Plus: Starship's successful test flight
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Starship makes a successful return to flight, Aerospacelab raises funds to compete for IRIS², EchoStar sells spectrum to fund a constellation and more.
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Top Stories
SpaceX's Starship vehicle performed a largely successful test flight Tuesday after a string of failures. The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off from Starbase, Texas, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern on the Flight 10 mission. The vehicle avoided the problems that caused the three previous launches to fail. Starship was able to deploy eight mass simulators of next-generation Starlink satellites during the suborbital flight and perform an in-space relight of a Raptor engine. The vehicle survived reentry and made a pinpoint "soft" splashdown in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX said after the flight that the launch achieved all of its major goals. [SpaceNews]
EchoStar is selling spectrum to AT&T in a deal that should boost its efforts to deploy a direct-to-device satellite constellation. EchoStar will sell the terrestrial wireless spectrum to AT&T for $23 billion, ending its bid to operate as a traditional mobile carrier in the United States. The proceeds from the spectrum sale should allow EchoStar to pay down much of its more than $25 billion in debt and help it finance a $5 billion constellation of direct-to-device satellites. EchoStar ordered 100 satellites from MDA Space earlier this month for that constellation. [SpaceNews]
Belgian satellite maker Aerospacelab has raised 94 million euros ($110 million) to expand manufacturing capacity. The extended Series B round announced Tuesday brings Aerospacelab's total venture capital raised to 134 million euros. The investment will support completion of the company's "Megafactory" in Belgium, designed to produce up to 500 satellites a year by 2027. Aerospacelab is competing with Airbus to build 290 satellites for the low Earth orbit portion of IRIS², Europe's planned sovereign multi-orbit broadband constellation. [SpaceNews]
Firefly Aerospace said a structural failure caused by excessive heating was the key problem with its Alpha rocket in April. The company announced Tuesday it completed the investigation into the failure, which caused the loss of a Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite. On the launch, a higher angle of attack during ascent than used on previous launches caused aeroheating on part of the first stage. That weakened the structure, which ruptured from the forces of stage separation. The pressure wave from the rupture took off the nozzle of the second stage engine, reducing its performance and keeping the stage and its payload from reaching orbit. The company said it has implemented changes to prevent the problem from happening again and has received approval from the FAA to resume launches. [SpaceNews]
Satellite operator XTAR is planning new satellites to expand opportunities with U.S. and allied military customers. The Virginia-based company is shifting from its two legacy X-band satellites to next-generation spacecraft funded by its minority shareholder, Spain's Hisdesat Servicios Estratรฉgicos. One of the satellites, Spainsat NG-1, launched in January, while Spainsat NG-2 is scheduled for launch in the fall. Both next-gen satellites carry payloads in X-band, military Ka-band and UHF. XTAR's new CEO, Patrick Rayermann, said the satellites will give XTAR more tools to compete for U.S. Department of Defense and allied government contracts. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
SpaceX launched an imaging satellite for Luxembourg and several secondary payloads Tuesday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:53 p.m. Eastern. Its primary payload was the National Advanced Optical System (NAOS) satellite, a high-resolution imaging satellite built by OHB Italia for the government of Luxembourg. The launch also carried seven secondary payloads for Capella Space, Dhruva Space, Pixxel and Planet. The launch was an example of the "shared launch" rideshare services that SpaceX provides in addition to its dedicated rideshare launches. [SpaceNews]
Another Falcon 9 launched more Starlink satellites this morning. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 7:10 a.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying 28 Starlink satellites. Those satellites were deployed a little more than an hour after liftoff. [Florida Today]
Iceye has secured funding from a Polish bank. Iceye announced this week it raised more than 40 million Polish zลoty ($10.9 million) from Vinci S.A., an investment vehicle of Poland's National Development Bank. The announcement described Iceye as a Polish-Finnish company, although the synthetic aperture radar company was founded in Finland in 2014 and has subsidiaries in several countries, including Poland. [European Spaceflight]
The head of RSC Energia has warned employees of the Russian space company that it is in danger of shutting down. In a notice on an internal website, Igor Maltsev, general director of the company, said the company has severe debts and that many employees have lost motivation. He said he could not rule out closing the firm if the problems continued. Energia, whose origins date back to a design bureau created by Sergei Korolev, currently produces Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. [Gazeta.ru]
A radio telescope project is facing allegations of financial mismanagement. The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) is a multibillion-dollar project building a network of thousands of radio antennas in the Australian outback. Costs of the project have gone up significantly, which a whistleblower alleges were due in part to losses from investments using SKAO funds, covered up by reshuffling other funds and claiming losses from currency fluctuations. SKAO is an international organization governed by a treaty that exempts it from taxes and normal legal processes. SKAO leadership has commissioned an external review of those claims. [The Guardian]
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Technical Update
| "When I do tours, I like to say that Starship is real, Starship is big and Starship is really big."
| – Bill Riley, vice president of Starship engineering at SpaceX, during a SpaceX webcast of the latest Starship launch. Riley and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the launch webcast in place of a previously planned "technical update" about Starship, but offered few new technical details about the vehicle.
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