Author: Fargo Orbit

A test flight of the Stratolaunch platform took off from Mojave Spaceport today, putting the space startup one step closer to delivering a unique pathway for satellites to reach orbit.

Flight tracking data from FlightAware is not yet publicly available at this time, but Parabolicarc.com made it out to Mojave to collect video.

Stratolaunch is among the quieter of the recent space startups, so its launch today came as a pleasant surprise. Clouds have hung over the firm’s future following the death of founder Paul Allen and its cancellation of its own second stage rocket platform.

What Stratolaunch offers now is not strictly new – it’s the same Pegasus 30XL rocket that can be fired off by Northrop Grumman itself off its aging L1011. However, the platform was designed to accommodate larger rockets, which still provides an interesting opportunity for other firms to make a match. Stratolaunch’s niche right now is in having the world’s largest vehicle dedicated to skipping the first stage of a rocket, which can multiply the effectiveness of platforms that are otherwise unremarkable.

Outfits like Virgin Orbit offer essentially the same concept, but unlike Stratolaunch, which offers just the first stage, Virgin Orbit handles the full stack with its own 747 air stage and LauncherOne orbital rocket. Whether the business locus will continue to be “buying a launch” from a service provider, or if a diversified market of piecemeal services will arise, depends entirely upon the willingness of aviation first stage firms like Stratolaunch to open their platform to a broader range of launch options — and for other rocket companies to make a serious effort to solve air-launch problems.

Falcon Heavy’s first commercial launch occurred at Kennedy Space Center, 11 April 2019 at 2235 UTC. SpaceX delivered Arabsat-6A to geostationary transfer orbit shortly thereafter at about 2309 UTC. The 3520 kg communications satellite, built for the Arabsat organization around the Lockheed LM2100 bus, will serve the Middle East and Africa from 30.5° E. The new spacecraft will replace the older Arabsat-5A.

SpaceX recovered all three of the first-stage boosters, including the core booster, which was not recovered during Falcon Heavy’s only other launch – the dramatic “Starman” mission – a test launch which, in the absence of a third party customer, instead launched a Tesla Roadster helmed by a spacesuited mannequin deep into interplanetary space.

Now that Falcon Heavy is operational, its future appears bright, as the heavy-lift rocket has been cited as an off-the-shelf fallback option for the United States’ ambitious schedule for crewed lunar missions, as the oft-delayed Space Launch System (SLS) program struggles through its test phase.

SpaceIL engineers looked on in concern as the Beresheet spacecraft’s main engine unintentionally shut down during the critical landing phase of its mission, in the moments after 1919 UT 11 April 2019.

SpaceIL valiantly attempted to reset the spacecraft control systems. However, by the designated landing time the spacecraft did not check in. While Israel became the fourth country to land on the Moon, rather than pictures of the surface, there is at least an artificial crater in the Sea of Serenity.

April 4 saw two orbital missions, one space probe milestone, and a rocket ground test.

The Progress MS-11 resupply mission reached the International Space Station at 1422 UT, following two orbits and a launch from Baikonur on a Soyuz-2 rocket at 1101. The capsule delivered 3.4 t of spare parts, fuel, and consumables. The successful mission is another sign that life is returning to normal on the station, which returned to a full crew of six astronauts after Soyuz MS-12 arrived three weeks ago.

At 1704, Arianespace launched four commsats for SES/o3b on Soyuz mission VS22. Much like the existing o3b fleet, the new satellites will operate at a 8000-km medium-earth orbit, and provide high-speed internet through targetable spot-beams. Though other firms are building low-earth orbit Internet constellations, for the moment o3b is the highest-performance option among systems that are fully operational. It is also relatively expensive and mainly filling an enterprise backhaul role for ISPs and wireless providers, rather than a direct-to-consumer model.