Sink or swim (6/7/23)

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means: time to throw it back to 2013, when the famous Geico camel commercial graced our TVs. Just like the camel said, “Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike,” today we’re shouting out a Space Mike that’s been nominated by the Payload community, but this week with a twist, since we also want to include women rock stars in the space industry!

Today’s honoree is Michal “Mic” Locker, a senior space executive at Deloitte, who was nominated by Brett Loubert, a principal at Deloitte. Mic is the national managing principal for Deloitte Consulting’s US Technology, Media and Telecom industry, which includes the satellite communications, satellite navigation, and EO portfolio.

In today's edition...
🚢 Spaceports at sea
🪆 Russia’s Moon mission
💸 The term sheet 

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Tactical Launch Sets Sail

The Spaceport Company, a startup aiming to supply mobile, floating launch pads for responsive launch, won a $1.5M contract from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) through its National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) program, the company announced Monday.

Under the contract, The Spaceport Company will develop a resilient sea platform that can be deployed in rough ocean conditions to support the DoD’s responsive launch goals.

The story so far: CEO Tom Marotta founded The Spaceport Company last year with ambitions to solve what he calls a spaceport bottleneck. The company is building a global network of launch sites that can, ideally, be deployed anywhere, serving the smallsat launch market and governments.

“As congestion grows at existing sites and regulatory constraints impede inland launch, operating spaceports at sea becomes a more attractive option to meet the demand for orbital launch, and solving the spaceport bottleneck,” Marotta wrote in a recent op-ed in The Space Review.

The Spaceport Company conducted its first demonstration two weeks ago, launching a handful of small, suborbital rockets from a floating launch pad in the Gulf of Mexico. This demo was also supported in part by NSIC investment and oversight. With this new funding, The Spaceport Company will continue to refine its design and expand development.

Gotta go fast: The DoD is on the hunt for ways to deploy spacecraft at the drop of a hat, whenever they’re needed for national defense. Mobile launch pads give the Pentagon access to space even if a launch pad is damaged in conflict, and allow operators to quickly replace a satellite taken offline by an adversary. Commercial partnerships with launchers, satellite manufacturers, and infrastructure companies are key to achieving a tactically responsive launch capability.

• USSF has requested $60M from Congress to support its tactically responsive launch programs in the upcoming fiscal year.

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Russian Back to the Moon

Russia’s lunar race has a new start date.

After years of delays, Russia’s Luna-25 probe is slated to launch to the Moon aboard a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket on Aug. 11, according to Russian state news site TASS and local tour operator RocketTrip.

The uncrewed mission will be the first Russian lunar trip in 45+ years.

The mission: The spacecraft will land near the Boguslavsky crater at the Moon’s south pole, a region thought to be rich in water ice that multiple nations, including the US, are looking to explore. The 800-kg spacecraft has a 1.6-m arm equipped with a scoop tool to acquire lunar samples. The spacecraft will also carry dust detectors, charged particle instruments, imaging systems, and an array of spectrometers.

The mission has three main goals:

• Study the polar lunar regolith

• Examine the plasma of the polar exosphere

• Search for signs of water ice

History refresher: The Soviet Union became the first nation to soft land a spacecraft on the Moon in 1966 with its Luna-9 mission. The USSR achieved six more successful lunar landings over the next 10 years before shutting down the program after the 1976 Luna-24 mission.

A successful Luna-25 touchdown would represent a major milestone in Russia’s quest to revive its lunar program after years of dormancy, especially as questions swirl about the health of Moscow’s space program.

Moon base prep: Luna-25’s upcoming visit to the south pole comes as Russia and China are working on an ambitious long-term plan to set up a permanent ILRS moon base at the lunar south pole by 2028. The Luna-25 mission is expected to provide valuable insight on the local environment ahead of ILRS development and future crewed missions.

In Other News

• China's Tianzhou-5 spacecraft re-docked with Tiangong after 33 days of independent flight.

• Russia vowed to provide full satellite coverage of the Northern Sea route in two years to monitor ice build up.

• UAE highlighted peaceful space exploration in a statement at the UN.

• OneWeb and Speedcast deployed their first maritime connectivity service.

• JWST detected the earliest known complex organic molecules in the universe.

The View from Space

The Space Force’s eastern launch site in Florida oversaw its 27th launch of the year with SpaceX’s cargo delivery to the ISS on Monday.