Rocket Report: Rocket Lab’s next step in reuse, Blue Origin engine explodes

Welcome to Edition 6.02 of the Rocket Report! I'm on my third week at Ars, and the space beat is as busy as ever. Going forward, Eric and I will alternate work on the Rocket Report every other week. SpaceX broke its own booster reuse record this week, and a Chinese company made history with the first methane-fueled rocket to achieve orbit. Back on Earth, Blue Origin blew up an engine that was supposed to fly on ULA's second Vulcan rocket.

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.

8am ET update: The list of upcoming launches at the bottom of the Rocket Report has been updated to reflect the successful liftoff of the Chandrayaan-3 mission and delays of the next SpaceX and Rocket Lab missions.

Zhuque-2 rocket makes history. A commercial Chinese firm named LandSpace launched its Zhuque-2 rocket July 11 (US time) and made history as the first company to send a methane-fueled launcher into orbit, beating a bevy of US vehicles to the milestone, Ars reports. In its current form, the Zhuque-2 rocket can loft a payload of up to 1.5 metric tons into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit.

Methane is all the rage ... There are numerous methane-fueled rockets in development, including SpaceX's Starship, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, Blue Origin's New Glenn, and Relativity's Terran R, to name a few. All those can lift significantly more payload to orbit than LandSpace's Zhuque-2, but the Chinese commercial space sector won the "race" to reach orbit with a methane-fueled vehicle. Methane has several benefits in rocketry, and one big one is it makes engines easier to refurbish and reuse. LandSpace's Zhuque-2 booster is designed to eventually be reusable.

Virgin Galactic announces window for next commercial flight. On the heels of Virgin Galactic's first commercial suborbital flight June 29, the company has announced that the window for its next mission opens August 10. Virgin Galactic, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, hopes to launch suborbital hops to the edge of space on a monthly cadence going forward.

Passenger list pending ... Virgin Galactic said it would fly three paying passengers on the August flight but did not announce their identities. The June 29 mission was a research flight for the Italian government, but the next flight is expected to carry private space tourists. The company says it charges about $450,000 per seat for commercial space tourist missions and has about 800 would-be passengers waiting to fly. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Rocket Lab's next launch will take another step toward reuse. The next launch of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket will feature another attempt to recover the first-stage booster at sea. Rocket Lab's CEO, Peter Beck, says the company is taking methodical steps toward eventually reusing the first stage of the light-class Electron rocket but did not identify a timetable for re-flying a booster, Space News reports.

Focusing on marine recovery ... Rocket Lab recovered several Electron boosters intact since announcing plans to reuse the rocket's first stage in 2019. But progress has been relatively slow, and Rocket Lab is now focusing on retrieving boosters from the sea downrange from its launch site in New Zealand, rather than using a helicopter to pluck the rockets and their parachutes out of mid-air. Rocket Lab says the boosters recovered from the water are in better shape than expected, and this next flight—slated to carry seven small satellites into orbit—will debut an optimized parachute design and changes inside the booster to prevent salt water from damaging sensitive internal components.

Astra seeking to raise more money. Astra is pursuing a capital-intensive development of its new Rocket 4 launch vehicle at a time when its stock price has been on a precipitous decline. Now Astra is planning a "reverse stock split" and is attempting to raise up to $65 million through an offering of common stock, CNBC reports. A reverse split can be seen as a sign a company is in distress and is trying to “artificially” boost its stock price, or it can be viewed as a way for a viable company with a beaten-up stock to continue operations on a public stock exchange.

Astra is short on cash ... In its most recent quarterly financial report released in May, Astra said there was "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue. At the time, Astra said its production and operation plans will be scaled back or curtailed if it is unable to raise "substantial additional capital." Astra shelved its Rocket 3 small satellite launch vehicle last year after five failures in seven orbital launch attempts. It's now focusing on development of a larger vehicle called Rocket 4 and spacecraft propulsion systems. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

India wants to get in on the small-satellite launch market. A division of India's Department of Space has announced an effort to transfer technology for the country's newest rocket—the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV)—to the private sector. Indian rocket programs have traditionally been managed by the government, but the commercial arm of the Indian space agency last year awarded a contract to Indian industry to build five Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles on a commercial basis. The PSLV is a medium-class rocket, and the new SSLV is aimed at the smaller end of the satellite launch market.

There are questions about the demand for small launch vehicles ... India has carved a place of its own in the international launch market, primarily due to the success of its PSLV rocket. The smaller SSLV is designed to launch payloads up to 500 kgs (1,100 lbs) into low-Earth orbit, a market segment seemingly saturated by commercial rocket companies. Many of those companies are already pivoting to bigger rockets as they see more customer interest in the medium to heavy end of the launch market. While India's domestic space industry may have a use for a dedicated small launcher, there are major questions about the demand signal internationally. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX sets another rocket reuse record. The launch of a Falcon 9 rocket July 9 from Florida set a new record for the most flights by a SpaceX launch vehicle, with a first-stage booster flying for a 16th time, Ars reports. SpaceX now aims to fly its reusable Falcon 9 boosters as many as 20 times, double the company’s original goal.

SpaceX has launched 47 flights so far this year ... The July 9 launch carried a batch of second-generation Starlink Internet satellites. Just two days earlier, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from California with another group of Starlink satellites. The missions were the 46th and 47th SpaceX flights of 2023, including Falcon 9s, Falcon Heavy missions, and the company's Starship test flight in April. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Date set for next Japanese launch. Japan's space agency has set August 26 for the launch of the next H-2A rocket. The H-2A rocket will deploy an astronomy satellite called the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), along with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission in a bid to become the first Japanese spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.

Return to flight ... The launch of the XRISM and SLIM missions was delayed several months in the wake of the launch failure of Japan's new H3 rocket in March. The H3 rocket's upper-stage engine failed to ignite on the vehicle's inaugural test flight, and the H-2A rocket, which the H3 is designed to replace, uses a similar engine on its second stage. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China's Space Pioneer raises money for reusable rocket. Three months after launching its first test mission into orbit, Chinese commercial company Space Pioneer has secured another round of investment to fund the development of a larger medium-lift rocket called the Tianlong-3, Space News reports. Space Pioneer has now raised $414 million across 11 rounds since its establishment in 2018. A number of the investors are linked to the Chinese state.

Getting serious about reusability ... The first launch of the Tianlong-3 rocket is currently scheduled for May 2024. It is intended to be somewhat comparable to SpaceX's Falcon 9, with a reusable first stage booster. If successful, Space Pioneer claims it will be able to launch 30 times per year from 2025, according to Space News. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

China launches Internet test satellites. A Chinese Long March 2C rocket launched July 9 with two small payloads to test satellite Internet technologies in orbit. The satellites were built by China's state-owned space industry, and there is speculation they could be prototypes or testbeds for a future Chinese broadband megaconstellation similar to SpaceX's Starlink network.

Chinese rockets are flying about once per week ... Two more missions by Chinese rockets this week brought the country's total number of orbital launches this year to 27, about half that of the US launch industry so far in 2023. The vast majority of the US launches have been SpaceX missions.

Blue Origin engine explodes on test stand. A BE-4 engine assigned to fly on United Launch Alliance's second Vulcan rocket recently blew up on a test stand in Texas, CNBC reports. The engine detonated about 10 seconds into a hot-fire test, according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure.

No big deal, ULA boss says ... Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, said the BE-4 engine failed during an "acceptance test" before Blue Origin was set to deliver it to ULA's factory for integration with a Vulcan booster. The two BE-4 engines already integrated with ULA's first Vulcan flight vehicle passed their acceptance testing, and engineers are confident in the engine's design. Bruno said an explosion during an engine acceptance test is "relatively routine" early in the engine's production run. But this isn't great news for ULA's Vulcan rocket program, which is already dealing with an explosion that occurred during a ground test of the rocket's Centaur V upper stage in March. That has pushed back the Vulcan rocket's debut from mid-year to the end of 2023, at the earliest. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Upgrades continue at SpaceX's Starship launch pad. SpaceX continues making quick work to refurbish and beef up the launch pad for its Super Heavy booster and Starship launch vehicle in South Texas. NASASpaceflight.com reported that SpaceX has begun installing a massive steel plate underneath the Starship launch mount. The steel plate and an associated water deluge system are central to SpaceX's effort to reduce damage to the launch pad from the blast of the Super Heavy booster's 33 Raptor engines.

Next steps before second full-up Starship test flight ... Hundreds of concrete trucks have converged on Starbase in recent weeks to help fill the hole carved out under the Starship launch mount following the vehicle's first full-scale test launch in April. Once the pad is ready, SpaceX plans to test-fire the next Super Heavy booster at Starbase before moving into final launch preparations. Elon Musk said a few weeks ago he anticipated SpaceX could have the launch pad and rocket ready for another test flight in the August timeframe. Aside from the remaining technical work, SpaceX must convince the Federal Aviation Administration that it has resolved a concern with Starship's range safety destruct system, which took longer than expected to detonate the rocket in April after veering out of control.

Next three launches

July 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 5-15 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 04:15 UTC

July 16: Electron | "Baby Come Back" | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 23:30 UTC

July 19: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-15 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02:59 UTC