Welcome to the 7.09 edition of Rocket Report! When will SpaceX launch the next test flight of Starship? It certainly doesn’t seem imminent, as the SpaceX ground team in Texas is hard at work strengthening the launch pad in preparation to catch the rocket’s giant Super Heavy booster when it returns to the launch site on its next flight. Meanwhile, the FAA is reviewing a proposal to recover SpaceX’s booster on the ground for the first time. And on Thursday, a NASA official overseeing SpaceX’s Starship efforts said the next test flight is scheduled for “fall,” suggesting it could be more than a month away. They also listed the next three launches as “TBD” (not yet determined) because SpaceX is waiting for FAA approval to resume Falcon 9 launches following this week’s failed booster landing, and because the Polaris Dawn mission is on hold due to bad weather forecasts.
As always, we Reader submissions welcomeIf you don’t want to miss an issue, subscribe using the box below (the form won’t appear in the AMP-enabled version of the site). Each report includes information on a small, medium, and large rocket, as well as an overview of the next three launches listed on the calendar.
Firefly has a new CEO. Jason Kim, former president of Boeing satellite maker Millennium Space Systems, has been named CEO of Firefly Aerospace, effective October 1. Aviation Week & Space Technology ReportKim joins Firefly, an ambitious space transportation startup that has raised nearly $600 million from investors since its founding in 2021 and aims to launch a commercial lunar lander for NASA by the end of the year. Firefly is also partnering with Northrop Grumman to develop a medium-lift rocket with the goal of winning resupply missions to the International Space Station and payload launch missions for the U.S. military and commercial customers.
Kim Jong Un demonstrates his national security capabilities …At Millennium, Kim oversaw the completion of several national security space missions, including Victus Knox, a U.S. Space Command’s satellite-readiness and launch mission. Millennium manufactured the satellite for the Victus Knox mission, and Firefly Aerospace successfully launched the satellite on an Alpha rocket just 27 hours after receiving the launch order from the military, which required Millennium and Firefly to quickly integrate the satellite onto the Alpha rocket. Kim succeeds Bill Weber, who stepped down as Firefly’s CEO in July following allegations of inappropriate relationships with female employees.
New Shepard takes off again. Blue Origin on Thursday launched six passengers, including a NASA-backed researcher and the youngest woman in space, on a suborbital flight outside the lower atmosphere on the company’s eighth crewed spaceflight. CBS News reportsUniversity of Florida researcher Rob Phaal, philanthropist Nikolina Erlich, adventurer Eugene Glynn, Vanderbilt University cardiologist Elman Jahangir, American-Israeli entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin, and University of North Carolina senior Carsen Kitchen launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket from Jeff Bezos’ West Texas launch site. Kitchen became the youngest woman to fly more than 100 kilometers (62 miles), and Phaal became the first NASA-funded researcher to fly on a suborbital rocket. Blue Origin and its competitor in the suborbital human spaceflight market, Virgin Galactic, have long touted the ability of their spacecraft to support human research in microgravity.
3 good shots … This was Blue Origin’s first New Shepard flight since May 19, when one of the crew capsule’s three main parachutes did not fully deploy during descent. Passengers on that flight were safe, and Blue Origin said the capsule could return safely with only one parachute if two failed. Blue Origin said it had identified the cause of the parachute problem on the May flight, but did not provide details other than to say the investigation was “focused on the retraction system, which transitions the parachute from retracted to unretracted, which did not function as designed on one of NS-25’s three parachutes.” Space news coverage.
ABL rocket test failure caused damage to ground systems. A fire that broke out on a launch pad in Alaska last month not only destroyed an RS1 rocket ABL Space Systems was preparing to launch, but also damaged ground systems at the site. ABL said in an update posted to X:The company said the fire broke out “outside the base at RS1” after the booster’s 11 engines shut down during an aborted test launch on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The fire spread due to a fuel leak from two engines, and ABL’s launch team was able to extinguish it for more than 11 minutes using water and inert gas. But the remote launch site has no direct water supply, and mobile water tanks emptied, allowing the fire to spread until the rocket collapsed. ABL said most of the piping and electrical connections to the launch platform were damaged, but the launch platform structure, flame deflectors, and other equipment were intact.
Few details about next steps … ABL released a detailed update on its investigation into the test failure, notable for its openness. Engineers found that the two engines that leaked and caused the fire experienced “combustion instability” during the launch sequence. ABL said it believes differences in the RS1 rocket, called the Block 2 design, led to the launch at a higher energy than expected. The company plans to return the damaged ground support equipment from Alaska to its Long Beach, California, facility for refurbishment, and the next RS1 rocket is “progressing well in production,” ABL said. But the company did not provide any information on the corrective actions or the timeline for implementing them and returning RS1 to the launch pad. ABL aims to compete with more established small satellite launch companies, such as Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace, but its RS1 rocket has not made it very far from the launch pad. ABL’s first orbital launch attempt in January 2023 ended when the RS1 rocket lost power and fell to the launch pad.
