Congrats to @SpaceX on the IPO! For years, the bottleneck to deep space was the cost of getting off Earth. That’s becoming a solved problem. Now the challenge is building low-cost spacecraft that can operate there...good thing we’ve been busy. More news drops next week.

Finally got some of our hot-fire images released. This shot was taken during long-duration testing at The Aerospace Corporation. We put over 20 hours of firing on this thruster to make sure it worked with the avionics system. People always show the glow of a hot-fire test, but understanding the setup in detail is important. This was run in a flight-like configuration. That means flight avionics, a flight Power Processing Unit, and a flight Fuel Management System. The only major piece that wasn’t flight-like was the fuel tank, because that would have been pointless. Testing all of this together is really important. On our first test, our PPU caught on fire. It was a useful reminder that engineering hardware and flight hardware are not the same thing. So we rebuilt, re-tested, and tested more. We ran full-power burn-in, low-power testing, high-power testing, starting and stopping. We really ran this through its paces. These thrusters are now strapped onto the spacecraft and ready to fly.

Also shoutout to Kayden, our new Integration and Test intern!

Thanks for the write up, @jeff_foust. Check out the story to learn more about our plans for the DeepSpace-2 mission and our long-term ambition to mine the universe.

Our Head of Space Systems Ashton Meginnis joined the Techne podcast to discuss the realities building a deep space vehicle, the path to asteroid mining, and where he sees the space industry headed next. Listen below: shows.acast.com/68b93be00933…