Rocket Report: Starship heats up in third flight; Chinese lunar launch failure

Welcome to Edition 6.35 of the Rocket Report! It's been a big week for rocket failures, with a small launch in Japan going sideways shortly after liftoff, a rare misstep for China's Long March family of rockets, and another Starship flight test. The latter mission was not really a failure, of course, in that the experimental vehicle took a big step toward becoming operational with a nominal first stage performance and good flight of Starship in space.

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.

Japanese small-lift rocket lost shortly after liftoff. Tokyo-based startup Space One failed Wednesday to become Japan's first private firm to put a satellite into orbit after its solid-fuel Kairos rocket burst into flames just seconds after liftoff, The Japan Times reports. The 18-meter, 23-ton Kairos rocket, carrying a mockup of a government spy satellite, took off from a new space facility in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture. The rocket exploded in midair five seconds after launch, with its remains falling onto a nearby mountainous area.

No impact to big dreams ...  Live news footage of the event showed fragments of the rocket lying on the ground, as firefighters attempted to extinguish a large fire. The fire was put out eventually, and nobody was hurt. Space One executives said they are investigating the cause of the explosion but remained committed to the startup’s goal of undertaking 20 launches per year by the end of 2029 and 30 launches in the 2030s. (submitted by tsunam, Jay500001, gizmo23, and Ken the Bin)

Stratolaunch deploys and honest-to-goodness payload. Built and flown by Stratolaunch, the massive Roc aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday. The airplane flew out over the Pacific Ocean, where it deployed the Talon-A vehicle, which looks something like a mini space shuttle. This marked the first time this gargantuan airplane released a viable payload, the first Talon-A vehicle, TA-1, which is intended to fly at hypersonic speed. During the flight, TA-1 didn't quite reach hypersonic velocity, which begins at Mach 5, or five times greater than the speed of sound, Ars reports.

A big step for Ursa Major ... The TA-1 vehicle was powered by the Hadley rocket engine designed and built by Ursa Major, which specializes in the development of rocket propulsion engines. Hadley is a 5,000-lb-thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene, oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle rocket engine for small vehicles. Founded in 2015, Ursa Major seeks to provide off-the-shelf propulsion solutions to launch customers. While Ursa Major started small, the company is already well into the development of its much larger Ripley engine. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay50001)

Stoke Space tests second stage. The Washington-based launch company recently carried out the first test of the full-size 30-thruster version of the innovative engine that Stoke is producing for its in-development second stage, NASASpaceflight.com reports. This will be an integral part of its future Nova rocket, which aims to be a fully reusable rocket. The engine test took place on February 26 and follows the engine’s first test flight on its prototype vehicle, Hopper 2, in September 2023. On that testbed half of the 30 thrusters were fired.

A flight every 24 hours? ... At approximately 30.5 meters tall when fully stacked, Nova is being designed to launch with a wide variety of potential payloads and functions. These include not only deploying satellites but also performing manufacturing and science experiments in the vacuum of space and microgravity before returning to Earth. Furthermore, Nova could even be used for collecting and returning satellites or removing space debris. (submitted by Jay50001)

Phantom Space raises some bridge funding. The small launch company announced that it has increased its total fundraising to $37 million, Payload reports. Phantom Space is aiming to launch its Daytona rocket for the first time in mid-2025. Daytona is a 500-kg class, two-stage launcher that uses Hadley engines supplied by Ursa Major.

Daytona debut in California ... Company cofounder Jim Cantrell estimates that Phantom Space will need to secure another $30 million to get through that launch. He said a full Series B raise is underway to prepare. Daytona will likely make its debut from Vandenberg Space Force Base, where Phantom Space has already secured permission to launch from. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Chinese lunar launch fails. A pair of Chinese spacecraft, apparently intended for lunar orbit, have likely been lost following an issue with a Long March rocket’s upper stage on Wednesday, Space News reports. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, but there was no official acknowledgment of the launch until early Thursday when Chinese state media Xinhua announced the DRO-A and B spacecraft had not been inserted accurately into their designated orbit by the rocket’s Yuanzheng-1S upper stage.

First Long March issue in four years ... Xinhua provided no details of the nature of the DRO-A and B satellites. However, it is thought that the pair were intended to enter a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. If correct, this would have seen DRO-A and B target a high lunar orbit that moves in the opposite direction to the moon’s rotation around Earth. The launch issue appears to be the most serious issue with Long March rockets since an April 2020 launch failure. The Palapa-N1 satellite for Indonesia was lost due to a Long March 3B third stage failure. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Starliner launch delayed due to ISS schedule. The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has slipped from late April to early May because of International Space Station schedule conflicts and not due to any issues with the spacecraft itself, Space News reports. Starliner will fly on an Atlas V rocket, and the launch date moved from April 22 to no earlier than May 1. NASA managers have said the key factor in the schedule was other missions to the station.

Finding room at the inn ... "What we’ve been doing is watching how we progress with the Crew-8 launch and the CRS-30 mission," said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, in a briefing after the early March launch of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission to the ISS. SpaceX’s CRS-30 cargo mission is scheduled for launch on March 21 and will stay at the station for about a month. After it departs, the Crew-8 spacecraft will move from its current forward docking port on the Harmony module to the zenith port to allow Starliner to use the forward port. Those ports are the only two available on the station for both Starliner and Dragon spacecraft. (submitted by Jay500001)

Starship completes third flight test. SpaceX's new-generation Starship rocket, the most powerful and largest launcher ever built, flew halfway around the world following liftoff from South Texas Thursday, accomplishing a key demonstration of its ability to carry heavyweight payloads into low-Earth orbit. The successful launch builds on two Starship test flights last year that achieved some, but not all, of their objectives and appears to put the privately funded rocket program on course to begin launching satellites, Ars reports.

A few boxes left unchecked ... While it made it closer to splashdown than before, the Super Heavy booster plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico in an uncontrolled manner. If everything went perfectly, the booster would have softly settled into the sea after reigniting its engines for a landing burn. A restart of one of Starship's Raptor engines in space—one of the three new test objectives on this flight—did not happen for reasons SpaceX officials did not immediately explain. All in all, this flight marked an important step forward as SpaceX develops the Starship launch system.

India's next-gen launch vehicle takes place. India is in the preliminary stages of designing its Next Generation Launch Vehicle, which will be used to construct a space station and potentially land Indian astronauts on the Moon. The chair of the Indian space agency, S. Somanath, provided details about the project to the Times of India. Internally nicknamed "Soorya," the rocket is expected to have three stages and use a combination of methane and kerosene fuels.

A hefty throw, but a long way to go ... The Indian space agency intends for the rocket to be capable of putting 10 tons into geostationary transfer orbit, or about 10 percent more than a fully expendable Falcon 9 rocket. This is also about double the capacity of India's most powerful rocket to date, the LVM-3. Although the details are still being worked out, elements of the next-generation rocket are intended to be reusable, with the intent of bringing the per-kg launch costs down to $1,900 to low-Earth orbit. Somanath said he is "hopeful" the rocket will be ready by 2034 or 2035.

Final Delta IV Heavy gets a date. Liftoff of the final Delta IV Heavy rocket is now planned for March 28 from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. According to the rocket's operator, United Launch Alliance, this will be the 16th flight of the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle and the 389th and final flight of the Delta program. This mission truly marks the end of an era.

Moving on to a single-core solution ... This NROL-70 mission will carry an unspecified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. This is the final Delta IV Heavy as ULA transitions its future missions from the East and West Coasts to the new, single-core Vulcan rocket. The company still has a couple of dozen Atlas Vs to fly before completely transitioning to Vulcan. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Sizing up SLS costs. To date, NASA has spent about $29 billion developing the Space Launch System rocket, Payload estimates, making it the most costly element of the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. Orion is the next most costly element, at $25 billion to date. NASA owns the rocket, which was largely contracted out to Boeing (core stage), Aerojet Rocketdyne (engines), and Northrop Grumman (solid rocket booster).

Frustration at costs is warranted ... The report notes that the SLS rocket's development costs are significantly less than those, adjusted for inflation, of the Saturn line of rockets that powered the Apollo program. However, it adds, the "Apollo vehicles were developed over 60 years ago as novel tech, and given the rapid cost reductions witnessed in other advanced hardware during that period, frustration with Artemis’s high price tag is justifiable. The disappointment is particularly pronounced when we juxtapose these expenses with the costs of current commercial vehicles." The SLS rocket is largely derived from NASA's Space Shuttle.

Rocket cargo program gets a budgetary go. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Rocket Cargo Vanguard program gets “real boy” status as a Space Force prototype effort—and a new name, Point-to-Point Delivery—in the service’s fiscal 2025 budget request, Breaking Defense reports. While the dollar amount is small at only $4 million in research, development, test & evaluation, the funding request marks the up-to-now experimental effort to literally rocket military supplies around the planet as a formal “new start” for the service.

Airdrop payload delivery sought ... The initial Rocket Cargo concept is to blast military kit from one earthly base to another to rapidly equip deployed forces, with the Space Force already eyeing potential use in the Indo-Pacific theater. But in the future, service officials can see the possibility of transporting cargo routinely to space-based outposts or to and from space stations. The program’s endgame is to buy delivery services from commercial providers. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

March 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-44 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 23:04 UTC

March 19: Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-16 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02:20 UTC

March 20: Electron | Live and Let Fly | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 06:40 UTC