SpaceX has postponed a Falcon 9 launch of an AsiaSat communications [...]]]>

A Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5, carrying the AsiaSat 8 satellite. Another Falcon 9 launch of an AsiaSat satellite, planned for after midnight on Wednesday, has been postponed by one to two weeks. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX has postponed a Falcon 9 launch of an AsiaSat communications satellite that was scheduled for just after midnight Wednesday in order to “review all potential failure modes and contingencies again” but adding there is no specific issue with the rocket nor a link to last Friday’s loss of an experimental vehicle in a test flight.

In a statement issued around 10 pm Eastern time Tuesday evening by SpaceX, company CEO Elon Musk said the launch of AsiaSat 6 would be delayed by one to two weeks in order to “triple-check” potential issues that could cause problems. “We are not aware of any issue with Falcon 9, nor the interfaces with the spacecraft, but have decided to review all potential failure modes and contingencies again,” Musk said in the statement.

The statement came more than six hours after SpaceX postponed the launch, offering no reasons for the postponement. A statement issued Tuesday evening by AsiaSat said that the launch “has been postponed until further notice to allow more time for SpaceX to examine and verify data,” but provided no additional details. The Falcon 9 rocket had already been placed on the pad when the launch postponement was announced Tuesday afternoon.

Musk said in Tuesday night’s statement that the postponement was not linked directly to Friday’s loss of the F9R-Dev experimental vehicle in a flight at the company’s test site near McGregor, Texas. “After a thorough review, we are confident that there is no direct link,” Musk said. “Had the same blocked sensor port problem occurred with an operational Falcon 9, it would have been outvoted by several other sensors. That voting system was not present on the test vehicle.” The reference to a “blocked sensor port” is the first detail the company has provided regarding the loss of the F9R-Dev vehicle Friday.

“What we do want to triple-check is whether even highly improbable corner case scenarios have the optimal fault detection and recovery logic,” Musk said, adding that “the most likely outcome is no change.”

A delay of one to two weeks would have ripple effects not only on SpaceX’s launch schedule, but for other organizations, including NASA. SpaceX’s next launch after AsiaSat 6 is a commercial cargo mission for NASA tentatively scheduled for September 19 before today’s postponement. A delay in that launch could also delay the next Orbital cargo mission, slated for launch in mid-October from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia.

SpaceX, which at the beginning of the year had plans to launch ten Falcon 9 rockets in 2014, has so far launched only four. At the AIAA Space 2014 conference in San Diego earlier this month, immediately after the Falcon 9 launch of AsiaSat 8, SpaceX’s Lauren Dreyer said the company had plans to do five more launches this year. That is still possible, although SpaceX will have to maintain a tempo of one launch every three to four weeks for the remainder of the year to meet that goal.

An experimental version of a Falcon 9 first stage used to test technologies for future reusable versions of that launch vehicle was destroyed [...]]]>

A frame from a video aired by a local TV station showing the destruction of SpaceX’s F9R test vehicle after it suffered an in-flight anomaly on August 22, 2014. (credit: KWTX-TV)

An experimental version of a Falcon 9 first stage used to test technologies for future reusable versions of that launch vehicle was destroyed during a flight Friday at SpaceX’s Texas test site, the company confirmed Friday evening.

The vehicle, known as F9R-Dev, was performing the latest in a series of test flights at the McGregor, Texas, site when the vehicle suffered an unexplained “anomaly,” according to a SpaceX statement issued Friday evening. Video of the flight published by local news media showed the stage perhaps tipping too far during a maneuver to translate, or fly sideways, during the test.

“During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission,” SpaceX said in its statement. Video showed the vehicle exploding, with debris raining down.

“Throughout the test and subsequent flight termination, the vehicle remained in the designated flight area,” SpaceX stated. “There were no injuries or near injuries.”

F9R-Dev was a successor to Grasshopper, the company’s first vertical takeoff and landing testbed. While both vehicles were based on a Falcon 9 first stage, Grasshopper used a single engine and fixed, large landing legs, while F9R had three engines and retractable landing gear. F9R-Dev made its first flight from McGregor in April, and flew most recently in June, according to videos released by the company.

The loss of the vehicle is a setback to SpaceX’s efforts to develop a reusable version of the Falcon 9, an effort which had garnered some successes. Besides the earlier F9R tests in Texas, SpaceX had attempted to “land” Falcon 9 first stages in the ocean on some its launches. The most recent attempt, in last month’s ORBCOMM satellite launch, resulted in the stage successfully touching down on the ocean surface before tipping over.

“With research and development projects, detecting vehicle anomalies during the testing is the purpose of the program,” SpaceX said in its statement. “Today’s test was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test. As is our practice, the company will be reviewing the flight record details to learn more about the performance of the vehicle prior to our next test.”

Company officials had previously indicated surprise that there had not been a similar failure during tests of the earlier Grasshopper test vehicle. “In some ways we’ve kind of failed on the Grasshopper program because we haven’t pushed it to its limit,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said at last October’s International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico. “We haven’t broken it.”

It’s not clear what affect, if any, this failure will have on the next Falcon 9 launch, scheduled for next week from Cape Canaveral. A static test of the rocket’s first stage took place as planned Friday evening and apparently was a success, according to one unofficial report. This upcoming launch, which, like the previous Falcon 9 launch earlier this month, is for AsiaSat, will not perform any reusability tests in order to maximize the payload the rocket can place into orbit.

Today was rumored to be one of the days that NASA would announce the winner or winners of contracts for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). Barring an unlikely last-second [...]]]>

Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft approaches the International Space Station in this illustration. (credit: Boeing)

Today was rumored to be one of the days that NASA would announce the winner or winners of contracts for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). Barring an unlikely last-second announcement, that won’t happen, but NASA did have some things to say yesterday about commercial crew.

In a press release Thursday, NASA highlighted a “summer of advancements” with the three companies that have Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) awards from NASA, as well as Blue Orion, which is working on an unfunded extension of its earlier Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev-2) award. “We have a set of detailed criteria drawn up so we can adequately evaluate what they are doing and they can tell us where adjustments fit in with their system’s overall success,” NASA commercial crew program manager Kathy Lueders said in the statement. “It’s exactly what we had in mind when we kicked off this effort four years ago.”

Perhaps the biggest development was word that Boeing had completed its final two CCiCap milestones, including an integrated critical design review (CDR) of its CST-100 spacecraft, which Boeing heralded with its own release. “The challenge of a CDR is to ensure all the pieces and sub-systems are working together,” John Mulholland, manager of commercial crew efforts at Boeing, said in the release. “Now we look forward to bringing the CST-100 to life.”

The other two CCiCap awardees, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and SpaceX, still have some milestones on their agreements that may not be completed until early next year. SNC recently completed a review of its Dream Chaser engineering test article with NASA officials in advance of its second free flight, planned for later this year. SpaceX, meanwhile, is working through some reviews before it performs two abort tests of its Dragon V2 spacecraft. Earlier this month, SpaceX’s Garrett Reisman said those tests, one from ground level and the other in flight on a Falcon 9, are planned for November and January, respectively.

All three companies, meanwhile, are anxiously awaiting when NASA will award CCtCap contracts. Thursday’s NASA release offered no new guidance: “In August or September, NASA plans to award one or more contracts that will provide the agency with commercial services to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station by the end of 2017.”

The long-awaited decision on which company or companies will win contracts from NASA for the next phase of the [...]]]>

Elon Musk stands in front of the Dragon V2 spacecraft unveiled at SpaceX on May 29. SpaceX is one of three leading contenders for the next phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. (credit: J. Foust)

The long-awaited decision on which company or companies will win contracts from NASA for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program can be expected by the end of this month, according to one report last night.

Charles Lurio, the well-connected publisher of The Lurio Report newsletter about the commercial space industry, tweeted Thursday night that he expected NASA to announce the awardees of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts either next Friday, August 22, or the following Friday, August 29:

The suggested dates raised some eyebrows: why announce on a Friday (particularly the latter date, which would be the Friday before the three-day Labor Day weekend?) However, such a decision would not be unprecedented: when NASA announced the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) awards in August 2012, they also did so on a Friday—the Friday before NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover landed on the Red Planet!

Three companies—Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp., and SpaceX—are the leading contenders for the CCtCap contracts. Lurio also said he expected NASA to make two “full” awards, rather than one full-sized award and a “half-sized” award that would be enough to allow that company to continue development, albeit as a slower pace:

NASA officials have not indicated a specific date for the CCtCap contract announcement, beyond that it would be in the “August-September” timeframe. “Our progress on commercial crew source selection deliberations has been evidently better than we anticipated,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a presentation to the NASA Advisory Council July 30. He said that those awards would come “much sooner than later this year,” but was not more specific.

SpaceX released late Thursday a new video of [...]]]>

Enhanced frame from a video released by SpaceX on August 14 showing the first stage of a Falcon 9 launched in mid-July just before touching the ocean surface, the most recent test by SpaceX to make the first stage of the Falcon 9 reusable. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX released late Thursday a new video of the “landing” attempt of the Falcon 9 first stage after last month’s ORBCOMM launch. The video, taken from a chase plane, shows the first stage descending as it goes through “supersonic transition,” according to the video, then cuts to the relight of the first stage engines just above the ocean surface. Unfortunately, the stage slips from view just as the stage touches down on the ocean. “Plane camera with extra long lens loses sight of rocket just before splashdown,” the video explains.

While the video was posted to YouTube on Thursday, it’s not the first time the video has been shown in public. In his keynote address at the AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites on August 4 at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, Steve Jurvetson of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson—an investor in SpaceX—showed the same footage. “This has never been seen outside of SpaceX,” he told an audience of more than 1,000 before showing the video. “They said they’re going to do better tracking next time,” he said of SpaceX as the first stage slipped from view as it touched down. “They’re going to nail it.”

While SpaceX has gotten plenty of media attention for its lawsuit against the US Air Force regarding [...]]]>

A Falcon 9 v1.1 lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 14. Some of the workers involved in that and other SpaceX activities are suing the company over alleged violations of state labor laws. (credit: SpaceX)

While SpaceX has gotten plenty of media attention for its lawsuit against the US Air Force regarding the “block buy” contract for Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) missions with United Launch Alliance, the company is also on the receiving end of lawsuits. Last week, the company was named as the defendant in two separate suits from former employees, alleging the company has violated different aspects of state and federal labor laws.

On August 4, two former employees filed suit, claiming they and up to 400 others were laid off from SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California, headquarters without proper notification. In the suit, plaintiffs Bobby R. Lee and Bron Gatling said they were terminated as part of a “mass layoff” by SpaceX on or around July 21. They and others—the suit estimates that between 200 and 400 employees were laid off—were not given advance notice, as required under state and federal law.

Under California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, a stricter version of similar federal law, employers must give 60 days’ advance notice of any “plant closing, layoff or relocation of 50 or more employees within a 30-day period,” regardless of the overall number of employees. SpaceX did not file a WARN notice with the state.

The case may come down to whether the affected employees were indeed “laid off” or “fired,” that is, terminated for cause. The federal WARN status makes clear that termination for cause is not included in employment losses that require a notification and advance notice, although California law is more vague, defining a layoff as “a separation from a position for lack of funds or lack of work.”

SpaceX has made it clear that it considers the separated employees fired, not laid off. The company said the “headcount reduction” came after an annual review, with the company firing low-performing employees. “We did our annual performance review, there were some low performers, and we terminated them,” said company president Gwynne Shotwell in a brief interview at the NewSpace 2014 conference in San Jose last month. SpaceX also said the reduction was “less than 5%” of the company’s overall workforce, which would put the total number of terminated employees at no more than 200, not the 200-400 that the suit claims.

A second suit by a former SpaceX employee claims that the company is violating labor laws by not giving workers breaks as required by California law. In the suit filed with the LA Superior Court on August 8, former employee Joseph A. Smith alleges that the company’s hourly employees “were consistently required to work in excess of four hours without be provided proper ten minute rest periods” as required by state law, according to a copy of the suit obtained by this publication. The company also denied a 30-minute meal period for shifts longer than five hours, and a second such period for shifts in excess of ten hours. SpaceX also required hourly employees to “work ‘off the clock’ and without pay by rounding time entries.”

As with the termination lawsuit, this suit seeks class action status to cover all affected employees. The suit doesn’t provide a firm estimate of how many that would include beyond that it’s in excess of 100 people. The suit seeks a variety of compensation for pay due to those in the affected class, including interest on back pay and attorneys’ fees. However, the suit notes that the “aggregate potential damages and recovery” sought is believed to be less than $5 million.

Early Tuesday morning, SpaceX performed the latest launch of its Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, placing the AsiaSat 8 satellite into orbit. While the launch was originally scheduled for 1:25 am EDT (0525 GMT), [...]]]>

A Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5, carrying the AsiaSat 8 satellite. (credit: SpaceX)

Early Tuesday morning, SpaceX performed the latest launch of its Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, placing the AsiaSat 8 satellite into orbit. While the launch was originally scheduled for 1:25 am EDT (0525 GMT), a problem with the vehicle’s first stage—never explained in detail by SpaceX—pushed the launch back towards the end of an unusually long launch window. The problem was resolved, though, and the Falcon 9 lifted off at 4:00 am EDT (0800 GMT), releasing the AsiaSat 8 satellite into geostationary transfer orbit.

While SpaceX didn’t issue a press release about the launch, AsiaSat did, confirming the launch was successful and that the Space Systems Loral-built satellite was operating normally. The launch is the first of two back-to-back missions for AsiaSat: a second Falcon 9 will launch AsiaSat 6 towards the end of the month. (This launch demonstrated a three-week turnaround between launches, so assuming that can be maintained, another launch at the end of the month is feasible.)

Unlike the previous two launches, SpaceX did not attempt to “land” the first stage in the ocean, citing the need to reserve the rocket’s performance for the payload. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk did tweet that they did relight the first stage’s engines after stage separation, though:

That launch took place less than a day after SpaceX confirmed it eventually shift commercial launches like this one from Texas. Gov. Rick Perry announced that SpaceX has agreed to build its planned commercial launch complex on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico east of Brownsville. That announcement was expected after the FAA completed an environmental review of the proposed spaceport and gave its OK last month for the project to proceed.

Texas is providing a relatively modest amount of funding for the project: it will provide $2.3 million from the Texas Enteprise Fund, plus $13 million from a separate Spaceport Trust Fund to Cameron County to support infrastructure work needed for the spaceport. The release from Perry’s office cites “$85 million in capital investment into the local economy” from the spaceport, suggesting that SpaceX will provide the bulk of that funding for the project.

And there was a smaller development for SpaceX as well this week: a new landlord. Chambers Street Properties announced it was buying the building that serves as SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, for $46.7 million. SpaceX leases the building under an agreement that runs through January 2023, and there’s no indication that the sale would affect the company in any significant way.

SpaceX provided an update Tuesday on last week’s test of a Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage landing during the launch of six ORBCOMM satellites. The company released a [...]]]>

A still from a SpaceX video reeled July 22 shows the Falcon 9 first stage performing a reentry burn after its July 14 launch. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX provided an update Tuesday on last week’s test of a Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage landing during the launch of six ORBCOMM satellites. The company released a video that showed the first stage, after separating from the upper stage, firing its engines for a reentry burn to slow down. Later, the engines fire again and the stage’s landing legs deploy as it approaches the ocean surface. SpaceX said the rocket did a soft “landing” on the ocean surface and remained upright for a few seconds before toppling over to the horizontal position. That fall caused a “loss of hull integrity” in the stage, but did not prevent SpaceX from collecting the information it needed for that test.

One glitch with the test was ice that formed on the camera filming the stage’s descent. The company said it is “taking steps to minimize the build up of ice and spots on the camera housing” for future flights.

SpaceX will stand down from these landing tests for the next two Falcon 9 v1.1 flights. “However, our next couple launches are for very high velocity geostationary satellite missions, which don’t allow enough residual propellant for landing,” the company explained. Those launches are of the AsiaSat 8 and AsiaSat 6 satelites, with the first tentatively scheduled for early August. SpaceX also did not attempt landing tests on launches of two other GEO satellites in December 2013 and January 2014.

“We will attempt our next water landing on flight 13 of Falcon 9, but with a low probability of success,” the company said. That would be the fourth Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission for NASA, planned for no earlier than September 12. The company didn’t explain why that mission had a “low probability” of success given that the most recent test appeared to go well.

The following two launches would attempt to land the stage on a “solid surface,” although it’s not clear if that would be back at Cape Canaveral or on a barge or other platform in the ocean. SpaceX said it has been in discussions with the Air Force to identify locations at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to support Falcon 9 landings. Those two tests, the company added, have “an improved probability of success.” Those launches, according to the current manifest, are of the second group of ORBCOMM Generation 2 satellites and the fifth CRS mission.

It took two months, and a fair amount of drama, but SpaceX finally successfully launched six ORBCOMM Generation 2 (OG2) satellites on Monday. The Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:15 [...]]]>

A Falcon 9 v1.1 lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 14, carrying six ORBCOMM satellites. (credit: SpaceX)

It took two months, and a fair amount of drama, but SpaceX finally successfully launched six ORBCOMM Generation 2 (OG2) satellites on Monday. The Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:15 am EDT (1515 GMT) and started deploying its payload six OG2 satellites about 15 minutes later. All six satellites, built by Sierra Nevada Corporation, are in their planned low Earth orbits and in good condition, ORBCOMM confirmed in a press release Monday afternoon. ORBCOMM said a second batch of 11 OG2 satellites should launch by the end of the year, also on a Falcon 9.

The launch was originally planned for May 10, but was postponed when an issue cropped up during an attempted static test firing. The launch slipped until mid-June, when an issue with one of the six OG2 satellites had an issue that pushed back the launch a week. A technical issue scrubbed a June 20 launch, then weather postponed a June 21 attempt, and another technical issue, coupled with range maintenance, pushed back a June 22 launch until Monday. In the middle of all that, SpaceX kicked up a firestorm of criticism when it announced it would not webcast a June 21 launch.

SpaceX did webcast the Monday launch, although it was a more low key affair, starting less than 15 minutes before launch, with primarily audio from launch control with a little commentary. The webcast ended prior to payload separation, although that was consistent with some prior SpaceX webcasts.

The webcast also did not cover the attempt to recover the Falcon 9 first stage, which the company planned to make a soft “landing” in the ocean as a test of efforts to eventually reuse the first stage. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk later reported on Twitter mixed success with the test: the stage did appear to touch down on the ocean surface, but it broke apart immediately thereafter:

SpaceX has not announced when the next Falcon 9 launch will take place. According to the manifest on its website, it has two missions coming up for communications satellite operator AsiaSat, who announced in June that the AsiaSat 8 satellite had arrived at the Cape for a planned August launch. On Sunday, NASA said it had tentatively scheduled SpaceX’s next Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station, SpaceX-4, for launch no earlier than September 12.