Heavenly (7/25/22)

Good morning. Today, we'll touch on a privately funded Mars mission and a space station that's being built. Just another day at the office...

In today's newsletter:🚀 Q+A with Tim Ellis 🏗️ Wentian module 🗓️ The week ahead

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About that ambitious commercial Mars mission...

Last week, Relativity Space and Impulse Space announced a partnership to launch the first private mission to Mars. To much fanfare, the two startups say they’ll try to launch a Red Planet lander as early as 2024.

Under the agreement, Relativity will launch Impulse’s Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander on the 3D-printed Terran R rocket from Cape Canaveral. Terran R will enter a trans-Mars injection (TMI) orbit, and once there, Impulse’s aeroshell-equipped Mars Lander will attempt a propulsive landing on Mars’ surface. The Relativity/Impulse Mars partnership runs through 2029.

The 2024-2025 timetable merits a healthy dollop of skepticism. But as Ars Technica recently wrote, “this announcement—audacious though it may be—is probably worth taking seriously because of the companies and players involved.”

• Relativity is progressing toward its first orbital launch attempt with the Terran 1 rocket. It should announce a launch date in the coming weeks, Relativity CEO Tim Ellis told Payload on a recent taping of the Pathfinder podcast.

• Impulse is led by Tom Mueller, who was on the founding team of SpaceX. The startup’s short-term focus is last-mile delivery services in LEO, along with in-orbit servicing, debris deorbiting, and space station orbit-keeping.

Payload briefly caught up with Ellis to discuss the mission, scaling up production in Relativity's new 1M square foot facility, and Terran R.

What does this partnership and deal represent, in terms of Relativity's long-term mission?This is our first, concrete step towards establishing an industrial base on Mars, which has been our mission from day one. Relativity was created with the goal of building a multiplanetary future for humans, and this partnership rapidly advances us towards making that a reality.

No two Terran R launches will be the same. That said, how much different is the Mars mission with Impulse? What makes this mission different is that it’s focused on multiplanetary transport, not satellite launch services. But the same core capabilities for Terran R are required for both kinds of missions. That’s why we designed Terran R to be fully reusable. It’s a unique challenge for sure, but an important one we feel confident in tackling.

Relativity has yet to conduct an orbital launch attempt (though I know it's coming soon). Do you worry that a Mars mission may distract the company from scaling up production? Our mission has always been Mars. So, we don’t see this as a distraction–it’s about delivering on what we set out to do when we started the company. To be clear, we’re heads down focused on launching Terran 1, the first 3D printed rocket, this year, because that’s of the utmost importance and helps us build up towards Terran R and this mission.

As we've heard before, it's not making the first rocket that's the hard part, it's making the next 10. Any thoughts here? In terms of scaling production, we’re close to finishing printing the next Terran 1 vehicle for our NASA VCLS 2 mission, and have already started installing our new fourth generation Stargate metal 3D printers in our 1M+ square foot factory in Long Beach, which is dedicated to printing Terran R vehicles. We’ve also signed five customers for Terran R, including a multi-launch agreement with OneWeb, totaling more than $1.2B in backlog.

How razor-focused are the Relativity and Impulse teams on making the next Mars window? Obviously, a slip and then having to wait a couple more years wouldn't be ideal. Our launch window is aggressive, but possible–and we’re confident that we’ve got a solid shot at making it happen. The partnership agreement is also in an exclusive arrangement until 2029, with launch windows occurring every two years, so we’ll have multiple launch options, as well as opportunities for repeatable commercial missions to Mars, making a serious business out of scheduled payloads to the Red Planet.

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Wentian heads to space

China’s space station is almost finished.

Over the weekend, the China Manned Space Agency launched the Wentian laboratory module to its in-progress Tiangong (or "Heavenly Palace") station atop a Long March 5B. Wentian successfully docked with the station earlier this morning after a 13-hour journey.

Wentian: The lab module is the largest spacecraft that China has ever sent to orbit. In fact, it’s the heaviest single spacecraft module ever sent to orbit, weighing 23 metric tons, per the state-owned Global Times. Wentian is designed to host biology and other science experiments, as well as provide backup life support systems and propulsion to the Tianhe core module.

Tiangong: China is building its own space station at breakneck speed. The country’s space program been iced out of the ISS since 2011, when Congress banned US-China off-Earth cooperation on national security grounds. Since then, China has set its own space station plans into motion, hitting key milestones over the last year.

• The first module, Tianhe, went up to orbit last April.

• The last module, Mengtian, is slated for launch in October.

The Shenzhou-14 mission launched three taikonauts, Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe, to the station last month. They were onboard the Tianhe core module to welcome the new laboratory.

Look up: China’s Long March 5B rockets are now notorious for making uncontrolled reentries into the atmosphere. The rocket stage from the Tianhe launch reentered over the Indian Ocean 10 days after launch. The spent stage from Wentian’s launch is currently being tracked in orbit, but it’s difficult to estimate when or where it will reenter.

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Webinar Alert Tomorrow

Its time for another marketing webinar with Ari, who will be joined by Alicia Stump from Kepler and Dave Hebert from Astroscale. This time, we'll be talking about how to market to the US government.

Topics include:

• How to reach the "right" government audience

• The overlap between federal marketing and corporate marketing

• Why you need to focus on marketing to the federal government

• Where and when to spend advertising dollars

In Other News

• The rumors are true: Eutelsat confirmed this morning that it’s in talks to merge with OneWeb. “There can be no assurance that these discussions will result in any agreement,” the European satellite operator added.

• Reps. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Don Beyer (D-VA) joined HawkEye 360 at the startup’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. The company opened a 19,000-square foot satellite factory in Herndon, VA.

• France and the UK would get board seats in the combined entity, the FT reports.

• French space agency CNES is moving forward in talks with seven startups interested in launching from Guiana Space Center: Avio, HyImpulse Technologies, Isar Aerospace, Maia, Payload Aerospace, RFA, and Latitude (h/t Peter B. de Selding).

• Last week, Isar became the first privately funded operator to gain access to the spaceport.

• The UAE named Sultan Al Neyadi as the Emirati astronaut who will serve on NASA and SpaceX’s Crew 6 mission, set to launch next spring. Al Neyadi will be the first Arab astronaut to spend six months on the ISS.

• SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites on Sunday and a set of 46 on Friday. The company has now launched 33 missions this year, breaking the record set last year...and it's only July.

• Measat-3D, operated by Malaysian satellite company Measat, entered commercial service last week. The satellite launched in late June and has an expected lifespan of 18 years.

The View from Earth