Rocket Report: Firefly’s CEO steps down; Artemis II core stage leaves factory

Welcome to Edition 7.03 of the Rocket Report! One week ago, SpaceX suffered a rare failure of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. In fact, it was the first time the latest version of the Falcon 9, known as the Block 5, has ever failed on its prime mission after nearly 300 launches. The world's launch pads have been silent since the grounding of the Falcon 9 fleet after last week's failure. This isn't surprising, but it's noteworthy. After all, the Falcon 9 has flown more this year than all of the world's other rockets combined and is fundamental to much of what the world does in space.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

Astra finally goes private, again. A long-simmering deal for Astra's founders to take the company private has been finalized, the company announced Thursday, capping the rocket launch company’s descent from blank-check darling to delisting in three years, Bloomberg reports. The launch company's valuation peaked at $3.9 billion in 2021, the year it went public, and was worth about $12.2 million at the end of March, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Astra's chief executive officer, Chris Kemp, and chief technology officer, Adam London, founded the company in 2016 with the goal of essentially commoditizing launch services for small satellites. But Astra's rockets failed to deliver and fell short of orbit five times in seven tries.

Spiraling ... Astra's stock price tanked after the spate of launch failures, drying up its funding spigot as Kemp tried to pivot toward a slightly larger, more reliable rocket. Astra acquired a company named Apollo Fusion in 2021, entering a new business segment to produce electric thrusters for small satellites. But Astra's launch business faltered, and last November Kemp and London submitted an offer to retake ownership of the company. Astra announced the closure of the take-private deal Thursday, with Kemp and London acquiring the company's outstanding shares for 50 cents per share in cash, below the stock's final listing price of 53 cents. "We will now focus all of our attention on a successful launch of Rocket 4, delivering satellite engines to our customers, and building a company of consequence," Kemp said. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

Firefly chief leaves company. Launch startup Firefly Aerospace parted ways with CEO Bill Weber, Payload reports. The announcement of Weber's departure late Wednesday came two days after Payload reported Firefly was investigating claims of an alleged inappropriate relationship between him and a female employee. “Firefly Aerospace’s Board of Directors announced that Bill Weber is no longer serving as CEO of the company, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement Wednesday night. Peter Schumacher takes over as interim CEO while Firefly searches for a new permanent chief executive. Schumacher was an interim CEO at Firefly before Weber's hiring in 2022.

Two days and gone ... Payload published the first report of Weber's alleged improper relationship with a female employee Monday. Two days later, Weber was gone. Payload reported an executive brought his concerns about the alleged relationship to Firefly's board and resigned because he lost confidence in leadership at the company. Citing four current and former employees, Payload reported Firefly's culture became "chaotic" since Weber took the helm in 2022 after its acquisition by AE Industrial Partners. The Texas-based company achieved some success during Weber's tenure, with four orbital launches of its Alpha rocket, although two of the flights ended up in lower-than-planned orbits. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Themis hop tests delayed to next year. The initial hop tests of the European Themis reusable booster, developed by ArianeGroup and funded by ESA, won't start until next year, European Spaceflight reports. The Swedish Space Corporation, which operates the space center in Sweden where Themis will initially fly, confirmed the schedule change. Once ArianeGroup moves on to higher altitude flights, the testing will be moved to the Guiana Space Center. ESA awarded the first development contract for the Themis booster in 2019, and the first hop tests were then scheduled for 2022. Themis' hops will be similar to SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket, which performed a series of up-and-down atmospheric test flights before SpaceX started recovering and reusing Falcon 9 boosters.

Fate of Themis ... The Themis booster is powered by the methane-fueled Prometheus engine, also funded by ESA. A large European reusable rocket is unlikely to fly until the 2030s, but a subsidiary of ArianeGroup named MaiaSpace is developing a smaller partially reusable two-stage rocket slated to debut as soon as next year. The Maia rocket will use a modified Themis booster as its first stage. "As a result, for MaiaSpace, the continued and rapid development of the Themis program is essential to ensure it can hit its projected target of an inaugural flight of Maia in 2025," European Spaceflight reports. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Baby steps for Vaya Space. Launch startup Vaya Space has received its first full-size liquid oxygen tank shell for its two-stage Dauntless rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. Robert Fabian, Vaya's chief operating officer, called the delivery an "amazing moment of the company," which was founded in 2017 by former astronaut Sid Gutierrez. Vaya's Dauntless rocket, which is now scheduled to debut in 2026, will be capable of lofting a metric ton of payload mass into low-Earth orbit, roughly comparable in performance to Firefly's Alpha rocket. For the rest of this year, Vaya will focus on testing the hybrid vortex engines that will power the Dauntless rocket, along with the newly delivered liquid oxygen tank.

Saturation ... Vaya is trying to break into a small satellite launch market that seems, from many indications, to be a losing business, at least for new entrants. Rocket Lab is the only company with a long track record of success in the smallsat launch business, and it's transitioning to a larger reusable rocket. Firefly's Alpha rocket appears to be on the cusp of a breakthrough, with several successful launches and a large backlog of launch contracts. But Firefly, too, is eyeing a larger rocket to go after a more lucrative slice of the market. Virgin Orbit went bankrupt, and Astra has washed out of the launch business after a string of rocket failures. Vaya will share a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with another small launch startup named Phantom Space. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

RFA test-fires upper stage. German rocket builder Rocket Factory Augsburg has completed a full-mission hot fire test of its Redshift upper stage, European Spaceflight reports. The stage will now be sent to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland ahead of an inaugural flight of the RFA One rocket later this year. The RFA One will have three stages, stand nearly 100 feet (30 meters) tall, and can carry nearly 2,900 pounds (1,300 kilograms) of payload into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit. It has a good chance to be the first of several privately developed small orbital-class European rockets to reach the launch pad.

Where things stand ... With the hot-fire test, the rocket's Redshift upper stage is now fully qualified for flight, according to RFA. The upper stage will next be delivered to Scotland for payload integration. The second stage of the RFA One completed qualification testing last year. And the booster stage for the RFA One rocket completed a test-firing at SaxaVord with four of its kerosene-fueled Helix engines in May. The company is now preparing for a full-scale hot-fire test of the first stage with all nine engines. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9's streak of perfection ends. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered an upper-stage engine failure and deployed a batch of Starlink Internet satellites into a perilously low orbit after launch from California on July 11, the first blemish on the workhorse launcher's record in more than 300 missions since 2016, Ars reports. The upper stage of the Falcon 9 failed during a second engine burn that was required to place 20 Starlink Internet satellites into a stable orbit. The rocket deployed the Starlink satellites in a lower-than-planned orbit, and atmospheric drag was expected to pull all the spacecraft back to Earth for destructive reentries. SpaceX said the upper stage developed a liquid oxygen leak that led to the failure.

Grounded by the FAA ... Going into the failed mission, the current version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, known as the Falcon 9 Block 5, was indisputably the most reliable launch vehicle in history. Since debuting in May 2018, the Falcon 9 Block 5, which NASA has certified for astronaut flights, never had a mission failure in all of its 297 launches before the ill-fated Starlink 9-3 mission. The Falcon 9 Block 5 now has a 99.7 percent success rate. This is still an enviable number for any launch company. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Falcon 9 rocket while SpaceX investigates the failure. However, SpaceX is making preparations to resume Falcon flights as soon as this weekend, pending FAA approval.

Long March 12 on the cusp of launch. China is set to boost its space launch capabilities as preparations for the first launch of the Long March 12 are underway at a new commercial space launch center, Space News reports. Flight hardware for the first Long March 12 rocket has been delivered to the Wenchang launch base on Hainan Island, suggesting the rocket could launch as soon as August. The medium-lift Long March 12 is designed to launch payloads up to 10 to 12 metric tons (approximately 22,000 pounds to 26,500 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. It was developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, part of China's apparatus of state-owned aerospace companies.

A new engine ... The Long March 12 will debut the new YF-100K engine, an uprated version of the YF-100 engine flying on the Long March 5, 6, 7, and 8 rockets. The YF-100K will also power the first stages of China's Long March 10 rocket, a human-rated launcher in development to send Chinese astronauts to the Moon before the end of the decade. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Super Heavy fires up at Starbase. The next test flight of the company's next-generation Starship vehicle appears to be on track for liftoff next month. On Monday, SpaceX test-fired the 33 Raptor engines on the Starship rocket's Super Heavy booster at the company's Starbase facility in South Texas, Ars reports. The methane-fueled engines fired for about eight seconds, long enough for SpaceX engineers to verify all systems functioned normally. At full power, the 33 engines generated nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, twice the power output of NASA's iconic Saturn V Moon rocket. The test moves SpaceX closer to the fifth full-scale test flight of Starship.

To catch or not to catch? … Back in May, SpaceX test-fired the engines on the Starship upper stage for the next test flight. Lessons learned on the fourth Starship flight in June prompted SpaceX to replace the heat shield on the ship. That work is continuing inside a high bay at Starbase. Barring any surprises, it certainly looks like SpaceX is on track to launch Starship again in August. One of the main goals for this next flight may be an attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster back on its launch pad. If SpaceX tries this, it will be a can't-miss event for space enthusiasts.

Artemis II's core stage is on the move. The core stage of NASA's second Space Launch System rocket rolled out at its factory in New Orleans on Tuesday. The 212-foot-long (65-meter) core stage left the Michoud Assembly Facility for loading onto NASA's Pegasus barge to begin the roughly one-week journey from New Orleans to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will be prepared for launch on the Artemis II mission as soon as next year. The core stage, with its shuttle-era RS-25 main engines already installed, will undergo final touch-ups inside the Vehicle Assembly Building before stacking between two solid rocket boosters.

A noteworthy milestone … Built by Boeing, the core stage is the largest element of the SLS rocket. Its arrival at the Florida spaceport will mark a turning point in the Artemis II launch campaign. The rocket will launch four NASA astronauts into space to begin a journey around the far side of the Moon on the Artemis II mission, the first flight of humans to cislunar space since the last Apollo mission in 1972. NASA says the Artemis II mission is scheduled for launch in September 2025.  (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

SpaceX headquarters moving to Texas. Elon Musk said Tuesday that he will move the headquarters of SpaceX and his social media company X from California to Texas in response to a new gender identity law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, Ars reports. Musk said SpaceX's headquarters will move from Hawthorne, California, to the company's Starship launch site, named Starbase, near Brownsville, Texas. He said he will also relocate X's headquarters from San Francisco to Austin, and he moved Tesla's headquarters from California to Texas in 2021.

Staking SpaceX's future in Texas … After Tesla moved its headquarters to Texas, Musk committed to maintaining an engineering hub for the electric car company in California. One of Tesla's largest factories also remains in California. Relocating SpaceX's headquarters is also likely to be largely symbolic, with engineering support and production for the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft likely remaining in Southern California. However, Musk has already chosen Texas as the home for the programs that will shape SpaceX's long-term future. The giant Starship rocket is built and launched from the Texas Gulf Coast, SpaceX tests engines in Central Texas (and plans to build them there), and the company manufactures Starlink user kits at a new factory outside of Austin.

Next three launches

July 21: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-4 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04:59 UTC

July 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-9 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 04:44 UTC

July 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-4 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 09:44 UTC