harvest and sell natural resources from the Moon. The company wants to initially focus on harvesting helium-3, which it can sell to government and commercial customers in the national security, quantum computing, medical imaging, and fusion energy industries, according to Interlune.
“There is growing demand for Helium-3 across burgeoning and potentially massive industries,” Alexis Ohanian, one of the main investors in Interlune’s latest round of funding, said in a statement. “We invested in Interlune because access to the ample cache of Helium-3 and other precious natural resources on the Moon and beyond will unlock or accelerate technological advancements currently hindered by lack of supply.”
Interlune was founded in 2020 by former Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson and former Chief Architect Gary Lai, as well as Harrison Schmitt, the only living member of Apollo 17—NASA’s last crewed mission to the Moon. “For the first time in history, harvesting natural resources from the Moon is technologically and economically feasible,” Meyerson said in a statement.
Sure it’s feasible, but the company still needs to develop a way to do it. The latest round of funding is a good start, but there’s still a long way to go. Interlune is working on the design of its first robotic lander mission, which will verify the helium-3 levels at the company’s chosen Moon site for its initial operation.
Although it’s still in its initial phases, Interlune is hoping to launch a new era for the lunar economy, essentially becoming the first to harvest and sell natural resources extracted from the Moon. According to the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act, which was passed in 2015, any resource obtained in space is the property of the entity that extracted it.
The idea of resource mining from the Moon and other celestial objects has been floating around for some time, but very few companies have made any substantial steps towards achieving it. NASA recently announced its own plans to explore harvesting resources from the Moon within the next 10 years to support its Artemis plans, hoping to establish large scale lunar regolith mining by 2032 and extracting resources such as water, iron, and rare metals.
Space definitely has all the right stuff, but there’s still a lot of groundwork that needs to be done before we can start selling cosmic resources. Since there are no regulations set in place as of yet, there’s also an added risk of the race to extract as much resources as possible, altering the makeup of the Moon or other objects in space.
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American astronauts aren’t heading back to the moon just yet. NASA’s pricey Artemis mission is facing technical challenges. The space agency is now working with both SpaceX and Blue Origin.
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A small robotic lander built by a private company and carrying a scientific payload for NASA touched down near the south pole of the moon 11 days ago… and promptly tipped over on its side. Even so, it’s the first American spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years.
NASA has a much more ambitious lunar program – called Artemis – which aims to send people back to the moon, to establish an outpost at the south pole, and to push on from there to Mars.
We previewed Artemis here in 2021, but there are significant questions now about the program’s costs and its timetable. In January NASA announced its new target for a manned landing – late 2026 – a year later than planned. but as we discovered, even that may be unrealistic.
When Artemis I soared into space in November of 2022, it was the beginning of a nearly flawless mission. In its first test flight, NASA’s new space launch system rocket sent an empty Orion crew capsule on a 1.4 million mile flyby of the moon before a picture-perfect return to Earth.
The next flight – Artemis II – meant to carry four astronauts on a lunar flyby – was supposed to launch this year, and then a year later Artemis III would land the first woman and first person of color on the moon. It’s not working out quite that way.
George Scott: I think it is safe to say, without significant reductions in cost, better cost controls, better planning, this Artemis program on its current trajectory is not sustainable.
George Scott is NASA’s acting inspector general. Don’t be misled by the ‘acting’; he’s been a top agency watchdog for more than five years. While NASA’s engineers have their heads in the stars, it’s his job to bring them back to Earth, particularly when it comes to costs.
George Scott is NASA’s acting inspector general.
60 Minutes
George Scott: Right now, we’re– we’re estimating that per launch– the Artemis campaign will cost $4.2 billion per launch.
Bill Whitaker: Per launch?
George Scott: Per launch. That’s an incredible amount of money per launch. A lot of that hardware is just going to end up in the ocean, never to be used again.
Bill Whitaker: The– inspector general for NASA says that the costs for the Artemis program are simply unsustainable. Is he wrong?
Jim Free: We didn’t necessarily agree with their conclusions. We, we feel like we’ve taken an affordable path to do these missions.
Jim Free is NASA’s associate administrator, and directly in charge of Artemis. We met him at historic Launch Pad 39b, from which both Apollo and Artemis rockets have flown.
Jim Free: We believe that the rocket we have is best matched for the mission and frankly the only one in the world that can take crews to the moon.
But as George Scott said, most components of that SLS rocket end up in the ocean; they’re not reusable. And with the goal of building an outpost on the moon, Artemis will need a lot of those $4.2 billion rockets!
Bill Whitaker: It’s going to take launch after launch after launch to get all that stuff up there.
Jim Free: Yes. So the number of launches is daunting. But it’s– it’s hard to get people to the moon.
When America sent Neil Armstrong and 11 more astronauts to the moon a half century ago, they got to the lunar surface aboard landers…owned and operated by NASA.
Bill Whitaker: You’re taking a different approach this time than with Apollo. What’s– what’s the difference this time?
Jim Free: The difference is we’re buying it as a service. We’re paying someone to take our crews down and take them up.
Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, at the historic launch pad 39B.
60 Minutes
That someone is Elon Musk. In 2021, NASA signed a nearly $3 billion contract with his SpaceX to use its new Starship mega-rocket as the lunar lander for the first Artemis astronauts.
SpaceX is preparing for its third Starship launch atop its enormous super-heavy booster. The first two launches both ended in roughly the same way.
Announcer (during SpaceX broadcast): As you can see, the super-heavy booster has just experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Bill Whitaker: And now you’ve seen some of the perils of relying on SpaceX.
Jim Free: We’ve seen some of the challenges they’ve had on Starship. We need them to launch several times– to give us the confidence that we can put our crews on there.
Bill Whitaker: But right now, as we sit here today, you have no way of getting the astronauts to the surface of the moon because of these problems that SpaceX has faced?
Jim Free: Because they haven’t– they haven’t hit the technical milestones.
SpaceX’s stated plan is to first put its Starship lander into low earth orbit, then launch 10 more starship tankers to pump rocket fuel into the lander in space…
… before sending it onward to meet astronauts in lunar orbit.
Bill Whitaker: And this has never been done before?
Jim Free: There’s been small-scale transfers in orbit, but not of this magnitude.
Bill Whitaker: It just sounds incredibly complicated.
Jim Free: It– it is complicated. There’s no doubt about that. It’s d– you don’t– you just– just launch ten times kind of on a whim.
George Scott: If it’s never been done before, chances are it’s going to take longer than you think to do it, and to do it successfully, and– and prove that technology before we trust putting humans on it. There is a long way to go.
NASA Artemis rocket
NASA
NASA’s contract with SpaceX requires the company to make an un-manned lunar landing with Starship before trying one with astronauts on board. But NASA still says the manned mission can happen in two and a half years.
Bill Whitaker: And that just seems like the time frame we’re talking about, the end of 2026, seems ambitious to say the least.
Jim Free: What we’re doing is ambitious And it’s a great goal to have. To do that–
Bill Whitaker: Is the goal realistic?
Jim Free: I believe it is. I– I believe it is.
Jim Free’s optimism is based on SpaceX’s track record with its smaller Falcon rocket.
Once it got the Falcon up and running, it demonstrated it can launch a lot – 96 times last year alone, with both commercial and government payloads. But so far Starship has yet to reach orbit even once.
Bill Whitaker: Does that concern you, that that’s going to keep pushing that timeline back further–
Jim Free: Of course it absolutely concerns me because we need them to launch multiple times.
SpaceX ignored our multiple requests for an interview or comment. But in an interview with “The Daily Wire” in January, Elon Musk said this:
Elon Musk (in “Daily Wire” interview): We’re hoping to have first humans on the moon in less than 5 years.
Jim Free: My view of that is we have a contract with SpaceX that says they’re going to launch our crew in the end of 2026.
Why does it really matter when we get back to the moon? Here’s why: China has said it plans to send its “taikonauts” to the moon by the end of the decade, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has publicly expressed concern.
Bill Nelson (during 8/8/23 briefing): Naturally, I don’t want China to get to the South Pole first with humans and then say, “This is ours, stay out.”
To ensure that the U.S. will plant its flag first, NASA signed a new $3 billion contract last year with Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to build another lunar lander. And Jim Free is crystal clear that he sees it as an option if SpaceX Starships keep blowing up.
Jim Free: If we have a problem with one– we– we’ll have another one to rely on. If we have– a dependency on a particular aspect in– in SpaceX or Blue Origin and it doesn’t work out, then we have another lander that can take our crews.
In this battle of the star-gazing billionaires, Bezos’ Blue Origin has far fewer launches than Musk’s SpaceX, and has been far quieter about its ambitions… until now.
John Couluris: So what we’re looking to do is not only get to the moon and back, but make it reliable, and repeatable, and low cost.
Blue Origins’s John Couluris shows Bill Whitaker around Blue Origin’s Florida complex, just next to the Kennedy Space Center.
60 Minutes
John Couluris’s title at Blue Origin is “senior vice president of lunar permanence,” and it says a lot about the company’s ambition.
John Couluris: The landers that Blue Origin’s going to be building are reusable. We’ll launch them to lunar orbit. And we’ll leave them there. And we’ll refuel them in orbit, so that– multiple astronauts can use the same vehicle back and forth.
Our cameras were among the first to be allowed inside Blue Origin’s huge complex in Florida, just next to Kennedy Space Center.
Bill Whitaker: This is where the future is being built.
John Couluris: That’s right. This is the main factory floor for the New Glenn rocket.
New Glenn is Blue Origin’s first heavy lift rocket. Its maiden launch will be sometime this year.
John Couluris: So you can see over here we have three different second stages already in build here.
The first New Glenn is already out at Blue Origin’s launch complex. It’s designed to carry all sorts of payloads, including the lunar lander being built for NASA.
John Couluris: So this is the Mark 1 lander. We call this our small lander.
Bill Whitaker: This is the small one?
John Couluris: Yes.
It’s actually a mock-up of their cargo lander, in Blue Origin’s Florida lobby. John Couluris used to work at SpaceX, and he came over to Blue to help speed things up.
Bill Whitaker: Is there a bit of a space race between you and SpaceX?
John Couluris: So the country needs competition. We need options. Competition brings innovation.
Illustration of a Blue Origin lander
Blue Origin
Bill Whitaker: But you haven’t had anything close to the accomplishments that SpaceX has had at this point, have you?
John Couluris: SpaceX has done some amazing things. And they’ve changed the narrative for access to space. And Blue Origin’s looking to do the same. This lander, we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today.
Bill Whitaker: 12 and 16 months from today–
John Couluris: Yes. Yes. And I understand I’m saying that publicly. But that’s what our team is aiming towards.
Bill Whitaker: But that’s for, that’s for the cargo lander. What about humans?
John Couluris: For humans, we’re working with NASA on the Artemis V mission. That’s planned for 2029.
That’s not so different from Elon Musk’s forecast of when SpaceX can land humans back on the moon… even if it doesn’t match NASA’s. Like the Starship, Blue Origin’s lander will require in-space re-fueling, but Couluris insists that it and their rocket will help NASA trim costs.
John Couluris: Our New Glenn vehicle will be– a reusable vehicle from its first mission. That lander for the astronauts is a reusable lander. So now you’re not just taking the equipment and throwing it away. You’re reusing it for the next mission.
Bill Whitaker: You do it again, and again, and again. Is that where the cost savings comes in?
John Couluris: Exactly. We are now building with NASA, the infrastructure to ensure lunar permanency.
Bill Whitaker: You have said that the Artemis program is the beginning, not the end. Tell me, what is the future you see?
Jim Free: I see us landing on Mars. Absolutely see us landing on Mars. But we have to work through the moon to get to mars.
Bill Whitaker: These are magnificent goals, you know, going back to the moon, going to Mars. Do we have the ability to do what we’re dreaming of doing?
George Scott: You know, this is NASA. Right? This agency is destined to continue to do great things. There’s no question about that. What we’re telling the agency is, “Just be more realistic.” There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic. In fact, it’s required. Right? In this business, optimism is required. The question is though, can you also be more realistic?
Produced by Rome Hartman. Associate producer, Sara Kuzmarov. Broadcast associate, Mariah B. Campbell. Edited by Craig Crawford.
Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.
A stealth startup led by ex-Blue Origin leaders, focused on harvesting resources from the moon, has quietly closed a sizable new tranche of funding, according to regulatory documents.
Interlune, a startup that’s been around for at least three years but has made almost zero public announcements about its tech, has raised $15.5 million in new funding and aims to close another $2 million. A representative for Interlune declined to comment on this story.
This is the first public indication that the company has closed any funding since a $1.85 million seed round in 2022.
Much of what’s known about the startup was reported by GeekWire last October, when Interlune CTO Gary Lai briefly described the startup during a speech at Seattle’s Museum of Flight: “We aim to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the moon to use here on Earth,” he reportedly said. “We’re building a completely novel approach to extract those resources, efficiently, cost-effectively and also responsibly. The goal is really to create a sustainable in-space economy.”
Lai is an aerospace engineer whose resume includes a 20-year stint at Blue Origin, where he eventually became chief architect for space transportation systems, including launchers and lunar landers. Interlune is being led by Rob Meyerson, an aerospace executive who was president at Blue Origin for 15 years. Meyerson is also a prolific angel investor, with investments in well-known hardware startups including Axiom Space, Starfish Space, Hermeus and Hadrian Automation.
The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also lists attorney H. Indra Hornsby as a company executive. Hornsby previously held the position of general counsel at BlackSky and Spaceflight Industries, and also worked as an executive VP at Rocket Lab.
What little else is known of Interlune’s tech comes from an abstract of a small SBIR the startup was awarded last year from the National Science Foundation. Under that award, the company said it will aim to “develop a core enabling technology for lunar in situ resource utilization: the ability to sort ‘moon dirt’ (lunar regolith) by particle size.”
“By enabling raw lunar regolith to be sorted into multiple streams by particle size, the technology will provide appropriate feedstocks for lunar oxygen extraction systems, lunar 3-dimensional printers, and other applications,” the abstract says.
A growing number of space startups are focusing on what’s known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), or collecting and transforming space resources into valuable commodities. Much of this is driven by NASA’s stated priority to build a long-term human outpost on the moon via its Artemis program: The agency acknowledges that longer-term stays in space will require the ability to generate materials locally — whether that’s to build roads, produce breathable air or even make rocket propellants.
But it isn’t just startups that are trying to commercialize ISRU tech; last year, Blue Origin announced that it had made solar cells and transmission wires out of a material that’s chemically identical to lunar regolith.
In its February 2023 announcement on the tech, Blue Origin said, “Learning to live off the land – on the Moon and on Mars – will require extensive collaboration across the ISRU community.” The phrase is echoed in Interlune’s abstract: “The use of the Moon’s resources is a disruptive capability that will enable missions there to ‘live off the land,’ making the development of this technology important for government agencies and industry alike.”
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +0.64% said Friday it has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX for three Falcon 9 rocket launches to support deployment plans for Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite broadband network. The deal, the first between the companies, is considered a surprise since the Kuiper system is likely to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink in the satellite broadband market. Amazon previously ordered launches from three of SpaceX’s top rocket rivals, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Amazon declined to comment on terms of the new deal with SpaceX.
Lauren Sánchez made headlines in 2019 when she and her fiance, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,went public with their relationship, and she’s since made a name for herself in the world of philanthropy — and soon, space exploration.
The formerbroadcast journalist and founder of aviation company Black Ops Aviationrecently sat down with Vogue in a tell-all interview, where she shed light on her relationship with Bezos, her plans to travel out of the atmosphere, and how philanthropy plays a role in her life.
On the lavishness of the couple’s upcoming nuptials
“We’re still thinking about the wedding, what it’s going to be. Is it going to be big? Is it going to be overseas? We don’t know yet,” she told Vogue. “We’ve only been engaged five months!”
Bezos, 59, and Sánchez, 53were engaged in May in a private moment inside their home, something the public was not aware of at the time. Sánchez told the outlet that she found the engagement ring box underneath her pillow, which she found right before heading to bed.
Sanchez is aware, of course, of what marrying Bezos and his fortune entails, and how the financials of such a major commitment will play out. Bezos is currently the No. 2 richest man in the world with $166 billion, per Bloomberg.
“I think there are a lot of opportunities that come with that, and I take those opportunities very seriously,” she said, noting that she will be taking Bezos’ last name. “We always look at each other and go, ‘We’re the team.’ So everything’s shared.”
On space exploration
Sánchez told Vogue that she will be traveling into space next year on Blue Origin’s New Shepard, though she left the details vague, noting that she will be flying alongside five (so far unnamed) women who are “paving the way.”
She also tried to shed light on why Bezos is so passionate about space exploration, and justified the practice as an informative and educational tool instead of just a joyride throwaway for the extremely wealthy.
“Jeff always says, ‘Building the road to space so that our children can build the future.’ And that’s what it’s about,” she explained. “Launch, land, repeat, over and over so that we can figure out how to have reusable rockets.”
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez speak onstage during the IWMF Courage in Journalism Awards on October 23, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for IWMF)
On the couple’s morning routine
Sánchez said she and Bezos try to keep off their phones when they wake up.
“We try not to get on our phones right away,” Sánchez says. “That’s what I’m working on.”
And through recommendations of famous friends, such as Diane Von Furstenberg (who reportedly hosted the couple’s engagement party last weekend), the couple has started journaling.
“We’re not quite there,” admits Sánchez. “We’ll do it, like, three days a week.”
On philanthropy
Sánchez, who now serves as the Vice Chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, also works with This Is About Humanity and the Bezos Day One Fund.
“We really want to do the most we can with the dollars that we put into things,” she said. “It’s not about just giving the money away. It’s about being involved … I think Jeff and I really are focusing on the long-term commitment to climate, and we’re extremely optimistic about it.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is known for its frequent launches, which now dominate the space industry. But thesatellites that the rockets send to space are just as important for the company as the launches. Starlink is SpaceX’s answer to providing global, high-speed internet coverage using a network of thousands of satellites buzzing around the planet in a region known as low Earth orbit (LEO), about 342 miles above the Earth’s surface.
SpaceX launched its first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019. Adoption of the service has ballooned since then. The company has said Starlink has more than 2 million active customers and is available on all seven continents and in over 60 countries.
“This growth is uncharacteristic in the sense of its magnitude. Whereas prior satellite service providers have ramped up to anywhere at most between 500,000 to a little bit over a million subscribers. And this has taken, you know, a ten-year period, Starlink’s race to 2 million subscribers has taken only the better part of two years,” says Brent Prokosh, a Senior Affiliate Consultant at Euroconsult.
A Falcon 9 rockets launches a Starlink mission on January 20, 2021.
SpaceX
Experts estimate that the global market for consumer satellite services, including TV, radio, and broadband internet, was worth over $92 billion in 2022. And Starlink could be in a good position to capture a big piece of the market. Although initially conceived for the consumer segment, Starlink’s offerings have expanded to serve enterprise customers including in the maritime and aviation industries.
“Starlink’s importance to SpaceX overall as a company is imperative. Euroconsult estimates that, optimistically, by the end of 2023, this business of Starlink could represent upwards of 40% of SpaceX’s overall business. This total would be somewhere in excess of $3 billion generated from Starlink,” Prokosh says.
Starlink has been praised for its ability to connect remote parts of the world that would otherwise not have access to reliable internet. The service has also become indispensable in areas hit by natural disasters, and, more recently, during times of conflict, particularly in the Russia-Ukraine war.
“The big benefit of Starlink and how it’s being used in Ukraine today is communications. It’s providing a pathway for the military, for civilians to stay connected to the outside world. It allows a pathway for the military to communicate with each other and to provide command and control direction to their forces,” says Kari Bingen who is the Director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Ukrainian forces set up Starlink satellite receivers to provide connection for civilians at Independence Square after the withdrawal of the Russian army from Kherson to the eastern bank of Dnieper River, Ukraine, on November 13, 2022.
Metin Atkas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
But Starlink’s growing influence is garnering condemnation from critics who say Musk is meddling in geopolitics. Meanwhile, the scientific community has its own concerns.
“The astronomical community got concerned about the first launch of the Starlink satellite a few years ago because the projection of the full constellation of several tens of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit was immediately seen as an interference to both the optical observation and to radio observation,” says Piero Benvenuti, who is the Interim General Secretary, International Astronomical Union.
To find out more about Starlink’s rapid expansion and if it can continue, watch the video.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is moving to the Sunshine State.
In a sentimental Instagram post Thursday, which included old footage of the very first Amazon office located in Bezos’ former garage in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, the billionaire said he’s moving to Miami. His reasons for relocating include a desire to be closer to his parents; his partner, Lauren Sanchez; and Cape Canaveral, where operations for his space exploration company Blue Origin “are increasingly shifting,” according to the post.
“As exciting as the move is, it’s an emotional decision for me,” Bezos said in the post. “Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart.”
Bezos established Amazon in Seattle in 1994, contributing to the city’s transformation into a vibrant technology hub. He helmed the company until 2021, at which time he stepped down as CEO to focus on other ventures, such as his aerospace company.
Influx of billionaires
Bezos’ cross-country move comes months after the billionaire bought two South Florida mansions worth $79 million and $68 million, respectively, Bloomberg reported.
However, being close to friends and family won’t be the only perk to living in Miami for Bezos. The move could also save him loads of money on taxes.
Washington State, where Bezos currently lives, recently passed a 7% tax on capital gains, which could cost wealthy individuals like Bezos millions, according to the state’s Department of Revenue. Under that new tax, Bezos would owe $70 million in state taxes for every $1 billion of Amazon stock he sells, according to CNBC Wealth Reporter Robert Frank.
By comparison, Florida is one of nine states that does not have state income or capital gains taxes, according to Investopedia.
Several other ultra-wealthy individuals have recently made the move to Miami to take advantage of the state’s generous tax laws. Last year, Ken Griffin, the wealthiest man in Illinois, moved his family and his Chicago-based hedge fund to Miami. Hedge fund tycoons Dan Loeb and Josh Harris have also purchased palatial mansions in Miami Beach in recent years, Insider reported.
Planetary scientist Alan Stern, who spearheaded NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, enjoyed a spaceflight of his own Thursday, soaring to the edge of space and back aboard Virgin Galactic’s winged spaceplane, chalking up the company’s fifth commercial sub-orbital flight.
Stern, researcher and STEM “influencer” Kellie Gerardi, Italian investment manager Ketty Maisonrouge, two Virgin Galactic pilots and a company trainer were carried aloft by a carrier jet that released the Unity spaceplane at an altitude of about 44,700 feet above the New Mexico desert.
The hybrid motor powering Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane ignites high above New Mexico Thursday, propelling the craft to the lower edge of space in the company’s tenth sub-orbital flight out of the discernible atmosphere.
Virgin Galactic
At the controls were Unity commander Michael Masucci and pilot Kelly Latimer, both veterans of earlier flights. Virgin astronaut trainer Colin Bennett joined the three passengers in Unity’s multi-window cabin.
Seconds after release, Unity’s hybrid rocket motor ignited with a rush of flame, propelling the ship up on a near-vertical trajectory, accelerating to nearly three times the speed of sound.
The motor then shut down and the crew enjoyed three to four minutes of weightlessness as Unity coasted up to an altitude of 54.2 miles — NASA recognizes 50 miles as the “boundary” between the discernible atmosphere and space — where it arced over and began the long fall back to Earth.
During their brief sojourn in weightlessness, Stern and Gerardi collected data with five experiments primarily focused on the physiological aspects of microgravity.
Stern wore a biomedical harness to monitor his body’s reaction to weightlessness and planned to practice procedures with a high-tech camera that will be used on a future NASA astronomical research mission. Gerardi planned to operate three experiments related to microgravity healthcare and fluid dynamics.
Unity carried two Virgin Galactic pilots and a company astronaut trainer, along with three paying customers: researcher Alan Stern, back right at window, European investment manager Ketty Maisonrouge, front left, and STEM educator/researcher Kellie Gerardi, center. Virgin Galactic astronaut trainer Colin Bennett is just out of view at bottom right.
Virgin Galactic
A former chief of NASA’s science division and principal investigator with the agency’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, Stern was sponsored by the Southwest Research Institute where he now helps lead the space science division.
“Our objective in developing requirements, procedures timelines and training runs is to maximize the value of this first spaceflight and to minimize risks to performance on the second flight while doing NASA experiment work,” Stern wrote before launch.
“And while there is always more one could do, I believe we have a solid plan both for flight ops and for training to perform those that’s commensurate with the low cost of this mission. Of course, the proof of that will come at showtime, in space, high above southern New Mexico!”
Gerardi’s trip was sponsored by the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences while her experiments were developed by the National Research Council of Canada. Maisonrouge is an investment manager who was born in Italy and grew up in Switzerland and France. She was among Virgin’s first customers, reportedly paying $250,000 for a seat back in 2005.
As it began descending, Unity’s two swept-back wings rotated upward, or “feathered,” earlier in the flight, working as designed to properly orient the spacecraft, increase atmospheric drag and reduce the “loads” acting on the ship during re-entry.
The view from a short visit to sub-orbital space.
Virgin Galactic
Back in the lower atmosphere, the wings rotated back down parallel to the fuselage and the pilots guided the spaceplane, now flying as a glider, to touchdown on Spaceport America’s 12,000-foot-long runway just west of the White Sands Missile Range at 11:59 a.m. EDT.
It was Unity’s 10th piloted flight above an altitude of 50 miles and Virgin’s fifth fully commercial flight in a row with paying customers aboard. Overall, Virgin Galactic has launched 49 company employees and commercial passengers in Unity’s 10 sub-orbital flights to date.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which has launched six sub-orbital flights with 32 passengers using its more traditional New Shepard rocket and capsule, is currently in a standdown while resolving a booster problem that occurred during an unpiloted microgravity research flight last year.
Virgin Galactic’s next flight is planned for January. Blue Origin is expected to resume New Shepard flights before the end of the year.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
It looks like it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Jeff Bezos this summer — and we’re not just talking about his 500-foot mega sailing yacht.
Per a new report from CNBC, a rocket engine from the Blue Origin fleet, Bezos’ space exploration and tourism company, blew up during testing last month.
The BE-4 engine reportedly exploded about 10 seconds into its test, according to “people familiar with the matter,” who noted that they viewed footage showing a massive explosion.
The test occurred on June 30 at Blue Origin’s West Texas facility.
A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launches from Launch Site One in West Texas north of Van Horn on March 31, 2022 (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
“No personnel were injured, and we are currently assessing root cause,” Blue Origin representatives said in a statement to CNBC.
Company personnel also said they “have proximate cause and are working on remedial actions” for the rocket engine, which was set to fly on the Vulcan Centaur’s second launch (it had already been pushed back from its original May 4 debut date).
The same engines are also used on Blue Origin’s “New Glenn” rocket, named after famed astronaut John Glenn.
The Vulcan Centaur is owned by the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a customer of Blue Origin. ULA’s president and CEO Tony Bruno confirmed the failure Tuesday on Twitter.
Sure. Every engine, elex box, COPV, etc, gets an Acceptance Test (ATP) as they come off the line to verify good workmanship. (The one time Qual verifies the design. BE4 is qualified). The BE4’s on Cert1 have passed ATP, as have many others. This engine failed ATP. https://t.co/2n73TwlTa8
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launched its first commercial space flight Thursday, sending three Italian researchers, two company pilots and an astronaut trainer on a high-speed thrill ride to the edge of space aboard a winged rocketplane.
Cheered on by Virgin employees, family members and friends gathered at Spaceport America in New Mexico, the twin-fuselage VMS Eve carrier jet took off around 10:30 a.m. EDT, carrying the company’s VSS Unity spaceplane and its six passengers up to an altitude of about 45,000 feet.
After final checks, clamps opened and Unity detached from Eve’s mid-wing attachment mechanism at 11:28 a.m.
Seconds later, the spacecraft’s hybrid rocket motor ignited with a rush of flame, instantly propelling Unity up and out of the lower atmosphere on a near-vertical trajectory. Cameras mounted on the hull of the ship showed the Earth dropping away and the sky changing to deep black as the ship gained altitude.
Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane launched with its first commercial crew aboard on June 28, 2023.
Virgin Galactic
One minute later, now traveling 2.8 times the speed of sound at an altitude of 136,000 feet, the rocket motor shut down, leaving the six crew members weightless as Unity coasted up to an altitude of 51.8 miles, just above the somewhat arbitrary 50-mile-high “boundary” between space and the discernible atmosphere.
Along the way, veteran pilot Mike Masucci and rookie co-pilot Nicola Pecile “feathered” the ship’s wings, folding the swept-back wing-tip fins up about 60 degrees in a unique procedure invented by legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan to minimize heating and speeds during re-entry.
In the meantime, Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi and Pantaleone Carlucci, representing Italy’s National Research Council, began carrying out or monitoring 13 experiments designed to collect data about the effects of weightlessness on themselves and a variety of technological processes.
Amid switch throws and experiment activations, Villadei took a moment to unfurl an Italian flag as he floated above his crewmates.
The researchers were assisted by Colin Bennett, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut trainer. It was the company’s sixth piloted sub-orbital space flight and the first to carry paying customers, a milestone that has taken the company more than a decade longer than expected to achieve.
Meet the crew from the @ItalianAirForce & @CNRSocial_. On June 29, they will take-off to conduct more than a dozen experiments in space, which will examine how microgravity effects the human body and other materials. Learn more about their roles and sign… pic.twitter.com/1CKq2FTKtn
As with all such sub-orbital flights, the crew only had about three minutes of weightlessness as the ship arced over the top of its trajectory and began falling back to Earth, weightlessness giving way to increasing “G” loads as the vehicle rapidly slowed during re-entry.
Finally, back in the dense lower atmosphere, Unity’s two wings rotated back down to their normal positions and the pilots manually flew the spaceplane through a spiraling glide to landing on Spaceport America’s 12,000-foot-long runway. Total time between Unity’s air launch and landing: just under 14 minutes.
Virgin has now launched 25 people to the edge of space, several of them more than once, including Masucci, making his fourth flight, and Bennett, making his second. Arch rival Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has launched 32 people on six sub-orbital spaceflights using its more traditional New Shepard booster and capsule.
The competition between the two companies in the space tourism marketplace has been fierce.
Virgin’s first space flight came in 2018 when two company pilots flew Unity to an altitude of 51 miles. That initial launch to space came four years after a catastrophic test flight that destroyed Virgin’s original spaceplane, killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot when the feather mechanism was unlocked earlier than planned.
After addressing that issue, Virgin launched four successful test flights in a row before standing down for two years to upgrade the Eve carrier jet and carry out more modifications. A fifth successful test flight on May 25 cleared the way for Thursday’s launch.
Blue Origin, meanwhile, began commercial operations in 2021. But the company’s most recent launch in September 2022, an uncrewed research flight, experienced a booster malfunction and while the capsule’s abort system operated as planned and the ship landed successfully, launches currently are on hold.
The six-member crew of Blue Origin’s fifth flight in June 2022 included Hamish Harding, a billionaire pilot and explorer who was killed along with four others when the submersible Titan imploded June 18 during a commercial dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The mishap has raised fresh questions about the risks of private ventures into inherently dangerous environments.
Commercial spaceflight is monitored by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for licensing and ensuring minimal risk to the public. But legislation forbids the FAA from regulating crew safety procedures during a so-called “learning period” as as the commercial space market matures. Instead, passengers must provide “informed consent” that they understand the risks.
That learning period expires October 1, and the FAA is considering steps it might take if Congress does not extend the deadline.
“This includes the establishment of an Aerospace Rulemaking Committee to provide recommendations on the scope and costs of future regulations,” the FAA said in a statement. “The FAA also is updating its recommended practices for human spaceflight occupant safety and is working with international organizations to develop voluntary consensus standards.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
SpaceX launched a powerful Indonesian communications satellite Sunday, the linchpin in a $550 million project to provide high-speed internet access to schools, medical centers and thousands of public and government facilities across the island nation.
Using a first stage making its 12th flight, the Falcon 9 rocket roared to life at 6:21 p.m. EDT and shot away from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, arcing to the east over the Atlantic Ocean and quickly disappearing from view.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 blasts off on a Father’s Day flight to put a powerful Indonesian communications satellite into orbit, boosting broadband access across thousands of islands in the vast archipelago.
William Harwood/CBS News
After jettisoning the first stage, which flew itself to a pinpoint landing on an offshore droneship, the second stage’s single engine fired twice to reach the planned elliptical deploy orbit, releasing the 10,100-pound SATRIA satellite to fly on its own about 37 minutes after launch.
Built by Thales Alenia Space, the satellite will use onboard ion thrusters to circularize its orbit at an altitude of 22,300 miles above the equator at 126 degrees east longitude.
Satellites at that geosynchronous altitude take 24 hours to complete one orbit, rotating in lockstep with Earth to appear stationary in the sky. That allows the use of fixed antennas on the ground, greatly simplifying the infrastructure needed to send and receive data.
SATRIA is a public-private project between the government of Indonesia and a consortium led by satellite operator PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, or PSN.
The SATRIA satellite drifts away from the Falcon 9’s second stage after successfully reaching orbit. After its solar arrays are deployed, the five-ton spacecraft will use electric ion thrusters to reach its final orbit 22,300 miles above the equator over Indonesia.
SpaceX
With a throughput of 150 gigabytes per second, SATRIA will connect some 94,000 schools, nearly 50,000 village offices, other government facilities and thousands of hospitals and medical facilities across the vast archipelago, the fourth most populous country in the world.
Going into Sunday’s launch, Indonesia relied on five domestic communications satellites and and four “foreign” relay stations with a combined 50 gigabytes of telecommunications bandwith.
“With a capacity of 150 Gbps, (SATRIA) can provide more than three times the combined national capacities that are currently in use,” Adi Rahman Adiwoso, chief executive officer of PSN, was quoted by SpaceTechAsia. “We are confident that SATRIA can be the solution to the digital gap that still exists in Indonesia.”
The satellite is designed to operate for at least 15 years.
Sunday’s launch was SpaceX’s 41st Falcon-family flight so far this year, the fifth this month and the company’s 245th overall, including five Falcon 1 rockets, six Falcon Heavies and one Super Heavy-Starship.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
Rocket Lab launched two toaster-size satellites for NASA on Sunday, the first of four “cubesats” designed to provide hourly updates of typhoon and hurricane development in a bid to improve forecasting and provide new insights into how tropical storms evolve and intensify.
An Electron rocket blasts off from Rocket Lab’s picturesque Mahia, New Zealand, launch site, carrying two small NASA satellites designed to monitor tropical storm development.
Rocket Lab
“The threat to our friends and neighbors is real and repeats every year,” said Ben Kim, a program executive with NASA’s Earth Science Division. The TROPICS mission, he said, “aims to improve our scientific understanding by obtaining microwave observations that allow us to see the inner structure of these storms approximately hourly.
“These observations will complement the existing weather satellites, and ultimately then can be tied to the broader understanding of the entire earth system.”
TROPICS, one of NASA’s more convoluted acronyms, stands for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats. The bargain-basement $30 million mission takes advantage of miniaturized electronics and the evolution of cubesats capable of taking on big-ticket science.
The cubesats aren’t intended to replace larger, much more powerful and much more expensive weather satellites. But they offer a low-cost way to augment those “flagship” missions with complementary science and much shorter development times
“We utilize a balanced mission portfolio that ranges from the really large observatories, like Landsat 9 at around 6,000 pounds, down to the very smallest of satellites like TROPICS at around 12 pounds,” Kim said.
“This mix within our portfolio allows us to maximize the science per taxpayer dollar, and thus do more science than if we only focus on the large missions.”
The first two of six planned TROPICS cubesats were lost last year when their Astra rocket failed during the climb to space. NASA then moved the four remaining cubesats to Rocket Lab’s more reliable Electron in order to get them into orbit in time for this year’s tropical storm season.
Running about a week late because of stormy weather, the first of the two remaining missions got off to a picture-perfect start at 9 p.m. EDT Sunday with launch from Rocket Lab’s picturesque Mahia, New Zealand, launch site.
An artist’s impression of a NASA TROPICS satellite studying a tropical storm from orbit. Four such satellites will enable hourly passes over developing storms to help scientists learn more about how storms develop and evolve.
NASA
The 59-foot-tall carbon-composite rocket’s nine 3D-printed Rutherford engines pushed the booster out of the lower atmosphere before falling away and handing off to the rocket’s second stage, which put the craft into an initial parking orbit nine-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.
A third “kick” stage then finished the job, releasing TROPICS 3 and 4 to fly on their own about 33 minutes after launch. It was Rocket Lab’s 36th Electron launch and its 16th successful flight in a row.
If all goes well, Rocket Lab will launch TROPICS 5 and 6 before the end of the month to complete a four-satellite constellation. All four satellites will operate in 341-mile-high orbits carrying them about 30 degrees to either side of the equator, ideal for “revisit” observations of developing storms on an hourly basis.
William Blackwell, the TROPICS principal investigator at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, said getting microwave observations of growing storms, at the rapid revisit rates the cubesats provide, is critical to understanding the development and behavior of tropical storms. . “We’ve been making (such observations) for 40 years from space, but the thing that has eluded us is this ability to capture the dynamics of the storm,” he said. “So this new hourly cadence that we’ll get with the constellation is really going to push us forward in terms of what the observations are able to do to explain how things are changing in the storm.”
The observations, in concert with data collected by larger, more powerful weather satellites, are expected to “improve understanding of the basic processes that drive the storms and ultimately improve our ability to forecast track and intensity.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
After multiple delays for weather and technical issues, SpaceX finally launched a Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday carrying a competitor’s internet satellite, the first of three next-generation data relay stations capable of terabyte-per-second performance.
After a final hour-long delay because of gusty winds, SpaceX’s most powerful operational rocket flashed to life at 8:26 p.m. EDT and climbed away from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center atop more than 5 million pounds of thrust.
SpaceX launched its sixth Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday, using the company’s most powerful operational booster to put a third-generation ViaSat internet satellite into orbit along with two smaller hitchhiker satellites.
William Harwood/CBS News
Powered by 27 Merlin engines in three strapped-together Falcon 9 first stage boosters, the Falcon Heavy quickly accelerated as it consumed its kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants and lost weight. After initially climbing straight up, the rocket arced over on an easterly trajectory, putting on a spectacular early-evening show for area residents and tourists.
SpaceX normally recovers first stage boosters for refurbishment and reuse, but all of the available propellant was needed Sunday to boost the 13,000-pound ViaSat-3 satellite into its planned orbit.
As a result, all three core stages were discarded to fall into the ocean more than 50 miles below after pushing the rocket out of the lower atmosphere.
The single engine powering the Falcon Heavy’s upper stage shut down eight minutes after launch, putting the vehicle in an initial parking orbit. Two more firings were planned over the next three hours and 44 minutes to get the satellite into the planned geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator.
A close-up view of launch from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX
Sunday’s flight capped an intense few days for SpaceX, which launched 46 of its own low-altitude Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday. The company then launched two medium-altitude broadband satellites for Luxembourg-based SES from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday.
All three launchings highlight the ongoing race to deploy space-based internet relay stations to provide broadband access to customers anywhere in the world, including rural, hard-to-reach or under-served areas, as well as aircraft and ships at sea.
The Starlink satellites are part of a fast-growing constellation of small, low-altitude laser-linked satellites designed, built and operated by SpaceX to provide high-speed, low-latency internet to users anywhere in the world.
Thousands of Starlinks are required to ensure that multiple fast-moving satellites are above a user’s horizon at any given moment to provide uninterrupted service. The satellites receive user inputs, and send those to nearby Starlinks for relay to “gateway” ground stations connected to high-speed data lines. Responses are then passed along back to the user.
An artist’s impression of a ViaSat-3 internet relay satellite in orbit, with its huge mesh antenna deployed to enable high-speed data transfers.
ViaSat
ViaSat is taking a different approach, stationing satellites in 22,300 mile-high-orbits above the equator where they rotate in lockstep with the planet below and thus appear stationary in the sky. Three such ViaSat-3 satellites are planned to provide global space-based internet access on hemispheric scales.
The powerful satellites are equipped with huge solar panels generating 25 kilowatts of power and stretching 144 feet from tip to tip when fully unfolded.
Capable of handling up to 1 terabyte of data per second, the satellites are equipped with the largest dish antenna ever launched on a commercial satellite. Once on station, the huge mesh reflector will unfold atop an 80- to 90-foot-long telescoping boom based on technology developed for the James Webb Space Telescope.
If all goes well, the first ViaSat-3 will provide internet access to customers in the Western Hemisphere starting this summer. Two more satellites, covering Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, are expected to launch over the next two years.
“If you are a low-Earth orbit (provider), by definition, in order to stay up in orbit, you’re going to be screaming across the sky fairly fast. So your terminal on the ground has to be more complicated … and more expensive,” David Ryan, president of space and commercial networks at ViaSat, told CBS News.
“The other advantage of geosynchronous orbit is that you can see a third of the Earth with one satellite. So with one launch, one satellite, you potentially can connect to a third of the Earth. And that’s the principle behind ViaSat-3.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
SpaceX fired off two SES broadband communications satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday atop a Falcon 9 rocket, and then tried to launch a ViaSat internet relay station from the nearby Kennedy Space Center aboard a triple-core Falcon Heavy booster. However, a last-minute glitch triggered a frustrating abort at the end of the launch window.
SpaceX tweeted that the ViaSat payload, and the rocket — the company’s most powerful operational booster — were healthy and that another launch opportunity was available Saturday. But no details were provided, and it wasn’t immediately known if whatever went wrong could be fixed in time to permit a 24-hour turnaround.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying two broadband relay satellites, the third and fourth launched by the California rocket builder for Luxembourg-based SES.
SpaceX
The scrub capped an especially busy day in space, with the first launch coming just two hours after NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi completed a 7-hour and one-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station to make preparations for installation of roll-out solar blankets in June to augment the lab’s aging power system.
The spacewalkers also tried to bring in a degraded communications antenna back to Earth for refurbishment, but they were foiled by a jammed bolt and were forced to leave it in place to await another attempt on a future spacewalk. It was the eighth spacewalk for Bowen, who now ranks 10th on the list of most experienced spacewalkers, and the first for Alneyadi.
“Sultan, you’ve now entered an exclusive club of humans who have stepped out into the void of space and in doing so, you’ve marked a milestone for the United Arab Emirates,” astronaut Anne McClain radioed from mission control in Houston. “Congratulations to you both.”
Astronauts Stephen Bowen, left, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, right, are seen after a failed attempt to retrieve a degraded 145-pound antenna assembly, center, for return to Earth, refurbishment and relaunch. A stuck bolt prevented the unit’s removal from a stowage platform. NASA likely will make another attempt during a future spacewalk.
NASA
Alneyadi, the first Arab astronaut to make both a long-duration flight aboard the ISS and a spacewalk, thanked NASA and the leadership of both countries for the opportunity, saying “it’s a great moment for the UAE.”
“It might be a first in the Arab world, but it definitely won’t be the last,” he said. “We have astronauts under training now to undergo missions to the ISS, to the lunar surface and to Mars. I would like to thank everone who helped getting us to this moment.”
Back on Earth, SpaceX was in the midst of gearing up for a dramatic doubleheader, and what would have been the shortest time between two orbit-class launches since 1966. It also would have been the company’s second and third launches in just two days.
SpaceX tried to launch a Falcon Heavy rocket Friday evening, but a last-minute abort foiled the company’s attempt to launch two rockets within a little more than two hours of each other, the shortest time between two orbit-class launches since 1966. But it was not to be.
SpaceX
On Thursday, a Falcon 9 boosted 46 Starlink internet satellites into space from California, but stormy weather in Florida blocked an attempt to get the Falcon Heavy off the ground carrying the first of three ViaSat broadband relay stations.
Despite another gloomy forecast, the ViaSat launch was reset for Friday, shortly after another Falcon 9 launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to put the two SES 03b mPOWER medium-altitude internet satellites into orbit.
That flight got off the ground at 6:12 p.m. EDT using a first stage making its second flight. Two hours later, the two SES satellites were released to fly on their own as another SpaceX team was fueling the Falcon Heavy for liftoff at 8:26 p.m. SpaceX had hoped to launch the Heavy at 7:29 p.m., but the flight was re-targeted for the end of the launch window because of weather.
Everything appeared to be going smoothly as the countdown ticked into its final minutes. Then, at T-minus 59 seconds, when the rocket’s flight computer began final checks, the clock stopped and the countdown was aborted. SpaceX provided no immediate explanation, other than to say another launch opportunity was available Saturday.
Thursday’s Starlink launch, the SES flight Friday and the eventual launch of ViaSat’s third-generation satellites, highlight the ongoing competition to deploy internet relay stations in space to provide broadband access to customers anywhere in the world, including rural, hard-to-reach or under-served areas, as well as aircraft and ships at sea that cannot be serviced by traditional suppliers.
The satellites illustrate the different architectures being employed, from multi-thousand satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit like SpaceX’s Starlink initiative — 4,284 Starlinks have been launched to date — to ViaSat’s plan to launch a handful of much more powerful, high-altitude satellites that can provide broadband access on hemispheric scales.
How those competing architectures will play out is anyone’s guess, but the rush to stake out a claim on that high frontier is heating up.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
