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

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!

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.

From left to right, George Nield, Associate Administrator of Commercial Space Transportation, FAA; Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator; Doug Comstock, Director, Innovative Partnerships Program, NASA; David Masten, CEO, Masten Space Systems; Phil Eaton, VP, Operations, Armadillo Aerospace; U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX); Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO, X PRIZE Foundation and Mitch Waldman, VP, Advanced Programs & Technology, Northrop Grumman. Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)

Masten Space Systems Qualifies for $1 Million Prize

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mojave, California – October 30, 2009 – Masten Space Systems successfully qualified for first place in Level Two of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Wednesday. Flying a brand new vehicle named XA-0.1E (nicknamed Xoie), Masten demonstrated their ability to build, debug and fly a vehicle on a very short timeline.

“To come from not flying at all last year to qualifying for level one AND level two of the LLC this year shows how far our technology has progressed,” Masten Space Systems CEO David Masten said. “After a short vacation we will start modifying Xoie for commercial payloads and begin work on Xoie’s successor.”

Xoie is a larger, lightweight version of Masten’s Level One vehicle Xombie and features an aluminum structure, larger tanks and a more powerful engine. Originally designed for only 750 pounds of thrust, Xoie’s engine produces over 1000 pounds of thrust. “Our engines go to 11! Now we go build the 2500 pound version,” stated MSS propulsion engineer Jonathan Goff. A visibly exhausted but happy Ian Garcia, guidance engineer, said, “We wrote our flight control system from scratch and it just does what I tell it to do! Making it work for supersonic flight is going to be a fun challenge.”

Masten’s qualification flight came at the final Lunar Lander Challenge flight window on Friday morning. During previous windows on Wednesday and Thursday the vehicle experienced communications and plumbing issues. After a small fire on Thursday afternoon the team spent most of the night engineering a solution to a small leak. The solution worked and the team successfully flew the required profile on Friday morning.

“We are now working with interested parties to begin payload integration for low altitude commercial flights in early 2010,” said Michael Mealling, Vice President of Business Development. “If you want to book space on our early commercial flights the time to do that is now. We’re seeing significant interest from research scientists, companies looking to increase their Technology Readiness Levels, and aerospace systems companies building unique quality assurance techniques.” Recently, the Department of Defense awarded Masten Space Systems a Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) contract to use its vehicles as a network communications testbed.

“We are building up a good head of steam. Next year is going to be full of bigger, faster, and higher,” said Masten. “Winning contests is fun, but we won’t rest until we’re flying a fleet of vehicles into space carrying all sorts of commercial payloads.”

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

Contact:
Masten Space Systems
Michael Mealling
+1-888-488-8455 x 102
mmealling@masten-space.com
http://www.masten-space.com