Rocket Report: Falcon 9 flies for 300th time; an intriguing launch from Russia

Welcome to Edition 6.31 of the Rocket Report! Photographers at Cape Canaveral, Florida, noticed a change to the spaceport's skyline this week. Blue Origin has erected a full-size simulator of its New Glenn rocket vertically on its launch pad for a series of fit checks and tests. Late last year, we reported Blue Origin was serious about getting the oft-delayed New Glenn rocket off the ground by the end of 2024. This is a good sign of progress toward that goal, but there's a long, long way to go. It was fun to watch preparations for the inaugural flights of a few other heavy-lift rockets in the last couple of years (Starship, SLS, and Vulcan). This year, it's New Glenn.

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.

Russia launches a classified satellite. On February 9, Russia launched its first orbital mission of the year with the liftoff of a Soyuz-2-1v rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the far north of the country. The two-stage rocket delivered a classified satellite into orbit for the Russian military, Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com reports. In keeping with the Russian military's naming convention, the satellite is known simply as Kosmos 2575, and there's little indication about what it will do in space, except for one key fact.

But wait, there's more ... It turns out the launch of Kosmos 2575 occurred at exactly the same time of day as another Soyuz-2-1v rocket launched on December 27 with a Russian military satellite named Kosmos 2574. The newer spacecraft launched into the same orbital plane as Kosmos 2574, a strong indication that the two satellites have a shared mission. In recent years, Russia has tested rendezvous, proximity operations, and, at least in one instance, a projectile that would have applications for an anti-satellite weapon. You can be sure the US military and a global community of hobbyist satellite trackers will watch closely to see if these two satellites approach one another. If they do, they could continue technology demonstrations for an anti-satellite system. It's unclear if the recent revelations regarding US officials' concerns about Russian anti-satellite capabilities are related to these recent launches.

European startup testing methane-fueled rocket engine. Space transportation startup The Exploration Company has continued testing its methane-fueled Huracán engine, which will power an in-space and lunar transportation vehicle under development, European Spaceflight reports. Most recently, the Huracán engine completed another round of thrust chamber testing using liquid methane fuel as a coolant and tested a new thermal barrier coating. The methane/liquid oxygen engine is undergoing testing at a facility in Lampoldshausen, Germany, ahead of use on The Exploration Company's Nyx Moon spacecraft, a transfer vehicle designed for transportation to and from cislunar space and also capable of Moon landings. The Nyx Moon is an evolution of a transfer vehicle the European startup is developing to ferry satellites between different orbits around Earth.

Other uses for Huracán... The Exploration Company appears to be positioning itself not only as a builder and operator of orbital and lunar transfer vehicles but also as a propulsion supplier to other space companies. In 2022, The Exploration Company received funding for the Huracán engine from the French government. At the time, the company described the engine as serving the needs of “the upper stages of small launchers and those of orbital vehicles." (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX launches commercial Moon mission. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a privately developed lunar lander launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Thursday. The vehicle, built by a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines, was the second US-made lunar lander to launch from Florida in a little more than a month. The renaissance in American lunar landers represents the vanguard of NASA's program to return humans to the Moon and establish a more permanent presence, Ars reports. The first mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-1, has a chance to become the first US-built spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon since 1972. The IM-1 mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which has the aim of finding lower-cost transportation services to ferry experiments and payloads to the Moon.

Not trivial ... As if landing on the Moon wasn't enough of a challenge, the IM-1 lander, named Odysseus, uses a mixture of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants rather than the room-temperature fuels used by all previous Moon landers. Intuitive Machines chose these propellants because they are significantly less toxic than hypergolic fuels, and they allow the small lander to have a more powerful engine that can get to the Moon in days rather than a month or longer. However, cryogenic fuels are more challenging to work with because they must be kept chilled, limiting the time they can be stored for usage. Because of this, the lander had to be fueled just a couple of hours before liftoff while it was already closed up inside the Falcon 9's payload fairing on the launch pad. SpaceX had to modify the Falcon 9's second stage to route propellant into the lander's tanks. The late fueling procedure was "not trivial," said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Missile defense satellites deployed by Falcon 9. Two prototype satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and four missile-tracking satellites for the US Space Force rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Wednesday from Florida's Space Coast, Ars reports. These satellites are part of a new generation of spacecraft designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia and perhaps emerging missile threats from Iran or North Korea, which are developing their own hypersonic weapons. Hypersonic missiles are smaller and more maneuverable than conventional ballistic missiles, meaning they can evade detection by the US military's legacy missile defense satellites.

Military exercises ahead ... The Missile Defense Agency and Space Force satellites use different types of sensors to detect and track missile flights. The reason military officials opted to launch them together is to allow all six satellites to participate in military exercises later this year, in which the Space Force satellites will initially detect a missile launch with wide-view sensors, then cue the more sensitive MDA satellites to precisely track the missile and develop a firing solution for an interceptor that could shoot the missile out of the sky. These spacecraft are the final prototypes for a future military constellation of hundreds of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites to provide a global hypersonic missile-tracking capability. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

300 and counting for Falcon 9. SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket launched for the 300th time on Thursday, carrying another batch of Starlink Internet satellites into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. This is a remarkable milestone for the Falcon 9, which has flown more than any other single type of US rocket in history. This launch was also notable in that it was SpaceX's third Falcon 9 flight in a little more than 23 hours, following back-to-back launches from Florida Wednesday night into Thursday morning. Those two launches are covered in the two entries above this one.

Rolling on and rolling by … Last year, we reported the SpaceX steamroller had shifted into a higher gear. SpaceX keeps finding higher gears for its steamroller, with the goal of flying more than 140 missions in 2024. Taking into account its launches since January 1, SpaceX is on pace for about 120 launches by the end of the year. Another way of looking at SpaceX's launch statistics is to measure how many flights the company has accomplished in the last 365 days. As of Thursday, that number is at 101. Oh, and SpaceX has racked up 281 successful missions in a row with the Falcon rocket family, dating back to a prelaunch explosion in 2016. That's nearly three times the longest streak of successful flights by any other rocket in history.

First flight-ready Ariane 6 on the way to Kourou. The stages that make up the central core of Europe’s new rocket, Ariane 6, have left mainland Europe and are heading toward Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, according to the European Space Agency. Shipping across the Atlantic, the main stage and upper stage were loaded into the purpose-built hybrid sailing ship Canopée at the harbors of Bremen, Germany, and Le Havre, France. The vessel is due to arrive in Kourou, French Guiana, before the end of February, and the rocket components will be trucked to a hangar at the Guiana Space Center for prelaunch processing.

On track for June … The first flight of Europe's Ariane 6 rocket remains on schedule for no earlier than June 15. ESA officials set this schedule following a series of checkouts and demonstrations last year using a test version of the Ariane 6 on its launch pad in French Guiana. Once the flight-worthy Ariane 6 arrives in French Guiana, technicians will connect the core stage and upper stage horizontally, then transfer the rocket to its launch pad and raise it vertically. Once upright, two solid-fueled boosters will be installed, followed by the payload shroud, or nose cone, containing the test flight's satellite passengers. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Starship fully stacked for third flight. Over the last week, SpaceX has rolled out the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage to their launch pad in South Texas. This is in preparation for the third full-scale test flight of Starship, which could happen as soon as early March. On Tuesday, teams lifted Starship on top of the Super Heavy booster to complete stacking of the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket. That was followed by countdown rehearsals and propellant loading tests later in the week. From a technical perspective, it appears as if SpaceX could be ready to launch Starship quite soon.

Pending approval … As with SpaceX's first two Starship test flights last year, the company will need to receive a commercial launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration before proceeding with the next launch. For this to happen, SpaceX must submit the results of its investigation into what happened on the second test flight in November. That test flight was largely successful, but the Super Heavy booster exploded as it began to maneuver toward a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Then Starship disintegrated in the final moments of its burn around seven minutes after liftoff, just before reaching its desired velocity. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

New Glenn makes an appearance. This week, Blue Origin raised a simulator for its New Glenn rocket vertically at Space Launch Complex-36, the company's launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This is a sign of progress for the long-delayed New Glenn rocket program, and we should be seeing many more signs of activity at Cape Canaveral in the coming weeks and months if Blue Origin is really on track to launch the first New Glenn by the end of the year. We believe this simulator was built to mimic the dimensions and weight of a New Glenn rocket, allowing workers to test the launch pad's transporter/erector and strongback.

A first … Blue Origin largely finished construction of the launch pad in Florida a couple of years ago, but this is the first time anything resembling a New Glenn rocket has been seen upright at the launch site. Photographer Max Evans from NASASpaceflight.com captured beautiful views of the New Glenn simulator from a boat just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. The real New Glenn will be a beauty.

ULA still riding high from “perfect” debut of Vulcan. Tory Bruno, United Launch Alliance’s CEO, says the successful inaugural flight of the company’s Vulcan rocket January 8 was “dead nominal” and provided Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander with a “bullseye insertion” into its targeted highly elliptical orbit around Earth, Space News reports. Bruno heralded the outcome of the Vulcan launch as vindication for ULA’s technology and approach to rocket development, which contrasts with the iterative development strategy favored by companies like SpaceX. “You can fly, fail, fix; nothing wrong with it,” Bruno said. Instead, ULA followed a “rigorous design process” with an emphasis on ground testing and computer simulations. “That’s how this was done and my guys just did an outstanding job.”

There’s another way … It’s easy to see why Bruno sees ULA’s approach as a vindication. The Vulcan rocket did its job, and not many companies can say that about the debut flight of a brand-new launch vehicle. And Vulcan has a bright future, at least in the near- to mid-term, with numerous launch contracts with Amazon and the US military. SpaceX’s Starship rocket is the most obvious example of an iterative development, where engineers emphasize flight testing. Proponents of this strategy argue it ultimately results in quicker results, lower costs, and a rocket that is just as reliable as a vehicle developed using ULA’s approach. (submitted by Ken the Bin, EllPeaTea, and Jay500001)

Next three launches

February 17: H3 | VEP-4 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 00:22 UTC

February 17: GSLV Mk.II | INSAT 3DS | Satish Dhawan Space Center, India | 12:05 UTC

February 18: Electron | ADRAS-J | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 14:52 UTC