Do you want your satellite to be ready for in-space refueling?
If you are buying a Dawn propulsion system, we will include docking hardware for free!
All it will cost you is a bit of volume and 600g of added mass. It doesn't get much easier than that to be ready for the next
I love transporter launches. All my feeds flood with stories from the SmallSat world. Everyone is celebrating as dozens of projects make their next big leap to improve the world.
I celebrate with you as we get another batch of B20 thrusters on orbit!
Going through old video and stumbled on this gem:
Mk-II Flight 50 take-off from about 100m away.
I was way too excited to have still hands with a 600mm lens.
BIG NEWS – today we announced the successful hotfire of our Draper engine ahead of schedule. Designed from the ground up for hypersonic applications and in-space propulsion, Draper is primed to address the growing demand of the U.S. defense industrial base.
Yeah, maybe there are too many launch companies, but there are not nearly enough trying to do something truly different rather than just nibble at F9’s ankles. These folks are the real deal, and have a serious shot at greatness. Congrats team Stoke! 🔥
We have been building towards this campaign for over a year now. Just about every system on the aircraft was upgraded to prepare it for supersonic flight. It was almost like building a whole new aircraft.
The fact that we went from a check-out flight to Mach 0.9 in three
📣🛫 Flight Testing Update - Campaign 2-2 🛫📣
In late July, we conducted three flights, the last of which reached Mach 0.92 (967 km/h) and 50,000 ft (15.1 km). That is more than three times faster and higher than we have ever flown before!
This was another significant step
200 rocket motor firings across a thrust range of 5000x, for three different markets. All bi-propellant. All green propellants. All within the last 24 hours.
Shit was cookin' today
@DawnAerospace
#space
#innovation
#Sustainable
This worldwide unique certification is massive. Arguably way bigger than actually going out and flying supersonic.
Why? Because you can't throw money at a certification problem. It takes years of relationship building with regulators and airspace users responsible for public
We are officially certified for supersonic flight!
Dawn has been awarded certification to fly the Mk-II Aurora at unlimited speeds and up to 80,000ft, nearly twice as high as commercial jets fly!
Read the full press release here:
Smallsat conferences feel so strange rn.
75%+ of all smallsats were Starlink, and the remaining 25% were mostly launched on F9. Yet SpaceX barely even shows up.
We just talk about them like some long lost father.
Come back SpaceX. We love you.
@shortmsger
No, but we have seriously considered it. Likely needs unlocked GPS chips but they obviously had that on starship.
@elonmusk
can I get some speed unlimited starlink dishes for our spaceplane?
I love how Lockheed was able to get public investors to fund their SmallSat production facility, then buy it for 25c on the dollar. Great utilisation of the 2018-2022 space SPAC hype train.
/s
A case study in how slow the aerospace industry STILL is:
Ursa Major is a very capable, well funded rocket component company with an awesome product, the Hadley engine.
They were founded in 2015.
First prototype tested in 2018.
Qualified for flight in March 2022.
The real
Picture of the week, B1 thruster undergoing acceptance testing.
This was one of 20 that came off the production line in the last 5 weeks. We aim to produce over 100 in the first half of 2023.
"......Odin would also be the first private mission to fly by a body in the Solar System beyond the Moon."
And
@astroforge
will do it with a
@DawnAerospace
propulsion system.
LFG!
For many, this will be just another Starlink launch.
For
@DawnAerospace
, this will see our 50th(!) thruster launched into space in just over 2 years.
The green prop revolution is coming. And it's happening faster than anyone realizes.
I dont get the hype around RDE's. The extra Isp is much more easily achieved with a closed-cycle full-flow pump which has near-infinite power available. Ergo Raptor.
RDE's still need quite high chamber pressure to achieve Isp comparable to what a truly high chamber pressure
Space X booster cores B1051 and B1049 have each launched greater than 10% (!) of all active satellites. (360 and 370 respectively / 3372 total)
There is no better statistic that illustrates how so much work can be done by such a small amount of hardware if you just reuse it.
After nearly 40 flights on surrogate jets, we are pretty close to swapping them out for the real deal: a pump-fed rocket engine. Then the party really starts.
How to land your rocket plane:
Step 1: control energy with split rudder, maneuvers, and LG deploy timing.
Step 2: 10 deg decent, maintain speed 95 knots.
Step 3: flare, scrub speed and set it down softly.
Pro tip: practice with jet engines before moving on to pure rocket!
@DawnAerospace
just cracked 200 thrusters off the production line.
Our production rate is a tad over 1/day. As far as I know, that's the highest rate for a chemical in-space thruster, worldwide, including hydrazine thrusters.
Is anyone doing more than than 1/day?
From jets to rockets – the transformation is complete 🚀
The Mk-II engine upgrade takes it from 670N on jets to 2800N. Real rocket power!
Two tests were conducted in one day, just as is needed to be the first vehicle to fly to space twice a day.
Epic Mahi team!
@SciGuySpace
They asked, "why a spaceplane". This is the answer. I am well aware we are still a long way from proving it out. My quote is out of that context.
I can't do much about media that reports like this....happy to do an interview with you directly of course ;-)
The speed, power, and elegance was simply awesome.
And even better that we could see it three times in three days. It was surreal every time!
Hats off to the team, you are all amazing.
🎉The future of space transportation is one step closer! Dawn Aerospace's Mk-II Aurora spaceplane completed its first rocket-powered flight campaign last week. 🚀🌌
This is a significant milestone in our company's history. A big shout-out to our amazing team 🌎 🔥
#RocketPowered
Only a few hours after the launch of
#SpaceX
Transporter-1, my Twitter feed is flooded with
#SmallSat
companies stoked about their latest and greatest making it to orbit. 143 and 5 tons of SmallSats in one hit. This makes me so happy.
@Point_of_Gold
Yes. It's the smallest we could make it while still having enough performance to fly the same profile as a rocket first stage, ie ~3km/s delta V. It will prove out all the aerodynamics, reentry, guidance, rapid reuseabbility as well as regulation needed to do it full scale.
If there is one thing I learnt at Rocket Lab, it was a lesson in learning from your failures and recovering quickly. This will not take
@Peter_J_Beck
and the team long to figure out. Good luck and I can't wait to see that beautiful machine back on the pad soon.
"space is hard" should not be an excuse to justify bashing your head against the same brick wall. We need to find ways to make space easier.
A reusable system is a testable system.
@DawnAerospace
@BellikOzan
It can and has been done, in space. See CubeDrive. As far as I know , the first AM Tank in space, launched in 2020.
Common fuel/ox bulkheads. Flat fuel tank walls. Maximum propellant packing density.
6 sats cataloged to date from today's SpaceX Falcon 9 launch for the Korea 425 project. Three are in 560 x 575 km sun-sync orbit at 10:00 LTDN; three are in 515 x 532 km orbit.
The number of
@SpaceX
F9 or "mini F9s" ripoffs is so crazy. After 70 years of dumb rockets, Space X is showing how innovation CAN happen in aerospace.....yet all we are getting is more copycats.
Russia has clearly decided that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em with its new design for a reusable booster. Alas, no flights until at least 2026 means it will be at least 15 years behind the Falcon 9. Russia is lucky SpaceX doesn't innovate, hah.
Hydrazine replacement in motion 🔥
The team is assembling our latest propulsion system for
@ALE_StarAle
at our Delft facility. The module has 4x 1N and 1x 20N
#green
bipropellant thrusters. From components to full assembly took only 2.5 hours!
Epic work from the team. 💪💪
The video and imagery is great. But nothing can replace the feeling of landing after a successful mission, and then be back in the air 90 min later.
Once you have reusability, it's hard to imagine developing technology any other way.
So proud of what the team has achieved.
Petition to officially establish the NewSpace uniform:
-Black top
-beige Chinos/skirt
-Black shoes
Already inadvertently adopted by Dawn and Rocket Lab
@MoreMorganB
Need more thrust in your life? Check out our flight-duration test of the MkII-A engine! 112s of pump-fed fire 🔥✨
Look out for our next flight tests where we will push the aircraft MUCH higher and faster than ever before. We can’t wait to get back off the ground! 🚀✈
Has anyone achieved a semi decent air breathing EP thruster for VLEO?
Context: I'm researching EP and holy moly it's an ocean of crazy ideas and random homebrew terminology.....Makes ordered research pretty hard :-/
🎙️ Today on the show, I’m joined by Stefan Powell, CEO of
@DawnAerospace
, to talk about their big news: they flew their rocket-powered spaceplane 3 times in 3 days last week!
We chat about the company, their plans for the future, and their flights.
TIL the propellant "ASCENT" (Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic), which is definitely quite toxic, is called "non-toxic" in the marketing name because, once you burn it, it's indeed (in theory, assuming complete combustion) non-toxic.
Where would we be without marketing?!
Into deep space we go 🚀🌌
This Dawn SatDrive propulsion system is destined for an asteroid 22 million miles away on a spacecraft developed by our customer AstroForge.
Our nitrous-based systems can easily be put through their paces in the lab before they're sent to space🌱🛰
@deltaIV9250
Our core philosophy
@DawnAerospace
is that space isn't an interesting industry because it's so constrained by limited space transportation, both earth to space and in space.
Interesting space industries will emerge once we 100x space transportation bandwidth.
I have been told we are at the "eating glass" stage of building a company.
I was also told the solution is not to stop eating glass, but to learn to like the taste of your own blood.
From the responsible engineer:
"Good that we decided to print 12 instead of 10. Those extra prime factorizations pay off when placing them in a matrix structure"
Great to be a part of two (!) missions onboard a groundbreaking flight carrying over 150 satellites. It's a major step forward for the SmallSat industry!
Not many in Europe realize
@DawnAerospace
is already building propulsion systems for the moon 🌝 and asteroid 🌠 missions.
So we thought we would share the good news of nitrous propulsion to the kids as
@esa
estec open day!
@Interpl70838591
It would most probably work with quite a few of them, at least within our expected pressure ranges. But you would have to qualify it yourself :-)
From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name. For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100 km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line.
The Mk-II will smash the absolute altitude record for self-powered HTHL aircraft.
The record is currently held by the Mig-25 at 123kft. We should 2.5x that. It won't be close.
But is it fair that a rocket-powered UAV would take the record?
Today we had a visit from one of our parents who organised bringing along a real space plane ✈️ Thank you Dawn Aerospace and Tim for allowing us to experience this engineering masterpiece and inspiring our children to see they can be part of this industry in New Zealand!
@SpaceX
rideshare +
@DawnAerospace
onboard propulsion = the most cost-effective dedicated launch
And we see it in our growing customer base. We now have Dawn propelled satellites manifested on every SX transporter flight.
Targeting launch of SpaceX’s third dedicated smallsat rideshare mission, Transporter-3, tomorrow, January 13. The 29-minute launch window opens at 10:25 a.m. EST →
Flying on jets was already exciting. And we got to do it nearly 1/wk average (up to 4x/day) over the last 13 months.
Rapidly reusable rocket-powered flight if going to 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Off with the jets, in with the rocket!
The team has completed 48 flights on surrogate jet engines to learn everything we can about Aurora. Now it's time for an upgrade to take testing to the next level.
Check out our phase 1 flight test summary below
Thanks to everyone who has supported us in our journey. And thanks to
@NZHiTechAwards
for putting on a great event despite Covids best effort to derail it. A true testament to the hitech spirit of resilience and adaption
The winner of the Hi-Tech Start-Up Company of the Year Award 2020 has just been announced. Congratulations to
@DawnAerospace
! Category sponsored by NZ Growth Capital Partners.
#HTANZ
👏🏆
A huge amount of work went into this. And it's a massive step forward to showing that spaceflight and civil aviation can play in the same sandpit. Now let's go do it!
Basic SpaceX math:
F9 Reuseable: 15.8t for $50m = $3.2k/kg
F9 Expended: 21.8t for $62m = $2.7 k/kg
So why does everyone quote SX style reusability as grounds for the price drop revolution? I think the revolution so far is mostly just being an efficient space company
Our in-space propulsion team has to double in the next 3 months to meet demand.
We need: project managers, systems designers, propulsion engineers, embedded systems/electrical engineers, AIT and more.
Get in touch or RT!
#space
#greenpropulsion