Friday, January 12, 2024

Astrobotic gets payloads working on ailing Peregrine lander

Here's your Friday rundown of the top stories from SpaceNews this week.

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Your weekly news rundown from SpaceNews.

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IRIS on Peregrine
An image from Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander shows the wheels of IRIS, a lunar rover from Carnegie Mellon University. Credit: Astrobotic

Astrobotic, which is working to squeeze as much life as possible out of its crippled Peregrine lunar lander, says it has obtained data from many of the payloads on the spacecraft.

Latest Headlines

Launch

SpaceWERX, the technology arm of the U.S. Space Force, is looking to award a new round of Small Business Innovation Research contracts worth up to $1.9 million each for IT infrastructure upgrades at the Eastern and Western launch ranges.

A young Chinese launch startup has reached orbit with its Gravity-1 all-solid launch vehicle, smashing the record for payload capacity for Chinese commercial rockets.

SpaceX expects to conduct the third integrated test flight of its Starship vehicle in February as it works to demonstrate key technologies needed to land humans on the moon.

China launched its Einstein Probe early Tuesday to detect X-ray emissions from violent, fleeting cosmic phenomena using novel lobster eye-inspired optics.

United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur soared into night skies on its long-awaited first launch Jan. 8, carrying a commercial lunar lander that encountered problems post deployment.

Civil

The launch of a Japanese mission to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos and return them to Earth, previously scheduled for later this year, has slipped to 2026.

Components for China's Chang'e-6 lunar far side sample return mission spacecraft arrived at Wenchang spaceport Wednesday.

A Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite, with contributions from NASA and ESA, is working well in orbit four months after its launch, other than an issue that could affect one of its instruments.

NASA is postponing the next two Artemis missions, including the first crewed landing on the moon, by nearly a year to address technical issues that could affect the safety of the astronauts on board.

JPL laid off 100 contractors last week because of potential sharp budget cuts to Mars Sample Return (MSR) and warned that more layoffs could come.

Military

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) on Jan. 10 issued a solicitation for commercial satellite Earth observation data under a new program called Luno.

U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson handed over the reins of U.S. Space Command to U.S. Space Force Gen. Stephen Whiting Jan. 10 at a change-of-command ceremony at Peterson Space Force Base outside Colorado Springs.

The U.S. Space Force has inked a $19.8 million deal with Microsoft to develop a virtual and mixed-reality training environment.

The startup Muon Space announced Jan. 9 it will explore the use of climate-monitoring satellites to capture cloud characterization data for the U.S. Air Force.

The U.S. Army's top leadership has unveiled new guidance underscoring the vital role of space systems in modern ground warfare and calling for greater investment in space capabilities.







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