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NASA announced Tuesday it is delaying the next two Artemis missions by nearly a year. The agency said Artemis 2, a crewed mission around the moon previously scheduled for launch late this year, is now scheduled for September 2025. That will delay Artemis 3, the first crewed landing, to no earlier than September 2026. The Artemis 2 delay is to give the agency time to address several issues with Orion that affect crew safety, including unexpected erosion of the capsule's heat shield seen on Artemis 1, faulty electronics on its life support system, and concerns that the launch abort system could affect Orion's electrical power systems. NASA said that, even if Artemis 2 remained on schedule, it would have likely delayed Artemis 3 to provide more time for development of the Starship lunar lander and lunar spacesuits. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX expects to perform its third Starship integrated test flight in February. At the NASA briefing that announced the new Artemis launch dates, a SpaceX executive said the hardware for that launch should be ready this month. An updated FAA launch license is projected for February after SpaceX completes corrective actions from the previous Starship launch in November. The company also estimated it will need about 10 Starship refueling flights to send a Starship lander to the moon, after previous estimates by NASA of nearly 20 such flights. SpaceX is downplaying the complexity of its approach for lunar lander missions, noting it has already demonstrated key requirements like docking and high flight rates with its existing Falcon launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
Iridium is shifting to standardized technologies for providing direct-to-device services rather than its own proprietary approaches. The company announced Wednesday that it will make its low Earth orbit constellation compatible with 5G standards used by mass-market smartphones, aiming to enable them to access messaging and SOS services outside cellular coverage from 2026. Iridium previously pursued a partnership with Qualcomm using proprietary technologies and specialized chips, but Qualcomm backed out of the agreement in November because of a lack of interest from smartphone manufacturers. Iridium said it would take more time to develop standardized protocols that can be uploaded into the constellation, but the end result would be easier for device manufacturers to adopt. [SpaceNews]
China is gearing up for the launch of the first sample return mission to the far side of the moon. The Chang'e-6 spacecraft arrived at the Wenchang spaceport Wednesday for final assembly and testing work, the China National Space Administration announced. A Long March 5 will launch the mission, likely in May, after a Long March 8 rocket launches the Queqiao-2 relay satellite to enable communications with Chang'e-6. The mission is designed to land in a southern portion of Apollo crater on the lunar farside, collecting up to two kilograms of samples to return to Earth. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Space Force is working with Microsoft on "mixed reality" technologies for training. Under a $19.8 million contract announced this month, Microsoft will continue work on an augmented reality space simulation tool it started developing last year for Space Systems Command. The system features Microsoft's HoloLens headsets, Azure cloud platform and a mesh framework for building shared augmented reality experiences, such as an interactive model of space with accurately scaled orbital objects that users can manipulate in real time. That technology, the Space Force said, can help guardians better understand the space environment. [SpaceNews]
| | Other News
A stuck valve may have caused the propulsion anomaly on Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander. The company said Tuesday that its current hypothesis for the propellant leak on the lander detected shortly after launch Monday was that a valve for a helium pressurization system failed to reseal after initial tests. That caused helium to surge into an oxidizer tank, rupturing it. Astrobotic is working to stretch out the life of the lander in its lunar transfer orbit, but confirmed there is no possibility of attempting a lunar landing. [Space.com]
A minor problem is affecting operations of one of the instruments on a Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite. The XRISM spacecraft launched in September and is nearing the end of its commissioning. The two main instruments on the spacecraft, an imager and spectrometer, are working well, but the aperture door for the spectrometer has not opened despite several commands to do so. The door is made of material that is transparent to X-rays, allowing the spectrometer to operate but with reduced throughput, particularly for low-energy X-rays. NASA, which helped developed the spectrometer, said that while the glitch is "frustrating" the spacecraft is otherwise working well, and is holding out hope that the door can eventually be opened. [SpaceNews]
A Chinese satellite launch triggered an air raid warning on Taiwan on the eve of presidential elections there. The Long March 2C launch of the Einstein Probe astronomy spacecraft Tuesday followed a flight path that took it over southern Taiwan, although at an altitude of hundreds of kilometers. The Taiwanese government apologized for issuing the warning and said it did not consider the launch an attempt at election interference by China. Taiwan's main opposition party, though, questioned the government's motives for sending the alert days before the election. [Reuters]
The government of Oman plans to develop a spaceport. The Etlaq spaceport, announced this week at the Middle East Space Conference in the country, would be ready to host launches of small to large rockets by 2030. No launch operators have yet signed up to use the launch site, and many would face export control and missile technology proliferation challenges if they sought to launch from Oman. [The National (UAE)]
A British spaceflight training company is taking steps to establish a facility near NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Blue Abyss acquired 12 acres in the suburb of Brook Park adjacent to the center last month. The company says it will use the property for a $250 million commercial astronaut training center and hotel. Construction of the center could start in the second half of 2024, pending local approvals. The center will host facilities including a pool up to 50 meters deep intended for training in space and other extreme environments. The company has not disclosed how much funding it has raised to build the facility. [NEOtrans]
| | Astronomical Cost Accounting
"Of course, it's very expensive. It's probably several billion dollars for a launch. That means, to NASA astrophysics, it's free. We can't possibly afford it out of the NASA astrophysics budget, so we have to be given it or we can't use it."
– Martin Elvis of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, discussing how the Space Launch System could be used to launch future space telescopes during a session at the 243rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Tuesday.
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