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French maritime tracking startup Unseenlabs has raised 85 million euros ($92 million) to build out its satellite constellation. Unseenlabs announced the round Tuesday with participation by new and existing investors. The company, which has now raised 120 million euros since its founding nine years ago, will use the money to double its maritime surveillance constellation to 25 nanosatellites for tracking vessels in near real-time. The funds will also enable Unseenlabs to grow its global sales presence, particularly across the U.S. and Asia, and improve the radio-frequency geolocation network's capabilities. The company currently has 11 smallsats in orbit that are able to track vessels based on their radio emissions, allowing them to monitor ships that are not broadcasting Automatic Identification Systems signals. [SpaceNews]
The FAA has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight as SpaceX gears up for the third. The FAA said Monday it accepted SpaceX's finding of 17 corrective actions, 7 for the Super Heavy booster and 10 for the Starship upper stage, that came from the November launch. On that launch, the Super Heavy booster performed as expected through stage separation but suffered a cascading series of engine failures as it descended, causing it to break apart. The Starship upper stage was destroyed after fires broke out when liquid oxygen leaked while being vented late in its ascent. The FAA noted that SpaceX still needs an updated license before its next launch, although agency officials earlier said that the license modification should be ready ahead the launch SpaceX is planning by mid-March. [SpaceNews]
The IM-1 lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines could end as soon as today. The company said Monday that it expected to lose communications with the lander on Tuesday once the lander's solar panels are no loner illuminated. The lander touched down on the moon last Thursday for a mission originally expected to last about a week, but the lander tipped over, affecting its ability to generate power and communicate. The spacecraft has returned only a couple images since landing. Images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the lander about 1.5 kilometers from its planned landing site. Shares in Intuitive Machines fell nearly 35% in trading Monday. [SpaceNews]
A former Maxar executive is the new CEO of space tracking company LeoLabs. Tony Frazier, formerly vice president and general manager of Maxar's public sector intelligence business, will take over as CEO of LeoLabs on Friday. LeoLabs operates a network of radars to track objects in low Earth orbit and recently raised $29 million. Frazier will focus on new growth opportunities for LeoLabs while Dan Ceperley, co-founder and former CEO, will become chief operating officer and lead the engineering side of the company. [SpaceNews]
India has unveiled its first four astronauts. The four, all Indian Air Force pilots, have been training for several years but were not publicly identified until an event Tuesday led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Three of the four are expected to fly on the first Gaganyaan crewed mission, no earlier than 2025. [NDTV]
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NASA has named a new manager for the International Space Station program. The agency announced Monday that Dana Weigel, the current ISS deputy program manager, will take over as manager on April 7. She succeeds Joel Montalbano, ISS program manager since 2020, who is moving to NASA Headquarters to become deputy associate administrator for space operations. [NASA]
Rocket Lab may miss a deadline to compete for a Space Force launch contract. Companies bidding on "Lane 1" of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract have to have "credible path to first flight" by Dec. 15. Rocket Lab has previously said its Neutron rocket will be on the pad, although not necessarily ready for launch, by the end of the year. However, contracting documents for the Neutron launch site at Wallops Island, Virginia, show that key parts of the facility won't be ready until the end of November, giving the company little time to put a vehicle on the pad by the NSSL's deadline. Rocket Lab has not disclosed if it bid for a Lane 1 contract. [Defense One]
New images of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter show additional damage to its rotors. The images, taken by the Perseverance rover, show one blade had broken off completely, landing 15 meters away from the helicopter, with other blades sustaining damage. NASA declared Ingenuity's mission over last month after the helicopter was damaged in a hard landing on its 72nd flight. [Ars Technica]
Astronomers have discovered three new moons orbiting Uranus and Neptune. Observations by telescopes in Chile and Hawaii found two moons orbiting Neptune and one orbiting Uranus. One Neptunian moon is 23 kilometers across and in a nine-year orbit around the planet while the other is 14 kilometers across and in a 27-year orbit. The Uranian moon is just eight kilometers across and takes nearly two years to orbit the planet. The objects are among the smallest moons spotted by groundbased telescopes and required special processing techniques to discover them, astronomers said. [Space.com]
NASA decided to go for the gusto and set a new balloon endurance record. The Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory, or GUSTO, balloon has been in the skies high above Antarctica for eight weeks, breaking the record of 55 days for the longest flight of any NASA large balloon mission. GUSTO, going around Antarctica in the stratosphere, is carrying instruments to map parts of the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud for carbon, nitrogen and oxygen emission lines to better understand the material in the interstellar medium. [NASA]
| | Tough to Find a Parking Spot
"Who would have thought, five or six years ago, that the competition for launch, or the constraint for launch, would be the launch pad? We delayed our launch a few days because of stiff competition to get out there to [Launch Complex] 39A. It's not a rocket constraint, it's a pad constraint."
– NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, commander of the Crew-8 mission, in remarks Sunday when he and his crewmates arrived at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch, scheduled for just after midnight Friday. The launch was delayed about a week to accommodate the IM-1 launch from the same pad earlier this month.
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