MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — European startup Atmos Space Cargo has received the regulatory approvals it needs for its first mission to demonstrate reentry technologies.
The company announced Feb. 5 that it obtained a positive payload review from the Federal Aviation Administration as part of the launch licensing process for its Phoenix capsule, which is slated to launch in April on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission.
That payload review was the final regulatory step needed for the mission, Sebastian Klaus, chief executive and co-founder of Atmos, said in an interview. The company doesn’t need a separate FAA reentry license because the spacecraft is planned to reenter over international waters, he said, and there are no licensing requirements by Germany, where the company is based.
Phoenix is fully assembled and has completed environmental testing, although the company is continuing to update software for the vehicle. “Physically and from a testing point of view, the spacecraft is ready for launch,” he said.
On the Bandwagon-3 mission, Phoenix will remain attached to the Falcon 9 upper stage while other spacecraft are deployed. The stage will then perform a deorbit maneuver, after which Phoenix will separate.
The mission will last a little under three hours, Klaus said, with the spacecraft operating while attached to the upper stage. That includes collecting data from a radiation monitor from the German Aerospace Center DLR and biotech payloads from Japan’s IDDK and the United Kingdom’s Frontier Space.
The key objective of the mission is to test the capsule’s inflatable decelerator as the spacecraft reenters over the Indian Ocean. Klaus said the spacecraft is equipped with temperature, pressure and other sensors to monitor the environment during reentry. The spacecraft can transmit data to the ground through a UHF communications system as well as through Iridium satellites. It is also equipped with an ADS-B transponder for tracking.
Atmos does not plan to recover the spacecraft even if it survives reentry. “I think the best comparison for that is the SpaceX Starship missions that also went down into the Indian Ocean after pretty much a fractional orbit,” he said. “I think it’s going to take us a couple flights to get it right, so on the first flight it’s really just about getting flight data.”
Atmos is competing against companies like Inversion Space and Varda Space Technologies, which launched their first and second return capsules, respectively, on the Transporter-12 rideshare mission Jan. 14. Both spacecraft are expected to reenter in the coming weeks.
Klaus said that his company stands out in its ability to return much larger payloads with the inflatable system, as well as being able to reuse the entire satellite bus. “We already have 100 kilograms of capacity on this first generation of the vehicle, and it’s easily scalable to several tons,” he said, adding that Atmos is seeing demand for the system for biotech and in-space manufacturing applications as well as the U.S. military’s interest in rapid cargo delivery from and through space.
“Having the ability to return life sciences and other types of microgravity research, rocket upper stages, military spacecraft and manufactured resources could be the next breakthrough in-space transportation,” said Lori Garver, former NASA deputy administrator who joined the board of Atmos in December, in a statement.
Atmos is working on its second Phoenix spacecraft, which Klaus said will be larger and able to spend weeks or months in orbit before reentering. He projected that mission will launch in about a year.
