Rocket Lab Is About To Help Launch A Space Factory
Rocket Lab has been trying to become a vertically integrated company offering practically any service needed related to launching payloads into orbit. The company’s unique technology and specifically the Photon spacecraft bus managed to secure them a contract with Varda Space Industries. This upcoming mission will see Rocket Lab help place a small space factory into the proper orbit.
Just days ago, Rocket Lab completed and shipped the Photon spacecraft for the first launch scheduled next month in June. The goal is to enable high-value products to be manufactured in zero-gravity and returned to Earth in Varda’s re-entry capsule. Photon is a custom spacecraft bus that acts like a third stage one separated from the rocket.
In the past, we’ve seen this hardware allow Rocket Lab to send payloads all the way to the Moon with a small lift launch vehicle. Now it’s helping space factories stay powered, communicate, and stay in orbit as intended. Here I will go more in-depth into this customer Photon spacecraft, the space factory being launched, what to expect in the coming weeks, and more.
New Updates
This mission has been in the works for quite a long time but just recently a lot of things are picking up. Less than a week ago on the 9th Rocket Lab tweeted saying, “New Photon spacecraft complete! We’re celebrating the completion and shipping of a custom Photon for @VardaSpace to enable in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing.”
The Rocket Lab-designed and built Photon spacecraft will provide power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control to Varda’s 120kg capsule that will produce pharmaceutical products in microgravity and return them to Earth. In addition to providing support during the in-space manufacturing phase of Varda’s mission, the Photon will place Varda’s hypersonic re-entry capsule (carrying finished pharmaceuticals on board) on a return trajectory to Earth.
Varda’s space-manufactured products are targeting small molecule therapeutics, and over time larger molecules and biologics — all of which can have higher efficacy when produced in microgravity, while the re-entry capsule provides opportunities to advance hypersonic systems. This first mission will focus on small molecule formulation to provide insight into retrieved microgravity-grown pharmaceutical crystals.
The Photon spacecraft was developed, manufactured, and tested at Rocket Lab’s Spacecraft Production Facility in Long Beach, California. With final assembly, integration, and test of the spacecraft complete, the fully integrated Varda spacecraft has been shipped to Vandenberg Space Force Base for launch on a commercial rideshare mission scheduled for no earlier than June 8. On this specific mission, Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle won’t be used but instead, it will take off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rideshare mission.
This Photon spacecraft is the first of four ordered by Varda to support in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing. Leveraging Rocket Lab’s deep vertical integration, all Photon spacecraft incorporate Rocket Lab-designed and manufactured components and software including star trackers, propulsion, reaction wheels, solar panels, flight software, radios, composite structures and tanks, and separation systems.
“Opening access to space is about much more than launch for Rocket Lab. It’s about making it easier to put the ideas of tomorrow in orbit today, enabling innovation, rapid iteration, and new capabilities that will improve lives back on Earth. This is exactly what the team at Varda is doing by producing novel pharmaceuticals in orbit and we’re immensely proud to make that possible with our Photon spacecraft,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “Space Systems is a rapidly growing part of Rocket Lab’s business, and we’re delighted to deliver another spacecraft that leverages our vertical integration strategy for high-quality and cost-effective satellite solutions on rapid timelines” he said.
The mission will begin with a launch before Varda’s factory and the attached Rocket Lab Photon separate from the rocket. Once in orbit, the production facility begins operations. When complete, the reentry capsule with the products inside is released and the finished materials are then returned to Earth. The reentry vehicle comes home to Earth at hypersonic speeds greater than Mach 25, or 19,000 mph. Eventually, it deploys a parachute for a controlled landing. For a lot of this journey, the Photon will be facilitating different necessary actions. This is why the company has already ordered 4 in total as they will be needed for each mission. Something we can expect to see in action in only a few months.
Photon Spacecraft
Photon has come a long way in the past few years. The spacecraft is based on the heritage Electron launch vehicle Kick Stage, leveraging numerous components that have significant flight heritage. Normally, Photon flies as the upper stage of Electron, eliminating the parasitic mass of deployed spacecraft and enabling full utilization of the fairing.
The idea being, as a configurable platform, Photon can be tailored to meet unique mission requirements. From mass manufacture as a streamlined constellation offering, to a single customized technology demonstration spacecraft, Photon is meant to be adapted to make different missions possible. This upcoming launch is just one of many unique examples.
Rocket Lab has two different types of spacecraft buses both related to each other. The most standard and original option is the kick stage. Rocket Lab describes the kick stage as a streamlined path to orbit that eliminates the added risk, complexity, and cost of having to develop your own spacecraft propulsion or using a third-party space tug to deliver your spacecraft to the desired orbit when flying as a rideshare. The Kick Stage’s propulsion system consists of Rocket Lab’s in-house designed and built Curie engine, six low minimum impulse bit cold gas Reaction Control System thrusters, tank pressurization system, and high propellant mass fraction tanks which can be scaled to meet mission-specific needs. Curie is an additively manufactured, pressure-fed engine with flight heritage across more than a dozen orbital missions. It is a storable, re-startable, bipropellant liquid propellant engine integrated with lightweight composite propellant tanks and valves into a single compact module.
The Kick Stage has deployed many satellites to standard 500 km altitudes but is also capable of transferring payloads to much higher altitudes. During Rocket Lab’s Electron mission, ‘As The Crow Flies’, the Kick Stage successfully raised the payload’s orbit to 1,200 km, before Curie performed a final burn to lower the stage’s perigee by more than 700 km to rapidly accelerate the de-orbit process to avoid the used stage becoming orbital debris. The Kick Stage has been designed with the capability to deorbit itself on an accelerated time scale, well before the 25 year deorbit guidelines stipulated by NASA. By performing a deorbit burn with the Curie engine, Rocket Lab can lower the Kick Stage’s perigee to increase aerodynamic drag on the spacecraft and cause it to deorbit within months or single digit years, as required.
These among other features make it an important piece of equipment available to Rocket Lab. Photon, on the other hand, is considered a high-performance evolution of the Kick Stage. In other words for more intensive or mission specific applications, custom Photon spacecraft are designed. The upcoming launch of a small space factory is a perfect example.
Traditionally, almost all in-space manufacturing research has been carried out on the International Space Station. This research has demonstrated that innovative materials and products can be created in the consistent microgravity environment of low-Earth orbit, an environment that can’t be replicated on Earth. Until now, manufacturing in orbit has been impossible to scale due to cost. Building a space factory with a proven, Photon spacecraft — one that doesn’t require human tending in orbit — will allow Varda to make building products in space at scale a reality for the first time.
The first Varda Photon was planned for delivery in Q1 2023, with the second to follow up later in the year and a third in 2024. The contract, which is subject to standard termination provisions, included an option for Varda to procure a fourth Photon, which they eventually did. The upcoming launch joins a growing list of Photon missions, including the CAPSTONE lunar mission in support of NASA’s Artemis program and a recently announced contract to design twin Photon spacecraft in support of a NASA Mars mission. Rocket Lab currently operates two existing Photon spacecraft on orbit. Launched in 2020 and 2021 respectively, the Photon First Light and Photon Pathstone spacecraft demonstrated Rocket Lab’s end-to-end mission service, encompassing satellite design and build, launch on Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle, and on-orbit operations.
Conclusion
Rocket Lab just shipped its first custom Photon spacecraft for Varda Space Industries. Soon it will arrive and then launch on a commercial rocket early next month. When in space, it will help support the small factory until it has produced its materials and sent them on a trajectory back into Earth’s atmosphere. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.