WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – The United States plans to test a spacecraft engine powered by nuclear fission by 2027 as part of a long-term NASA effort to demonstrate more efficient methods of propelling astronauts to Mars in the future, the space agency’s chief said on Tuesday.
NASA will partner with the U.S. military’s research and development agency, DARPA, to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion engine and launch it to space “as soon as 2027,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
The U.S. space agency has studied for decades the concept of nuclear thermal propulsion, which introduces heat from a nuclear fission reactor to a hydrogen propellant in order to provide a thrust believed to be far more efficient than traditional chemical-based rocket engines.
NASA officials view nuclear thermal propulsion as crucial for sending humans beyond the moon and deeper into space. A trip to Mars from Earth using the technology could take roughly four months instead of some nine months with a conventional, chemically powered engine, engineers say.
That would substantially reduce the time astronauts would be exposed to deep-space radiation and would also require fewer supplies, such as food and other cargo, during a trip to Mars.
“If we have swifter trips for humans, they are safer trips,” NASA deputy administrator and former astronaut Pam Melroy said Tuesday.
The planned 2027 demonstration, part of an existing DARPA research program that NASA is now joining, could also inform the ambitions of the U.S. Space Force, which has envisioned deploying nuclear reactor-powered spacecraft capable of moving other satellites orbiting near the moon, DARPA and NASA officials said.
DARPA in 2021 awarded funds to General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin to study designs of nuclear reactors and spacecraft. By around March, the agency will pick a company to build the nuclear spacecraft for the 2027 demonstration, the program’s manager Tabitha Dodson said in an interview.
The joint NASA-DARPA effort’s budget is $110 million for fiscal year 2023 and is expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars more through 2027.
Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio
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Converted Boeing 747 takes off from Newquay, Cornwall
Rocket will be deployed over the Atlantic in next hour
‘Start Me Up’ mission will deploy nine small satellites
NEWQUAY, England, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Virgin Orbit’s “Cosmic Girl” carrier aircraft took off from Newquay’s spaceport in Cornwall, southwest England on Monday night, the initial stage of Western Europe’s first ever satellite launch.
The modified Boeing 747 with a rocket under its wing took to the air and then soared out over the Atlantic Ocean, where after an hour it will release a rocket at about 35,000 feet (10,668 meters).
More than 2,000 space fans cheered when the aircraft left the runway.
The “horizontal” launch has catapulted the resort in southwest England – population 20,000 and famous for its reliable Atlantic waves – into the limelight as Western Europe’s go-to destination for small satellites.
Virgin Orbit (VORB.O), part-owned by British billionaire Richard Branson, said nine satellites would be deployed into lower Earth orbit (LEO) from its LauncherOne rocket in its first mission outside its United States base.
($1 = 0.8213 pounds)
Additional reporting by Sarah Young; editing by Nick Macfie and Sandra Maler, Kate Holton
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Jan 8 (Reuters) – A mobile air-launched rocket system to be used in Britain’s first domestic satellite launch could sow the seeds for a globally dispersed rapid-response capability to put extra eyes in space in times of war, executives and analysts said.
Virgin Orbit (VORB.O), part-owned by billionaire Richard Branson, plans to launch nine satellites from a LauncherOne rocket attached under the wing of a modified Boeing 747, to be flown from a new spaceport in Cornwall on Monday.
Barring delays, it will be the first time a satellite has departed from western European soil.
For now the focus is on commercial payloads from companies such as Space Forge, which is developing in-orbit manufacturing.
But the launch is also seen by many as a blueprint for quicker launches of limited satellite capacity for tactical military purposes, in what planners call “Responsive Launch”.
“Ukraine woke up the world in a lot of ways,” Virgin Orbit Chief Executive Dan Hart told a news conference in southwest England on Sunday.
“Clearly there is a hope of a pan-European, as well as a U.S. collaboration … and that we have responsiveness so that if something happens in the world, we can get assets there right away,” he told the pre-launch briefing, monitored online.
Virgin Orbit said last year Britain’s Royal Air Force was doing exercises to demonstrate the value of “Responsive Launch”.
Britain had a brief foray into space launch activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when its Black Arrow rocket was cancelled after just one successful mission.
The rocket’s four launches took place in Australia in an era when commercial satellites barely existed.
Now, constellations of miniaturised satellites are heading an explosion of commercial activity in low Earth orbit.
‘FLEXIBLE AND AGILE’
Lobbing small satellites into low orbit at short notice would do little more than fill temporary gaps in coverage from large spy satellites, but experts say the technology has some dual civil and military potential and could spread costs.
“It gives you greater resilience or redundancy or duality of systems, whether that’s for position, navigation and timing or quicker access … as we’ve seen in Ukraine,” Ian Annett, deputy chief executive of the UK Space Agency, told Sunday’s briefing.
“It’s a natural transition that helps us develop security capabilities, but also, for government, keeps costs down whilst providing commercial opportunities as well.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX activated its Starlink constellation over Ukraine after Russia’s invasion last February. Its communication links have been used by civilians and by Ukraine’s military.
Luxembourg said in October it had signed a letter of intent with Virgin Orbit to develop a “rapid and flexible response to different threats”, for NATO and other allies.
Its defence ministry has called for “new, more flexible and agile satellite launch procedures and techniques from Europe”.
Britain’s own 2022-25 space roadmap calls for dual-use capabilities in Earth Observation and Space Domain Awareness.
Virgin Orbit is also talking to Japan and Australia.
Questions remain, however, over how quickly the mobile launch concept could work its way into actual budgets, which are dwarfed by U.S. spending on space.
“Everyone is playing up military space as the next big thing,” said UK-based defence analyst Francis Tusa. “But ministries of defence have eyes larger than their stomachs.”
The system’s liquid propellant and final rocket assembly also require some local infrastructure, and Europe’s crowded airspace has thrown up significant regulatory obstacles.
“At the moment, it’s a bit bigger on the commercial side, but we see the defence and national security side growing so I think in this steady state, it’ll probably end up being 50/50,” Hart told Reuters.
Reporting by Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by David Holmes
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Dec 26 (Reuters) – SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Monday that the company is now close to having 100 active Starlinks, the firm’s satellite internet service, in Iran, three months after he tweeted he would activate the service there amid protests around the Islamic country.
Musk said, “approaching 100 starlinks active in Iran”, in a tweet on Monday.
The billionaire had said in September that he would activate Starlink in Iran as part of a U.S.-backed effort “to advance internet freedom and the free flow of information” to Iranians.
The satellite-based broadband service could help Iranians circumvent the government’s restrictions on accessing the internet and certain social media platforms amid protests around the country.
The Islamic Republic has been engulfed in protests that erupted after the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after being arrested by the morality police for wearing “unsuitable attire”.
Reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler
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DUBAI, Dec 26 (Reuters) – Iranian authorities rerouted a flight bound for Dubai on Monday and prevented the wife and daughter of former national soccer team captain Ali Daei, who has supported anti-government protests, from leaving the country, state media reported.
Amid a concerted clampdown, Tehran also said the arrests in Iran of citizens linked to Britain reflected its “destructive role” in the more than three months of unrest.
People from across Iran’s social spectrum have joined one of the most sustained challenges to the country’s ruling theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, relying heavily on social media platforms – which the government is trying to shut down – to organise and spread news of demonstrations.
A service that could help Iranians circumvent internet restrictions is Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Musk said on Monday that the company was getting close to having 100 active Starlink satellite receivers inside Iran.
Meanwhile Daei’s wife was banned from travelling abroad, Iran’s judiciary said, after authorities ordered the Mahan Air plane she had been a passenger in to land on Iran’s Kish Island in the Gulf.
“I really don’t know the reason for this. Did they want to arrest a terrorist?” Daei told semi-official news agency ISNA.
After he voiced support for the protests on social media, authorities this month shut down a jewellery shop and a restaurant he owned.
The protests were triggered by the Sept. 16 death in detention of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian held for wearing “inappropriate attire” under Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.
Iran has accused Western countries, Israel and Saudi Arabia of fomenting the unrest, allegations accompanied by arrests of dozens of dual nationals, part of an official narrative designed to shift blame away from the Iranian leadership.
Asked by a reporter to comment on Sunday’s announcement of the arrest of seven people linked to Britain, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said: “Some countries, especially the one you mentioned, had an unconstructive role regarding the recent developments in Iran.
“Their role was totally destructive and incited the riots.”
The British foreign ministry had said it was seeking further information from Iranian authorities on the reported arrests.
Rights group HRANA says about 18,500 people have been arrested during the unrest. Government officials say most have been released.
Besides arrests, authorities have imposed travel bans on dozens of artists, lawyers, journalists and celebrities for endorsing the protests.
HRANA also said that as of Dec. 25, 507 protesters had been killed, including 69 minors, as well as 66 members of the security forces.
Iran’s troubled rial currency on Monday fell to a record low of 415,400 against the dollar, according to forex site Bonbast.com. It has lost about 24% of its value since the protests began, as Iranians grappling with official inflation of about 50% buy dollars and gold in an effort to protect their savings.
Reporting by Dubai newsroom, additional reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru;
Editing by Mark Heinrich and John Stonestreet
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Dec 14 (Reuters) – A routine spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was called off as it was about to begin after flight controllers noticed a stream of liquid spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed.
The spray of fluid, which was visible in NASA’s live video feed as a torrent of snowflake-like particles emanating from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule, was described by a NASA commentator as a coolant leak.
NASA said none of the seven members of the current International Space Station (ISS) crew – three Russian cosmonauts, three U.S. NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut – was ever in any danger.
The mishap occurred just as two of the cosmonauts, crew commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dimitri Petelin, were suited and preparing for a planned spacewalk to move a radiator from one module to another on the Russian segment of the ISS.
An official for Russia’s mission control operations near Moscow was heard telling Prokopyev and Petelin in a radio transmission that their spacewalk was being canceled while engineers worked to determine the nature and origin of the leak.
The NASA commentator on the livestream, Rob Navias, broadcasting from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, also said the spacewalk was called off because of the leak, which he said began about 7:45 p.m. EST (0145 GMT Thursday).
Navias said the Soyuz craft arrived at the space station in September, bringing Prokopyev, Petelin and U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio to the ISS, and has remained attached to the Earth-facing side of the orbital laboratory.
The spacewalk planned for Wednesday was postponed once before, in late November, because of faulty cooling pumps in the cosmonauts’ spacesuits, Navias said.
The spacewalk was to be the 12th this year at the ISS and the 257th in the history of the 22-year-old platform for assembly, maintenance and upgrade work, according to NASA.
Navias said it was too soon to know what implications the leak might have for the integrity of that spacecraft, and whether it might pose any difficulties for returning crew to Earth at the end of their mission.
Five other spacecraft are parked at the space station – two SpaceX capsules (a Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon), a Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter and two Russian resupply ships, Progress 81 and Progress 82.
The ISS, spanning the length of a U.S. football field and orbiting some 250 miles above Earth, has been continuously occupied since 2000, operated by a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington. Editing by Gerry Doyle
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Sept 26 (Reuters) – NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully slammed into a distant asteroid at hypersonic speed on Monday in the world’s first test of a planetary defense system, designed to prevent a potential doomsday meteorite collision with Earth.
Humanity’s first attempt to alter the motion of an asteroid or any celestial body played out in a NASA webcast from the mission operations center outside Washington, D.C., 10 months after DART was launched.
The livestream showed images taken by DART’s camera as the cube-shaped “impactor” vehicle, no bigger than a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, streaked into the asteroid Dimorphos, about the size of a football stadium, at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT) some 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.
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The $330 million mission, some seven years in development, was devised to determine if a spacecraft is capable of changing the trajectory of an asteroid through sheer kinetic force, nudging it off course just enough to keep Earth out of harm’s way.
Whether the experiment succeeded beyond accomplishing its intended impact will not be known until further ground-based telescope observations of the asteroid next month. But NASA officials hailed the immediate outcome of Monday’s test, saying the spacecraft achieved its purpose.
“NASA works for the benefit of humanity, so for us it’s the ultimate fulfillment of our mission to do something like this – a technology demonstration that, who knows, some day could save our home,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, a retired astronaut, said minutes after the impact.
DART, launched by a SpaceX rocket in November 2021, made most of its voyage under the guidance of NASA’s flight directors, with control handed over to an autonomous on-board navigation system in the final hours of the journey.
Monday evening’s bullseye impact was monitored in near real time from the mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Cheers erupted from the control room as second-by-second images of the target asteroid, captured by DART’s onboard camera, grew larger and ultimately filled the TV screen of NASA’s live webcast just before the signal was lost, confirming the spacecraft had crashed into Dimorphos.
DART’s celestial target was an oblong asteroid “moonlet” about 560 feet (170 meters) in diameter that orbits a parent asteroid five times larger called Didymos as part of a binary pair with the same name, the Greek word for twin.
Neither object presents any actual threat to Earth, and NASA scientists said their DART test could not create a new hazard by mistake.
Dimorphos and Didymos are both tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, wiping out about three-quarters of the world’s plant and animal species including the dinosaurs.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system showed in this undated illustration handout. NASA/Johns Hopkins/Handout via REUTERS
Smaller asteroids are far more common and present a greater theoretical concern in the near term, making the Didymos pair suitable test subjects for their size, according to NASA scientists and planetary defense experts. A Dimorphos-sized asteroid, while not capable of posing a planet-wide threat, could level a major city with a direct hit.
Also, the two asteroids’ relative proximity to Earth and dual configuration make them ideal for the first proof-of-concept mission of DART, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test.
ROBOTIC SUICIDE MISSION
The mission represented a rare instance in which a NASA spacecraft had to crash to succeed. DART flew directly into Dimorphos at 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph), creating the force scientists hope will be enough to shift its orbital track closer to the parent asteroid.
APL engineers said the spacecraft was presumably smashed to bits and left a small impact crater in the boulder-strewn surface of the asteroid.
The DART team said it expects to shorten the orbital path of Dimorphos by 10 minutes but would consider at least 73 seconds a success, proving the exercise as a viable technique to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth – if one were ever discovered.
A nudge to an asteroid millions of miles away years in advance could be sufficient to safely reroute it.
Earlier calculations of the starting location and orbital period of Dimorphos were made during a six-day observation period in July and will be compared with post-impact measurements made in October to determine whether the asteroid budged and by how much.
Monday’s test also was observed by a camera mounted on a briefcase-sized mini-spacecraft released from DART days in advance, as well as by ground-based observatories and the Hubble and Webb space telescopes, but images from those were not immediately available.
DART is the latest of several NASA missions in recent years to explore and interact with asteroids, primordial rocky remnants from the solar system’s formation more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Last year, NASA launched a probe on a voyage to the Trojan asteroid clusters orbiting near Jupiter, while the grab-and-go spacecraft OSIRIS-REx is on its way back to Earth with a sample collected in October 2020 from the asteroid Bennu.
The Dimorphos moonlet is one of the smallest astronomical objects to receive a permanent name and is one of 27,500 known near-Earth asteroids of all sizes tracked by NASA. Although none are known to pose a foreseeable hazard to humankind, NASA estimates that many more asteroids remain undetected in the near-Earth vicinity.
(This story corrects name in paragraph 6 to Pam from Palm)
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Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler and Stephen Coates
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 3 (Reuters) – Ground teams at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday began fueling NASA’s giant, next-generation rocketship for its debut launch on an uncrewed test flight to the moon, five days after an initial liftoff attempt was thwarted by technical problems.
The 32-story tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule were due for blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT), kicking off the U.S. space agency’s ambitious moon-to-Mars Artemis program 50 years after the last Apollo lunar mission. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/3PPRsbN)
The previous launch bid on Monday was halted by engineering snags. NASA says technicians have since remedied the issues.
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Weather is an additional factor beyond NASA’s control. The latest forecast saw a 70% chance of favorable conditions during Saturday’s two-hour window, according to the U.S. Space Force at Cape Canaveral.
Before dawn, launch teams started the lengthy, delicate process of filling the rocket’s core-stage fuel tanks with several hundred thousand gallons of super-cooled liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant.
Engineers stopped loading liquid hydrogen around 7:30 a.m., roughly an hour into the complex process, to fix a leak.
If the countdown were halted again, NASA could reschedule another launch attempt for Monday or Tuesday.
Dubbed Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight for both the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, built under NASA contracts with Boeing Co (BA.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), respectively.
It also signals a major change in direction for NASA’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program, after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station.
Named for the goddess who was Apollo’s twin sister in ancient Greek mythology, Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame will likely slip.
Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface. But Apollo, born of the U.S.-Soviet space race during the Cold War, was less science-driven than Artemis.
The new moon program has enlisted commercial partners such as SpaceX and the space agencies of Europe, Canada and Japan to eventually establish a long-term lunar base of operations as a stepping stone to even more ambitious human voyages to Mars.
SPACEFLIGHT STRESS TEST
Getting the SLS-Orion spacecraft off the ground is a key first step. Its first voyage is intended to put the 5.75-million-pound vehicle through its paces in a rigorous test flight pushing its design limits and aiming to prove the spacecraft suitable to fly astronauts.
If the mission succeeds, a crewed Artemis II flight around the moon and back could come as early as 2024, to be followed within a few more years with the program’s first lunar landing of astronauts, one of them a woman, with Artemis III.
Billed as the most powerful, complex rocket in the world, the SLS represents the biggest new vertical launch system NASA has built since the Saturn V of the Apollo era.
Barring last-minute difficulties, Saturday’s countdown should end with the rocket’s four main RS-25 engines and its twin solid-rocket boosters igniting to produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust, about 15% more than Saturn V, sending the spacecraft streaking skyward.
About 90 minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage will thrust Orion out of Earth orbit on course for a 37-day flight that brings it to within 60 miles of the lunar surface before sailing 40,000 miles (64,374 km) beyond the moon and back to Earth. The capsule is expected to splash down in the Pacific on Oct. 11.
Although no humans are aboard, Orion will be carrying a simulated crew of three – one male and two female mannequins – fitted with sensors to measure radiation and other stresses that real-life astronauts would experience.
The spacecraft also is set to release a payload of 10 miniaturized science satellites, called CubeSats, including one designed to map the abundance of ice deposits on the moon’s south pole.
A top objective for the mission is to test the durability of Orion’s heat shield during re-entry as it hits Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 mph (39,429 kph), or 32 times the speed of sound, on its return from lunar orbit – much faster than more common re-entries of capsules returning from Earth orbit.
The heat shield is designed to withstand re-entry friction expected to raise temperatures outside the capsule to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius).
More than a decade in development with years of delays and budget overruns, the SLS-Orion spacecraft has so far cost NASA least $37 billion. NASA’s Office of Inspector General has projected total Artemis costs will run to $93 billion by 2025.
NASA defends the program as a boon to space exploration generating tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in commerce.
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Reporting by Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles
Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Frances Kerry
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Aug 25 (Reuters) – U.S wireless carrier T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) will use Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to provide mobile users with network access in parts of the United States, the companies announced on Thursday, outlining plans to connect users’ mobile phones directly to satellites in orbit.
The new plans, which would exist alongside T-mobile’s existing cellular services, would cut out the need for cell towers and offer service for sending texts and images where cell coverage does not currently exist, key for emergency situations in remote areas, Musk said at a flashy event on Thursday at his company’s south Texas rocket facility.
Starlink’s satellites will use T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum to create a new network. Most phones used by the company’s customers will be compatible with the new service, which will start with texting services in a beta phase beginning by the end of next year.
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SpaceX has launched nearly 3,000 low-Earth-orbiting Starlink satellites since 2019, handily outpacing rivals OneWeb and Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) Project Kuiper.
SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites, the first of which are planned to launch on SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket whenever it is fully developed, will have larger antennae that will allow connectivity directly to mobile phones on the T-mobile network, Musk said.
SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert take part in a joint news conference at the SpaceX Starbase, in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., August 25, 2022. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
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“We are constructing special antenna. … They are actually very big antenna that are extremely advanced,” he said. “The important thing is you will not need to get a new phone. The phone you currently have will work.”
Meanwhile, U.S telecom firms are in a race to build up the mid-band portion of their 5G networks to catch up with T-Mobile, which bagged a chunky 2.5 GHz of mid-band spectrum thanks to a buyout of rival Sprint.
Mid-band or C-Band has proven to be perfect for 5G, as it provides a good balance of capacity and coverage.
The carrier said it aims to pursue voice and data coverage after the texting services beta phase.
Satellite communications firm AST SpaceMobile Inc (ASTS.O) is also building a global cellular broadband network in space that will operate with mobile devices without the need for additional hardware.
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Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington, Akash Sriram and Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler
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PARIS, Aug 12 (Reuters) – The European Space Agency (ESA) has begun preliminary technical discussions with Elon Musk’s SpaceX that could lead to the temporary use of its launchers after the Ukraine conflict blocked Western access to Russia’s Soyuz rockets.
The private American competitor to Europe’s Arianespace has emerged as a key contender to plug a temporary gap alongside Japan and India, but final decisions depend on the still unresolved timetable for Europe’s delayed Ariane 6 rocket.
“I would say there are two and a half options that we’re discussing. One is SpaceX that is clear. Another one is possibly Japan,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuters.
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“Japan is waiting for the inaugural flight of its next generation rocket. Another option could be India,” he added in an interview.
“SpaceX I would say is the more operational of those and certainly one of the back-up launches we are looking at.”
Aschbacher said talks remained at an exploratory phase.
“We of course need to make sure that they are suitable. It’s not like jumping on a bus,” he said. For example, the interface between satellite and launcher must be suitable and the payload must not be compromised by unfamiliar types of launch vibration.
“We are looking into this technical compatibility but we have not asked for a commercial offer yet. We just want to make sure that it would be an option in order to make a decision on asking for a firm commercial offer,” Aschbacher said.
SpaceX did not reply to a request for comment.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has already swept up other customers severing ties with Moscow’s increasingly isolated space sector amid the Ukraine conflict, but a high-profile European mission could be seen as a significant win for the U.S. rocket maker.
Aschbacher stressed any back-up solution would be temporary, however, adding he was not worried about the future of Ariane 6.
Satellite internet firm OneWeb, a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet venture, booked at least one Falcon 9 launch in March. It has also booked an Indian launch.
On Monday, Northrop Grumman booked three Falcon 9 missions to ferry NASA cargo to the International Space Station while it designs a new version of its Antares rocket, whose Russian-made engines were withdrawn by Moscow in response to sanctions.
‘WAKE-UP CALL’
Europe has until now depended on the Italian Vega for small payloads, Russia’s Soyuz for medium ones and the Ariane 5 for heavy missions. Its next-generation Vega C staged a debut last month and the new Ariane 6, designed in two versions to replace both the Ariane 5 and Soyuz, has been delayed until next year.
Aschbacher said a more precise Ariane 6 schedule would be clearer by October after current hot-firing testing. ESA would then finalise a back-up plan to be presented to ministers of the agency’s 22 nations in November, he said, adding the most recent Ariane 6 delay was not the result of any signifcant new setback.
“But yes, the likelihood of the need for back-up launches is high,” he said. “The order of magnitude is certainly a good handful of launches that we would need interim solutions for.”
Aschbacher said the Ukraine conflict had demonstrated Europe’s decade-long cooperation strategy with Russia in gas supplies and other areas including space was no longer working.
“This was a wake up call, that we have been too dependent on Russia. And this wake-up call, we have to hope that decision makers realise it as much as I do, that we have to really strengthen our European capability and independence.”
However, he played down the prospect of Russia carrying out a pledge to withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS).
Russia’s newly appointed space chief Yuri Borisov said in a televised meeting with President Vladimir Putin last month that Russia would withdraw from the ISS “after 2024”.
But Borisov later clarified that Russia’s plans had not changed and Western officials said Russia’s space agency had not communicated any new pullout plans.
“The reality is that operationally, the work on the space station is proceeding, I would say almost nominally,” Aschbacher told Reuters. “We do depend on each other, like it or not, but we have little choice.”
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Reporting by Tim Hepher and Joey Roulette
Editing by Mark Potter
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