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SpaceX sets new record for most satellites on a single launch with latest Falcon 9 mission
SpaceX has set a new all-time record for the most satellites launched and deployed on a single mission, with its Transporter-1 flight on Sunday. The launch was the first of SpaceX’s dedicated rideshare missions, in which it splits up the payload capacity of its rocket among multiple customers, resulting in a reduced cost for each but still providing SpaceX with a full launch and all the revenue it requires to justify lauding one of its vehicles.
The launch today included 143 satellites, 133 of which were from other companies who booked rides. SpaceX also launched 10 of its own Starlink satellites, adding to the already more than 1,000 already sent to orbit to power SpaceX’s own broadband communication network. During a launch broadcast last week, SpaceX revealed that it has begun serving beta customers in Canada and is expanding to the UK with its private pre-launch test of that service.
Customers on today’s launch included Planet Labs, which sent up 48 SuperDove Earth imaging satellites; Swarm, which sent up 36 of its own tiny IoT communications satellites, and Kepler, which added to its constellation with eight more of its own communication spacecraft. The rideshare model that SpaceX now has in place should help smaller new space companies and startups like these build out their operational on-orbit constellations faster, complementing other small payload launchers like Rocket Lab, and new entrant Virgin Orbit, to name a few.
This SpaceX launch was also the first to deliver Starlink satellites to a polar orbit, which is a key part of the company’s continued expansion of its broadband service. The mission also included a successful landing and recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster, the fifth for this particular booster, and a dual recovery of the fairing halves used to protect the cargo during launch, which were fished out of the Atlantic ocean using its recovery vessels and will be refurbished and reused.
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Space startup Aevum debuts world’s first fully autonomous orbital rocket launching drone
Launching things to space doesn’t have to mean firing a large rocket vertically using massive amounts of rocket-fuel-powered thrust — startup Aevum breaks the mould in multiple ways, with an innovative launch vehicle design that combines uncrewed aircraft with horizontal take-off and landing capabilities, with a secondary stage that deploys at high altitude and can take small payloads the rest of the way to space.
Aevum’s model actually isn’t breaking much new ground in terms of its foundational technology, according to founder and CEO Jay Skylus, with whom I spoke prior to today’s official unveiling of the startup’s Ravn X launch vehicle. Skylus, who previously worked for a range of space industry household names and startups, including NASA, Boeing, Moon Express and Firefly, told me the startup has focused primarily on making the most of existing available technologies to create a mostly reusable, fully automated small payload orbital delivery system.
To his point, Ravn X doesn’t look too dissimilar from existing jet aircraft, and bears obvious resemblance to the Predator line of UAVs already in use for terrestrial uncrewed flight. The vehicle is 80 feet long, and has a 60-foot wingspan, with a total max weight of 55,000 lbs including payload. Seventy percent of the system is fully reusable today, and Skylus says the goal is to iterate on that to the point where 95% of the launch system will be reusable in the relatively near future.
Image Credits: Aevum
Ravn X’s delivery system is designed for rapid response delivery, and is able to get small satellites to orbit in as little as 180 minutes — with the capability of having it ready to fly and deliver another again fairly shortly after that. It uses traditional jet fuel, the same kind used on commercial airliners, and it can take off and land in “virtually any weather,” according to Skylus. It also takes off and lands on any one-mile stretch of traditional aircraft runway, meaning it can theoretically use just about any active airport in the world as a launch and landing site.
One of they key defining differences of Aevum relative to other space launch startups is that what they’re presenting isn’t theoretical, or in development — the Ravn X already has paying customers, including over $1 billion in U.S. government contracts. Its first mission is with the U.S. Space Force, the ASLON-45 small satellite launch mission (set for late 2021), and it also has a contract for 20 missions spanning nine years with the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Deliveries of Aevum’s production launch vehicles to its customers have already begun, in fact, Skylus says.
The U.S. Department of Defense has for quite some time now been actively pursuing space launch options that provide it with responsive, short turnaround launch capabilities. That’s the same goal of companies like Astra, which was originally looking to win the DARPA challenge for such systems (since expired) with its Rocket small launcher. Aevum’s system has the added advantage of being essentially fully compatible with existing airfield infrastructure — and also of not requiring that human pilots be involved or at risk at all, as they are with the superficially similar launch model espoused by Virgin Orbit.
Aevum isn’t just providing the Ravn X launcher, either; its goal is to handle end-to-end logistics for launch services, including payload transportation and integration, which are parts of the process that Skylus says are often overlooked or underserved by existing launch providers, and that many companies creating payloads also don’t realize are costly, complicated and time-consuming parts of actually delivering a working small satellite to orbit. The startup also isn’t “re-inventing the wheel” when it comes to its integration services — Skylus says they’re working with a range of existing partners that all already have proven experience doing this work but haven’t previously had the motivation or the need to provide these kinds of services to the customers that Skylum sees coming online, both in the public and private sector.
The need isn’t for another SpaceX, Skylus says; rather, thanks to SpaceX, there’s a wealth of aerospace companies that previously worked almost exclusively with large government contracts and the one or two massive legacy rocket companies to put missions together. They’re now open to working with the greatly expanded market for orbital payloads, including small satellites that aim to provide cost-effective solutions in communications, environmental monitor, shipping and defense.
Aevum’s solution definitely sounds like it addresses a clear and present need, in a way that offers benefits in terms of risk profile, reusability, cost and flexibility. The company’s first active missions will obviously be watched closely, by potential customers and competitors alike.
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Tesla says its battery innovations will deliver its goal of a $25,000 mass market electric car
Tesla held its Battery Day event on Tuesday to discuss a variety of innovations it has developed and is pursuing in battery technology for its vehicles. At the event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Drew Baglino detailed new anode and cathode technology it’s working on, as well as materials science, in-house mining operations and manufacturing improvements it’s developing to make more more affordable, sustainable batteries — and they said that taken together, these should allow them to make an electric vehicle available to consumers at the $25,000 price point.
“We’re confident we can make a very, very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle, that’s also fully autonomous,” Musk said. “And when you think about the $25,000 price point you have to consider how much less expensive it is to own an electric vehicle. So actually, it becomes even more affordable at that $25,000 price point.”
This isn’t the first time that Musk has talked about the $25,000 price point for a Tesla car: Two years ago, in August 2018, he said that he believed the company would be able to reach that target price point in roughly three years. Two years on, it seems like the goal posts have been pushed out again — fairly standard for an Elon-generated timeline — since Musk and Baglino acknowledged that it would be another two or three years before the company could realize the technologies it presented in sufficient quantities to be produced effectively at scale.
Tesla detailed a new, tabless battery cell design that would help it achieve its goal of reaching 10 to 20 terawatts of global battery production capacity per year. The design offers five times the energy density of the existing cells it uses, as well as six times the power and an overall 16% improvement in range for vehicles in which it’s used.
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Elon Musk says Tesla is open to licensing Autopilot, supplying powertrains and batteries to other automakers
Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Tuesday night that the automaker would be “open to licensing software and supplying powertrains & batteries” to other automakers. Musk added that that would even include Autopilot, the advanced driver assistance software that Tesla offers to provide intelligent cruise control in a number of different driving scenarios.
Musk was addressing a Teslarati article about how German automakers are looking to close the technology gap between themselves and Tesla when it comes to producing EVs. Volkswagen Chairman Herbert Diess has in past comments expressed admiration for Musk and Tesla’s accomplishments on multiple occasions.
VW has created its own EV platform, which it intends to use as the base for a number of different electric cars, ranging from sport sedans to SUVs. The company is also openly pursuing licensing its MEB platform to other automakers, and struck such a deal with Ford last July for the American automaker’s European business.
Musk says that Tesla’s interest in licensing stems from its underlying goal, which is “to accelerate sustainable energy, not crush competitors,” according to his tweet. This isn’t the first time the automaker has indicated a willingness to be more open in pursuit of that goal: In 2014, Musk penned a blog post announcing that Tesla would be making its intellectual property freely available to “anyone who, in good faith, wants to use [its] technology.”
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Tesla from taking aim at potential competitors via legal action on occasion — it filed suit against electric automaker Rivian and four of its former employees last week, alleging theft of trade secrets and poaching key talent.
A platform licensing or supplier relationship would be an entirely different arrangement, of course, and one with plenty of precedent in the automaker industry. Nor would it necessarily negatively impact Tesla’s own auto sales, as the company offers a number of other selling points above and beyond its underlying powertrain and battery tech.
At the time of Volkswagen’s announcement, the German automaker said it expects it could make up to $20 billion in revenue through the MEB deal with Ford, with a significant chunk of that coming from MEB parts and components supply. Tesla could realize similar gains but perhaps amplified globally, especially if it can ramp powertrain and battery production beyond the capacity needs of its own vehicle demand capacity.
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SpaceX alumni are helping build LA’s startup ecosystem
During the days when Snapchat’s popularity was booming, investors thought the company would become the anchor for a new Los Angeles technology scene.
Snapchat, they hoped, would spin-off entrepreneurs and angel investors who would reinvest in the local ecosystem and create new companies that would in turn foster more wealth, establishing LA as a hub for tech talent and venture dollars on par with New York and Boston.
In the ensuing years, Los Angeles and its entrepreneurial talent pool has captured more attention from local and national investors, but it’s not Snap that’s been the source for the next generation of local founders. Instead, several former SpaceX employees have launched a raft of new companies, capturing the imagination and dollars of some of the biggest names in venture capital.
“There was a buzz, but it doesn’t quite have the depth of bench of people that investors wanted it to become,” says one longtime VC based in the City of Angels. “It was a company in LA more than it was an LA company.”
Perhaps the most successful SpaceX offshoot is Relativity Space, founded by Jordan Noone and Tim Ellis. Since Noone, a former SpaceX engineer, and Ellis, a former Blue Origin engineer, founded their company, the business has been (forgive the expression) a rocket ship. Over the past four years, Relativity href=”https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/relativity-a-new-star-in-the-space-race-raises-160-million-for-its-3-d-printed-rockets/”> has raised $185.7 million, received special dispensations from NASA to test its rockets at a facility in Alabama, will launch vehicles from Cape Canaveral and has signed up an early customer in Momentus, which provides satellite tug services in orbit.
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Tesla ramps up solar tile roof installations in US, eyes China and Europe expansion
Tesla appears to be ramping up installations of its solar tile roofs in the San Francisco Bay area and will eventually roll out to Europe and China, according to CEO Elon Musk, who, in a series of tweets, provided the first substantial update since the company launched the third iteration of its product in October.
The solar tile roof, which Tesla calls Solarglass, is being produced at the company’s factory in Buffalo, N.Y. Musk announced in one of the tweets plans to host a “company talk” in April at the Buffalo factory, an event that will include media and customer tours of the facility.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment seeking more information about Solarglass, including how many installations have been made to date. We will update the article if Tesla responds.
Many Bay Area installations are ongoing now
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2020
Europe & China timing will be announced soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
Four months ago, Musk said the company would begin installations in the “coming weeks” and that it hopes to ramp production to as many as 1,000 new roofs per week.
Tesla’s solar roof tiles are designed to look like normal roof tiles when installed on a house, while doubling as solar panels to generate power. The company first unveiled the solar tiles in 2016 and has been tinkering with them ever since. Tesla has conducted trial installations with the first two generations of the solar tiles and opened up pre-orders in 2017.
In an earnings call last October, Musk suggested that the tiles were ready for a widespread deployment, noting that “version three is finally ready for the big time.”
The solar tile roof will initially be offered in textured black, but Musk reiterated Monday plans to offer other color and finish variants “hopefully later this year.”
Yes, but we want to focus on textured black first, then move into Earth tones & convolutions
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
A pricing estimator on the Tesla website says a solar tile roof with 10 kW of solar on an average 2,000 square-foot home costs $42,500 before federal tax incentives. It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive.
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SpaceX cautions on launch regulation that outpaces innovation
During the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) 23rd annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, D.C., one panel focused on the changing regulatory environment when it comes to private launch activities, and how those are integrated into existing rules and practices for managing commercial air transportation. Panelist Caryn Schenewerk, SpaceX senior counsel and senior director of space flight policy, emphasized that while the company always does the utmost to ensure safety in everything it does, the company also wants to focus on the actual state of the industry today and how it needs to grow as various partners work to establish new rules for the growing commercial launch sector.
“When aviation started, the Wright brothers weren’t flying over major populated cities,” Schenewerk pointed out. “They were outside Paris in an unpopulated field, and they were at Kitty Hawk on unpopulated beaches. And they were in Ohio in unpopulated areas.”
Schenewerk was directly addressing comments made by other panelists, and specifically ALPA Aviation Safety Chair Steve Jangelis, that suggested the emerging commercial launch industries may be looking far ahead to when they’re launching from spaceports located near populated areas, and launching with much more frequency than they are today. In general, Jangelis was advocating for laying the groundwork now for high levels of cooperation and integration between aviation traffic management and rocket launch operators.
Schenewerk was reluctant to concede any kind of direct equivalency between the commercial air transportation industry and the space launch sector, given their relative dissimilarity.
She noted that in terms of sheer volume, there’s a massive difference, with roughly 40 to 50 launches set for 2020 compared to millions of flights for commercial air. Airlines also use essentially the same small handful of airframes from suppliers like Boeing and Airbus, while each launch company has their own, very different vehicle with different conditions for launch and flight. Overall, she suggested then that anticipating some potential future state where the industries were more similar could result in stifling progress toward that ultimate goal.
“I hope we get to that million launches at some point, but when we are at that point, it’s going to be because we worked our way up the safety trajectory in a way that allows us to operate that way,” Schenewerk said. “Today, SpaceX can’t fly from a spaceport in the middle of the country, because we won’t get through the safety approval. We literally will not be licensed by the FAA to operate from that site, because we will then be flying over large populations of people — and we aren’t at that level of reliability and safety in this industry to fly over large populations of people with these kinds of rockets. Could we get there someday? Yeah, we can get there someday when we’ve had a million flights, and a million prove-outs of our capability, when we have such repeatability that we’re in that level.”
Ultimately, Schenewerk’s comments and Jangelis’ responses illustrate that there are still a lot of places where younger companies and emerging technologies like reusable rocket launches are conflicting with the views of more established industries and players operating in some shared spaces.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson also addressed the agency’s ongoing work to establish launch rules, which were released as a draft last year and which Dickson said will likely be finalized sometime this fall, once the FAA has incorporated industry comments and feedback.
“Let’s think about that big vision, that big day when lots of things are happening,” Schenewerk said. “But let’s also not yell at our kid for not being able to fly an airplane when they can barely walk — and I think that’s where we are right now: We’re still figuring out how to walk and run in this industry.”
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Max Q: NASA signs up new Moon delivery companies
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There were lot of highlights in the space industry this past week (even though a rocket launch that was supposed to happened is now pushed to Monday). The biggest news for commercial space might just be that NASA signed on five new companies to its list of approved vendors for lunar payload delivery services, bringing the total group to 14.
SpaceX is among them, and Musk’s company had its own fair share of news this week, too – some good, some bad. One things’ for sure: Even going in to the last week in November, there’s still plenty of news to come in this industry before the year’s out.
Artist’s rendering of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander.
The five include Blue Origin, SpaceX, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. This doesn’t necessarily mean all or any of these companies will actually fly anything to the Moon on behalf of NASA, but it does mean they can officially bid for the chance. Alongside 9 other companies selected previously by NASA, their bids will be considered by the NASA based on cost, viability and other factors.
This is the bad news I referred to earlier: SpaceX’s Starship Mk1 prototype in Texas blew up just a little bit during cryo testing. This test is designed to simulate extreme cold conditions that the spacecraft could endure during flight, and it clearly didn’t. But Elon Musk was optimistic, saying just after the incident that they’ll move on to a more advanced design right away.
SNC’s Shooting Star module. Credit: SNC.
One of the companies that is now included in NASA’s lunar payload service provider list is Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). They’re currently developing and building their Dream Chaser spacecraft, which is reusable and lands like the Space Shuttle. At an event at Cape Canaveral in Florida, they unveiled what they call the ‘Shooting Star’ – an ejectable single use cargo container for the Dream Chaser that can really add to its versatility.
This demonstration mission is just a start, but the tech that Nanoracks is launching aboard a future SpaceX launch will be able to cut metal in space, marking the first time a robotic piece of equipment has done that. The ultimate goal is to use this tech to take spent spacecraft upper stages and give them new life – as research platforms, satellites or even habitats in orbit.
That’s one of Saturn’s moons, and it’s made up of icy oceans. Normally, that’s not an optimal place for a rover to get around, but the agency’s laboratory has been testing a design in the Earth’s coldest oceans to see how viable it will be, and now they’re going to use the Antarctic, which is where it’ll test it for months at a time.
Elon Musk revealed Tesla’s crazy, beautiful, ugly, strange Cybertruck pickup last week, and he noted that the stainless steel alloy that makes up its skin is the same material that SpaceX is developing and using on its new Starship spacecraft. Sometimes, being CEO of both a car company and a space company at the same time really pays off.
A lot of large companies outsource at least part of their innovation management and design, and with the space boom on, there’s a new opportunity for companies to emerge that specialize in helping those same large companies find out where they fit in this new frontier. Luna is one such co, putting the puzzle pieces together for health tech companies.
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Tesla all-electric ATV makes a surprise debut at Cybertruck event
Tesla CEO Elon Musk definitely didn’t have the most issue-free presentation during last night’s Cybertruck unveil, but he did pull off a pretty impressive “one more thing moment” — revealing a surprise all-electric all-terrain vehicle (ATV) that Tesla created to pair with its futuristic pickup.
The Tesla electric ATV didn’t get a lot of time to shine on its own, and instead was used primarily to demonstrate how the Tesla Cybertruck bed and active suspension works for loading cargo, but it’s a real enough thing that Tesla made sure to point out that you can charge the electric four-wheeler right from the Cybertruck while the ATV is loaded in the bed.
Musk didn’t reveal anything about pricing or availability regarding the ATV, but a demo driver did actually drive it up onstage and load it into the bed, so it’s real enough to be functional. Like the Cybertruck itself, it also featured a body design with a lot of intersecting flat planes and angels, and it was done up in matte black, which makes it look like the ATV version of a stealth bomber.
In the past, Musk has discussed the idea of electric motorcycles, dismissing Tesla’s interest in the category in favor of electric bikes. Musk said at a Tesla shareholder meeting in 2018 that a motorcycle was not in the cards, and also floated the idea of doing an e-bike instead that same year.
An ATV is a very different kind of vehicle — designed more for utility and recreation than for road use, but it’ll be interesting to see what kind of consumer launch Tesla has in mind for such a vehicle. A “Cybertruck: ATV Edition” would probably incur a lot of demand.
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Tesla is launching version three of its solar roof tile this week
Tesla will debut a new, third iteration of its solar roof tile this week — with an official debut tomorrow afternoon. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday that it’ll make an official announcement detailing the differences in generation three on Thursday afternoon.
Tesla originally unveiled its solar roof tile product back in 2016, and officially opened pre-orders in 2017. During the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk said that the product was already in its third iteration, which he said improved performance and put the product on cost parity with cheap, non-solar roofing tiles, once you factor in savings over time on utility cost plus the cost of purchase for the new roof.
It seems like that version was in testing at that point, and is now ready for general consumer sales and purchase. The solar tiles have not seemed to have seen consumer installations in any kind of significant scale to date, with existing customers with reservations in place claiming they haven’t heard much in the way of installation timeline expectations. Perhaps we’ll learn more about availability and roll-out plans along with tomorrow’s “official” launch of the version-three product.
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