TechCrunch Newsletters - Max Q - A sad reversal for Rocket Lab

Monday, July 06, 2020 • By Darrell Etherington

This week wasn’t the busiest in space news, but what news there was, was big. Rocket Lab broke its streak of successful launches with its unlucky 13th Electron mission, one notable company got a clutch rescue and Amazon made a space industry power play.

Rocket Lab loses an Electron rocket and all payloads

July 4 was a very bad day for small satellite launch provider Rocket Lab – the company’s 13th Electron launch didn’t go as planned, and the launch vehicle and all seven payloads on board were lost.

The payloads included a new demonstration satellite from Canon with Earth imaging tech on board, as well as five Planet satellites. The rocket apparently encountered an issue during the second stage flight part of the mission, which comes after the booster separates following liftoff and exit from Earth’s atmosphere.

Plenty of rocket programs, including SpaceX’s, have encountered problems resulting in vehicle loss and have managed to recover, and Rocket Lab does have 12 other good Electron flights under its belt, but we’ll have to wait for more info about the cause and potential fixes.

Rocket Lab loses an Electron rocket and all payloads image

Image Credits: Rocket Lab

UK government to buy beleaguered OneWeb

Low Earth orbit broadband satellite company OneWeb was headed towards bankruptcy, but a successful bid worth over $1 billion, from a consortium made up of the UK government and India’s Bharti Global means it’ll live on as a partially publicly-owned utility. Speculation points to a need from the UK for something to replace the EU GPS network it lost the ability to share as part of Brexit.

AWS established dedicated space business line

Amazon’s AWS has set up a business unit called Aerospace and Satellite Solutions that will serve space customers with dedicated cloud service offerings. This is largely a play to make it more competitive when it comes to defense and government contracts, but it should also pay dividends for startup companies looking for turnkey solutions when it comes to ground-based infrastructure to support their in-space assets.

AWS established dedicated space business line image

Image Credits: AWS

NASA awards $51 million in small business grants

NASA continues to be a key source of funding for small and new companies working on high-tech projects, including brand new technologies under development that might find it hard to attract private investment. The agency just announced a fresh batch of over 300 small businesses that will receive awards in varying denominations as part of its Small Business Innovation Research/Technlogoy Transfer program.

NASA awards $51 million in small business grants image

SpaceX launches a Space Force GPS satellite

SpaceX launched an upgraded GPS III satellite for the U.S. Space Force last week, the third in a growing network of the advanced geostationary navigation satellites. It was a notable mission for SpaceX because it included the first booster stage recovery on a national security mission – hopefully setting the pace for future such efforts, which could help reduce costs for SpaceX.

NASA sets up long-lead orders to support 6 more Moon missions

NASA has taken another step towards continuing the Artemis program beyond the currently planned initial three missions, ordering parts for the solid core boosters built by supplier Northrop Grumman to ensure they’ll be available in time for when those missions take place – sometime over the next decade or so. Artemis is NASA’s ambitious program to return humans to the lunar surface, and ultimately to set up a long-term presence there for continued research and exploration.