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Welcome to Rocket Report 7. 07! SpaceX hasn’t missed a beat since the Federal Aviation Administration gave the company the green light to resume Falcon nine launches after a failure last month. In nine days, SpaceX unveiled 10 units of the Falcon 9 rocket, leveraging its three Falcon 9 launch pads. This is a remarkable rate in itself, but even if it’s a small pattern, it’s impressive from the start after the rocket has landed.
As always, we welcome submissions from readers. If you don’t need to miss any issues, subscribe to the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-compatible versions of the site). Each report will also include information on small, medium, and heavy-range rockets. as a quick refresher of the next 3 scheduled releases.
A quick turnaround for Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab unveiled its 52nd Electron rocket on August 11 from its personal spaceport on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula, Space News reports. The company’s light-class Electron rocket deployed a small radar imaging satellite into a medium-inclination orbit for Capella Space. the shortest turnaround time between two Rocket Lab projects from its main launch base in New Zealand, less than nine days after an Electron rocket lifted off from the same pad carrying a radar imaging satellite for Japan’s Synspective. Capella’s Acadia 3 satellite originally scheduled to launch in July, Capella asked for time to conduct more tests on its spacecraft. Rocket Lab swapped positions in the Electron launch series and introduced the Synspective project first.
Now, silence on the launch pad. . . Rocket Lab praised the change as an example of the flexibility provided through Electron, as well as the ability to deliver payloads into fast orbits that are not feasible with percent-trip missions, according to Space News. In this custom launch service, Rocket Lab charges a launch value higher than the launch value of a small payload on a SpaceX percent-of-trip mission. However, SpaceX’s trip percentage launches gobble up the largest percentage of small satellites in Rocket Lab’s addressable market. On Friday, a Falcon nine rockets are expected to launch 116 small payloads into polar orbit. Meanwhile, Rocket Lab is only making plans for one more launch before the end of September and plans to make 15 to 18 Electron launches this year, a record for the company still far below. the 22 planned earlier in the year. Rocket Lab says visitor preparation is the explanation why it won’t live up to expectations.
Defense contractors team up to manufacture counterfeit rockets. Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are joining forces to restart production of forged rocket engines, announcing a strategic partnership agreement that could see new engines come off the line as early as 2025, Breaking Defense reports. The new deal could position a third supplier to enter the long-suffering forged rocket engine commercial base, which currently includes only L3Harris subsidiary Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman in the United States. Both corporations have struggled to meet the demands of weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed and RTX, who desperately want forged rocket engines for products such as Javelin or the PAC-3 missiles used using the Patriot missile defense formula.
Pressure from startups. . . Demand for forged rocket engines has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the United States and its partners have filled their stockpiles of weapons such as the Javelin and Stinger, as well as offering engines to meet the developing desires in the domain of the area. Although General Dynamics has so far kept quiet about its interest in the forged rocket motor market, several defense generation startups, such as Ursa Major Technologies, Anduril, and X-Bow Systems, have announced plans to enter the market. (submitted via Ken the Bin)
Polarizing with the crew. SpaceX will conduct the first manned space flight over the Earth’s poles, likely before the end of this year, Ars reports. The Crew Dragon project itself will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and will be joined by a polar explorer, roboticist and filmmaker with whom he has had friendships in recent years. The “Fram2” project, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch in a polar room from SpaceX’s launch facility in Florida and fly directly over the North and South Poles. The project, which will last between three and five days, will fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere, to take advantage of maximum illumination.
Wang’s inclination is Wang’s prerogative. . . Wang told Ars that he wanted to try something new and bring to light a polar project aligned with his interests in cold places on Earth. It will pay for the value through advertising, and SpaceX has shown in recent years that it can launch satellites into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, something no one has done in more than 50 years. The steepest flight ever made by a human spacecraft was that of the Soviet Vostok 6 project in 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova’s spacecraft reached 65. 1 degrees. From now on, Fram2 will fly continuously and directly over the poles.
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