Rule the roost (7/15/22)

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In today's newsletter:🏠 Skyrora’s new digs🐦 A plane for Mars📖 Weekend recs

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Skyrora Opens Rocket Factory

UK-based launch startup Skyrora has new digs: a 55,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that the company says will be capable of producing up to 16 launch vehicles per year.

“Opening the UK’s largest rocket engine manufacturing facility is a significant step towards Skyrora achieving the first sovereign orbital launch from British soil,” Skyrora COO Lee Rosen told Payload.

“If the UK’s space sector is to grow into a self-reliant ecosystem with strong commercial and defensive capabilities, then advanced domestic facilities like the Cumbernauld site are crucial assets.”

A hot piece of real estate

This spacious 55,000-square-foot home is a renovated distribution and storage facility located in Cumbernauld, Scotland. It boasts an open-plan factory floor, generous office space, and a 67,000-square-foot “yard,” perfect for all the integration activities and launch rehearsals a growing aerospace company would require.

Having moved from a comparatively tiny 2,000-square-foot facility, the much larger Cumbernauld facility will allow Skyrora to bring many of its manufacturing and testing operations in-house. It will also house what the company is calling the UK's largest metal 3D printer, which will be used to produce many key components for the company’s Skyforce rocket engines.

Additionally, the new facility will allow Skyrora to expand its workforce, with plans to add 100 new employees within two years. Skyrora currently employs 160.

A collaborative effort

During the renovation and construction phase of the new Skyrora manufacturing and production facility, the company received support from both ESA and the UK Space Agency.

According to Skyrora, officials from both agencies made regular visits to the facility, providing support and guidance during its development. The pair also provided indirect funding for the development through a €3M ($3M) co-funding grant, which was part of ESA's Commercial Space Transportation Services initiative.

“Scotland is home to around one-fifth of all space jobs in the UK and, by harnessing the opportunities provided by commercial spaceflight, we are creating highly skilled jobs and local opportunities in Scotland and across the country,” said UKSA deputy CEO Ian Annett.

No time for ribbon cutting

Skyrora has wasted no time since arriving at its new facility. The company confirmed that it is already working on the second and third stages of a Skyrora XL, in addition to two suborbital Skylark L rockets.

The Skyrora XL launch vehicle will be capable of carrying 315kg payloads to LEO, per the company’s plans. The rocket’s 3D-printed Skyforce engines powering the first and second stages of the rocket burn Ecosene, a propellant the company makes from unrecyclable plastic waste. Skyrora hopes to debut the XL in 2023 from SaxaVord spaceport on the northmost Shetland Island.

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It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…

Paired with a NASA scientist, a team of researchers from Arizona believes the future of Martian exploration lies in a motorless plane designed to fly like a large seabird.

Robots rule the roost on Mars. Rovers study the planet’s surface while orbiters scout from far above. These “sailplanes” would target the in-between region.

"This is where all the exchanges between the surface and atmosphere happen,” says Alexandre Kling, a research scientist in NASA's Mars Climate Modeling Center in a press release. “And we just don't have very much data about it.”

These 11-pound, 11-foot-wingspan sailplanes would ride winds in an S-shaped pattern—the way that albatross fly on long journeys. Horizontal wind speeds tend to increase with altitude, so the planes would accelerate as they rise, turn 180 degrees, drift back toward the ground, then repeat the process.

• In this way, the planes can fly for “hours or even days at a time,” per the release.

• The researchers will test their design this summer at ~15,000 feet above sea level, where Earth’s atmosphere is thinner, like Mars’s.

Taking flight: If successful, sailplanes would travel to the Red Planet tucked inside CubeSats. Post-deployment, they’d either unfold or inflate and begin collecting data on the atmosphere.

Still, no plane can fly forever—especially one without a motor. Once the planes inevitably fall, they’ll continue gathering data about atmospheric conditions. In effect, the grounded sailplanes would become a network of Martian weather stations. Now that’s how you get the most bang for your buck.

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In Other News

• SpaceX launched a cargo resupply mission to the ISS.

• Ingenuity, everyone’s favorite Mars helicopter, is taking a break from operations for a few weeks to wait out dust brought on by Martian winter.

• South Korea launched a KASS precision aviation satellite from French Guiana.

• Virgin Galactic ($SPCE) plans to build a new spaceship factory in Mesa, AZ. As Ars Technica reminded readers earlier this week, It’s been a year since the company has flown passengers.

• A new study concludes there’s a 10% chance that someone will die from falling rocket debris in the next decade.

• Saudi Arabia became the 21st nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

Payload Insights

It’s no easy feat to get data back and forth from JWST, balancing at a gravitational equilibrium point a million miles away from Earth. To send commands to JWST, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has to funnel through a Deep Space Network (DSN) ground station. The DSN consists of three huge, equidistant radio antennas that can communicate with distant spacecraft at all times—as a craft passes over the horizon from one antenna’s POV, the next can pick up the signal where it left off.

STScI sends its commands through a DSN station, which forwards them straight to JWST. Then, once the telescope has data to send back to Earth, it transmits back to the nearest DSN station, which dutifully passes the data back to STScI.