Top Stories
HawkEye 360 is acquiring the radio-frequency intelligence unit of Maxar. HawkEye 360 said Monday it would acquire Maxar Intelligence RF Solutions, the business unit formed after Maxar acquired Aurora Insight earlier this year, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition gives HawkEye 360 two additional RF-monitoring satellites to add to its 21-satellite constellation. It also expands HawkEye 360's coverage to include RF signals from 26 to 40 gigahertz. [SpaceNews]
Lynk Global announced Monday its intent to go public through a SPAC merger. The company said it signed a non-binding letter of intent to merge with Slam Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) founded by Alex Rodriguez, the former baseball player. The companies are still working out details of the merger and Lynk did not disclose how much it expected to raise through it. Slam raised $575 million from its initial public offering in February 2021 but returned more than half of that to shareholders earlier this year when it extended a deadline to complete a deal. Lynk plans to use the proceeds to fund development of a satellite constellation to provide direct-to-phone connectivity. [SpaceNews]
Blue Origin will try again today to launch its New Shepard vehicle after a scrub yesterday. The company initially delayed the launch from its West Texas site by an hour because of cold conditions, then postponed it because of a problem with ground systems. Liftoff of the NS-24 mission is now scheduled for 11:37 a.m. Eastern this morning. The flight will be the first for New Shepard in more than 15 months and will carry 33 research payloads, many provided by NASA that also flew on the aborted NS-23 mission in September 2022. The return to flight comes as Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, said in a recent podcast interview that he is spending more time with the company and encouraging it to move "much faster" than it has been on its various projects. [SpaceNews]
A new report found potential problems with the Pentagon's effort to develop space-based systems to track hypersonic missiles. The report, released Monday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that hypersonic missile tracking is far more difficult than traditional ballistic missile warning. One challenge will be "sensor fusion," or combining data from several satellite systems to better track hypersonic missiles and enable interception. The study suggests other tradeoffs could be considered in order to ensure coverage of the Indo-Pacific region, where Chinese hypersonic missiles might be deployed. [SpaceNews]
A startup has raised $9.5 million to develop a crowdsourced space tracking system. OurSky raised the seed round earlier this month to support the creation of a space tracking system using a network of telescopes that it owns as well as data from "extremely capable telescopes" operated by amateur astronomers. The company says it can take advantage of underutilized telescopes to track space objects. [SpaceNews]
A Chinese spaceplane appears to be accompanied by several "wingmen" satellites. The spaceplane, launched last week, appears to have deployed six spacecraft, designated Objects A through F. Some of the objects are transmitting radio signals like those seen on previous Chinese missions, but the purpose of the spacecraft is not known. On its previous mission last year, the spaceplane released one object tracked by Western observers. [Space.com]
| | Other News
SpaceX ended an 11-day launch hiatus last night. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:01 p.m. Eastern and placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was the first by SpaceX since another Starlink launch from California early Dec. 8. The gap, the longest between SpaceX launches this year, was linked to a combination of poor weather, technical problems and rescheduling of other launches. The gap likely rules out achieving a goal by SpaceX of performing 100 Falcon launches this year: the company has performed 92 Falcon launches this year with about five more scheduled through the end of the year. [SpaceNews]
Firefly Aerospace announced it will perform its next Alpha launch on Wednesday. The company said the launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base is scheduled for 12:18 p.m. Eastern with a 20-minute launch window. The "Fly the Lightning" mission, the fourth flight of the Alpha rocket, will carry a technology demonstration satellite for Lockheed Martin and also test its responsive launch capabilities. [Firefly]
Satellite navigation startup TrustPoint said it is working with SpiderOak on cybersecurity. TrustPoint plans to deploy a constellation of small satellites to deliver positioning, navigation and timing services for commercial and national security applications. The company announced Monday that it will use SpiderOak, which specializes in cybersecurity for space applications, to provide security for its systems. [SpaceNews]
Virginia is providing $20 million to upgrade a launch pad at Wallops. The Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the funding earlier this month to cover upgrades to the pad used by Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket. The upgrades will allow it to handle launches of the new Antares rocket, Antares 330, Northrop is developing with Firefly, along with their future MLV launch vehicle. [Virginia Mercury]
NASA is preparing for the end of an asteroid-hunting mission. The agency said its NEOWISE spacecraft will likely cease operations in early 2025 as its orbit around the Earth decays. The spacecraft launched as an infrared astronomy mission called WISE in 2009, and was repurposed in 2013 to search for near Earth asteroids. The spacecraft has discovered 215 such asteroids and 25 comets. NEOWISE will be succeeded by NEO Surveyor, a larger space telescope designed for asteroid searchers and slated to launch by 2028. [Sky & Telescope]
NASA has demonstrated the capabilities of a deep-space laser communications system… with a cat video. The agency said Monday that the Deep Space Optical Communications laser payload on the Psyche spacecraft successfully transmitted a video to Earth from a distance of 31 million kilometers. The 15-second video, transmitted at rates of 267 megabits per second, showed a cat, named Taters, chasing a laser pointer along with other data. The video was a nod to both cat memes popular on the internet as well as history: a small statue of the popular cartoon character Felix the Cat was featured in television test broadcast transmissions nearly a century ago. Moreover, said one engineer involved with the project, "everyone loves Taters." [NASA/JPL]
| | Making Sense of the Universe
"Doing this made me realize that being a scientist and being an artist aren't that different. We're all just making sense of the universe, and this is one way of doing it."
– Sophie Kastner, a composer who used NASA data to create a piece of music depicting a voyage into the center of the Milky Way galaxy. [Washington Post]
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