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Japan's H3 rocket reached orbit on its second launch Friday. The rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 7:22 p.m. Eastern, nearly a year after its first launch failed when the second-stage engine did not ignite. On this flight the second stage operated as intended, deploying two smallsats before performing a deorbit burn. The primary payload was a mass simulator of ALOS-3, the spacecraft lost in the first H3 launch. An investigation into that failure found three potential issues that could have prevented an electrical signal from reaching the engine's ignition system, and engineers addressed all three ahead of this launch. The H3, years behind schedule, is the successor to the H-2A and key to Japan's future government and commercial space activities. [SpaceNews]
Eutelsat is scaling back its plans for a second-generation OneWeb constellation. Eutelsat said it is holding off from deploying significantly upgraded satellites for its Gen 2 system to instead focus on adding continuity of service capacity for customers with long-term contracts. Eutelsat that approach will reduce the costs of the Gen 2 system, previously projected at $4 billion, by nearly one third. Eutelsat is talking with export credit agencies in India, the United Kingdom and France to support the majority of Gen 2 costs, which would also be funded by revenues from the first-generation constellation. [SpaceNews]
Lockheed Martin is seeing growing demand for small satellites. The company has a backlog of 100 satellites from Defense Department and intelligence customers, a Lockheed executive said at the AFA Warfare Conference last week. The company opened a smallsat assembly facility last year that can produce 180 satellites a year, mostly using buses from Terran Orbital. The company has flown several smallsat tech demos with another, Pony Express 2, scheduled to launch next month to test a Ka-band mesh network. [SpaceNews]
An Astroscale inspection satellite is in orbit after a launch on a Rocket Lab Electron Sunday. The Electron lifted off from the company's New Zealand launch site at 9:52 a.m. Eastern and deployed the ADRAS-J satellite into orbit a little more than an hour later. ADRAS-J, or Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, will approach and inspect an H-2A upper stage left in orbit after a 2009 launch. The mission is a precursor to a potential future mission to attempt to deorbit the stage. [SpaceNews]
India launched a weather satellite Saturday. A GSLV Mark 2 rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 7:05 a.m. Eastern and placed the INSAT-3DS satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit. INSAT-3DS will operate from 74 degrees east in GEO to provide weather data. The spacecraft also carries a payload to relay search-and-rescue beacons. [SpaceNews]
Intuitive Machines' first lunar lander is in good condition on its way to the moon. The company said Friday that the Nova-C lander fired its engine for the first time in space in a "commissioning maneuver" designed to test the engine, which will later be used for trajectory correction maneuvers, entering lunar orbit and the landing itself. The IM-1 mission is scheduled to enter lunar orbit on Wednesday with a landing scheduled for Thursday afternoon. [SpaceNews]
Viasat has started work to upgrade satellite broadband services for the U.S. Navy. The company said it completed the first upgrade of a Military Sealift Command ship recently, replacing a Ku-band antenna with Global Xpress Ka-band and the ELERA L-band systems. The work is being done under a $578 million contract that Inmarsat won in 2022 before it was acquired by Viasat. The company expects to complete the upgrades of 105 ships over the next year. [SpaceNews]
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A Progress cargo spacecraft docked with the International Space Station early Saturday. The Progress MS-26 spacecraft, designated Progress 87 by NASA, docked with the station's Zvezda module at 1:06 a.m. Eastern, a little more than two days after the spacecraft's launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft delivered about three tons of fuel, food and supplies to the station. [NASA]
A company has won a Space Development Agency (SDA) contract to develop a software tool for tracking missiles in flight using satellite data. California-based EpiSci received a $1.6 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 contract from SDA earlier this month. The company says the funding will go towards development of AI-powered software able to track and identify hypersonic missiles in data from SDA satellites. Raytheon, an investor in EpiSci, is collaborating on the project. [SpaceNews]
The Space Force is preparing to start environmental studies of potential Starship launch sites at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The studies, which will begin with a series of public scoping meetings next month, will examine converting SLC-37, the launch pad currently used by the Delta 4, as well as building a new pad, SLC-50, just to the north of SLC-37. The environmental study is projected to take about a year and a half to complete. SpaceX currently has one Starship launch pad at its South Texas site and is building a second there, and is also building a Starship pad at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A. [SpaceNews]
Thales Alenia Space will provide communications equipment for NASA's NEO Surveyor mission. The company announced last week it won a contract from Ball Aerospace, now part of BAE Systems, to provide transponders and other equipment for the spacecraft. NEO Surveyor will operate at the Earth-sun L-1 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers away, to search for near Earth objects using an infrared telescope. The mission is scheduled for launch no earlier than the fall of 2027. [SpaceNews]
Speculation about a Russian space weapon has gone back to a nuclear weapon in orbit. Officials now say that that the proposed system, not yet in orbit, would explode a nuclear weapon to create an electromagnetic pulse that would disable large numbers of satellites. The system is seen as a "last-ditch" weapon Russia would use if faced with military defeat or economic collapse. The concerns prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to meet with Chinese and Indian counterparts at the recent Munich Security Conference, asking them to put pressure on Russia not to deploy such a weapon that would also affect Chinese and Indian satellites. [CNN | New York Times]
NASA is looking for volunteers who want to spend a year on "Mars". NASA says it is seeking applications from people aged 30 to 55 willing to work and live in a simulated Mars habitat at the Johnson Space Center starting in the spring of 2025. The first such simulated mission, part of NASA's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) program, started last June and will conclude this summer. NASA said it will follow criteria used for its astronaut selection process for picking the CHAPEA crew. The application deadline is April 2. [NASA]
| | Webinar: Automating for SmallSat Success - Register Today
Tuesday, Feb. 20
1 p.m. Eastern
The purpose of this webinar is to explore how today's smallsat leaders are employing automation in satellite operations and manufacturing.
Panelists - Chris Winslett, Blue Canyon Technologies
- Chuck Beames, York Space
- Marc Bell, Terran Orbital
- Chester Gillmore, Planet
Moderator - Jeff Foust, SpaceNews senior staff writer
| | sponsored by  | | The Week Ahead
Tuesday: Tuesday-Thursday: Wednesday: - Earth orbit: Projected reentry of ESA's ERS-2 satellite at 6:14 a.m. Eastern, plus or minus 15 hours.
- Utah Test and Training Range: Planned return of Varda Space Industries' W-Series 1 capsule at around 4:30 p.m. Eastern.
- Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 11:24 p.m. Eastern.
Wednesday-Thursday: Thursday: - Moon: Planned landing of Intuitive Machines' IM-1 lunar lander near the Malapert A crater.
Thursday-Friday: Friday: | | | |
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