A European company that seeks to develop orbital spacecraft for cargo, and eventually humans, took a step forward this week with a test flight that saw its \u201cMission Possible\u201d vehicle power up and fly successfully in orbit before making a controlled reentry into Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
However, after encountering an \u201cissue,\u201d the Exploration Company lost contact with its spacecraft a few minutes before touchdown in the ocean.<\/p>\n
In an update on LinkedIn Tuesday morning, the company characterized the test flight as a partial success\u2014and a partial failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe capsule was launched successfully, powered the payloads nominally in-orbit, stabilized itself after separation with the launcher, re-entered and re-established communication after black out,\u201d the company said in a statement. \u201cWe are still investigating the root causes and will share more information soon. We apologize to all our clients who entrusted us with their payloads.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reestablishing communications with the spacecraft after the blackout period suggests that the vehicle got through the most thermally challenging part of reentry into Earth\u2019s atmosphere and perhaps validated the spacecraft\u2019s handling and ability to withstand maximum heating.<\/p>\n
Following this, according to the company\u2019s timeline for Mission Possible, the capsule\u2019s parachutes were due to deploy at a velocity between Mach 0.8 and Mach 0.6. The parachutes were selected for their \u201cproven flight heritage,\u201d the company said, and were procured from US-based Airborne Systems, which provides parachutes used by SpaceX\u2019s Dragon, Boeing\u2019s Starliner, and other spacecraft.<\/p>\n
Given when the spacecraft was lost, it seems most likely that there was a problem with the deployment of the drogue or main parachutes.<\/p>\n
Mission Possible was a 2.5-meter diameter demonstration vehicle that was among the larger payloads launched Monday afternoon on SpaceX\u2019s Transporter 14 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission sought to test four primary areas of spaceflight: structural performance in orbital flight, surviving reentry, autonomous navigation, and recovery in real-world conditions. It only clearly failed in this final task, recovering the vehicle within three days to return on-board payloads to customers.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
It is refreshing to have such clear and concise communication from a space company, especially the acknowledgment that a flight was a partial failure, within hours of launch. And it is not a surprise that there were technical challenges on a vehicle that was put together fairly rapidly and at a low cost.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Ars last November, the founder of The Exploration Company, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Huby, said Mission Possible was developed at a cost of about $20 million in 2.5 years, in addition to $10 million for the rideshare launch on the Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n
At the time, she said Mission Possible was on track to launch this summer, and the company met this timeline.<\/p>\n
Given the potential issues with the parachute system or other problems near touchdown, it is possible that The Exploration Company may fly another subscale demonstration mission before moving into development of its full-size Nyx cargo spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis partial success reflects both ambition and the inherent risks of innovation,\u201d the company said Tuesday morning. \u201cLeveraging the technical milestones achieved yesterday and the lessons we will extract from our ongoing investigation, we will then prepare to re-fly as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
To date, the company has raised more than $230 million and plans to use much of that for the development of Nyx, which could fly as early as 2028 and focus on cargo delivery missions to low-Earth orbit. By demonstrating this capability, Huby said her company would like to secure funding from the European Space Agency to develop a crew-rated version of the spacecraft and a vehicle to return cargo from the Moon.<\/p>\n
This is not an unreasonable plan. SpaceX required significant funding from NASA, nearly $3 billion, to develop its Crew Dragon vehicle after demonstrating an initial cargo version. Huby said The Exploration Company would require a similar amount of funding from European nations. It is not possible to raise that money from private capital markets right now by promising a great return a decade from now.<\/p>\n
By one metric, Monday\u2019s flight was a significant success. Compared to the United States and China, the commercial space industry in Europe has lagged behind, beset by a less favorable environment for startups and opposition by large, traditional space companies that have dominated Europe\u2019s orbital activities for decades. The Exploration Company reached space with a fairly large vehicle and flew it back through Earth\u2019s atmosphere less than four years after its founding. This is a credible start for the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A European company that seeks to develop orbital spacecraft for cargo, and eventually humans, took a step forward this week with a test flight that saw its \u201cMission Possible\u201d vehicle power up and fly successfully in orbit before making a controlled reentry into Earth\u2019s atmosphere. However, after encountering an \u201cissue,\u201d the Exploration Company lost contact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}