Rocket Report: Will Northrop’s rocket be reusable? Fourth Starship gets fired twice

Welcome to Edition 6.37 of the Rocket Report! The big story this week is the final launch of the Delta IV Heavy rocket, which is one of the biggest spectacles to enjoy lifting away from the planet. Because of a scrub on Thursday, there is still time to clear your calendar for a second attempt on Friday at 1:37 pm ET in Florida.

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.

Orbex patents reusable rocket tech. The British launch company said this week it has patented a "REFLIGHT" technology that enables the recovery of the first stage of its small Prime rocket. Essentially, Orbex designed an interstage that will function somewhat like grid fins on the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage. "After Stage 1 detaches from Stage 2, the interstage on top of Stage 1 reconfigures into four ‘petals’ which fold out and create drag forces that passively reorients and slows the spent rocket stage’s descent to Earth," the company stated.

Show me, don't tell me ... This petal structure will combine with a parachute to enable a low-speed landing at sea, where Orbex plans to recover its first stage. It all sounds good, but this seems to be something of putting the cart before the horse. Orbex is now nearly 9 years old, and it's not clear when the Prime rocket will take flight for the first time. As with all small launch companies, the focus should really be getting to the first flight, demonstrating a capability, and then ramping up launch cadence. Talk of reuse and recycling is great. But flying is better. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Boeing sues Virgin Galactic. Boeing and its subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation, have sued Virgin Galactic, alleging the space tourism company has misappropriated trade secrets, The Register reports. In 2022, Virgin Galactic selected Aurora to build new motherships for its spacecraft as replacements for the VMS Eve carrier aircraft. The lawsuit alleges that Virgin Galactic has failed to pay it almost $26 million for work on new craft.

Going forward with just one aircraft ... At the time of the agreement, Virgin Galactic said it needed new motherships to support an increased cadence of spaceflights. Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said, "Our next-generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain, and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year." The first delivery was due in 2025. After it began work on the project, Aurora concluded that a new mothership would cost nearly twice as much as Virgin Galactic hoped and would not be completed before 2027. Now, Virgin Galactic plans to soldier on with just Eve for the time being. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

JAXA inks with Interstellar Technologies, others. Japan’s space agency has selected startup Interstellar Technologies as a priority launch provider as part of a program to advance the commercialization of space, Space News reports. Space One, whose Kairos solid rocket exploded seconds after liftoff earlier this month, was also selected under the small satellite initiative by JAXA, as were Space BD and Mitsui Bussan Aerospace.

Broadening the domestic industry ... The agreements mean the companies will have priority for future contracts. These are designed to support private-sector entities capable of launching satellites developed under JAXA’s small satellite missions and advance the commercialization of space transportation services. Japan is targeting a domestic launch capacity of approximately 30 institutional rockets and private rockets per year by the early 2030s. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Will the Medium Launch Vehicle be reusable? Earlier this month Northrop Grumman unveiled a new website that provided some additional detail about the "Medium Launch Vehicle" it is developing in conjunction with Firefly. "Carrying more than 16,000 kg to low Earth orbit, MLV serves commercial, civil, national security, and international launch markets with competitive pricing to customers’ preferred orbits," the website stated. MLV will first launch from Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island.

A rare new vehicle without a reuse component ... What was missing from the new information about MLV was any mention of reusability, be it of the first stage, its seven main Miranda engines, or other components. This was a bit surprising, because almost every medium-lift vehicle announced recently in the United States and elsewhere has featured some element of reuse. I asked a spokesperson with Northrop Grumman about this and was told this week, "At the current moment we don’t have more answers to provide other than what’s currently on our website." Read into that what you will.

After rare delay, Soyuz crew mission safely launches. The crewed Soyuz MS-25 mission was scheduled to fly on March 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station. However, an automatic abort command was issued at the T-20 second mark. On its second attempt two days later, the mission lifted off successfully, NASASpaceflight.com reports.

A lower launch cadence ... Once Soyuz MS-25 got off the ground, it took a 48-hour path to the ISS. If it had launched on March 21, it could have taken an “express” path to the station that would take only three hours and 18 minutes to get to docking, which was expected to occur at 16:39 UTC on the same day. Soyuz MS-25 is only the second launch to take place from Baikonur Cosmodrome this year. (submitted by Jay50001)

Don't expect perfection from Starliner. The first crewed launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft remains on track for May 1 of this year on board an Atlas V rocket. In a pre-flight interview, the commander of that mission, Butch Wilmore, emphasized to Ars that this would be truly a test flight. "The expectation from the media should not be perfection," Wilmore said. "This is a test flight. Flying and operating in space is hard. It’s really hard, and we’re going to find some stuff. That’s expected. It’s the first flight where we are integrating the full capabilities of this spacecraft."

But it's not going to be bad ... Outside observers, Wilmore said, "don’t realize that there are flights going on with F-18s back in the day, or the T-45s that I flew, where we found stuff and fixed it." More on the mission: "You don’t get visibility in those programs and those flights. This one is visible, especially with some of the things that have transpired. So don’t have that expectation, please. It’s not going to be perfect. But it’s not going to be bad, either. We wouldn’t go if we thought that... It’s going to be things that are rectifiable. And the whole thing is to get up, get to the space station, and get back, and we’re going to show that it has that capability.”

China to increase usage of Long March 6. On Tuesday, a Long March 6A rocket lifted off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, north China, carrying a secretive meteorological satellite. Tuesday’s mission was the fifth launch of the Long March 6A rocket, which has a capacity of 4.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit and features two kerosene-liquid oxygen stages and four solid propellant side boosters. As Space News notes, this is the first Chinese rocket to use a combination of liquid and solid stages and boosters.

A new generation of rockets ... All of the Long March 6A rocket launches have been successful, dating to March 2022. A new variant of the rocket, the Long March 6C, is due to launch later this year. It uses the same core stage but does not have any boosters. China’s main space contractor, CASC, stated that Tuesday’s launch is the start of the high-frequency launch of the Long March 6 series this year. It is part of China's effort to replace the aging hypergolic and toxic Long March 2, 3, and 4 series of boosters. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Delta IV Heavy scrubs on Thursday. At just under four minutes to go before liftoff, United Launch Alliance scrubbed the final mission of the Delta IV Heavy rocket on Thursday. According to the company, the launch "was scrubbed due to an issue with the gaseous nitrogen pipeline, which provides pneumatic pressure to the launch vehicle systems." Later on Thursday United Launch Alliance said it needed more time to troubleshoot the pipeline issue, and did not set a new date. The launch is now unlikely to take place before at least Monday.

It's the end of an era ... As Ars reports, the Delta IV Heavy leaves a legacy of launching national security missions, along with NASA's Orion spacecraft, on a test flight in 2014 and NASA's Parker Solar Probe in 2018 on a mission to fly through the Sun's outer atmosphere. Moreover, this is the final flight overall for the Delta rocket family—the 389th rocket with the Delta name—since 1960. But those earlier rockets share virtually nothing in common with the Delta IV, which debuted in 2002. The older generations of Delta rockets could trace at least some of their design lineage to the Thor program, a Cold War-era ballistic missile later converted into a satellite launcher.

Starship fired up for fourth test flight. This week SpaceX conducted two static fire tests of the Starship upper stage that will be used for a fourth test flight of the vehicle later this year, possibly as soon as May. The first test was a "full duration" static fire test of the vehicle's six Raptor engines. The second test, on Wednesday, saw the firing of a single Raptor engine using the header tanks in the vehicle, rather than its main fuel tank.

Seeking a full test flight ... The goal of this fourth flight will be to complete a full test regime, including making a soft landing of the Super Heavy boost stage in the Gulf of Mexico and a series of milestones by the Starship upper stage. This includes an in-space re-light of the Raptor engines, a fully controlled flight, and successfully surviving the fiery reentry process. There will be no Starlink satellites on board. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

March 29: Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-18 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 02:30 UTC

March 29: Delta IV Heavy | NROL-70 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 17:37 UTC

March 30: Falcon 9 | Eutelsat 36D | Kennedy Space Center, Fla. | 21:52 UTC