Welcome to Rocket Report Release 6.44! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It appears that this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two and a half months after Starship’s previous test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.
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 display 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.
Blue Origin goes on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will send six passengers per flight into suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) above West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has not sent humans into space since a New Shepard rocket broke down on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.
Historic flight … This will be the 25th flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and New Shepard’s seventh human spaceflight mission. Before Blue Origin’s rocket failure in 2022, the company was hitting a flight cadence of about one launch every two months on average. Flight speed has decreased since then. Sunday’s flight is significant not only because it marks the resumption of launches for Blue Origin’s suborbital human spaceflight business, but also because the six-person crew includes an aviation pioneer. Ed Dwight, 90, almost became the first black astronaut in 1963. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, flew military fighter jets and graduated from test pilot school, following a familiar career path like many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates submitted by the Air Force to NASA, but the space agency did not include him. Dwight will become the oldest person ever to fly in space.
Spaceport Camden officially no longer exists. With the stroke of a pen, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill that dissolves management of the Camden County Spaceport, Action News Jax reported. This news follows a March 2022 referendum where more than 70 percent of voters rejected a plan to purchase land for the spaceport on the Georgia coastline between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. County officials were still trying to move forward with the spaceport initiative after the failed referendum, but the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in February that the county must comply with the wishes of voters.
$12 million for what?… The government of Camden County, population about 55,000, spent $12 million on the Camden Spaceport concept over a decade. The goal of the spaceport authority was to attract small launch companies to the region, but no major launches have ever taken place from Camden County. State Rep. Steven Sainz, who sponsored the bill to deauthorize the spaceport, said in a statement that the legislation “reflects community choices and paves the way for future collaboration on economic initiatives that are more aligned with local needs.” (submitted by zapman987)
Polaris Spaceplanes is moving on to bigger things. German startup Polaris Spaceplanes says it is moving forward with building its MIRA II and MIRA III spaceplane prototypes after MIRA, a subscale test vehicle, was damaged earlier this year, European Spaceflight reports. The MIRA demonstration vehicle crash-landed during a test flight in February. The accident occurred on takeoff at an airport in Germany before the vehicle was able to ignite its in-flight aerospace engine. The remote-controlled MIRA prototype was about 4.25 meters long. Polaris announced on April 30 that it would not refurbish the MIRA and instead continue to build a pair of larger vehicles.
Almost 16 months without a start … The MIRA II and MIRA III vehicles will be 5 meters long and powered by Polaris’ AS-1 aeroship engines, along with jet engines to propel the craft before and after the rocket engine’s in-flight tests. Aerospike engines are rocket engines that are designed to operate efficiently at all altitudes. The MIRA test vehicles are precursors to AURORA, a multi-role space plane and hypersonic transporter that Polaris says will be able to deliver up to 1,000 kilograms of payload into low Earth orbit. (submitted by Jay500001 and Tfargo04)
