Rocket Report: Two small launchers fail in flight; Soyuz crew flies to ISS

Welcome to Edition 6.12 of the Rocket Report! Two of the world's most successful small satellite launchers suffered failures this week. We've seen many small launch companies experience failures on early test flights, but US-based Rocket Lab and China's Galactic Energy have accumulated more flight heritage than most of their competitors. Some might see these failures and use the "space is hard" cliché, but I'll just point to this week as a reminder that rocket launches still aren't routine.

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.

Rocket Lab suffers launch failure. Rocket Lab's string of 20 consecutive successful launches ended Tuesday when the company's Electron rocket failed to deliver a small commercial radar imaging satellite into orbit, Ars reports. The problem occurred on the upper stage of the Electron rocket about two and a half minutes after liftoff from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. This was the fourth time a Rocket Lab mission has failed in 41 flights. A small commercial radar surveillance satellite from Capella Space was destroyed when the rocket crashed.

Not great, not terrible ... The Electron rocket has a 90 percent success rate over its 41 missions to date, which is still better than Rocket Lab's competitors in the market for dedicated launches of small satellites. Aside from Rocket Lab, Astra and Firefly Aerospace are the only other active companies in the new wave of commercial small satellite launch startups that have achieved orbit. Virgin Orbit launched a handful of successful missions, but that company went out of business earlier this year. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Firefly launches responsive space mission. Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket successfully delivered a US military satellite into low-Earth orbit on September 14, Ars reports. The two-stage Alpha launch vehicle lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with a small satellite built by Millennium Space Systems. This was the third flight of Firefly's Alpha rocket, which is designed to lift about a ton of payload into orbit. But it was the first time Alpha has successfully placed a satellite into the planned orbit, following a launch failure in 2021 shortly after liftoff, and an off-target orbital deployment last year.

"Conquer the night" ...As part of its efforts to be more nimble in space, the US military has been pushing satellite and launch companies to become more "responsive" in their ability to put spacecraft into space. This launch—known as Victus Nox, Latin for "conquer the night"—was the next step in the military's effort to demonstrate it can quickly replace a satellite that might be destroyed by an enemy attack in a future conflict. Firefly and Millennium met the military's goal of being "launch ready" within 24 hours, and the total time from receiving the go command to liftoff was 27 hours, far eclipsing the previous record set by the first tactically responsive launch two years ago. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Stoke Space's upper stage takes a hop. A prototype for the reusable upper stage Stoke Space is developing for its new orbital-class rocket flew for the first time Sunday at an airfield in Eastern Washington, Ars reports. The flight was, admittedly, rather modest. The second-stage rocket only ascended to about 30 feet (9 meters) and traveled just several feet downrange. The entire flight was over in 15 seconds. And yet this was a momentous step for Stoke Space, which is less than 4 years old and has only about 90 employees. The test successfully demonstrated the performance of the company's oxygen-hydrogen engine, which is based on a ring of 30 thrusters; the ability to throttle this engine and its thrust vector control system; as well as the vehicle's avionics, software, and ground systems.

On to the first stage ... Stoke Space intends for its second stage to fly back to Earth and land vertically after a launch. Accordingly, the upper stage has a novel engine design—a ring of 30 thrusters instead of a single engine with a nozzle—to make sure the vehicle can fly safely through both the vacuum of space as well as the thicker atmosphere near the surface of the Earth. This stage was the more complex and novel element of the rocket's design, so it's where the small Stoke team began its efforts. Stoke Space's co-founder said the company will now focus on developing a more traditional first stage of its as-yet-unnamed rocket, which is on track to debut in 2025. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

FAA proposes new regulation on rocket upper stages. The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing a new rule requiring US commercial launch operators to dispose of the upper stages of their launch vehicles to keep them from becoming long-term pieces of space debris. The rule, which is now in a 90-day public comment period, would allow companies to meet the requirement through a controlled reentry of the upper stage, maneuvering the spent rocket toward a less congested, or graveyard, orbit, sending the rocket to an Earth-escape trajectory, retrieving the upper stage within five years, or allowing the rocket body to come back to Earth with an uncontrolled reentry within 25 years. "If left unchecked, the accumulation of orbital debris will increase the risk of collisions and clutter orbits used for human spaceflight and for satellites providing communications, weather, and global positioning system services," the FAA said in a press release.

Meeting the standard ... The upper stages of nearly all US commercial launches in the last few years would already meet the proposed FAA standards. SpaceX and United Launch Alliance regularly de-orbit their upper stages once they deploy their payloads. On launches carrying satellites to higher orbits, SpaceX and ULA rockets are typically left in transfer or graveyard orbits, where there's a lower risk of a collision with another piece of space junk. It is already US government policy to require similar upper-stage disposal standards on all launches with NASA or military satellites. It's likely these new standards will be felt most by small satellite launch providers, which have tighter mass margins and less leftover fuel on the upper stage for a disposal maneuver. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Success streak ends for China's Galactic Energy. The Ceres 1 rocket operated by Chinese launch startup Galactic Energy failed for the first time Thursday, Space News reports. This malfunction followed nine consecutive successful launches for the Ceres 1 since its debut in 2020. A small Earth-imaging satellite named Jilin-1 Gaofen-04B was lost in the launch failure. Galactic Energy had been executing a high-density period of launches, carrying out four missions between July 22 and September 5, including a first launch from a mobile sea platform off the coast of Shandong province.

First blemish of the year for China ... This was the first failure of a Chinese launch vehicle this year. China's Galactic Energy, founded in 2018, has amassed one of the more impressive records among that country's stable of emerging quasi-commercial launch providers. The Ceres 1 rocket that failed Thursday is primarily powered by solid-fueled rocket motors, with a capability of hauling up to 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of payload to low-Earth orbit. Galactic Energy is also developing its first liquid-fueled rocket, which it calls Pallas 1. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX breaks another reuse record. On SpaceX's 67th launch of the year Tuesday night, the company broke another of its own records, Ars reports. One of SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 boosters, designated B1058, flew for the 17th time to carry 22 Starlink Internet satellites into space from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The booster landed on an offshore drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean less than 10 minutes later, to be brought back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment and another flight. SpaceX engineers now believe each Falcon 9 booster can achieve 20 flights. Remarkably, SpaceX has pushed the limits of booster reuse while maintaining a 100 percent record of success across the Falcon 9 rocket's last 228 launches, dating to a pad explosion in September 2016.

Did anyone see it? ... On its webcast of Tuesday night's launch, SpaceX also continued its trend toward a minimalist broadcast approach. The company still provides a hosted webcast for external satellite customers and partners with NASA for crew and cargo launches. But for Starlink, as of last month, the company now only provides a video feed with minimal audio from the launch control center, beginning just five minutes before liftoff. SpaceX has also recently moved live broadcasts of its launches off of YouTube and exclusively to X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, also the CEO of SpaceX. This has resulted in a lower-quality video resolution, as well as a host of other issues that degrade the experience for online viewers. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that alternative launch streams by NASASpaceflight.com and Spaceflight Now appeared to have larger audiences for Tuesday night's Starlink launch.

Three-person crew launches to International Space Station. NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, veteran Russian commander Oleg Kononenko, and rookie cosmonaut Nikolai Chub rocketed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Friday on a Soyuz rocket and docked at the International Space Station three hours later, clearing the way for three other crew members to return to Earth after a full year in orbit, CBS News reports. O'Hara, making her first space flight, plans to spend six months aboard the outpost, while Kononenko and Chub, like the Soyuz crew they are replacing, plan to log another yearlong stay, returning to Earth in September 2024. At landing, Kononenko will have logged around 1,100 days in space across five flights, setting a new record for total time off the planet.

Americans still flying Soyuz ... O'Hara's flight to the space station is part of a no-funds-exchanged barter agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that also allows Russian cosmonauts to fly to the space station on US crew vehicles. The agreement ensures there is always at least one US astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut at the station to operate each partner's critical systems required to keep the outpost operating, even if a Russian Soyuz or SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is grounded by a technical problem. NASA announced this week that another US astronaut, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, is training to fly to the station on a Soyuz mission early next year.

ESA delays next big Ariane 6 test. The European Space Agency announced this week that the next major ground test for the continent's long-delayed Ariane 6 rocket won't happen in early October. Ground teams were preparing to load a test version of the Ariane 6 rocket with propellant and fire its main engine for nearly eight minutes on a launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. This was supposed to be a final exam, of sorts, for the Ariane 6 ahead of its first flight next year. ESA said teams discovered a problem affecting the hydraulic thrust vector control system on the Ariane 6 test rocket. This system will be used to gimbal, or pivot, the rocket's main engine. "Further investigations are necessary before running this long-duration hot firing test," ESA said.

More waiting ... ESA officials have repeatedly declined to announce any specific launch schedule for the first Ariane 6 rocket until the completion of the long-duration hotfire test, but it's not likely to happen before the second half of next year. We're not only waiting longer for the launch, but we're now going to have to wait a little longer to find out when ESA and its prime contractor, ArianeGroup, might be ready to launch Ariane 6 for the first time. Until then, Europe is without independent launch capability for medium and large satellites. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

ULA begins stacking next Atlas V rocket. Less than a week after launching its previous Atlas V mission, United Launch Alliance started stacking its next Atlas V rocket on its mobile launch platform at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This began with the raising of the first stage with its Russian-made RD-180 engine on September 16. Later in the week, ULA ground crews installed the Centaur upper stage. This is one of 18 Atlas V rockets remaining on ULA's launch manifest before retiring the workhorse rocket in favor of the next-generation Vulcan rocket.

Protoflight ... The next Atlas V rocket is scheduled to launch in the first week of October with the first two prototype satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper megaconstellation. These two satellites were previously supposed to launch on ULA's first Vulcan rocket, but Amazon switched them to an Atlas V rocket earlier this year after the delays on the Vulcan program. Amazon plans to deploy more than 3,200 satellites in the Kuiper constellation to provide low-latency Internet services, using a mix of ULA Atlas V and Vulcan rockets, Blue Origin's New Glenn, and Europe's Ariane 6.

Artemis II astronauts train at SLS launch pad. The four astronauts training to fly around the far side of the Moon on the Artemis II mission were at NASA's Kennedy Space Center this week, rehearsing some of the steps they will take on launch day. Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen put on their bright orange spacesuits, then rode from their crew quarters to Launch Complex 39B inside NASA's new, specially designed fully electric crew transport vehicles supplied by Canoo Technologies. At the pad, the astronauts rode an elevator up the Space Launch System's mobile launch tower to the white room at the end of the crew access arm, where they will board their Orion spacecraft during the launch countdown.

But the rocket was not there ... The only big thing missing from Wednesday's rehearsal was the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Those vehicles probably won't be fully assembled for at least another year, with the launch of the Artemis II mission likely in early 2025, if all goes according to plan. The processing of the Orion spacecraft is driving the schedule for Artemis II, the first crew mission for NASA's Artemis lunar program. Next week, the solid rocket booster segments for the Artemis II launch vehicle are scheduled to arrive at Kennedy Space Center by rail from a Northrop Grumman facility in Utah. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Blue Origin eyeing larger footprint at Cape Canaveral. Blue Origin hasn’t flown its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket yet, but the Jeff Bezos-owned space company has a significant presence on Florida’s Space Coast. There’s a large industrial campus and factory just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center, and Blue Origin has built one of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Now Blue Origin has unveiled plans for a rocket refurbishment facility near Cape Canaveral’s Skid Strip runway, a couple of miles from the New Glenn launch pad, NASASpaceflight reported.

All eyes on the pad…  Blue Origin submitted documents detailing the rocket refurbishment facility to the St. Johns Water Management District earlier this month. The documents explain the facility’s purpose is to “provide a building and associated infrastructure for the refurbishment of launch vehicles, and reuse of existing large and small components for rocket launches.” Over the last few months, Blue Origin has been running tests of its transporter-erector at the New Glenn launch pad. If Blue Origin is serious about launching New Glenn in 2024, as the company claims, we would expect to see more extensive tests of real New Glenn hardware at the pad soon. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

September 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-18 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 00:06 UTC

September 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-3 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 07:11 UTC

September 26: Long March 4C | Unknown payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 20:18 UTC