Rocket Report: Chinese firm suffers another failure; Ariane 6 soars in debut

Welcome to Edition 7.02 of the Rocket Report! The highlight of this week was the hugely successful debut of Europe's Ariane 6 rocket. They will address the upper stage issue, I am sure. Given Europe's commitment to zero debris, stranding the second stage is not great. But for a debut launch of a large new vehicle, this was really promising.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Chinese launch company suffers another setback. Chinese commercial rocket firm iSpace suffered a launch failure late Wednesday in a fresh setback for the company, Space News reports. The four-stage Hyperbola-1 solid rocket lifted off from Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert at 7:40 pm ET (23:40 UTC) on Wednesday. Beijing-based iSpace later issued a release stating that the rocket’s fourth stage suffered an anomaly. The statement did not reveal the name nor nature of the payloads lost on the flight.

Early troubles are perhaps to be expected ... Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd., or iSpace, made history in 2019 as the first privately funded Chinese company to reach orbit, with the solid-fueled Hyperbola-1. However the rocket suffered three consecutive failures following that feat. The company recovered with two successful flights in 2023 before the latest failure. The loss could add to reliability concerns over China’s commercial launch industry as it follows Space Pioneer’s recent catastrophic static-fire explosion. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Feds backtrack on former Firefly investor. A long, messy affair between US regulators and a Ukrainian businessman named Max Polyakov seems to have finally been resolved, Ars reports. On Tuesday, Polyakov's venture capital firm Noosphere Venture Partners announced that the US government has released him and his related companies from all conditions imposed upon them in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This decision comes more than two years after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the US Air Force forced Polyakov to sell his majority stake in the Texas-based launch company Firefly.

Not a spy ... This rocket company was founded in 2014 by an engineer named Tom Markusic, who ran into financial difficulty as he sought to develop the Alpha rocket. Markusic had to briefly halt Firefly's operations before Polyakov, a colorful and controversial Ukrainian businessman, swooped in and provided a substantial infusion of cash into the company. "The US government quite happily allowed Polyakov to pump $200 million into Firefly only to decide he was a potential spy just as the company's first rocket was ready to launch," Ashlee Vance, a US journalist who chronicled Polyakov's rise, told Ars. It turns out, Polyakov wasn't a spy.

Pentagon ICBM costs soar. The price tag for the Pentagon's next-generation nuclear-tipped Sentinel ICBMs has ballooned by 81 percent in less than four years, The Register reports. This triggered a mandatory congressional review. On Monday, the Department of Defense released the results of this review, with Under-secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante saying the Sentinel missile program met established criteria for being allowed to continue after his "comprehensive, unbiased review of the program."

Trust us, the military says ... The Sentinel project is the DoD's attempt to replace its aging fleet of ground-based nuclear-armed Minuteman III missiles (first deployed in 1970) with new hardware. When it passed its Milestone B decision (authorization to enter the engineering and manufacturing phase) in September 2020, the cost was a fraction of the $141 billion the Pentagon now estimates Sentinel will cost, LaPlante said. To give that some perspective, the proposed annual budget for the Department of Defense for its fiscal 2025 is nearly $850 billion. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Polish rocket reaches space for the first time. The Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has made history with the launch of its ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket from the Andøya Space Centre in Norway on July 3, European Spaceflight reports. Powered by a hybrid core stage and two solid-fuel boosters, the rocket reached an altitude of 101 km, the first time a Polish rocket has reached outer space.

Operational flights next ... "This is a historic day for the Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation, but also a historic moment for the entire Polish rocket community," said Michał Wierciński, vice president of the Polish Space Agency. With the rocket successfully reaching space for the first time, operational flights can now commence. The rocket has already secured a customer with Polish company Thorium Space expected to conduct research missions aboard ILR-33 Amber 2K flights between 2025 and 2027. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Dawn Aerospace obtains flight clearance. New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace announced Thursday it has received certification from the Civil Aviation Authority in that country to fly its Mk-II Aurora space plane at unlimited speeds, including supersonic, up to an altitude of 80,000 feet. The Mk-II Aurora is a rocket-powered aircraft, designed to be the first vehicle ever to fly to 100 km altitude twice in a single day. "This unlocks the next major performance milestone for the Mk-II vehicle, namely supersonic flight," said the company's chief executive, Stefan Powell.

Seeking to go supersonic ... In the last three years, Dawn has completed 50 flight tests under both jet and rocket power, operating under more restrictive licenses. This Mk-II Aurora vehicle measures 4.5 meters long and is powered by a combustion rocket engine fueled by kerosene and hydrogen peroxide. The upcoming flight test campaign, scheduled from July through September, will consist of up to a dozen flights. The primary objective is to test the vehicle's speed up to Mach 1.1.

Virgin Galactic completes manufacturing facility. On Wednesday, the suborbital space tourism company said it had completed a new manufacturing facility in Phoenix, where final assembly of its next-generation Delta spaceships is scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2025. The facility is scheduled to have tooling installed beginning during the final quarter of this year. The Delta class ships are designed to be capable of supporting a higher flight rate, up to eight missions a month.

Building the machine to build the machine ... The company plans to assemble the Delta ships at the new facility and perform some ground testing. Then, Virgin Galactic’s mothership will ferry completed spaceships to Spaceport America, New Mexico, for flight testing ahead of commercial operations. The company hopes to begin commercial operations with the Delta ships in 2026. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

A positive step for European space sector. A Germany-based fund, Alpine Space Ventures, said in a news release Thursday it has raised 170 million euros to invest primarily in the European space sector. The fund will invest in a concentrated portfolio of no more than 10 to 15 selected targets, which will receive up to 5 million euros initially, with capital reserved for follow-on rounds. One of the founding partners is Bulent Altan, an early leader at SpaceX.

VC funding needed ... Altan told me that the majority of the firm's investments would be "one to two steps further downstream from launch," with "satellites and components right now being the focus." Although the firm is not likely to invest directly in launch companies, this development is important for a couple of reasons. One, to thrive, the commercial space sector in Europe needs a more robust venture capital environment. And two, a more vibrant in-space sector could drive demand for European launch services.

Ariane 6 makes a largely successful debut. The first European Ariane 6 rocket fired off its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon rainforest and climbed into orbit Tuesday, restoring Europe's ability to put its own large satellites into space, Ars reports. The European Space Agency paid more than $4 billion to get the Ariane 6 rocket to this point, with the goal of replacing the Ariane 5 with a cheaper, more capable launcher. But there are still pressing questions about Ariane 6's cost per launch, and whether the rocket will ever be able to meet its price target and compete with SpaceX and other companies in the commercial market.

Only a slight sting in the tail ... European officials were celebratory after the launch. “Europe is back," said Josef Aschbacher, ESA's director general. "This powers Europe back into space.” The flight went essentially perfectly until a malfunction on the upper stage prevented the Vinci engine from completing a third burn to steer back into Earth's atmosphere for a targeted, destructive reentry. The restartable Vinci engine is intended to allow Ariane 6 to deploy payloads at different altitudes, or inject satellites directly into high-energy geosynchronous orbits, like SpaceX's Falcon launchers or United Launch Alliance's Atlas V and Vulcan rockets.

Some intrigue surrounds Vega C customers. The manufacturer of the Vega C rocket, Avio, has reached an agreement to break its rocket away from Arianespace for marketing and operations. Under the terms of the resolution, Arianespace will remain the launch service provider for the final Vega flight scheduled for later this year, and all Vega C flights up to and including flight VV29, which is currently expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2025, European Spaceflight reports.

A request rather than a requirement ... Following that, all customers who have contracted Vega C flights through Arianespace will be offered the opportunity to transfer their contracts to Avio as the new launch service provider for their missions. When asked if the agreement would allow customers to shop around instead of transferring their contracts to Avio, the European Space Agency’s head of strategy and institutional launches, Lucia Linares, gave a diplomatic non-answer. “Arianespace will request agreement for the transfer of those launch service contracts to the clients, which are European institutional customers,” Linares told European Spaceflight. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Congress to NASA: find more customers for SLS rocket. As part of the new NASA reauthorization bill working its way through Congress, there is a curious section on the Space Launch System rocket, Ars reports. The section is titled "Reaffirmation of the Space Launch System," and in it Congress asserts its commitment to a flight rate of twice per year for the rocket. The reauthorization legislation, which cleared a House committee on Wednesday, also said NASA should identify other customers for the rocket.

Subsidized launch system ... Congress is asking for NASA to study demand for the SLS rocket and estimate "cost and schedule savings for reduced transit times" for deep space missions due to the "unique capabilities" of the rocket. The space agency also must identify any "barriers or challenges" that could impede use of the rocket by other entities other than NASA, and estimate the cost of overcoming those barriers. It seems preposterous that Congress would ask NASA to identify subsidies to lower the cost of the SLS rocket in order to sell more of them to commercial customers, but here we are.

SpaceX rolls next Super Heavy booster to the pad. The company rolled Starship's giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, out to the launch pad at Starbase on Wednesday, Space.com reports. This booster will be used for the fifth flight test of the Starship rocket. Video of the rollout provided by SpaceX also showcased the company's new "Starfactory" facility in South Texas.

Flight test possibly in August ... When it's complete and fully optimized, Starfactory is intended to churn out one Starship every day, SpaceX representatives have said. As for the fifth flight test, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said it could come in about four weeks, so perhaps during the first half of August.

Next three launches

July 12: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-3 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02:35 UTC

July 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-4 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 07:35 UTC

July 16: Falcon 9 | Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission | Vandenberg Space Force Base | 03:40 UTC