And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
Northrop Grumman is acquiring Orbital ATK in a $9.2 billion deal. Lockheed Martin unveiled a new family of satellite busses, positioning themselves for the next era of satellite bus production.
Elon Musk’s long-awaited IAC update is coming up next week. Interestingly, his session has a moderator. And that moderator is none other than Jean-Yves Le Gall.
Formerly of Honeywell, United Space Alliance, and The Aerospace Corporation, Smith has a ton of experience and a very interesting background to bring to Blue Origin.
Blue Origin announced a size increase to New Glenn’s fairing, and OneWeb has decided to keep their Toulouse factory open for other customers after their initial 10-satellite production run is over. Both decisions bring about some interesting implications for the market at large.
Not quite what I would call an unexpected first customer for Ariane 6, but this at least gives us 3 launches to put on the calendar. The first launch has the surprisingly-specific date of July 16, 2020, with these two to follow shortly thereafter.
This is a very smart move for OneWeb. I could very much see the ~200 kilogram satellite becoming to the next decade what the ~5,000 kilogram satellite has been to the last few.
With every step taken towards the launchpad, Blue Origin gets more confident, they open up, and they let the industry know just what’s coming its way.
I’ve added a new tier to the MECO Patreon: at $3 per month (or above!), you’ll get access to the weekly MECO Headlines podcast. Each Friday, I’ll be recording and publishing a show where I sit down, run through the headlines of the week’s space news, and discuss some of those smaller-yet-still-great stories.
Jake Robins of the WeMartians Podcast joins me to discuss the state and future of the Mars exploration program, lean sample return, and more.
Thanks to the supporters of Main Engine Cut Off for the month of August. If you’re getting some value out of what I do here and want to send a little value back to help support Main Engine Cut Off, head over to Patreon and donate as little as $1 a month—every little bit helps.
Caleb Henry, for SpaceNews, on the breakup of Telkom-1 and the continuing saga of what I will now refer to as The Summer of Lost Satellites.
I spent 2 minutes and 40 seconds in the shadow of the Moon in Gallatin, TN. Totality was an incredibly powerful experience, and I wanted to share what it was like to be there as best I could.
Caleb Henry of SpaceNews joins me to discuss the slowdown in GEO satellite orders, the latest on the big LEO constellations, and what’s up with the sky falling.
Block 4 of the Falcon 9 is debuting with the launch of CRS-12, and Block 5 will debut on the uncrewed Dragon 2 demo mission.
Rocket Lab completed their investigation into what went wrong on their first launch, Virgin Orbit’s carrier 747 arrived in Long Beach, and I discuss a few NASA-backed advanced propulsion projects.
The total AR1 agreement is valued at $804 million, so it’s just about halfway there. Worth noting that the Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed for $390 million. And that includes the cost of Falcon 1 development.
I spend some time thinking through what the future of the ISS holds, and what may come after it.
Cutting travel time to Mars from six to four months is not unique to nuclear thermal propulsion, and more importantly, getting there two months faster is pretty pointless without the most important piece: a lander.
Thanks to the supporters of Main Engine Cut Off for the month of July. If you’re getting some value out of what I do here and want to send a little value back to help support Main Engine Cut Off, head over to Patreon and donate as little as $1 a month—every little bit helps.
USA 276 is making another close approach to the ISS, and yet again, there is a lot of activity around the ISS when it happens.