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One Falcon 9 launched a commercial lunar lander overnight. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 1:05 a.m. Eastern from the Kennedy Space Center and deployed the Nova-C lander for Intuitive Machines onto a translunar trajectory 48 minutes later. The IM-1 mission seeks to land in the south polar region of the moon next Thursday, carrying a dozen payloads from NASA and other customers. If successful, IM-1 would be the first non-government mission to land softly on the moon. [SpaceNews]
Another Falcon 9 launched a set of missile-warning satellites seven and a half hours earlier. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Wednesday on the USSF-124 mission procured by the Space Force. The payload included five satellites made by L3Harris Technologies and one made by Northrop Grumman. The Northrop Grumman satellite and one of the five from L3Harris are the first prototypes developed under the Missile Defense Agency's Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program. The other four L3Harris satellites are part of the Space Development Agency's Tracking Layer Tranche 0. Both agencies are collaborating to develop a sensor network for tracking both hypersonic and ballistic missiles. [SpaceNews]
Officials are sounding the alarm about a new Russian space threat, although it's not clear publicly what the threat is. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he had been informed of a "serious national security threat" posed by Russia and called on the White House to declassify details about it. Turner did not disclose more details about the threat, but later reports suggested it was a space weapon of some kind. One report claimed Russia had developed a nuclear weapon that could be used in space to disable satellites, which would violate international treaties banning the use of nuclear weapons in space. Another report said Russia had developed an electronic-warfare satellite, possibly nuclear powered-but not itself a nuclear weapon, to attack satellites. [Politico | New York Times | PBS NewsHour]
Chinese launch startup Orienspace has raised $83.5 million. The Series B funding will go towards development of a liquid-propellant rocket called Gravity-2 with a reusable first stage, similar in performance to the Falcon 9. The company launched its first rocket, the solid-fuel Gravity-1, from a barge off the coast of China last month. The substantial funding round indicates investor confidence in Orienspace despite a crowded field of competitors in China. [SpaceNews]
The chief executive of Airbus has criticized the performance of his company's space unit. Guillaume Faury said in an internal memo last month that while the aerospace company's overall performance was good last year, it faced "a major setback" in its space division. The company took a $320 million charge late last year on space programs, including its OneSat communications satellite bus. Jean-Marc Nasr, executive vice president of space systems at Airbus, is leaving the company in March and will be replaced by Alain Faure, head of Airbus Operations. [Reuters]
Varda Space Technologies will return an orbiting capsule to Earth next week after getting a long-delayed FAA license. The FAA issued a reentry license to Varda on Wednesday that will allow the company to bring back a capsule on its W-Series 1 spacecraft launched in June to test space manufacturing technologies. The capsule is set to land next Wednesday at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) and neighboring Dugway Proving Ground. Varda had been working since last summer to get a reentry license from the FAA and approvals from the Air Force, which operates UTTR, to land there. [SpaceNews]
| |  Astranis makes Proliferated GEO a reality. In 2023, Astranis launched the world's first MicroGEO communications satellite — and used it to demonstrate end-to-end connectivity for a national security customer. Astranis has also successfully demonstrated passing the Space Force's Protected Tactical Waveform through our proprietary Software-Defined Radio. MicroGEO offers a ground-breaking amount of capacity in a bus about 5% of the size of a normal GEO asset while also being backwards compatible with existing user terminals. And because MicroGEOs can relocate on orbit, actively reject interferers, and be replenished at low cost, it simply does not make sense for our adversaries to try (and fail) to take them down. Learn more here. | | | Other News
A Progress cargo ship is on its way to the International Space Station. A Soyuz-2.1a rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 10:25 p.m. Eastern Wednesday and placed the Progress MS-26 spacecraft into orbit. The spacecraft, carrying about three tons of supplies, is scheduled to dock with the station at 1:12 a.m. Eastern Saturday. [Space.com]
NASA has selected an ultraviolet astronomy mission for development but will delay its launch by two years. The agency said this week it picked the Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX) as its next Medium-class Explorer mission in astrophysics. UVEX will perform an all-sky survey at ultraviolet wavelengths, including monitoring transient sources from events like neutron star mergers. UVEX is scheduled for launch in 2030, but NASA had planned a 2028 launch when it picked UVEX and another proposed mission for further study a year and a half ago. NASA said constrained budgets led it to stretch out the mission's development. NASA also cited budgets as the reason it did not select either of two proposals for a smaller "mission of opportunity" that would have studied gamma-ray sources from the ISS or a spacecraft in cislunar space. [SpaceNews]
Artificial intelligence could help the Pentagon avoid procurement problems on future programs. Virtualitics has won Air Force and Space Force research contracts and is offering an AI tool that could identify vulnerabilities in procurement programs by analyzing historical data and predicting potential issues before they arise. A company executive said he heard Space Force leaders talk about the need for improvements in how the service acquires satellites and other systems and believes that AI tools can help. The tool was discussed during a panel at the AFA Warfare Conference that also examined other uses of AI, such as for enhanced space situational awareness. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX has reincorporated in Texas. The company moved its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas, CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday. The move is an apparent response to a recent decision by a Delaware court to revoke a $55 billion pay package Tesla, also incorporated in Delaware, had awarded Musk after shareholders of that company filed suit there. SpaceX remains headquartered in California. [New York Times]
Google is joining a private mission to monitor methane emissions. Google will provide cloud and mapping services for MethaneSAT, a mission led by the Environmental Defense Fund to track methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Google will provide computing resources to analyze the data returned by the spacecraft and integrate the data into the Google Earth Engine geospatial data platform. MethaneSAT is scheduled to launch next month. [BBC]
Engineers are studying a problem with one of the instruments on the Perseverance Mars rover. NASA said this week that a dust cover on the SHERLOC instrument appears to be stuck in a partially open position. In that position, SHERLOC cannot use a laser to study rocks or collect spectroscopy data. SHERLOC is one of seven instruments on Perseverance, with overlap among the instruments such that the rover can still meet its science goals if any single instrument fails. [NASA/JPL]
| | 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
| | No Easy Button
"I'm not good with buttons. That was a problem when I was flying, too."
– Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations and a former astronaut, during a House Science Committee hearing Wednesday as he tried to turn on his microphone to deliver his testimony.
| | | |
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