Space Explored

Last week we saw the first major collapse of a recent commercial space company, with Virgin Orbit furloughing its entire staff except for a handful of employees. However, there are some signs of hope, as tomorrow more employees will return for work with more coming later.

It’s been a turbulent week for Virgin Orbit, headquartered out of Long Beach California. The company suspended all operations and furloughed most of its workforce for a week as it sought relief by raising funds to rescue its rocket-flying business, according to sources close to the matter on March 15.

During a 5 p.m. EDT meeting that day, company higher-ups explained that employees could cash in their paid time off as the furlough would be unpaid with a small team remaining in place continuing to work.

During the third quarter of 2022, Virgin Orbit reported a loss of $42.9 million as cash demands continued, with fourth quarter funding coming from an investment arm of its founder Richard Branson’s parent company, Virgin Group.

Notes in the amounts of $25 million, an unsecured convertible note secured in November of 2022, along with another $30 million in senior secured notes in December 2022 and January 2023 gives “first priority” access to assets by Branson’s parent company.

Have these last two weeks flown by for anyone else or just me? I don’t think we have ever been closer to seeing SpaceX’s first Starship orbital launch than we are now. But, according to two SpaceXers, we are just waiting on the FAA’s approval.

We have another busy week ahead with four launches scheduled around the globe, all from different companies. Check out below to see what is launching.

Friday, SpaceX launched two missions from both coasts of the United States to bring its rate back up, closer to its goal. With these launches in the books, SpaceX has launched 19 missions with 20 successful booster landings.

Thursday evening Rocket Lab launched once again from its Virginia launch site at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. This was the company’s second launch of the year, both coming from LC-2.

Earlier this week, LockBit, a ransomware gang that operates largely on the dark web, posted to its website claiming to have obtained proprietary designs from a SpaceX contractor. Now the gang has shared evidence of the alleged leak, along with a threatening message to Elon Musk.

NASA is returning humanity to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, but this time powered by the growing commercial space industry. To walk on the Moon, you need a few essential tools to survive. One of those was unveiled today – a space suit.

According to CNBC’s Michael Sheetz, Virgin Orbit will be shutting down and furloughing its employees for at least one week while it looks for funding to continue operations.

Tuesday, Arianespace announced it signed a new contract for two launches, with an option of a third, from the European Space Agency and the Italian Government. However, no response has been made on the validity of Vega-C’s failure investigation.

Hot on the heels of the splashdown of the Crew-5 mission, SpaceX launched the uncrewed CRS-27 Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station.

Liftoff atop a Falcon 9 rocket came at 8:30 p.m. EDT March 14, 2023, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The autonomous spacecraft is set to dock to the ISS about a day later to deliver some 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of supplies to the seven-person Expedition 68 crew living aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The Falcon 9 first stage that flew in support of this mission, B1073, successfully landed on the SpaceX drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” less than 10 minutes after launch, which was positioned downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the seventh recovery for this booster.

Overall, this was SpaceX’s 17th launch of 2023 — the 16th for a Falcon 9 rocket. The company plans to fly as many as 100 missions this year.

SpaceX is set to deliver thousands of pounds of hardware and science experiments to the International Space Station as part of the uncrewed CRS-27 Dragon resupply mission.

Liftoff atop a Falcon 9 rocket is slated for 8:25 p.m. EDT March 14 (12:25 UTC March 15), 2023, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This will be the 27th resupply mission to the orbiting laboratory under the company’s Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

Last week, the US saw the second biggest bank closure in history, with the FDIC taking over Silicon Valley Bank. While SVB specialized in tech startups, space companies also used the bank, including Astra, Rocket Lab, and more.

The premier spaceport in the world, Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station has everything companies need to start launching its rockets to space. Four new companies will join those already operating there with new launch pad allocations by the Space Force.

Earlier today, SpaceX launched another set of satellites to fill out OneWeb’s internet providing constellation of satellites. Today’s launch saw 40 OneWeb satellites launched by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket out of SLC-40 in Florida.

On Wednesday afternoon, Relativity attempted to launch its first Terran 1 rocket out of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. However, it was not in the cards as the company used up its three-hour window troubleshooting the countdown, but they will be back out there this weekend.

I’ve came across some new details about JAXA’s H3 launch Monday that might change how we look at its failure. We mentioned that inside its payload fairing was the Advanced Land Observing Satellite 3 (ALOS 3), and it turns out that was not a cheap satellite.

Last week, SpaceX launched its first set of Starlink V2 Mini satellites, which will help the company build out their internet service to be more financially viable. Now, a company has shared imagery of one of these satellites with its solar panels deployed which they captured using on-orbit assets.