Masten Space Systems Wins NASA Suborbital Contract

MOJAVE, Calif., August 31 /PRNewswire/ — Masten Space Systems, a leader in vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) rocket vehicles, announced a contract today with NASA’s new Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program. The initial contract is for four flights of test payloads on Xaero, Masten’s next-generation vehicle currently in assembly.

“We’re very excited and proud to be one of the first awardees under the CRuSR program,” said David Masten, CEO. “CRuSR promises to be very helpful in the development of our industry. NASA’s partnership with our emerging industry will provide low-cost and reliable space access to NASA’s scientists, engineers and educators. “

Masten Space Systems won the NASA funded Lunar Lander Challenge in October 2009 and demonstrated the first ever VTVL in-air relight in May 2010. The initial four flights for the CRuSR program will be conducted this winter from the company’s 200,000 square foot test area at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, CA.

“We look forward to working with the CRuSR’s payload developers,” said Michael Mealling, Vice President of Business Development. “Everyone has a lot of work to do over the coming months. In two weeks we deliver the ‘operating manual’ to the CRuSR team. That manual provides all of the details for integration timelines, payload interfaces, and flight day operations.”

Masten Space Systems expects to begin extensive commercial flight operations in 2011. Potential applications include microgravity science experiments, testing engineering components for future space flight, and educational flights for K-12 and university students. “Our flights services aren’t limited to NASA. Over the next year we will begin offering this same service to any research scientist, engineer or educator”, said Colin Ake, Director of Sales.

Masten Space Systems is a Mojave, CA based aerospace company developing fully reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) launch vehicles, rocket-related products, and engineering services. The company’s 6000 square foot production facility and 200,000 square foot testing facility is located on the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company designs and builds aerospace solutions that focus on durability, long operational lifetimes, and minimal per-flight maintenance. For more information on the company see http://masten-space.com

Contact:
Michael Mealling
mmealling@masten-space.com
678.640.6884

Everyone at Masten Space is wishing SpaceX good luck and black skies today!

Masten Space Re-Lights Rocket Engine in Flight

MOJAVE, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire/ — Masten Space Systems, a leader in vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) rocket vehicles, successfully demonstrated in-air engine re-light capability today at the company’s test facility in Mojave, CA. Xombie, Masten’s most-flown vehicle, carried out the test Wednesday and became the first VTVL vehicle to successfully re-light a rocket engine in flight.

VTVL launch vehicles conserve fuel by shutting down their engines during the coast and re-entry phase of a flight. Being able to re-light the main engine is critical to safely landing the vehicle. Combining throttle-ability and restart-ability in the same propulsion system improves vehicle capability, flexibility, and operability.

“We’re extremely excited and very proud to announce that we now have in-air re-light capability,” said David Masten, CEO. “The ability to turn off our engine, re-ignite it in flight, successfully regain control and land was the next big milestone as we expand our flight envelope to include high altitude flights. Each milestone we hit makes the path to space much clearer.”

Masten Space Systems continues to lead VTVL vehicle development; coming off a win in the NASA and Northrop Grumman funded Lunar Lander Challenge in October 2009. In flight re-ignition of Masten’s internally developed engine technology is crucial for higher altitude flights with access to premium microgravity, as well as for upper atmospheric scientific measurements.

“This was by far the coolest rocket flight I’ve ever seen!” said Ian Garcia, Masten’s Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineer. Much of the work necessary for the in-flight re-light involved custom flight control software written by Garcia. Ben Brockert and Jonathan Goff engineered the propulsion and vehicle systems to allow for a 2 second cycle time from shutdown to restart.

With the completion of this milestone, Masten Space Systems will turn to vehicle development tasks such as supersonic aerodynamics, aerodynamic controls and space-capable electronics.

Videos of the flights are available at http://youtube.com/mastenspace

Masten Space Systems is a Mojave, CA based aerospace company developing fully reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) launch vehicles, rocket-related products, and engineering services. The company’s 6000 square foot production facility and 200,000 square foot testing facility is located on the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company designs and builds aerospace solutions that focus on durability, long operational lifetimes, and minimal per-flight maintenance. For more information on the company see http://masten-space.com

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA: XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects. These automated lander programs are expected to serve as robotic test beds on Earth, on the lunar surface, Mars, near Earth objects and other interplanetary locales, helping NASA push the boundaries of technology and opening the solar system for future human exploration.

Masten’s award winning automated vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) flight vehicles combined with XCOR’s strong experience in liquid oxygen (LOX) / methane powered propulsion systems and nonflammable cryogenically compatible composite tanks, brings to NASA a powerful and competitive combination of innovative talent with a proven record of producing exceptional results quickly and affordably.

Last October, Masten won the $1 million first prize for Level II of NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge, beating out a host of New Space rivals, and demonstrating they are the leading VTVL development group in the country. In 2007 XCOR Aerospace’s LOX/methane engine, developed for NASA, was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Inventions of the Year”, recognizing XCOR’s successive advancement in the state of the art of both pump and pressure fed reusable, throttle-able rocket propulsion systems. XCOR and Masten have also demonstrated the ability to rapidly take from concept to live fire, new propulsion and control system designs using innovative rapid prototyping techniques that surpass client requirements in much shorter periods of time than traditional aerospace methods.

Dave Masten, founder and President of Masten Space Systems commented “Masten Space and XCOR are next door neighbors here in Mojave. We’ve worked together on many tactical problems over the years and our corporate cultures mesh well. Working together on something like this simply made too much sense. We can’t wait to start working with Jeff, Dan, and the XCOR team to help NASA build affordable and responsive landing platforms.”

“Our company work ethic and styles are very compatible, and with XCOR propulsion and Masten VTVL technology, we can solve problems of national interest, and I am excited about the possibilities,” said Jeff Greason, CEO and Founder of XCOR.
Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR added, “It’s a no brainer, Dave’s team is the absolute best New Space company when it comes to VTVL and autopilot unmanned operations – they demonstrated that in October by winning NASA’s lander challenge. And we feel our LOX/methane engines are unsurpassed in the trade space today by anyone. We should bring this tandem set of best in class capabilities to NASA, it just makes sense for them and for us.”

XCOR and Masten will be jointly marketing their skill sets and services to the NASA community as prime contractors, and as joint teaming partners for larger systems integrators and prime contractors servicing the NASA community.

# # # # #

Masten Space Systems is a Mojave, CA based aerospace company developing fully reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) launch vehicles, rocket-related products, and engineering services. The company’s 6000 square foot production facility and 200,000 square foot testing facility is located on the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company designs and builds aerospace solutions that focus on durability, long operational lifetimes, and minimal per-flight maintenance. For more information on the company see http://masten-space.com

XCOR Aerospace is a California corporation located in Mojave, California. The company is in the business of developing and producing safe, reliable and reusable rocket powered vehicles, propulsion systems, advanced non-flammable composites and other enabling technologies for responsive private space flight, scientific missions, upper atmospheric research, and small satellite launch to low earth orbit. The Lynx is a piloted, two seat, fully reusable, liquid rocket powered vehicle that takes off and lands horizontally. The Lynx production models (designated Lynx Mark II) are designed to be robust, multi-commercial mission vehicles capable of flying to 100+ km in altitude up to four times per day. XCOR’s web address is: www.xcor.com.

Contact:
Michael Mealling
Masten Space Systems
Phone: +1-888-488-8455 x102
Email: mmealling@masten-space.com

Mike Massee
XCOR Aerospace
Phone +1-661-824-4714 x127
Email: press@xcor.com

We’ve opened the hiring doors a bit wider! If you dig around, you’ll find a new Careers page, and added a handful of job descriptions for positions we’re looking to fill shortly. There are some very exciting things brewing for Masten Space Systems – things we can’t talk about publicly, but if you join the team you’ll get the inside scoop. Positions we’re looking to fill include:

• Test Operations Engineer
• Systems Integration Engineer
• Propulsion Engineer
• Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineer

We’re also accepting resumes from other qualified engineers with industry experience. If they don’t match an area we’re currently hiring in, we’ll keep it on file and give you a call when something does open up.

This is a great time to join the Masten Space Systems team. We’re flying higher and faster than ever before as we complete our flight test program on Xombie, assemble and flight test AeroXoie, and begin development on Xogdor. Come join us in our quest for solar system domination!

Boulder, Colorado – February 18, 2010 – Masten Space Systems announced that it is offering the winner of the Next-generation Suborbital Research Conference 2010 Student Suborbital Experiment Competition a free zero gravity flight. The winning proposal was New Mexico State University’s “Experimental Validation of a Robotics-Based Inertial Property Identification Algorithm for Orbiting Spacecraft.”

The flight will take place on one of the company’s new high altitude vehicles slated for flights later this year. These flights can give payloads several minutes of zero gravity critical to developing the new technologies that will lower the cost of exploring space. “It’s partnerships between motivated and creative students like these and low cost launch providers like us that will make the future of space flight look nothing like what has come before. Our goal is to open up suborbital flights like this to any university or high school team in the world at a price that is well within their budget,” said David Masten, CEO.

The second and third place winners were the University of Colorado at Boulder’s “Suborbital Flight Testing of a Deployable Reflector” and Colorado State University’s “Fiber-Optic Mass Gauging System for Measuring Liquid Levels in a Reduced Gravity Environment”. The competition was part of the first annual Next-generation Suborbital Research Conference held in Boulder, Colorado this week. The conference’s goal is to bring researchers from government, industry, and academia together with new suborbital launch providers and help the two communities discover their requirements and capabilities.

About Masten Space Systems
Masten Space Systems is a Mojave, CA based aerospace company developing fully reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) launch vehicles, rocket-related products, and engineering services. The company’s 6000 square foot production facility and 200,000 square foot testing facility is located on the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company designs and builds aerospace solutions that focus on durability, long operational lifetimes, and minimal per-flight maintenance. For more information on the company see http://masten-space.com

Person Of The Year: The Space Entrepreneur – Aviation Week

The quiet work of space entrepreneurs is becoming reality, and metal and fire are streaking through the upper atmosphere into low Earth orbit. (Photo: Chad Slattery)….

Working quietly in the background since the days of viewgraphs, a group of space entrepreneurs has long been pitching far-fetched ideas to skeptical moneymen with the fervor of evangelists. Now their viewgraphs—updated to Powerpoint and CAD/CAM—are becoming reality, and metal and fire are streaking through the upper atmosphere into low Earth orbit.

We have had an incredible year. All the components and subsystems have finally come together into 2 flying vehicles. We designed and built the 750-LIT all aluminum engine, reworked Xombie from a 4 engine vehicle into a single engine vehicle, built Xoie in just 6 weeks, and cleaned up the NG-LLC. 2010 promises to be even better.

After a bit of a break, wherein just about everyone in the shop got sick, we are back to full strength and working on the next projects. All the projects serve a single goal – get to the edge of space with a small payload in the next year. There are three component/subsystem projects – aeroshell/aerodynamics, a 3000 lbf thrust engine, and “space” rating all systems. Those three projects feed the vehicle development projects – Xoie, Foxie, and Xogdor.

Xoie was just completely disassembled. We are re-arranging things on it so that it will be streamlined in a 30″ diameter cone and cylinder arrangement. An aeroshell (or three) will be built around it and we’ll start going much higher and faster. According to our trajectory analysis, it should be able to get to around 30 km (100,000 ft) altitude.

Jon and Ben are working on getting a new 3000 lbf engine and test stand built. Our goals are to get a much higher thrust to weight ratio, get higher Isp than our 750-LIT engine, and just generally make it better in every way. If all goes according to plan, we should be ready to mount a flight version of the engine on Foxie this summer.

Ken and Ian are updating and improving the software and electronics. Mike and I are working out the aeroshell and new vehicle designs. We are currently thinking about using high power rockets (HPR) to do some of the aerodynamic testing. A commercial HPR motor is much cheaper than a wind tunnel, and can get us a much larger range of aerodynamic conditions.

Foxie is in many ways just an updated Xoie. Xoie still has an internal structure supporting the tanks and other internal components while the aeroshell just takes the aerodynamic loads. With Foxie, we’ll have the aeroshell double as the structure holding all the internal bits together. Also, Foxie gets the new 3000 lbf engine. Initial estimates indicate that Foxie should be able to go to 60+ km (200,000+ ft).

Xogdor is just a better version of Foxie. Larger tanks within the same aeroshell size and shape enable Xogdor to get to over 100 km (328,000 ft).

On the business side, we just hired Colin Ake – one of our former interns – as our first full-time business development and salesperson. There are plenty of proposals to write, researchers to visit, conferences to attend and trade shows to display at. He’ll be working out of our Atlanta office with Michael but traveling a bit. Expect to see us around the country a lot more in 2010.

We have a lot to do, and the schedule is once again very challenging. Along with all the interesting things going on with our friends and competitors, 2010 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for both us and the industry as a whole.

As always, no moment like the last. As our internship page says, December 6 is the deadline for applications for the spring internship. That’s Sunday.

Please feel free to share with anyone you think might be interested. It’s a little known fact, but we don’t actually require interns to be current students.