Deep Space Industries (DSI) will formally announce their asteroid mining plans at a press event at 10 am PST (1 pm EST) Tuesday in Santa Monica, California, an event that will be webcast live. The DSI team does include some familiar names for those who have followed past space entrepreneurial efforts, including Rick Tumlinson, chairman of DSI; and David Gump, who is CEO. The company’s team also features Geoffrey Notkin, star of the TV show “Meteorite Men”, although his role with the company isn’t specified.
DSI plans to follow a path similar to Planetary Resources, with a fleet of small spacecraft to prospect asteroids. FireFlies, weighing 25 kilograms, will launch starting in 2015 on two- to six-month missions to study asteroids, while 32-kilogram DragonFly spacecraft will launch starting in 2016 on two- to four-year missions to return samples weighing up to twice as much as the spacecraft itself.
Those sample return missions will be followed by full-scale resource extraction efforts. DSI says it has a “patent-pending technology” called the MicroGravity Foundry, a 3-D printer that can convert raw asteroid (presumably metallic) material into complex metal parts. The company is also interested in extracting volatile materials from asteroids to use as propellant—a key focus of Planetary Resources as well—and has an NDA with an unspecified “aerospace company” to discuss how to potentially work together to use such propellants to refuel communications satellites. (A problem here is that while some asteroids are rich in water ice and similar volatiles, many satellites use hydrazine in their maneuvering thrusters.)
While the press release goes into great detail about their long-term plans for missions and the various resources that can be obtained from asteroids, they say virtually nothing about the company’s finances. The company doesn’t disclose how much money it has raised or who its investors are. (By contrast, Planetary Resources emphasized at its announcement the A-list investors it has, including Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, although it didn’t disclose how much they raised.) DSI does state in its release that it “is looking for customers and sponsors who want to be a part of creating this new space economy,” and mentions it’s open to the idea of corporate sponsorships for individual FireFly missions.
If DSI is serious about starting to launch spacecraft in 2015, it presumably has already laid significant groundwork, including establishing facilities, hiring engineers and other staff, and making at least initial contacts with launch services providers, details missing from its press release. How much progress they’ve made in those areas that they’re willing to reveal, particularly at the press conference later today, will make it clear how serious a competitor they are to Planetary Resources. Both companies, though, face the challenges of making progress in a field—asteroid mining—that still seems like science fiction.
Last week NASA hosted a news briefing allowing the agency and the four companies that have Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev-2) and/or Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) funded awards to provide updates on their efforts. Much of the media attention from the briefing focused on news that the companies are planning test flights of their vehicles with non-NASA crews, which was actually not a new development. There were not any major news coming out of the briefing, but a number of smaller, more incremental developments by the companies and NASA alike.
Blue Origin
The company, which did not receive (nor did it submit a proposal for) a CCiCap award, said it is in discussions with NASA to extend its current CCDev-2 award on an unfunded basis to allow it continue progress on its vehicle, leaving open the possibility of reentering the program at a later date.
Blue Origin highlighted its work on a new liquid-hydrogen/liquid-oxygen engine, designated the BE-3. That engine is capable of generating 100,000 pounds-force (445,000 newtons) of thrust. Tests of the engine are planned for mid-February at NASA Stennis.
Boeing
The company indicated it has completed its first three milestones of its CCiCap award on schedule, and remains on track to mature its CST-100 spacecraft design through a critical design review.
Sierra Nevada
SNC is working towards its final milestone of its CCDev-2 award, an uncrewed glide test of a Dream Chaser engineering test article. That flight is planned for later this quarter at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The company is ramping up staffing on the program, with plans to add up to 100 people over the course of 2013.
SpaceX
SpaceX has completed the first four milestones of its CCiCap award, including a ground systems and ascent preliminary design review last month.
The company’s plans for 2013 include a pad abort test at KSC in December, where the Dragon’s abort system will be flown directly off the pad. An inflight test of the system, where the Dragon escapes from its Falcon 9 rocket during ascent, is planned for April 2014.
The company has also wrapped up its investigation into a shutdown of a Falcon 9 engine during an October launch of a Dragon spacecraft to the ISS. The root cause of the failure has been identified and reported to NASA, and more details will be released publicly in the near future.
NASA
The agency is already starting plans for the next phase of the program, with a request for information due out soon and a formal request for proposals out in the fall. NASA would like to award contracts—more than one—by May 2014.
Funding remains an issue, and NASa officials acknowledged the uncertainty that remains with the program. They added, though, that they’re gaining better understanding of the overall costs to develop these systems every month.
A stealthy company developing small satellites has reportedly raised $10.1 million from one of the few venture capital firms that has shown an interest in the space industry. CrunchBase, a technology company database run by technology news site TechCrunch, noted late Friday that Cosmogia received $10.1 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) last month. The only citation for this funding is “DFJ Report” and no other information on the investment, including the valuation of the company, is given. There has been no announcement of the investment by either DFJ or Cosmogia.
We’re developing systems to provide universal access to information about the changing Earth, its environment, and its people. We are a team of aerospace engineers, computer scientists, physicists, economists and analysts that develop and utilize aerospace technology and computer science for applications that range from deforestation monitoring to land use to food security.
That “aerospace technology” appears to be in the form, at least in part, of smallsats. Cosmogia holds commercial remote sensing licenses from NOAA for four satellites, designated Dove-1 through -4. Dove-1 will “undertake a short-duration experimental mission” in a circular orbit at the space station’s inclination. Dove-2 will perform a similar mission in an elliptical, 64.9-degree orbit. Dove-3 and Dove-4 will operate in more traditional sun-synchronous orbits commonly used by remote sensing satellites; these, too, will be experimental, but not “short-duration.”
The spacecraft’s mission, according to a separate FCC filing, “is a technology demonstration to: a) test the basic capabilities of the low-cost bus built from non-space, Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components; b) show that a bus constrained to the 3U cubesat form factor can host a small payload; and c) demonstrate the ability to design, produce and operate satellites on short schedules and low cost. Dove 1 will do this by transmitting health and payload data to the ground.”
Dove-2 is similar, although it is launching as a secondary payload on a Soyuz rocket later this year carrying a Bion-M biomedical research spacecraft. It is designed to stay in orbit for up to half a year according to its FCC orbital debris report, although another FCC filing about the mission states that the mission duration will be two years in order to test the spacecraft’s power system.
All this suggests that Cosmogia is some kind of commercial remote sensing company that seeks to leverage the growing capabilities of cubesat-class spacecraft to provide imagery, likely trading away high resolution in favor of improved temporal resolution by operating a constellation of such spacecraft. That makes it similar to Skybox Imaging, which is developing its own small satellites for launch starting later this year. Cosmogia, based on its career fair description, may be focused more on environmental and related applications than Skybox, though.
Kate Winslet at the reception following the dedication of the Virgin Galactic terminal building at Spaceport America in October 2011. Despite her presence there, and one tabloid’s claims, she’s not going to space. (credit: J. Foust)
Over the last several years there’s been a minor cottage industry of rumors regarding celebrities who may or may not be going into space as tourists. Sometimes, sure enough, the rumors are true: after months of whispers about her potential interest in a spaceflight, Space Adventures announced in October that singer Sarah Brightman had signed up for a flight to the ISS, most likely in 2015. (Although more recently some Russian officials have raised doubts regarding whether she’ll actually fly.) For every one that does turn out to be true, though, there are many more that turn out to be false.
A case in point: on Friday, the UK tabloid The Sun reported exclusively that actress Kate Winslet has received a free ticket on a Virgin Galactic flight as a wedding present. The report seemed to make some sense: her new husband, Ned Rockandroll, works at Virgin Galactic and is the nephew to Sir Richard Branson. (Winslet accompanied Rocknroll to the dedication of Virgin Galactic’s terminal building at Spaceport America in New Mexico in October 2011.) And, The Sun claimed, the gift was also an expression for appreciation after Winslet helped save Branson’s mother from a fire at Branson’s Necker Island vacation home last year.
There’s just one problem with that nicely tied together story: it’s not true. While many other media outlets more or less repeated the claims in The Sun’s report verbatim, one paragon of journalism decided to check it out: E! Online, the web site of the E! cable television network. A spokesperson for Winslet told E! that the report wasn’t true and had been “invented a while ago” but repackaged, in effect, to tie it into the wedding. Another rumor bites the dust, but have patience: soon enough, some other celebrity will be linked, correctly or not, to space tourism…
SpaceX has been quietly working on Grasshopper, their reusable launch vehicle (RLV) technology demonstrator, as part of a long-term effort to develop a reusable version of their Falcon 9 rocket. Last week, some people noticed a new entry on the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation’s list of launches carried out under experimental permits: a flight by SpaceX’s Grasshopper vehicle on December 17 from its test site near McGregor, Texas. No other details about the flight were available.
Sunday night, SpaceX released a statement and videos of that third Grasshopper flight, the highest to date. According to SpaceX, Grasshopper—a Falcon 9 first stage with a single Merlin 1D engine and landing legs—flew to an altitude of 40 meters, landing successfully 29 seconds after liftoff. The previous two Grasshopper flights were much shorter and lower: its first flight flew 1.8 meters high and lasted just a few seconds, while its second, last month, flew to 5.4 meters.
The timing of the announcement was interesting: SpaceX posted the video Sunday evening, and a statement about the flight arrived in my inbox at 10 pm EST. SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk also publicized it in a series of tweets that evening, including one where he noted that the vehicle carried a “6 ft cowboy” (well, a mannequin of one) who had “no problemo” with the flight.
To provide a little perspective on the size of Grasshopper, we added a 6 ft cowboy to the rocket pic.twitter.com/3NMYJqmd
Grasshopper is part of a effort by the company to develop a reusable Falcon 9, and SpaceX said in a statement that “successively more sophisticated flights [are] expected over the next several months.” As for when that will lead to a reusable version of a Falcon 9, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell gave few clues when asked about it at a luncheon speech in Washington earlier this month. “I don’t want to guess when it’ll be ready for market, but there’s definitely no question that we want it to work,” she said.
SpaceShipTwo during a glide test on December 19, its first in a “powered flight” configuration, with its engine installed. (credit: Virgin Galactic)
A long-awaited major milestone for a leading suborbital vehicle developer—the first powered flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo—is a little bit closer to taking place after a test flight Wednesday. Virgin Galactic reported SpaceShipTwo flew its first glide flight in “powered flight configuration”, with its rocket motor system, including tanks and nozzle, installed. The flight also featured the first flight with thermal protection material installed on the vehicle’s leading edges, components needed for high-speed powered flight. “Aero performance slightly better than expected and no negative issues identified,” Scaled Composites noted in its test flight log.
The flight was the first glide flight for SpaceShipTwo since August, and the 23rd overall. It came after a captive carry flight the previous Friday, which also features SpaceShipTwo in its powered flight configuration. The test suggests Virgin and Scaled are getting closer to the long-awaited first powered flight of SpaceShipTwo, although the Virgin press release stated that “a minimum of two more glide flights” are planned before that first powered flight. Assuming the rocket motor is ready (it has performed several static tests in recent weeks, with “all objectives” achieved each time), that powered flight looks like will take place early in the new year.
An investigation into a problem on the most recent Falcon 9 launch that caused one of the rocket’s engines to shut down is wrapping up with a “most probable cause” of the problem identified, the president of SpaceX said Tuesday.
“We’re just wrapping that up,” Gwynne Shotwell said in response to a question about the investigation after a talk at a Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon. A briefing about the investigation with Michael Suffredini, NASA’s International Space Station program manager, is planned for later this week. “I think we’ve got a good most probable cause identified” for the shutdown, but declined to give specifics about that cause.
The investigation started after one of the nine engines on the Falcon 9’s first stage malfunctioned about two minutes after liftoff on the evening of October 7. Video of the launch showed debris of some kind coming from the lower stage, although SpaceX said the engine did not explode, but instead shut down and remained intact; the debris was from shields protecting the engines. The failure did not prevent the rocket’s primary payload, a Dragon capsule on the first operational ISS resupply flight, from reaching orbit, but did keep a small secondary payload, an ORBCOMM demonstration satellite, from reaching its desired orbit.
SpaceX had previously planned to launch its next mission, the CRS-2 cargo flight to the ISS, in January, but that date has slipped because of the engine investigation as well as studies of several minor glitches with the Dragon spacecraft during its three-week stay in space. Shotwell said that SpaceX is now planning the next launch in late February or early March. That launch will be the last for the “version 1.0″ model of the Falcon 9; future launches will use the 1.1 variant, which features new Merlin 1D engines.
Shotwell also addressed a recent major achievement for SpaceX, as the company won its first Air Force contracts last week: the DSCOVR satellite will be launched on a Falcon 9 in 2014 and the STP-2 payload on a Falcon Heavy in 2015. The contracts are part of an effort by the military to open up the EELV contract to new entrants, providing competition to United Launch Alliance’s Atlas and Delta vehicles. Shotwell noted that these launches, as well as NASA contracts, cost more that commercial payloads. “They ask for more stuff,” she explained. “They ask for more data, they ask for more design reviews, so the prices aren’t the same.”
The company has grown considerably in just the last few months, with about 3,000 people now employed by the company. Despite this growth, she said the company remains focused. “We have 3,000 folks who know, down to the janitor, what we’re doing in this company and why we’re doing it,” she said. “They all work incredibly hard.”
The company does have its share of growing pains, though. “I’m president of parking,” she joked, noting that to accommodate the growing number of people at their main facility in Hawthorne, California, they lease parking space in a mall and bus people in. That generates some complaints, she said, adding that she also parks there and takes the bus into the office. “I think they’re a little whiny,” she said to laughter. “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”
Technology: As expected, the company is leveraging existing capabilities in terms of launch vehicles, spacecraft, and the like, focusing on developing only those components that don’t exist today. “Take a look at what you’ve already got in terms of existing assets, use existing launch vehicles, adapt crew capsules that are already in development,” said Alan Stern, president and CEO of Golden Spike. “Only develop new systems, like an expedition lander and surface suits, where no system exists today.” He calls this a “head start” architecture that “offers enormous and convincing cost, schedule, and reliability advantages” over an entirely clean-sheet approach.
Financing: Even with this “head start” approach, the company will still need significant amount of money to develop this system: Stern said they estimate the cost to be $7–8 billion, which is still far less than any other human lunar mission approach. Stern said that while they’ll raise the money though a variety of means, including advance sales of expedition and an “enterprising financing plan,” they’ll still need to raise “hundreds of millions of dollars” from outside investors.
The company declined to go into details about their investment plans, including how much they’ve raised and from whom. “We don’t have any billion-dollar backers,” Stern said. Gerry Griffin, the chairman of the company’s board of directors, addressed “some pretty wild speculation” in the media about who might be funding the company. “For example, I read that Warren Buffett is involved. Let me just say that we’re in an earlier stage of this company than some people may think,” he said. “On the other hand, if any of you know Warren, I’d be grateful if you’d point him my way.”
Business Case: Who would be the customers of the company’s lunar expeditions? Their biggest target is what some in the industry call “sovereign clients”, or national space agencies that don’t have their own human spaceflight programs. “We expect significant demand from foreign space agencies,” Stern said, citing an internal market study that identified 15 to 20 “or more” nations out there that could afford such a mission, which the company prices at $1.5 billion a flight. “We’ve already had conversations with some national space agencies, and they’ve expressed their interest.”
Other markets include individual tourists or companies interested in commercial exploitation of the Moon. Stern said he’s talked with one unnamed individual who is “very seriously” interested in such a trip.
But are those markets big enough to warrant the hundreds of millions of dollars of outside investment, when other ventures, like Google Lunar X PRIZE teams and Space Adventures’ circumlunar flights, have struggled to find customers and line up significantly smaller tranches of funding? Stern and Griffin said that landing people on the Moon is big and exciting enough to attract interest that other ventures haven’t found. “It’s apples and oranges,” said Griffin, calling human spaceflight “a different domain” than robotic landers. “You can’t compare this to the Google Lunar X PRIZE. It’s not the same animal.”
Human missions, said Stern, “will attract a lot more interest, and, unlike a figure-eight flyby around the Moon”—a reference to the Space Adventures proposed mission—“these are serious scientific expeditions, so you don’t have to justify it as a stunt” but instead as science.
Indeed, human missions to the surface of the Moon are far different than anything else proposed to date. Whether they are exciting and compelling enough to open up investors’ pocketbooks and space agencies’ coffers to the tune of several billion dollars is a question whose answer will unfold over the next few years.
Over the last several weeks there’s been growing rumors that a new commercial space venture with an audacious goal—human missions to the lunar surface—was under development. In mid-November, NASASpaceFlight.com reported that there would be “a ‘game-changing’ announcement as early as December that a new commercial space company intends to send commercial astronauts to the moon by 2020.” Since then, more details have emerged, including the name of the company: Golden Spike. On Wednesday, the company issued a release confirming it plans “to offer routine exploration expeditions to the surface of the Moon by the end of the decade,” which it will discuss in more detail at a press conference Thursday afternoon in Washington.
With that background in mind, there are a few areas to think about when considering whether the company has a viable plan or not.
Technology: Many people will focus on the technical elements of the company’s plan, but in some respects this is not as big an obstacle as some might think. Any venture planning commercial human lunar missions by 2020 will be able to leverage a fair amount of infrastructure that already exists or should exist in the next several years, including commercial crew transportation systems under development by Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and SpaceX to get people to low Earth orbit. In addition, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, slated to make its first launch next year, could play a major role in providing more affordable heavy-lift needed for lunar missions.
Still, such a venture will require some new infrastructure, most notably a lunar lander. The venture may also require a vehicle to go from earth orbit to lunar orbit (which could be adapted from a commercial crew vehicle), transfer stages, and lunar surface infrastructure (hab modules, rovers, etc.). All of these will significant development time and expense.
Finance: To develop that infrastructure, and to keep the company running until sufficient revenues come in, will require significant investment. How much? It will depend on the specifics of the business plan, but it’s hard to see how this could be done for less than a few hundred million dollars, and potentially a billion or more. Who will provide that? Keep in mind that Google Lunar X PRIZE teams, seeking to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon, have struggled to raise tens of millions of dollars for their efforts.
Business Case: Who are the customers who will be lucrative enough to make a compelling case for potential investors, and to maintain the high costs of running human missions to the Moon? Tourism is one option, but how many people, and at what price? It’s worth noting that Space Adventures has been selling seats for a circumlunar mission (going around, but not landing on, the Moon) at $150 million each, but has yet to line up both customers needed for the first such flight (the company has reportedly signed one and has several prospects for the other.) What other businesses are so compelling that they can support—and require—human missions to the lunar surface by 2020?
These challenges don’t mean that a commercial human lunar venture is impossible, but that Golden Spike will have to make a compelling case that they have lined up not just the technology for such missions, but can also close the business case to fly such missions profitably. We’ll see soon enough.
A NASA prize competition to support the development of very small launch vehicles appears to be aborted by the space agency before it can get off the launch pad. In an email Tuesday afternoon, Space Florida vice president Percy Luney announced that NASA had notified the agency of its plans to terminate the Space Act Agreement between the two organizations regarding management of the Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge. Under that agreement, Space Florida was responsible for running the prize competition, with NASA providing oversight as well as the prize purse as part of the space agency’s Centennial Challenges prize program. “Space Florida is extremely disappointed at NASA’s decision and has made a significant investment of staff and resources in implementing this Challenge,” Luney wrote.
Luney’s email did not indicate a specific reason for the termination of the agreement between the organizations. “The existence of the SWORDS and ALASA projects may have contributed to this NASA decision to end the Challenge,” he wrote. That’s a reference to two government-funded efforts to develop dedicated nanosatellite launchers, the Soldier-Warfighter Operationally Responsive Deployer for Space (SWORDS) vehicle under development by the US Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, and the Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) program at DARPA.
NASA confirmed in response to an inquiry that it was canceling the competition for the reasons suspected by Luney, namely, the development of SWORDS and ALASA. Spokesman David Steitz said the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) performed a study of ongoing nanosat launcher efforts. “The study identified more than 15 efforts under way and concluded that other than the teams selected for ALASA and SWORDS, the companies lacked experience in designing, developing, or operating launch vehicles and none of the companies seemed to be sufficiently capable of self-financing to deliver the target capability (at approximately $1 million per launch) in the next 3-5 years,” he said.
To win the $2-million prize, a competitor had to launch a satellite at least as large as a cubesat (10 centimeters on a side, with a mass of 1 kilogram) that completed a minimum of one orbit, and then do it again within one week. The competition appeared to get bogged down in the development of detailed rules, though, with a draft initially released in April but a final version, based on comments from that draft, never approved. “The Competition has remained in a holding pattern. NASA has the revised Draft Rules for the Challenge,” Luney wrote in the last weekly update about the competition, posted on Space Florida’s website on September 26.
In August, NASA released a Request For Information (RFI) about the competition, “seeking additional information on the nano-satellite market and on approaches to address the market needs,” according to the agency. That RFI indicated that NASA was considering alternative approaches to the competition, including prizes based on the number of qualifying small satellites launched by a vehicle in a one-year period, or a focus instead on component development rather than full launch systems. “Response to the request for information indicated a community that was not prepared to develop a complete launch system in response to the NSL challenge,” Steitz said Tuesday.
“NASA’s decision to cancel the NanoSat Launch Challenge had nothing to do with Space Florida’s performance as an Allied Organization,” Steitz added. “Space Florida has been an excellent partner during the formulation and study of the challenge. We hope to work with Space Florida in the future on other partnering opportunities.”
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