Rocket Lab $RKLB SVP Lars Hoffman takes the #CST2022 stage:
@RocketLab Hoffman: "We are opening up our Wallops launch site for business this year. We expect that business to pick up quite a bit in the coming years."
@RocketLab Hoffman: Rocket Lab will also launch the first mission from its second New Zealand pad "very soon," planning for "this spring."
@RocketLab Hoffman presents Rocket Lab as "an end-to-end space company" with launch, spacecraft, and other components & subsystems.
"We're touching all the bases. We've got small launch figured out" and Neutron will come to market "in the next few years."
@RocketLab Hoffman: Launching NASA's CAPSTONE mission, which hopes "to be a pathfinder for the Artemis program. We're going to be racing Artemis I to the pad I think this spring, but we're very excited about that."
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Here at day two of #CST2022, BryceTech CEO Carissa Christensen is moderating a conversation with Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith and VP Audrey Powers, the latter who flew to space on New Shepard last year.
@csf_spaceflight@AudreyKPowers@BryceSpaceTech@blueorigin Powers, asked about her spaceflight experience, says she doesn't think Blue Origin would have achieved what it did last year "without the work of this industry" and its partnerships with the FAA, NASA, and more.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson is now speaking at the #CST2022 conference:
@SenBillNelson Nelson, introduced as a person who has flown to space, opens his comments by joking: "My critics wished that I had gone on a one way mission."
@SenBillNelson Nelson calls out the recent DART launch as a NASA mission that particularly "got people's attention."
FAA commercial space office leader Wayne Monteith says "nothing else comes between public safety and getting our job done," showing a photo of the 2016 SpaceX Amos-6 incident.
"A pretty catastrophic event [but] nobody was hurt ... that's what we do." #CST2022
Monteith: "Last year we licensed 8 human spaceflight missions -- that's more than the [total] launches we licensed in 2012."
Monteith: "What a year" 2021 was for human spaceflight. "Business is tremendous" and FAA sees the number of private crewed launches each year continuing to increase, referencing this week's Polaris Program announcement.
Isaacman says the program is named after the Polaris constellation, "or the North Star, which has been used as a guiding light throughout human history to help navigate the world around us and the sky above."
Isaacman: "I'm incredibly passionate that we can make meaningful progress towards a world we all want to live in for tomorrow, while also working to address the challenges and hardships of today. For this, it does not have to be one or the other but in fact can be both."
Jared Isaacman, less than six months after the historic Inspiration4 mission, announces he is going back to orbit with SpaceX – purchasing up to three private flights, including another free-flying Crew Dragon mission set for late this year: cnbc.com/2022/02/14/jar…
Known as the Polaris Program, the first mission "Polaris Dawn" is scheduled for Q4 2022.
Meet the crew:
Commander - Jared Isaacman
Pilot - Scott Poteet
Mission Specialist - Sarah Gillis
Mission Specialist - Anna Menon cnbc.com/2022/02/14/jar…