New rocket company looks at Cape Canaveral for launches

A new rocket company toured Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday to evaluate its potential as a site for small satellite launches and rocket engine manufacturing.

Rocket Lab USA is developing the 59-foot-tall, liquid-fueled Electron rocket for orbital launches of satellites weighing roughly 220 pounds.

“It’s a giant sounding rocket, basically,” said CEO Peter Beck, who founded the company in 2007.

Beck in 2013 raised money from Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, and says word about a second financing round is coming soon.

Technically a U.S. company with most of its employees (about 50) based at a New Zealand subsidiary, Rocket Lab has done work for DARPA and traditional aerospace contractors.

The company hopes to launch a test flight late this year from a private range in New Zealand and begin commercial service next year, and has commitments to launch more than 30 satellites.

“We’ve run this program very dark up until recently,” said Beck. “I think a lot of people probably are surprised at how mature the program is.”

The goal is to launch Electrons as often as once a week, though the U.S. flight rate would be lower, perhaps once a month, primarily for government customers, initially.

Beck said it’s too soon to tell whether his U.S. team might number 10 or hundreds, depending on customer demand. He described the company as being in the midst of a “massive expansion.”

Rocket Lab plans to build its Rutherford rocket engines in the States, 10 of which fly on each carbon-composite rocket, burning kerosene and liquid oxygen.

Of course, the company is exploring opportunities in other states, presumably including at Wallops Island in Virginia and a proposed spaceport in Georgia.

Executives met Friday with representatives from Space Florida, which might offer access to the one of the two Cape pads it operates, and NASA and the Air Force.

Interestingly, the tour included a stop at Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39B, where NASA eventually plans to launch astronauts atop the giant Space Launch System rocket – at 322 feet, more than five times taller than the Electron.

NASA has pitched 39B as a “multi-user” pad. But operators of larger rockets, at least, have expressed concern about the potential for conflicts with SLS missions, even if they are expected to fly no more than once every year or two.

Larger rockets pose more risk of damaging the pad in an accident, but the agency apparently sees opportunities there for smaller launch vehicles.

Rockledge firm snags launch pad contract

NASA last week awarded a contract worth up to $24.9 million to J. P. Donovan Construction of Rockledge to build a new flame deflector and refurbish the flame trench at Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39B.

That’s the pad NASA is overhauling for launches of astronauts on deep space exploration missions by its Space Launch System rocket.

The rocket’s first unmanned test launch is planned in 2018 or 2019, with a first launch with astronauts in an Orion capsule four years after that.

NASA buys more Russian seats

NASA hopes Boeing and SpaceX are ready to launch astronauts from the Space Coast to the International Space Station by late 2017, but what if they’re not?

To hedge against that possibility, the agency last week committed to buying six more seats for rides in 2018 on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, which since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011 has provided the only human access to orbit.

“Until the U.S. commercial vehicles are successfully demonstrated and meet the acceptance criteria established by NASA, continued access to Russian crew launch, return, and rescue services is essential for planned ISS operations and utilization by all ISS partners,” NASA said in a procurement notice.

The seats’ cost was not immediately disclosed. In its proposed 2016 budget, however, NASA anticipates paying about $76 million per seat in 2017.

Commercial Crew Program officials have said seats on Boeing and SpaceX flights will cost an average of $58 million.

If the two companies are ready on time, NASA said the Russian seats would be available as a backup.

ASAP visits KSC

Two weeks after the release of an annual report that included criticism of a key Kennedy Space Center program, an independent NASA safety panel will visit the center this week for its first quarterly meeting of the year.

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, will hold a public meeting in KSC’s headquarters building from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. (The deadline to register was last Thursday.)

The agenda includes updates on NASA’s development of exploration systems, the Commercial Crew Program and International Space Station.

The nine-person panel’s 2014 annual report accused the Commercial Crew Program, which is led from KSC, for a lack of transparency that could contribute to safety problems if not corrected.

Interestingly, a new member on the panel is Brent Jett, a former astronaut and former No. 2 in the Commercial Crew Program.

Orion

It’s been two months since NASA and Lockheed Martin flew an unmanned Orion capsule in space for the first time, completing a successful two-orbit test flight Dec. 5.

On Tuesday, Larry Price, Lockheed’s Orion deputy program manager, will discuss the results of the $370 million Exploration Flight Test-1 at the National Space Club Florida Committee’s monthly 11:30 a.m. luncheon event at the Radisson at the Port in Cape Canaveral.

His presentation is entitled “Orion Flight Test Overview.” The test was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy. The Orion flew as high as 3,600 miles up — 15 times higher than the International Space Station — before a 20,000 mph reentry through the atmosphere and a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The flight tested the capsule’s heat shield, parachutes and numerous separation events. The spacecraft was trucked back across the country is now undergoing post-flight processing at its Kennedy Space Center assembly facility.

KSC is Dragon’s lair, briefly

Through Monday you can get a close-up glimpse of the SpaceX Dragon capsule that was the first privately developed spacecraft to visit the International Space Station.

The capsule is wrapping up a four-day stop at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

“We are honored to display this remarkable spacecraft representing SpaceX’s success in resupply missions for the International Space Station and NASA,” said Therrin Protze, the Visitor Complex’s chief operating officer.

The spacecraft, which is being upgraded to fly astronauts, last Monday was one of three capsules providing a backdrop for NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s “State of NASA” address in KSC’s Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building. It sat alongside NASA’s Orion and a mockup of Boeing’s CST-100.

Meanwhile, the space station astronauts are preparing to bid goodbye to another Dragon — the fifth to deliver cargo under a $1.6 billion NASA contract.

A 58-foot robotic arm is scheduled to release the unmanned cargo craft just after 2 p.m. EST Tuesday, and it is expected to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 7:45 p.m. The departure would be delayed if weather is poor in the splashdown zone.

Dragon is the only spacecraft flying today that can return significant quantities of cargo and science experiments to Earth.

In other Dragon news: a test of the crewed version’s launch abort system is coming up soon from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft will fire thrusters that will launch it to about 4,000 feet up to set up a splashdown in the Atlantic, a SpaceX official said at a conference last week in Washington, D.C..

The entire “pad abort” test will last less than 80 seconds.

Crew access tower

Look for a formal groundbreaking later this month for the new tower astronauts will use to board Boeing CST-100 capsules atop Atlas V rockets at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 41.

The crew access tower will support commercial flights of NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, and potentially others.

Pluto pic

A NASA probe launched nine years ago from Cape Canaveral last week returned a new image of the dwarf planet Pluto on the 109th birthday of its discoverer, the late Clyde Tombaugh.

From 126 million miles away, the New Horizons spacecraft captured Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, as two blurry white dots in darkness.

“My dad would be thrilled with New Horizons,” said Clyde Tombaugh’s daughter Annette Tombaugh, of Las Cruces, New Mexico. “To actually see the planet that he had discovered, and find out more about it — to get to see the moons of Pluto — he would have been astounded. I'm sure it would have meant so much to him if he were still alive today.”

New Horizons already has traveled more than 3 billion miles since its launch on Jan. 19, 2006.

Dream Chaser

Shut out by NASA’s Commercial Crew competition, Sierra Nevada Corp. last week said it had completed a study with the German space agency about potential uses for its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.

Those could include manned or unmanned flights to perform science research, satellite servicing or space junk removal, Sierra Nevada said.

The Louisville, Colorado, company has also submitted a bid to NASA to use the Dream Chaser for cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station.

The company had hoped to use Kennedy Space Center as a base of operations for astronaut flights.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean