Plus: China pursues reusable rockets
Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, SpaceX had a largely successful Starship test, Rocket Lab opened its Neutron launch site, China takes steps toward rocket reusability and more.
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OUR TOP STORY
| | By Jeff Foust SpaceX completed a largely successful test flight of its Starship vehicle Aug. 26, putting the vehicle's development program back on track after a series of failures earlier this year.
The vehicle's ascent appeared to go as planned, other than the premature shutdown of one of 33 Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster. Starship reached its planned suborbital trajectory after a nominal burn of its six Raptor engines.
Starship then deployed eight mass simulators of next-generation Starlink satellites through a slot-shaped payload bay door. This was a test planned for previous Starship test flights but not carried out because of failures during earlier phases of each mission.
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CIVIL
| | Guangdong is seeking to establish an ecosystem covering launch, satellite communications and applications by streamlining approval processes and ensuring resource support, while also backing early demonstration projects in cutting-edge fields such as space mining and space tourism.
NASA is still working on a strategy to procure a Mars communications spacecraft funded in the budget reconciliation bill enacted in July, even as the agency moves more towards a services approach to communications.
| MILITARY
| | Nuview, a Florida startup building a constellation of lidar satellites, announced a $5 million award from the Defense Department's National Security Innovation Capital program. The funding will allow Orlando-based Nuview to rapidly prototype a lidar (light detection and ranging) payload for a constellation to provide "3D mapping of Earth from orbit" for civil, commercial and defense applications.
Rocket Lab's newly acquired subsidiary Geost has secured an expansion of a U.S. Space Force contract to produce two optical payloads for missions in geostationary orbit. The award, first issued in 2021, has more than doubled in value to $80.7 million and has been extended through July 2026, when Geost is expected to finish development. | | |
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LAUNCH
| | In a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, Virginia, Rocket Lab executives and dignitaries officially opened Launch Complex 3, the site that will host Neutron launches starting as soon as the end of this year. The pad is located next to Launch Complex 2, used for Electron launches.
China is preparing for its first attempt to land a rocket stage after an orbital launch, following years of development and testing. A plethora of reusable launchers being developed would support strategic goals such as constructing proliferated low Earth orbit broadband constellations such as Guowang and Qianfan/Thousand Sails.
Firefly Aerospace said it had concluded an investigation into the failure of the April 29 launch of Alpha, which was lost because of structural failure linked to higher-than-normal heating during the vehicle's ascent. With the completed investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration gave its approval for Alpha to resume launches.
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