SpaceX
Welcome to the 6.45 release of Rocket Report! The most interesting launch news for me this week is that Firefly is potentially for sale. As a result, two of America’s handful of operational rocket companies, Firefly and United Launch Alliance, are actively bidding. I’ll be fascinated to see what the valuation of each will be if/when the sale goes through.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form won’t appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small, medium and heavy rockets, as well as a quick look at the next three launches on the calendar.
Firefly may be for sale. Investors in Firefly Aerospace are considering a sale that could value the closely held rocket and lunar lander maker at about $1.5 billion, Bloomberg reports. The rocket company’s primary owner, AE Industrial Partners, is working with an adviser on “strategic options” for Firefly. Neither AE nor Firefly commented on the potential sale to Bloomberg. AE invested $75 million in Texas-based Firefly in a Series B funding round in 2022. The firm followed up with its Series C round in November 2023.
Launches and landing modules … Now more than a decade old and with a history of financial struggles, Firefly has emerged as one of the clear winners in the small startup race in the United States. The company’s Alpha rocket has now launched four times since its failed debut in September 2021 and is scheduled to fly on a Venture Class Launch Services 2 mission for NASA in the coming weeks. Firefly also aims to launch its Blue Ghost spacecraft to the moon later this year and is working on an orbital transport vehicle.
Blue Origin successfully returns to flight. With former Air Force captain and test pilot Ed Dwight as the lead passenger, Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft returned to flight Sunday morning. Dwight, an African-American, was one of 26 pilots recommended by the Air Force to NASA for the third astronaut class in 1963, but was not selected by the agency. It took another 20 years for America’s first black astronaut, Guion Bluford, to fly in space in 1983. At age 90, Dwight finally entered the record books on Sunday, becoming the oldest person to reach space. “I thought I don’t need that in my life,” Dwight said after Sunday’s scrimmage. “But I lied!”
One slide down … It was the seventh time that Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown humans into suborbital space and the 25th flight overall of the company’s New Shepard rocket fleet. It was the first time Blue Origin had launched humans in nearly two years and resumed suborbital service after a rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. In December, Blue Origin launched another uncrewed suborbital research mission to set the stage for the resumption of a human mission on Sunday. There was one problem with the flight, as only two of the capsule’s three parachutes deployed. It is not clear how long this issue will take to be resolved.
The RFA is testing the first stage of its rocket. German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg announced on Sunday that it has launched a hot campaign for the first stage of its RFA One rocket. “We fired a total of four Helix engines, one after the other at four second intervals,” the company said on social media X. “All engines ran simultaneously for 8 seconds with a total hot fire duration of 20 seconds, the test passed flawlessly through startup, steady state and shutdown.” This is a big step forward for a startup company.
Aiming for a test flight this year, though … The test took place at the SaxaVord Spaceport in the United Kingdom. The RFA One vehicle is powered by nine Helix engines and will have a payload capacity of 1.6 metric tons into low Earth orbit. The company plans to launch later this year, but I’m quite skeptical about that. By comparison, SpaceX began a test run of its Falcon 9 first stage in 2008, with a full test firing of all nine engines in November of that year. However, the rocket did not make its debut flight until June 2010.
China expands commercial spaceport. China is planning new phases of expansion of its new commercial spaceport to support an expected increase in launches and commercial space activity, Space News reports. Construction of the second of two launch pads at the Hainan Commercial Launch Site could be completed by the end of May. The first, completed in December and dedicated to the Long March 8 rocket, could host its first launch by the end of June.
Fulfilling a mega need … However, it seems that this is just the beginning, as the spaceport could have a total of 10 pads serving both liquid and solid rockets. The reason for the dramatic expansion appears to be to increase access to space and allow China to achieve the launch rate needed to build a pair of mega-constellations in low Earth orbit, each capable of over 10,000 satellites. It is also another sign of China’s determination to create a thriving commercial space sector. (submitted by Ken the Bin)