ULA is expanding its launch infrastructure at Cape Canaveral. With funding from Amazon, United Launch Alliance is spending about $500 million to upgrade and expand infrastructure at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Ars reports. The upgrades will allow ULA to double its launch capacity in Florida to support up to two launches of the company's new-generation Vulcan rocket every month, a pace required to meet the demands for Amazon's Kuiper broadband network, a fleet of more than 3,200 satellites that will primarily launch on ULA's rockets.
New hangar and launch platform ... The investments will pay for the outfitting of a second vertical hangar and a second mobile launch platform for Vulcan rockets, alongside the integration facility and launch table already built to support the first few Vulcan missions. Having dual lanes for launch processing in Florida will allow ULA to fly as many as 25 Vulcan rockets per year, the company says. ULA and its subcontractors are also expanding factory space at locations around the country to produce more Vulcan engines, solid rocket boosters, and payload fairings for the Kuiper missions.
Super Heavy is back on the pad at Starbase. SpaceX has moved the Super Heavy booster for the next Starship test flight to its launch pad in South Texas. The 33-engine Super Heavy booster rolled to the pad on July 20, allowing SpaceX to resume testing at the Starship orbital launch pad for the first time since the first full-scale Starship test flight lifted off three months ago. A few days later, SpaceX loaded cryogenic fluids into the Super Heavy booster for a proof test, a step toward an expected hot fire test of the rocket's methane-fueled Raptor engines.
Questions remain ... Moving the Super Heavy booster to the launch pad represents a key sign of technical progress at Starbase following repairs to the launch pad after the Starship launch in April, which resulted in fairly significant damage to ground equipment. Many armchair observers didn't expect the launch pad to be ready to resume testing this soon.
But there's still work to go, including hot fire testing and the stacking of a structural extension to the top of the Super Heavy booster to enable SpaceX's new "hot staging" technique that will be used to separate the booster from its Starship upper stage on the upcoming test launch. The booster didn't have the extension in place when it rolled to the pad last week. There's also uncertainty over the status of the Federal Aviation Administration's mishap investigation of the Starship launch in April, which ended in the upper atmosphere after the rocket tumbled out of control. The vehicle took longer than expected to disintegrate after activating its range-safety self-destruct system.
NASA control team completes first Artemis II launch simulation. Launch controllers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center have completed the first launch countdown simulation for the Artemis II mission, the first astronaut mission to fly around the Moon since 1972. The simulation focused on rehearsing procedures for loading liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants into the Space Launch System rocket.
Waiting on SLS flight hardware ... The countdown practice run didn't involve any flight hardware. The SLS core stage for the Artemis II mission isn't scheduled to arrive at the Kennedy Space Center from its factory in New Orleans until the October timeframe after Boeing finishes up assembly. The solid rocket boosters, which are complete and in storage, will arrive a couple months later from Northrop Grumman's fabrication facility in Utah. Then the rocket will be stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building, and an Orion crew capsule will be installed on top. When will Artemis II launch? Officially, no earlier than November 2024, but more likely in 2025. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Next three launches
July 29: Falcon Heavy | Jupiter 3 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 03:04 UTC
July 30: PSLV | DS-SAR | Satish Dhawan Space Center, India | 01:00 UTC
July 30: Electron | "We Love the Nightlife" | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 05:00 UTC
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