Main Engine Cut Off

Looks like this move is solidifying, and may have interesting implications for the geostationary satellite production and launch markets.

NASA is asking about 7.6 metric tons of cargo to lunar orbit. That’s an ATV-class vehicle—a huge undertaking, requiring a big launch vehicle.

ULA says its on track for a mid-2020 flight of the BE-4-powered Vulcan. I was expecting to hear a bit of a delay with this announcement, because past statements sounded a lot like, “This is what we said previously so we’re going to say the same thing again until we update the schedule when we make the selection.”

Northrop Grumman and Boeing both have previously denied that they were submitting a bid for GPS IIIF, leaving Lockheed Martin as the only known bidder. But apparently, there was another response.

Typically, we see ULA chosen because the customer needs to know they can hit a specific timeline. In this case, SpaceX was chosen because ispace is confident SpaceX will be flying near where they need to go, sometime around when they need to go.

Viasat has booked launches on Ariane 5 and Falcon Heavy for Viasat-3, and has an option for an additional Falcon Heavy launch. They’re taking the spread-the-work-around path for their deployment, rather than the all-in approach that Iridium took with Iridium-NEXT.

My first thought was that this could be early work on a constellation of infrared surveillance satellites.

When the tau dips below 1.5, a 45-day active communication phase begins. If nothing happens during that, a passive listening phase of several months begins.

I can only assume this use of common refers to the future use of Vulcan to launch Starliner. If that’s the case, it’s a good sign about where they’re at with the design of Vulcan, that they’re ready to make hardware changes to accommodate Vulcan in the future.