Moonshot #28

Blue Origin successfully launches another New Shepard crew, Rocket Lab pushes the debut of Neutron, Astroscale's plans to go public, and everything else happening in the commercial space sector.

New Shepard passenger Ed Dwight celebrates a successful flight on Sunday, May 19th. Credit: Blue Origin

Blue Origin – It may have only been a ten-minute mission, but Blue Origin’s crewed New Shepard launch yesterday marked a valiant return since the rocket’s grounding in 2022. The space tourism flight saw Ed Dwight, Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller and Gopi Thotakura ascend to 65.7 miles – or 105.7 kilometers – beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Following the ascent, the Nespresso pod-shaped crew capsule floated back to Earth with the assistance of (nearly) three operational parachutes. The failure of one of the parachutes to fully inflate did not negatively affect the descent – as the capsule is designed to land safely with only two – but will be investigated prior to the New Shepard’s next mission. Upon their safe landing, the passengers celebrated their quick trip to space. Dwight, who was the United States’ first black astronaut candidate selected in 1961, memorialized his first, long-awaited trip to space with a celebratory fist pump. At age 90, Dwight is also now the oldest person to have visited space, by a few months (sorry, Shatner). Also an artist, perhaps Dwight will one-up Shatner again with a So Fragile, So Blue-esque commemoration of the flight. 

Blue Origin & SpaceX – We’ve got the Musk-Bezos team up we’ve all been waiting for! Just kidding, we’re just here to serve you the latest competition between the two longtime rivals. This time, Blue Origin and SpaceX have been pitted against each other by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who recently tasked the firms to develop networking spacecraft that would expand a super space network to Mars. The Interplanetary Internet has been in the works for many years, with Internet pioneer Vint Cerf at the helm. As part of the existent Deep Space Network, there are spacecraft that currently orbit the Red Planet that can collect data from Martian rovers, relay data to one another as well as to giant ground antennas situated across Earth. But NASA is interested in extending the Mars Relay Network, and they want their two favorite kids to do it. At first glance, SpaceX seems more poised to tackle the project, with a massive fleet of Starlink spacecraft – proving a clear proficiency in celestial satellite networking – and a rocket with the means of delivering them to an intimidating distance like Mars. To adapt its Earth-orbiting satellites to provide broadband to future Martian settlements doesn’t seem to be an insane reach. That being said, Bezos does have his own Project Kuiper satellites with Amazon, and you know what they say about an underdog...

SpaceX – In other SpaceX news, the Musk-led company continued their steady cadence of Starlink launches with deployments on (**taking a deep breath**) May 8th, May 9th, May 12th, May 14th and May 17th, officially passing the 6,000 satellite marker and setting a new reusability record. Musk is also now serving Starlink service to Indonesia, after touching down in Bali via his PJ yesterday to make it official. The deal comes after the nation pursued SpaceX for years, in an effort to establish more reliable connectivity to health workers in remote areas of the archipelago. With all this Starlink action, we’re not sure why market analysts were so surprised by the business’ recent $6.6 billion revenue projection for this year. Still, the number is staggering, exceeding the combined revenue of the recently merged GEO heavyweights SES and Intelsat by over $2 billion. The company rides this high with a recent video reveal of their fresh-as-heck Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) suit. The snazzy suit is an evolution of SpaceX’s Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit, and will support space travelers on the first commercial spacewalk later this year, during a mission known as Polaris Dawn. While the Polaris crew awaits their celestial fashions, SpaceX waits for the results of the FAA’s latest environmental review, which will theoretically decide Starship’s future of launching from Kennedy Space Center. Assuming the powerful rocket’s development over the past year has significantly reduced its risk compared to its destructive inaugural launch, SpaceX will be looking at even more open doors (and revenue streams).

HyImpulse’s test rocket successfully lifts off from Australia by harnessing the power of candle wax. Credit: HyImpulse

HyImpulse – With a constant undercurrent of fear around access to fuel sources, it serves any company to get crafty. That’s just what German firm HyImpulse is doing with their SR75 rocket, which uses paraffin – or candle wax – and liquid oxygen as propulsion. The company successfully launched a test vehicle to suborbital heights earlier this month, a promising step towards a future of delivering satellites to orbit with a safer and cheaper propellant. Honestly, it’s giving Veggie Van and we’re here for it. Not one to leave a historical space analogy on the table, HyImpulse attributes the innovative fuel source to the famous Alan Shepard quote made before his first spaceflight, circulating the hashtag “LightThisCandle” on X. 

ispace – Last month’s agreement penned by JAXA and NASA presents opportunities to Japanese firm ispace, who plans to leverage an anticipated demand for small robotic rovers. Of course, ispace is all too familiar with lunar landers, with its Hakuto-R program, including its Mission 2 (M2) spacecraft scheduled to launch later this year (to avenge the death of Mission 1, obviously). The firm’s U.S. subsidiary is also working on a lunar lander known as APEX 1.0, set to launch in 2026 as part of a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract. It’s not all about dollar signs for ispace, though; the company’s philosophy of honoring cultural diversity earned the company a collaboration with UNESCO, for which ispace will carry a payload on M2. The prized package is a “memory disk” featuring a part of UNESCO’s Constitution translated in 275 languages, in an effort to preserve linguistic diversity.