Category: Science

WASHINGTON — Satellite operator Intelsat has signed an agreement with Relativity Space for multiple launches of that company’s Terran R reusable launch vehicle under development.

The two companies announced Oct. 11 they had signed a multi-year, multi-launch agreement for Terran R launches of Intelsat satellites starting no earlier than 2026, the year Relativity currently projects Terran R making its debut. The companies did not disclose the number of launches included in the agreement or the time span of the agreement.

The companies also did not disclose the value of the agreement, although Relativity Space said it now has a backlog of more than $1.8 billion from nine customers. The company said in April it had a backlog of $1.65 billion.

Intelsat, in a statement, praised Relativity for an “innovative design and production process” for Terran R, in the words of Luc Froeliger, senior vice president of space systems. However, the company didn’t go into details about why it procured multiple launches of a vehicle that is still about three years from its first launch.

One possibility is concerns about availability of launch given growing demand, particularly from low Earth orbit broadband constellations, and a supply of existing and new vehicles that is not keeping up. “The space industry clearly requires more commercially competitive, diversified and disruptive launch capacity,” Tim Ellis, chief executive of Relativity, said in the statement. “Relativity is developing Terran R as a customer-focused reusable launch vehicle to solve this need.”

That demand was one reason Relativity decided in April to discontinue its Terran 1 small launch vehicle that failed to reach orbit in its only launch in March. The company argued that the “biggest market opportunity” was at the heavy end of the market, which the Terran R, which can place up to 5,500 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit while recovering the first stage, can serve.

“We see this big gap between supply and demand” at the heavy end of the launch market, said Josh Brost, senior vice president at Relativity Space, during a panel at World Satellite Business Week a month ago, adding that the company expected that imbalance to last “for a very long time.”

He said the experience from the Terran 1, including building up a team and key technologies like additive manufacturing, will translate to the Terran R. “It led to us learning how do you design a system, how do you operate a system, how do you qualify it, all of which feeds into Terran R to give us a much better understanding of how long is it going to take for us to develop this much larger launch system that’s much more capable.”

Relativity has provided few updates on the development of Terran R since the April announcement it was discontinuing the Terran 1, which also revealed design changes in the Terran R since the company first announced plans to develop it in 2021.

Ellis, in a prerecorded presentation aired at the 26^th Annual International Mars Society Convention Oct. 8, said the company was making good progress on the Terran R. “We are 100% focused on Terran R. Of our 1,000-person team or so we have now, everybody is working on Terran R and the 3D-printing technology that supports Terran R,” he said.

He said Relativity expects to complete a preliminary design review of Terran R near the end of this year or early next year, and has recently performed its 500^th engine test. “We’re on track for first launch in 2026,” he said.

Ellis explained that one reason for pressing ahead with Terran R was a lack of competition for SpaceX in the launch market. “Eight years after founding Relativity, there is still not a second great commercial launch company,” he said. “It’s clear on the commercial side there is still not really an obvious second player that is just as quickly moving, low cost, and has a very capable launch vehicle in the heavy-lift payload class.”

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Rocket Lab had been on an upwards trajectory for the first eight and a half months of the year. The company conducted its first Electron launches from Launch Complex 2 on Wallops Island, Virginia, and flew a new suborbital version of the rocket, called HASTE, to tap into the hypersonics testing market. The company was planning to fly up to 15 Electrons in 2023, compared to nine in 2022. It also made strides toward its goal of reusing the Electron first stage, such as flying a reused Rutherford engine.

But, as many in the launch industry often say, you’re only as good as your most recent launch. On Sept. 19, those plans came plummeting back to Earth — literally.

On that day, an Electron lifted off from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, carrying the second in a series of Acadia radar imaging satellites for Capella Space. The first stage appeared to work as planned, but video from the rocket was lost moments after stage separation. Telemetry displayed on the launch webcast showed the rocket’s speed decreasing, suggesting the upper stage’s single engine was not working.

About 45 seconds after stage separation, the launch director delivered the bad news: “All stations, we have experienced an anomaly.”

The company has provided few details about exactly what went wrong. “We’ll find it, fix it and be back on the pad quickly,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, posted on social media a few hours after the failure.

Rocket Lab had emerged as the leader of the Western small launch market as others struggled. Some companies suffered launch failures, while others faced financial setbacks, most notably Virgin Orbit, which went bankrupt this spring.

Those technical and financial problems left developers of small satellites with few options to launch. The customer that was going to launch next on Electron after Capella Space was Japanese radar imaging company iQPS, which switched to Rocket Lab earlier this year after Virgin Orbit’s failure: it had been next to fly on LauncherOne when Virgin went under. Northstar Earth and Space, a Canadian company developing a constellation of satellites to collect space situational awareness data, had also switched to Rocket Lab after Virgin Orbit’s failure, with its satellites expected to launch on Electron before the end of the year.

The lack of launch options has become frustrating to some companies. “We have a duopoly, right? It’s just two of those guys,” said John Serafini, chief executive of HawkEye 360, a company that operates a constellation to perform radio-frequency geolocation. The company has launched its satellites both on Electrons and on SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions.

He had no complaints about the performance of either company but lamented the lack of options from others. “Either by bankruptcy or by delays, so many launch companies just haven’t gotten there yet and haven’t demonstrated repeatable success that will give us confidence to put our satellites on those launch options,” he said in an interview during World Satellite Business Week a week before the Electron failure.

And now, at least temporarily, that duopoly has become a monopoly.

RocketLab’s remaining 2023 manifest before Sept. 19 failure

“SpaceX is probably the monopolist right now”

Even before the Rocket Lab failure, people were tossing around the word “monopoly” when it came to SpaceX. It had become increasingly clear that companies needing to launch their satellites in the near future had few options beyond SpaceX, particularly those spacecraft too large to launch on a small vehicle like Electron, as other launch providers stumbled.

SpaceX’s dominance in the launch market became an unofficial theme of World Satellite Business Week, starting with the very first panel. “Having such a dominant launch service provider is probably not healthy in general for the commercial prospects of the industry,” said Vikram Nidamaluri, managing director of the telecom, media, and entertainment group at investment banking firm Lazard. “No one wants a monopoly choking off one point of the value chain.”

He suggested that increased government investment might be needed to bolster competition in the launch market. “I think critical and continued increases in government budgets focused on space and communications are going to be essential to pushing forward technologies,” he said, “and maybe even enabling a second or third launch company.”

One of SpaceX’s customers agreed that the company effectively had a monopoly on the market. “Let’s face it, SpaceX is probably the monopolist right now,” said Luca Rossettini, chief executive of D-Orbit, a company that has flown several orbital transfer vehicles carrying smallsats and hosted payloads on SpaceX Transporter missions.

That was, he added, no fault of SpaceX itself. “Not because they wanted to, but because of many other situations that created this scenario.”

Even if SpaceX has a commercial launch monopoly, a separate question is whether the company is acting like a monopolist, using its market power in an anti-competitive manner. Answers to that depend on where other companies sit in the market.

Some small launch companies argue that SpaceX has acted anti-competitively in the market by pricing its Transporter launches so low that their vehicles can’t compete. 

“SpaceX came with these Transporter missions, which have been really disrupting,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. They have been a boon for smallsat developers, he acknowledged, offering low-cost access to space. “But at the same time, they have created a big problem in terms of the business case for all of the other players.”

He accused SpaceX of, in effect, predatory pricing, willing to lose money on Transporter missions to drive out competition. He noted that past Vega smallsat rideshare missions sold payloads at $25,000 per kilogram, whereas SpaceX has sold Transporter launches for one-fifth that price. “It’s crazy.”

“I think the level of pricing they introduced was not sustainable,” Fragnito concluded, suggesting it led to the demise of Virgin Orbit and financial problems at other companies. “Launcher companies could not live with that level of pricing.”

Customers of SpaceX, though, say they are satisfied with the company’s launch pricing and availability. That has included those competing with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation, who have increasingly turned to SpaceX for launch given the lack of near-term options.

An example is Telesat, which announced on the first day of the conference, Sept. 11, that it had signed a contract with SpaceX for 14 Falcon 9 launches of its Lightspeed constellation in 2026 and 2027. Telesat had previously announced contracts with Blue Origin and Relativity Space for launches of Lightspeed satellites.

“Given the dedication and professionalism of the SpaceX team, and their outstanding track record of reliability and demonstrated high launch cadence, I have the utmost confidence that they will be an outstanding partner in helping us bring Telesat Lightspeed into service in a timely and low-risk manner,” Dan Goldberg, chief executive of Telesat, said in a statement about the contract.

The Telesat deal, as well as recent contracts to launch satellites for Globalstar and Rivada Space Networks, were evidence that, even if SpaceX had a launch monopoly, it was not acting like a monopolist, argued a company executive.

“We’ve proven that we’re a launch company first. We’re here to provide launches,” said Tom Ochinero, vice president of commercial sales at SpaceX. While the company’s launch manifest is dominated by Starlink, “they’ve proven to move out of the way as needed sometimes” to free up launches for other customers.

“I’m 100% here to say I’m not super worried about this,” he said of concerns SpaceX held a monopoly.

One major commercial satellite constellation under development that has avoided SpaceX is Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which announced contracts a year and a half ago with Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance to launch its 3,236-satellite constellation. However, those contracts involve vehicles that have, so far, yet to perform a single launch.

Amazon is now facing a shareholder lawsuit because of those launch contracts. The suit, filed in a Delaware court in August by a Cleveland-based pension fund that owns Amazon stock, argued that Amazon’s board failed to perform proper due diligence in approving those launch contracts, in part because Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, was funding Blue Origin, also owned by Jeff Bezos.

The suit also claims that the board failed to consider SpaceX for launching Kuiper satellites. “Despite being the launch provider with the most proven track record and the lowest prices in the industry, SpaceX was seemingly not considered by Amazon,” the suit states, which “likely committed Amazon to spending hundreds of millions of dollars more than it would have otherwise had to.”

Restoring competition

Amazon has said those suit’s claims are without merit. Naveen Kachroo, head of product management and business development for Project Kuiper at Amazon, offered no concerns at the conference about the ability of Arianespace, Blue Origin and ULA to meet a July 2026 FCC deadline of launching half its constellation.

Those launch companies also said they were ramping up production to meet the needs of Kuiper and other customers, even if the first launches of their vehicles — once planned for 2020 — remained uncertain. Tory Bruno, chief executive of ULA, was the most specific, offering a December launch date for the inaugural Vulcan Centaur after having corrected a problem with the Centaur upper stage discovered in a test this spring.

The first Ariane 6 launch is now planned for some time in 2024, but Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, said a more specific date would come only after a long-duration static-fire test of the Ariane 6 core stage in French Guiana, then scheduled for Oct. 3.

However, ESA announced Sept. 21 that test would be delayed because of a problem with the thrust vector control system in the rocket. The agency did not announce a new date for the test.

Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn at Blue Origin, was also vague about a first launch of New Glenn other than that the company planned “multiple” launches of the vehicle next year.

“We intend to meet our contractual requirements in ’24,” he said. Blue Origin’s New Glenn contracts include one with NASA for the launch of the ESCAPADE Mars smallsat mission, which project officials have previously said is planned for August 2024.

It’s clear, though, that there is increasing urgency among those launch companies to get flying. Blue Origin announced Sept. 25 that its chief executive, Bob Smith, was stepping down after six years, to be replaced by Dave Limp, an Amazon executive whose portfolio included Project Kuiper. “Dave has an outstanding sense of urgency, brings energy to everything, and helps teams move very fast,” Bezos said in a message announcing the change.

Other companies are planning to offer vehicles against SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The first H3 rocket failed in March, but Iwao Igarashi, vice president and general manager of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said at the conference he expected the rocket to return to flight by the end of the year, having incorporated corrective actions demonstrated with a successful H-2A launch in early September.

Rocket Lab is also seeking to compete directly with SpaceX with its larger Neutron rocket. Adam Spice, chief financial officer of the company, said at World Satellite Business Week that the company was still targeting a first launch of Neutron in late 2024.

“The market really does need another high-volume-capable, cost-effective medium launch option,” he said, citing the delays in vehicles from Arianespace, Blue Origin and ULA. “We hope to be the one that provides that incremental lift capability to the market.”

Rocket Lab, though, must first overcome its near-term Electron problem. That rocket has now failed three times since July 2020, all involving its upper stage, raising questions about its reliability as well as the company’s ability to ramp up production.

One analyst played down the effects of the Electron failure on the company. “Investors appreciate the fact that Rocket Lab is delivering on its core service by launching regularly, while also working to expand its capabilities through reusability, a larger vehicle and spacecraft manufacturing,” said Micah Walter-Range, president of space consulting firm Caelus Partners.

“As long as the company continues to show progress on these fronts, a single failure after a string of successes is unlikely to be catastrophic from a market perspective,” he concluded.

The risks of a single failure are magnified for a dominant launch provider like SpaceX. “A fleet-wide disruption to the Falcon 9 fleet for an issue of some type will have a big ripple effect,” warned John Rood, chief executive of Momentus, which has flown its tugs on Transporter missions. While he said he admired SpaceX’s reliability record, “we’ve all been in the space industry for a while. Things will happen. This will not be perfect.”

Customers like HawkEye 360’s Serafini are also looking for more competition in the small launch market. “We’re eager for companies that have been nearly there for several years to get there, so we can have more options and at least drive down the pricing for some of these other existing options.”

ULA’s Bruno emphasized that point on a panel with SpaceX’s Ochinero. “As much, Tom, as I appreciate the sentiment that you will be a benevolent monopoly, I don’t think you’re a monopoly,” he said. “I don’t think it’s our plan for you to become a monopoly.”

This article originally ran in the October issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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SAN FRANCISCO – As the annular solar eclipse drew widespread public attention, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leaders gathered at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta were considering their own solar observations.

“Ultimately, as NASA and NOAA work with European partners to build out a system that is capable of observing the sun from different perspectives, we’ll improve our models and ultimately improve our forecasts of solar activity and the impacts here on Earth,” Michael Morgan, assistant secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction, told SpaceNews.

For the moment, NOAA’s primary instrument for observing the sun is well past its prime.

“What might keep me awake at night would be losing the existing coronagraph,” said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. The LASCO coronagraph on the European Space Agency-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory launched in 1995 remains “vital for our prediction capability,” Murtagh said.

Fortunately, replacements are on the way.

Compact Coronagraphs

First up is the Compact Coronagraph, one of the instruments on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series GOES-U satellite scheduled to launch in April on a Falcon Heavy rocket. The Compact Coronagraph will observe the sun’s outer atmosphere and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

A second Compact Coronagraph will fly on NOAA’s Space Weather Follow-On satellite. The SWFO-L1 satellite will travel to sun-Earth Lagrange Point L-1 on NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe in 2025.

“The upgraded capability and resilience” will improve measurements of solar activity, said Elsayed Talaat, director of NOAA’s Office of Space Weather Observations.

Both coronagraphs are sorely needed for space weather warnings, Murtagh added. “I cannot build a warning system that relies on a single system. We want redundancy.”

Sharing Observations

A partnership with the European Space Agency will provide additional observations of solar flares and CMEs for NOAA models and forecasts.

Solar activity presents “a global threat that requires a global response,” Murtagh. “The U.S. can’t go it alone.”

ESA’s Vigil mission, formerly called Lagrange, is expected begin its journey to Lagrange Point 5 in 2029. Vigil observations taken 60 degrees off the sun-Earth line will complement measurements from SWFO L-1.

“Combined, they will give us that multidimensional perspective. We’ll know if and when CMEs will hit the Earth,” Murtagh said. “This is a vital input into the models.”

Solar Maximum

Solar activity affects satellites and terrestrial infrastructure like the power grid.

“We’re evolving technology at an extraordinary pace,” Murtagh said. “When we introduce new systems, new technologies, new processes, we often introduce new vulnerabilities to space weather that we don’t fully understand until unfortunate things happen” like the loss of 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites in February 2022 after “a relatively minor geomagnetic storm.”

The current 11-year solar cycle, expected to peak in 2025.

“Having more reliable space weather information will help,” Talaat said. “Statistically, we see the biggest storms on the downslope of solar maximum.”

Regarding the current solar cycle, it could be worse. When measured by sunspots, solar activity has been ramping up “faster and stronger” than expected, Murtagh said. “But we haven’t had any high-level storms hitting Earth. There’s been a lot of them just missing us. We’ve seen some great eruptions that have not been Earth-directed.”

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LOS ANGELES – Italian space company Argotec announced plans Oct. 11 to invests $25 million in a manufacturing facility in Maryland that will employ more than 60 people designing, building, testing and operating satellites.

“It’s important to be close to our customers,” David Avino, Argotec CEO and founder, told SpaceNews at the Space Economy Summit here. “At the same time, we want to be a U.S. company.”

The first product from the new Largo, Maryland, facility will be a software-defined radio. Argotec will work with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create a streamlined version of the Universal Space Transponder-Lite radio for high-speed communications services in deep space. Following the prototype phase for the software-defined UST-Lite, Argotec plans to expand production for commercial customers.

Argotec’s new U.S. managing director is Corbett Hoenninger, a former senior vice president of engineering at Sierra Space and a former United Space Alliance flight controller and astronaut trainer.

ArgoMoon and LICIACube

In the last couple of years, Argotec gained recognition for two cubesats sent to deep space: ArgoMoon, which launched on the Artemis Exploration Mission 1 in 2022, and LICIACube, which collected imagery of the ejecta plume from NASA’s 2022 Double Asteroid Redirection Test. At the SmallSat Conference in Utah in August, LICIACube won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Small Satellite Mission of the Year award.

ArgoMoon and LICIACube demonstrate the reliability and performance of Argotec satellites, Avino said. Based on that technology, Argotec plans to manufacture communications and Earth-observation satellites for constellations.

In the past, Argotec has worked extensively with the Italian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and NASA. For the future, “we’re targeting also commercial customers,” Avino said.

UST-Lite, originally developed by JPL, combines a miniature radio with advanced processing to facilitate long-distance data transmission and reception.

In July, Argotec unveiled its new SpacePark, a facility in Turin, Italy, designed to produce one satellite per week.

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WASHINGTON — NASA is considering cutting the budget of two of its biggest space telescopes as it faces broader spending reductions for its astrophysics programs.

In an Oct. 13 presentation to the National Academies’ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mark Clampin, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said he was studying unspecified cuts in the operating budgets of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope to preserve funding for other priorities in the division.

The potential cuts, he said, are driven by the expectation that his division will not receive the full request of nearly $1.56 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2024 because of legislation passed in June that caps non-defense discretionary spending for 2024 at 2023 levels, with only a 1% increase for 2025.

“We’re working with the expectation that FY24 budgets stay at the ’23 levels,” he said. “That means that we have decided to reduce the budget for missions in extended operations, and that is Chandra and Hubble.”

Clampin declined to say how much the budgets of those two observatories would be cut, or specific impacts on them because of the cuts. He indicated the proposed cuts are still being studied, noting that he was able to make a “positive adjustment” for Chandra just in the last week.

Chandra and Hubble are the two most expensive NASA astrophysics missions to operate after the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA requested $93.3 million for Hubble and $68.7 million for Chandra in its fiscal year 2024 budget proposal, in line with past years’ budgets. Combined, they represent a little more than 10% of the fiscal year 2024 budget request for NASA astrophysics.

They are also among the two oldest NASA missions, with Hubble launched in 1990 and Chandra in 1999. Clampin suggested that was a reason for reducing their budgets. “Chandra has a number of issues right now. It’s becoming increasing difficult to operate,” he said. Insulation on the spacecraft’s exterior is degrading, warming the spacecraft and making operations increasing difficult.

“While Hubble doesn’t have those issues,” he added, “it has been operating for a long time and it is a large piece of the astrophysics budget.”

Clampin said he was planning two “mini senior reviews” for Chandra and Hubble, likely in May 2024 after the release of the fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. NASA conducts senior reviews to decide whether and how to extend science spacecraft that have completed their primary missions.

In the last astrophysics senior review in 2022, Chandra and Hubble were effectively exempted, with separate panels studying each mission to look for efficiencies and other improvements rather that examining if the mission itself should be extended.

“Hubble and Chandra occupy the top tier given their immense, broad impact on astronomy,” the final report of the 2022 senior review stated. “Both missions are operating at extremely high efficiency, and although they are increasingly showing signs of age, both are likely to continue to generate world-class science throughout the next half decade, operating in concert with JWST as it begins its flagship role.”

Clampin said any savings from Chandra and Hubble would go to other astrophysics priorities. “What we are trying to do, though, is protect future missions and developing missions and international partnerships,” he said. That includes the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, smaller Explorer-class astrophysics missions, and NASA’s role on missions led by other nations, such as ESA’s LISA gravitational-wave observatory and the Israeli Ultrasat ultraviolet observatory.

He said he also wanted to protect early work on the Habitable Worlds Observatory, the next flagship astrophysics mission after Roman slated to launch in the 2040s. “It’s absolutely fundamental to keep moving Habitable Worlds Observatory forward,” he said. That includes the first call for proposals to develop key technologies for that large space telescope and funding teams studying science and technology topics for it.

He added that NASA is also considering “small reductions” to other operating missions, which he did not identify, as well as reductions in technology development spending.

All those plans, he said, were to protect against potential sharp cuts in astrophysics. A Senate version of a commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill for fiscal year 2024 would give NASA astrophysics $1.544 billion, short of the request but still above the $1.51 billion it received in 2023. House appropriators have yet to publicly release details about its CJS spending bill.

“It’s entirely possible when we get an appropriation, given what you see on the news every day, we could be even well below the ’23 level,” he warned the committee. “It’s not a happy outlook out there.”

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Charlie Hurley spent most of his career in college athletics. Before applying for a Spaceport America public information officer job, the former New Mexico State assistant athletics director considered the idea carefully.

“It was an intimidation factor for me. I didn’t have any knowledge base in aerospace, zero,” Hurley said.

Still, he recognized the potential.

“We’ve all seen the projections of space as a $1.2 trillion or $1.3 trillion industry by 2040,” Hurley said.

Public and private organizations in New Mexico are undertaking a concerted campaign to ensure citizens know of opportunities to work in the burgeoning space economy.

Starting in elementary school and continuing through early careers, companies and government agencies are developing curriculum, mentoring and career services to encourage students and young professionals to opt for space-related jobs. They call the concept Pathways to the Stars.

Casey DeRaad, CEO of NewSpace Nexus, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit with a mission to “unite and ignite” the space industry nationally, tells companies, “You can’t just think about the workforce when you’re doing job placement.” She urges executives to fund robotics clubs and rocket programs, provide internships and serve as mentors.

Nationwide demand

Expanding the space workforce is a challenge nationwide. The number of U.S. students working toward engineering degrees has declined annually since 2019. According to the National Student Clearinghouse spring 2023 report, community colleges and vocational schools show similar trends.

Manufacturing jobs, meanwhile, are becoming harder to fill.

“Largely this is due to phenomena where we are seeing the United States increase its manufacturing base writ large,” said Tom Roeder, Space Foundation senior data analyst. “From microchips to automobiles, a lot more things are being built in the United States, largely due to supply chain problems that we experienced during COVID.”

“The space industry is growing by leaps and bounds, but the workforce is not keeping pace with that,” Steve Isakowitz, Aerospace Corp. president and CEO, said in September at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

Many efforts to expand the space workforce focus in part on attracting women, people of color and employees from other industries. Through Space Workforce 2030, for example, 30 companies have joined forces “to build a stronger, more vibrant and inclusive workforce essential to the future success of our industry. Instead of competing for talent, we are growing talent,” Isakowitz said.

Pathways to the stars

In the United States, Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida and Texas have vibrant space economies, partly thanks to the presence of government and prime contractor facilities and the startups they attract. Arizona, Michigan, New York, Virginia and Washington are among the states making concerted efforts to support existing space businesses and attract new ones.

What’s happening in New Mexico is unusual because of its breadth. Schools and companies are working with local and state agencies and nonprofits like NewSpace Nexus to establish Pathways to the Stars.

New Mexico, with about 2.1 million residents in a state roughly the size of Germany, has the nation’s highest concentration of aerospace jobs per capita, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a result, aerospace is of greater relative importance for a state that ranks 36th in population than in states with larger populations and more diverse economies.

“Where we see the biggest challenge is the educational profile of the industry,” said Sarita Nair, cabinet secretary for New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions.

About 27,000 people, or 3.2 percent of the workforce, are tied to New Mexico’s aerospace industry. In July 2023, there were 3,720 advertised job openings for aerospace workers across the state, Nair said.

Most of the openings were research and development related and required highly skilled workers with advanced degrees. But New Mexico colleges and universities only awarded 68 aerospace engineering bachelor’s degrees, two master’s degrees and one doctorate in 2021 and 2022.

“Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people with a broader educational profile that could end up working in the industry,” Nair said. “But it speaks to the strength of the Pathways to the Stars approach. We want people thinking about these careers as they go from middle school to high school, thinking about the classes they want, and as they go from high school to picking a college and picking a major.”

“We need to be exciting people about aerospace because we are now at the place where there’s legitimate demand,” Nair said. “This is no longer, ‘Hey, little 6-year-old, maybe by the time you Right: Middle school students carry the model rocket they launched while participating in an AFRL STEM program in New Mexico. graduate college, there will be a job for you.’ It’s ‘Hey, college sophomore, maybe take these two extra courses because we have a job waiting for you tomorrow.’”

Space Valley

New Mexico has a wealth of military space-related assets at Kirtland Air Force Base, including the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles and Directed Energy Directorates, the Space Systems Command’s Prototyping and Innovation Directorate and the Space Rapid Capabilities Office.

On the commercial side is Spaceport America. There, anchor tenant Virgin Galactic’s VMS Eve mothership aircraft takes off to send private astronaut customers on suborbital spaceflights in the VSS Unity spaceplane.

“It’s been the hope and strategy of the state for many years to figure out how to take the strengths in the various disciplines and translate them into commercial opportunities,” said Randy Trask, New Mexico Trade Alliance president. “All of a sudden now, space, an area where we have a huge competitive advantage just happens to be aligned with a sector that could potentially grow into the largest sector we’ve ever seen.”

As a result, the state is looking at ways to help the space sector grow through education, investment and workforce development.

“Workforce is a challenge, unfortunately, right now, through all industry sectors,” Trask said. “It will take regional organization to start making investments in strategic areas where we think workforce is going to be needed. That’s not astrophysicists. That’s a blue-collar workforce that’s trained for when space technologies move into mass production.”

The Space Valley Coalition, which Trask leads as principal investigator, is one of 16 finalists competing for $160 million in National Science Foundation funding over 10 years to expand the region’s commercial space economy. Winners of the NSF Regional Innovations Engines Competition will be selected by the end of the year.

Space Valley stretches from southern New Mexico north to Colorado Springs, home of U.S. Space Command.

“We have an insane amount of assets spread out between Colorado and New Mexico that are all doing very important things,” Trask said. “The goal of the Space Valley Coalition is regional coordination to make them work better together, towards a collective vision.”

Feedback cycle

Space companies often come to New Mexico for government work.

Virginia-based Blue Halo established its first manufacturing facility in Albuquerque “because of the proximity to our customers and the innovative work done here,” Mary Clum, BlueHalo sector general manager and corporate executive vice president, said by email. “And as more industry partners like us choose New Mexico, more federal dollars and resources flow to the state. This synergy has created a feedback cycle driving even more research, investment and resources in the state – as witnessed by the growth of the U.S. Space Force presence in Albuquerque and the potential STARCOM announcement on the horizon.”

The U.S. Air Force named Kirtland Air Force Base as the preferred location for Space Delta 11, the Space Training and Readiness Command unit — STARCOM —in charge of training ranges and squadrons to serve as enemy units for wargames and exercises. A final decision is expected later this year.

BlackSky, based in Herndon, Virginia, has offices in Albuquerque, Denver and Seattle.“We have employees now in 28 states,” said Peter Wegner, BlackSky chief technology officer. “We’ve got to hire the talent wherever we can find it. It’s a very difficult war for talent. And it’s going to get worse in the next five years as the baby boomers hit the peak of retirement.”

As a result, Wegner is building relationships with universities, including schools like New Mexico State University, that help students obtain security clearances while performing national security research projects.

“Then when they graduate, they’re ready to hit the ground running,” Wegner said.

Center of gravity

Ever since Los Alamos was given a lead role in the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, New Mexico has been a hub for national security work. The focus on space is a more recent development.

With the AFRL and Space Force organizations, “you have a natural center of gravity for space science and technology, research and development,” said Stanley Straight, technical director for the Space Systems Command Innovation and Prototyping Acquisition Delta. “In my personal opinion, I think you’ll find that New Mexico is going to become more important within the Space Force activity and to the nation as we build systems that are resilient and ready to protect and defend our national interest.”

Richard Scott Erwin, chief scientist for AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate, agreed.

“It’s definitely been building over time,” said Erwin, who moved to New Mexico in 1997. “Between the level of commercial space activity and the buildup of more government-focused organizations, we’re really starting to see a nice ecosystem here for high-tech advanced space capabilities.”

This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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Shelli Brunswick is the chief operating officer of the Space Foundation, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

It was only a matter of time and effort before the world woke up to the reality of India’s space ascendancy. When the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Vikram lander made history by softly touching down on the Moon’s south pole, it was a defining moment not just for India but for all of humanity, and in the public square, there is today a broader awareness that India is a formidable space leader. 

For those who have followed India’s space journey to this point, the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission was not particularly surprising. As I wrote in 2021, the nation’s space ecosystem has been approaching an inflection point, wherein decades of investment, research, sweat and tears brought India to its current space maturity. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a perfect example of India crossing the threshold to a new era of space activity. While the August 2023 Moon landing is a shining star on India’s space lapel, Chandrayaan-3 is just one part of a larger Indian space ecosystem that is growing rapidly.

Indeed, the Moon landing was not the culmination of India’s space journey. It was simply the next step, and we should expect more activity, accomplishments and access to opportunity as India marches forward in space. To understand what is changing and why it is important for India’s trajectory, consider some of the vital ingredients in India’s space recipe that are helping it realize its grand space ambitions. 

Government Demand and Space Policy

A core challenge for any spacefaring nation is connecting government demand with private sector offerings. When businesses can directly satisfy the needs of government agencies, they have a reliable revenue stream that allows them to simultaneously develop intellectual property (IP) and look for other customers in the domestic and global space markets. This has been a stubborn hurdle for India’s private space sector. As Satsearch COO Dr. Narayan Prasad told me in 2021, the two opportunities for India to break through this logjam are opening up government end users directly to the private sector and developing a procurement mechanism for acquiring private sector services and solutions. 

Enter: Indian Space Policy 2023. The strategic approach is clear: “Indian consumers of space technology or services (such as communication, remote sensing, data services, launch services, etc.), whether from public or private sectors, shall be free to directly procure them from any source, whether private or public.”

The policy moves toward opening up government demand in part by standing up and defining three stakeholder organizations instrumental in connecting the dots. ISRO’s mandate is to focus on R&D and developing new technologies. NewSpace India Limited, a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU), is absorbing the operational components of ISRO’s activities, including launch vehicle assembly and integration. And the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) serves as the interface between ISRO and non-governmental organizations. Together, these three organizations provide entry points and advocates for the Indian private space sector, in turn unlocking IP, revenue, and the potential for companies to compete in the marketplace.

To be sure, change is hard, and a new space policy does not on its own resolve the challenge. 

“What I keep hearing from space startups, especially younger startups, is that IN-SPACe is dominated by leaders from the traditional contractors,” said Arpit Chaturvedi, CEO of Global Policy Insights. “The leaders don’t hear the concerns of the new startups. What happens is most startups are still working on delivering on demands for the government via ISRO.”

Still, the new space policy and delineation of responsibilities across three coordinated organizations shows that India is on a path that can open private sector opportunity to satisfy government demand. 

Launch Capabilities

India does not have just one indigenous launch vehicle; it has five operational with a sixth on the way. The PSLV and GSLV are reliable workhorses that have been sending items to orbit for years. A somewhat newer system, the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3), is showing its capabilities, including sending Chandrayaan-3 on its way to the Moon. 

There is an interesting development with the fourth launch system developed by ISRO, the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). Designed to lift small satellites into orbit at a lower cost compared to using one of the other systems, SSLV had its first successful flight and payload deployment in February this year. And almost as soon as it was ready, the announcement came that the SSLV would be transferred to private sector control. 

In addition to these systems, there are Indian companies developing private launch systems, and two in particular are ahead of the pack. Agnikul Cosmos is developing a single-stage, 3D-printed launch system, and in 2022, it opened India’s first private space launch facility. Skyroot Aerospace, meanwhile, is operating India’s first privately made launch system, the Vikram-1. 

“Right now, we are the only player who had a launch, and there is one more player who may launch soon [in the Indian launch market],” said Pawan Chandana, cofounder and CEO of Skyroot. “SSLV is being transferred to a private consortium, which is a two-year process. This would lead to there being three private players and amp up the competition. This is good for all. There will be a push to enable more launches and to develop infrastructure used by everyone. There are more pros than cons.”  

Ultimately, when it comes to accessing space, India’s options are many, and while an indigenous launch system is not necessarily a prerequisite for a country to lead in the global space ecosystem, the fact that India has so much lift capacity bodes well for ambitious missions and launch cadence.

National Security

Economic issues are national security issues. Because space today is appropriately viewed as critical infrastructure enabling core elements of the modern economy (e.g., telecommunications, Earth observation for agriculture), disruption to space access and operations is an economic concern and, thus, a national security priority. This is true for all spacefaring nations, but with India, the competition is close to home. 

India is bordered by regional geopolitical competitors, with Pakistan to the northwest and China to the northeast. While Pakistan’s space capabilities are at best nascent, China is rapidly maturing as a space power. In 2007, much to the world’s dismay, China tested an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) and destroyed one of its weather satellites, which resulted in debris speeding dangerously in Earth’s orbit. In 2019, India’s Mission Shakti tested an anti-satellite weapon, joining the small club of nations with the capability (also including the United States and Russia).

“India definitely is joining the Quad in space,” said Chaturvedi, referring to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which includes the United States, Australia, Japan and India. ”Once you look at areas of defense that might seem peripheral right now, such as space or artificial intelligence, there India finds a lot of collaboration with the United States, Australia and Japan, for two reasons. First, they have capabilities, and Russia does not have those capabilities. Second, all of these nations seem to be on the opposite side from China, and that’s really what drives what India is doing. You can shroud it in the words of common values, but a lot of it is finding your friends now because this space will grow. Even the Artemis Accords favor the early birds, and India’s idea is to join that early bird club.”

The insight is that India, like its peers, is approaching space as a potentially contested, warfighting domain, as well as critical infrastructure that must be protected like any other infrastructure. India’s Defence Space Agency was created in 2018 to run national security space operations, and a recently announced initiative holds the potential to connect government needs with private sector innovation. India’s Mission Defence Space is an initiative to develop offensive and defensive space capabilities for the Indian military branches by presenting the private sector with 75 challenges for innovative solutions that satisfy defense requirements. The opportunity could be significant for growing businesses, whether because government military acquisitions are lucrative or because the resulting IP can be used to create commercial products.

Pride and Inspiration

Few things are as inspirational as bold space missions. The final moments of the Chandrayaan-3 mission were watched live by millions of people worldwide. After the success, celebration erupted across India as people took to the streets to cheer and revel in the nation’s accomplishment. The Indian Prime Minister spoke at length to the country. ISRO leaders were surrounded by reporters. Indian expats published congratulatory op-eds in news outlets globally, while world leaders released statements congratulating India and promising ongoing collaboration.

It was a moment Indians will remember, particularly the young people and students who, full of pride and confidence in opportunity, contemplate their own future in the global space community. In the moments before and after the landing, untold numbers of young Indian minds were ignited with the idea that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and space accomplishments are exciting and available to them. One small roll for the Vikram lander yielded a giant leap in the passion and fascination that can lead someone on a lifelong journey of learning and participation in the space community. This pride and wonder will serve India as it develops the space workforce that can sustain and drive its space ambition.

“With our deep competence with high cost-efficiency, there is great potential,” said Chandana. “The temperament in India is going to grow with more missions. It is a great sense of pride that in one of the hardest sectors, space, we are among the top nations. There is a lot of inspiration that flows from the fact that we have the capability to be one of the top players in a deep technology industry, like space. It will inspire kids and attract more people into STEM fields, which will help the whole sector.” 

Just 10 days after the historic lunar landing, India launched the Aditya-L1 mission to study the sun. The scientific spacecraft is currently on its way to Lagrange point L1, nearly 1 million miles from Earth. Looking ahead, there is a planned IRSO science mission to Venus that could depart in late 2024. And there is growing momentum to send a crewed spacecraft into orbit as soon as 2025. These are the ambitions of an ascendant space power, and India has crossed its inflection point. Considering space policy, launch capacity, national security interests, and pride of country, India has the ingredients to pursue its space journey for the betterment of the country and people the world over.

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LOS ANGELES – In spite of its name, the Asteroid Mining Corp. is not banking on the space resources market materializing anytime soon.

“We are a robotics company with asteroid-mining aspirations,” Mitch Hunter-Scullion, Asteroid Mining Corp. CEO and founder, said Oct. 11 at the Space Economy Summit here. “Space resources is a very exciting industry. But it’s one which, let’s be honest, isn’t currently existing fully into its mature sense.”

In the near term, the London-based startup will offer services with an six-legged, 20-kilogram robot called Space Capable Asteroid Robotic-Explorer. SCAR-E, unveiled onstage at the Summit, lifted legs individually to perform what Hunter-Scullion, a Scottish techno-futurist, called “a wee dance.”

“We are coming for you Boston Dynamics,” Hunter-Scullion said. “You have four legs. We have six. Our go-to-market strategy is to go to the industrial inspection market and go to places which four legged robots cannot.”

SCAR-E’s Future

Once six-finger grippers are attached to its feet, SCAR-E will be able to scale walls and inspect ship hulls among other tasks. For future applications like lunar crater exploration and asteroid prospecting, SCAR-E’s mechanical and electronic components will be tightly encased to keep out regolith.

Wheeled rovers have proven useful on the moon or Mars. But they may have trouble with steep slopes.

“If you wanted to go into the Shackleton crater on the moon, you’re not going to be to get there with wheels,” Hunter-Scullion said.

The privately funded Asteroid Mining Corp., established in 2016, calls itself the UK’s first space mining company. In addition to its London headquarters, Asteroid Mining Corp. has a research laboratory in Sendai, Japan, and a U.S. division in Atlanta.

While offering SCAR-E for commercial industrial applications, Asteroid Mining Corp. will develop Alchemist-1, a materials-processing satellite.

“We are looking for International Space Station and lunar applications for this very robot in about 2026, 2027,” Hunter-Scullion said. “Beyond that, we’d be looking to validate target selection for an expedition-class mission. Then, towards the end of this decade, if not the early 2030s, we’d be looking to send this very robot or its son up to the asteroids in order to start exploring the resources so the humanity can take advantage of our celestial backyard.”

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WASHINGTON — NASA’s plans to buy future launches of the Space Launch System as a service are unlikely to achieve hoped-for cost savings, the agency’s inspector general concluded, recommending NASA keep its options open for alternative launch vehicles.

In an Oct. 12 report, NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded a 50% reduction in SLS launch costs projected by NASA by moving to a services contract is “highly unrealistic,” with the vehicle’s cost likely to remain above $2 billion for the foreseeable future.

NASA announced in July 2022 its intent to move to a services contract, called Exploration Production and Operations Contract (EPOC), for missions starting with Artemis 5 at the end of the 2020s. That contract would be with Deep Space Transport, a joint venture of Boeing and Northrop Grumman, the two major contractors for elements of the rocket.

NASA previously said it was seeking “a substantial savings of 50% or more off of the current industry baseline per flight cost” of SLS by shifting to EPOC. It would also open the door to using SLS for missions other than Artemis lunar exploration flights, including non-NASA customers.

The OIG report concluded both reduced costs and additional customers for SLS were unlikely. That report estimates the Block 1B version of SLS, to be used starting with Artemis 4, will initially cost $2.5 billion per flight. A 50% cost reduction under EPOC would mean the SLS costs would be reduced to $1.25 billion each.

However, NASA officials acknowledged that the 50% cost reduction goal was “aspirational and not based on actual analysis,” and OIG was skeptical it could be achieved. “While Boeing officials told us they believe the 50 percent cost reduction goal under EPOC is achievable, based on our audit we find such a goal infeasible.”

That skepticism came from assessments of ongoing efforts to reduce costs that have not achieved expected savings, such as on assembly of core stages for SLS and the restart of production of the RS-25 engine. A lack of competition, the report added, will make it difficult for NASA to negotiate cost reductions, contrasting it to competition in other launch services and commercial crew.

OIG concluded that, based on its assessment of existing contracts and affordability initiatives, the cost of the SLS will remain at more than $2 billion per vehicle through the first 10 launches under the EPOC contract. It added that the extent of cost savings may also depend on the use of fixed-price versus cost-plus approaches for EPOC.

Part of that cost-reduction strategy is finding additional customers for SLS that can increase the vehicle’s flight rate and reduce per-vehicle costs. However, the report noted that efforts to find other users of the SLS, including the Defense Department, have been unsuccessful, with those potential users instead opting for existing or new vehicles under development by Blue Origin, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

The OIG report suggested that while SLS is currently the only vehicle capable of launching the Orion spacecraft, that may not always be the case. “However, in the next 3 to 5 years other human-rated commercial alternatives may become available,” it stated. “In our judgment, the Agency should continue to monitor the commercial development of heavy-lift space flight systems and begin discussions of whether it makes financial and strategic sense to consider these options as part of the Agency’s longer-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals.”

The OIG report was the second in as many months critical of the costs of SLS, a key element of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration architecture. A Sept. 7 report by the Government Accountability Office criticized NASA for a lack of transparency on SLS costs as those costs grow under existing contracts.

“Senior agency officials have told us that at current cost levels the SLS program is unsustainable and exceeds what NASA officials believe will be available for its Artemis missions,” the GAO report stated. It acknowledged efforts like EPOC to reduce SLS costs, but noted it was too early to evaluate how effective they could be.

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