28 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 15-FEBRUARY 1, 2015 AviationWeek.com/awst
Amy Butler Washington, Amy Svitak Paris
and Guy Norris Los Angeles
No Pain, No Gain
NASA, USAF certifications slow, but do not
stem, SpaceX’s hopes for U.S. government work
T
hough 2014 was a strong year for
launch upstart Space Explora-
tion Technologies (SpaceX), the
company has missed several key goals
including gaining certification for U.S.
government launches and demonstrat-
ing reusability of Falcon 9’s first stage.
Certification from the U.S. Air Force
for the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket to obtain
access to a market dominated by the
monopoly United Launch Alliance was
hoped for by the end of 2014. It is now
slated for mid-year. Certification is re-
quired for SpaceX to win work lofting
national security payloads—work that
would help fund the company’s explo-
ration ambitions. SpaceX is pursuing
the certification while also suing the
service for an alleged issuance of a
multi-billion, 28-mission deal to ULA
for five years’ worth of launches last
year.
On the civil side, SpaceX’s progress
to expand its missions from “low-risk”
cargo carriage to the International
Space Station (ISS) to “medium-risk”
payloads is slower than planned. It is
now expected by early June, another
slip from late last year.
The company also missed its latest
attempt at a first-stage recovery Jan.
- This technology is key to SpaceX’s
ambitions to reduce cost and improve
turn time for launch missions. Although
recoverable, these issues will consume
SpaceX’s focus in early 2015.
USAF Secretary Deborah Lee James
says SpaceX has completed 80% of the
tasks required for certification, so more
work remains. But she agrees there is
a need for competition in the market.
“Although certification was not
awarded as of the end of December,
we recognize SpaceX for its thorough
efforts in moving toward an aggres-
sive certification goal, and we will
continue to vigorously pursue that
certification milestone,” says Lt. Gen.
Samuel Greaves, commander of the
Air Force Space and Missile Systems
Center (SMC) and certification author-
ity. “[We] remain very optimistic, since
SpaceX continues to demonstrate the
’90s after a series of dazzling failures.
It the first company to undergo the re-
vised certification process with the goal
of garnering work for its Falcon 9.
An Air Force spokesman declined to
specify what tasks remain for the cer-
tification because the data are propri-
etary. Last year, SpaceX completed the
three launches required; the company
did not reply to a request for comment
on remaining work.
The delay is not a surprise. Air Force
Space Command Gen. John Hyten said
last September that “if they are not
ready on Dec. 1, we are going to have to
stand up and say that,” during a speech
at the 2014 Air and Space Conference
hosted by the Air Force Association.
At issue is balancing an eagerness to
introduce competition into the U.S. mili-
tary launch market and an unrelenting
demand for flawless missions.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon
Musk has been a vocal critic of the
certification process, complaining that
the service is taking too long to accept
the Falcon 9 into its fleet. A company
spokesman declined to discuss the new
time line, however.
James has established an indepen-
dent group to assess how to “stream-
line and improve the certification
process while protecting mission as-
surance,” she says. “The Air Force has
learned much about the process dur-
ing our close collaboration, as well as
identified all certification open items.”
The December goal was pinned to
hopes that SpaceX could compete for
the forthcoming NRO-79 launch, loft-
ing a secret National Reconnaissance
Ofce payload into orbit. Once the draft
request for proposals was released for
the launch last June, Air Force ofcials
were adamant that NRO-79 must be on
contract by the end of 2014. But there
has been no award announced. An
SMC spokeswoman says the launch is
still planned for December, but despite
repeated requests she was unable to
discuss the timing of when the contract
will be awarded. Without SpaceX certi-
fied, it must be sole-sourced to ULA.
The NRO-79 launch was viewed as
one of a few opportunities in the near
term for SpaceX to win national secu-
rity work for the Pentagon.
A mission to loft the Deep Space Cli-
mate Observatory (Dscovr) for the Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration (NOAA), one of two low-risk
USAF launches won by SpaceX in 2012
under the new-entrant program, is nowSPACESpaceX was unsuccessful in its
attempt to recover a Falcon 9 first
stage during a Jan. 10 mission to
deliver cargo to the ISS.REUTERS/LANDOVinnate ability to innovate and quickly
respond to open items.”
At issue for the cumbersome cer-
tification process is ensuring that
SpaceX—a relatively new company
employing new techniques and pro-
cesses in line with commercial launch
needs—can adhere to standards estab-
lished by the Pentagon over decades of
experience and honed in the 1980s and