Rocket Report: China flies reusable rocket hopper; Falcon Heavy dazzles

Welcome to Edition 6.50 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX launched its 10th Falcon Heavy rocket this week with the GOES-U weather satellite for NOAA, and this one was a beauty. The late afternoon timing of the launch and atmospheric conditions made for great photography. Falcon Heavy has become a trusted rocket for the US government, and its next flight in October will deploy NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on the way to explore one of Jupiter's enigmatic icy moons.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Sir Peter Beck dishes on launch business. Ars spoke with the recently knighted Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, on where his scrappy company fits in a global launch marketplace dominated by SpaceX. Rocket Lab racked up the third-most number of orbital launches by any US launch company (it's headquartered in California but primarily assembles and launches rockets in New Zealand). SpaceX's rideshare launch business with the Falcon 9 rocket is putting immense pressure on small launch companies like Rocket Lab. However, Beck argues his Electron rocket is a bespoke solution for customers desiring to put their satellite in a specific place at a specific time, a luxury they can't count on with a SpaceX rideshare.

Ruthlessly efficient ... A word that Beck returned to throughout his interview with Ars was "ruthless." He said Rocket Lab's success is a result of the company being "ruthlessly efficient and not making mistakes." At one time, Rocket Lab was up against Virgin Orbit in the small launch business, and Virgin Orbit had access to capital through billionaire Richard Branson. Now, SpaceX is the 800-pound gorilla in the market. "We have a saying here at Rocket Lab that we have no money, so we have to think. We've never been in a position to outspend our competitors. We just have to out-think them. We have to be lean and mean."

Firefly reveals plans for new launch sites. Firefly Aerospace plans to use the state of Virginia-owned launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility for East Coast launches of its Alpha small-satellite rocket, Aviation Week reports. The company plans to use Pad 0A for US military and other missions, particularly those requiring tight turnaround between procurement and launch. This is the same launch pad previously used by Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket, and it's the soon-to-be home of the Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) jointly developed by Northrop and Firefly. The launch pad will be configured for Alpha launches beginning in 2025, according to Firefly, which previously planned to develop an Alpha launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Now, Alpha and MLV rockets will fly from the same site on the East Coast, while Alpha will continue launching from the West Coast at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Hello, Sweden... A few days after the announcement for launches from Virginia, Firefly unveiled a collaborative agreement with Swedish Space Corporation to launch Alpha rockets from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden as soon as 2026. Esrange has been the departure point for numerous suborbital and sounding rocket for nearly 50 years, but the spaceport is being upgraded for orbital satellite launches. A South Korean startup named Perigee Aerospace announced in May it signed an agreement to be the first user of Esrange's orbital launch capability. Firefly is the second company to make plans to launch satellites from the remote site in northern Sweden. (submitted by Ken the Bin and brianrhurley)

China hops closer to reusable rockets. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), part of China's apparatus of state-owned aerospace companies, has conducted the country's highest altitude launch and landing test so far as several teams chase reusable rocket capabilities, Space News reports. A 3.8-meter-diameter (9.2-foot) test article powered by three methane liquid-oxygen engines lifted off from the Gobi Desert on June 23 and soared to an altitude of about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) before setting down successfully for a vertical propulsive touchdown on landing legs at a nearby landing area. SAST will follow up with a 70-kilometer (43.5-mile) suborbital test using grid fins for better control. A first orbital flight of the new reusable rocket is planned for 2025.

Lots of players ... If you don't exclusively follow China's launch sector, you should be forgiven for being unable to list all the companies working on new reusable rockets. Late last year, a Chinese startup named iSpace flew a hopper rocket testbed to an altitude of several hundred meters as part of a development program for the company's upcoming partially reusable Hyperbola 2 rocket. A company named Space Pioneer plans to launch its medium-class Tianlong 3 rocket for the first time later this year. Tianlong 3 looks remarkably like SpaceX's Falcon 9, and its first stage will eventually be made reusable. China recently test-fired engines for the government's new Long March 10, a partially reusable rocket planned to become China's next-generation crew launch vehicle. These are just a few of the reusable rocket programs in China. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Spanish launch startup invests in Kourou. PLD Space says it is ready to start construction at a disused launch complex at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. The Spanish launch startup announced this week a 10 million euro ($10.7 million) investment in the launch complex for its Miura 5 rocket, with preparations of the site set to begin "after the summer." The launch pad was previously used by the French Diamant rocket in the 1970s and is located several miles away from the launch pads used by the European Ariane 6 and Vega rockets. PLD Space is on track to become the first fully commercial company to launch from the spaceport in South America.

Free access to space ... Also this week, PLD Space announced a new program to offer space aboard the first two flights of its Miura 5 rocket for free, European Spaceflight reports. The two-stage Miura 5 rocket will be capable of delivering about a half-ton of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. PLD Space will offer free launch services aboard the first two Miura 5 flights, which are expected to take place in late 2025 and early 2026. The application process will close on July 30, and winning proposals will be announced on November 30. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Starship not a threat to Ariane 6, ESA manager says. Toni Tolker-Nielsen, who oversees rocket development at the European Space Agency, isn't particularly worried about competition from SpaceX's giant Starship rocket, Ars reports. In an interview with Space News, Tolker-Nielsen said Starship won't eradicate Europe's Ariane 6 rocket, which is finally set to debut next month after years of delays. "Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor," he said. "This huge launcher is designed to fly people to the Moon and Mars. Ariane 6 is perfect for the job if you need to launch a four- or five-ton satellite." Ariane 6, of course, is entirely expendable, and Tolker-Nielsen defended the decision not to pursue reusability with Europe's new flagship rocket by saying it won't fly often enough to make investing in recovery and reuse worthwhile. "Our launch needs are so low that it wouldn't make sense economically," he said. On its face, this seems like a defeatist attitude.

Will they ever learn? ... European space officials are starting to say publicly what has been known for years: Ariane 6 will not compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 or Starship in any sustained or meaningful way, according to Space Intel Report. This is a far cry from the commanding position Europe's launch industry found itself in 10 to 20 years ago. In 2013, an official from the French launch service provider Arianespace famously dismissed SpaceX's ambition to field a reusable rocket and launch 100 times per year as a dream. Well, the dream is alive. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX sets new reuse records. Continuing the theme of rocket reusability, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday from Cape Canaveral with a first-stage booster making its 22nd trip to space, a new record, Spaceflight Now reports. This booster, designated B1062, has been active in SpaceX's rocket fleet since November 2020. Thursday's launch delivered 23 more Starlink Internet satellites into orbit, and the first stage returned to land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX also recently flew a Falcon 9 mission with a payload fairing shell that made its 20th launch, also a record for fairing reuse.

350 ... Thursday's launch was also the 350th flight by a Falcon 9 rocket, and SpaceX's 68th launch of the year overall, including 65 Falcon 9s, two Starships, and one Falcon Heavy. One more Falcon 9 flight is on SpaceX's schedule to close out the first half of the year, and SpaceX aims for an even higher number of flights in the second half of 2024, with the goal of nearly 150 launches for the entire year. Most of these missions will carry satellites into orbit for the Starlink network. (submitted by brianrhurley)

Look out! Video recorded downrange from China's inland Xichang launch site shows a booster from a Long March rocket falling to the ground alarmingly close to a community. The video shows people running in the direction away from the rocket debris. The booster left a trail of toxic gas as it tumbled back to Earth. Unfortunately, this is not all that unusual, and it often happens after rockets take off from Xichang, which is positioned closer to population centers than China's other launch sites. This has been going on for decades, and although China is moving toward new rockets that burn non-toxic propellants, they continue to use inland spaceports, and there's no sign this will stop happening any time soon.

In the name of science ... The Long March 2C that created the debris lifted off with the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission, a joint project by the Chinese and French space agencies. The SVOM astrophysics mission will study gamma-ray bursts—violent electromagnetic explosions that can release as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will emit over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime, Space News reports. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

India's diminished role in small satellite launch. The head of the Indian Space Organization, S. Somanath, says his country's once leading position in the market for launching small satellites has eroded in recent years. A few years ago, Russian launchers and India's PSLV rocket were the prime players in the nascent commercial rideshare launch market. SpaceX's Transporter missions have changed the equation, and Somanath says India will only launch four satellites from customers from other countries, after tallying 435 in total to date.

Competitiveness ... "We could only get this much, but our launch capabilities are three times the demand," Somanath said, according to The Economic Times. "We are not able to use our capacity because satellites are not there." The kinds of satellites that used to fly on PSLV rideshare missions now fly on SpaceX's Transporter missions, which offer lower prices, taking advantage of SpaceX's rocket reuse program. While it's true more than 70 percent of SpaceX's missions so far this year have been for the company's own Starlink network, the addressable commercial market for launch services is growing. The problem for India and other launch providers is that most of these satellites are flying on SpaceX rockets. "At ISRO, we have PSLVs, but we have no demand," Somanath said. "I have a problem: Rockets are built and kept in stock but not finding customers."

Vulcan's second flight won't have a payload. The second flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket will take off in September with a dummy payload in place of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane, preserving a chance for ULA to begin launching US military satellites on the new rocket by the end of the year, Ars reports. There was little hope Dream Chaser would be ready to make its first resupply run to the International Space Station before the end of the summer, so ULA opted to complete the second Vulcan test flight as soon as possible to allow the Space Force to certify the new rocket for national security missions. This will allow ULA to begin launching a backlog of 25 military space missions assigned to Vulcan.

An update on BE-4 reuse … Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, also provided an update on the company's progress on efforts to eventually recover and reuse BE-4 engines from the Vulcan first stage. He said ULA has spent "tens of millions of dollars" on technology development to enable engine recovery and reuse, but he declined to provide a timetable for when the company will actually introduce engine reuse on the Vulcan program. ULA is working with NASA on an inflatable heat shield to allow the engines to survive reentry and redesigning the aft engine section of the Vulcan booster to make the engine pod detachable in flight. The rest of the booster, including the main airframe and propellant tanks, will still be expended.

Falcon Heavy flies again. A powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket boosted a hurricane-hunting GOES weather satellite into orbit Tuesday, the final member of a four-satellite fleet at the heart of an $11 billion upgrade to the nation's forecasting infrastructure, CBS News reports. "NOAA's geostationary satellites are an indispensable tool for protecting the United States and the 1 billion people who live and work in the Americas," said Pam Sullivan, GOES program director. "They provide a constant real-time view of weather and dangerous environmental phenomena across the Western hemisphere." This satellite, known as GOES-U and soon to be renamed GOES-19, will provide constant vigil from geostationary orbit to track severe storms and tropical cyclones, wildfires, and other phenomena.

Fresh from the factory … This was the 10th flight of a Falcon Heavy rocket and one of two Falcon Heavy flights SpaceX has on its schedule this year. All three first-stage boosters were brand new, and the two side boosters returned to landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for reuse. The upper stage deployed the GOES-U spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, into a transfer orbit. GOES-U will use its own propulsion to maneuver into its final operational orbit over the equator to begin a 10-year operational lifetime.

Next three launches

June 29: Falcon 9 | NROL-186 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03:14 UTC

June 29: Long March 7A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 12:00 UTC

June 30: H3 | ALOS-4 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 03:06 UTC