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Astra Space has accepted a proposal from its founders to take the company private. The satellite propulsion and launch vehicle company announced Thursday that its board approved a revised proposal from Chris Kemp and Adam London, CEO and CTO respectively, to take the company private at $0.50 per share. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter, after which Astra will no longer be publicly traded but instead owned by "a number of long-term investors" in the company, including Kemp and London. Astra said in a regulatory filing last week that, if that deal fell through, its only option was a Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. [SpaceNews]
Space situational awareness company Slingshot Aerospace is expanding its presence in the U.K. The company announced it is opening offices in the country to lead a new international business division for the U.S. company. Melissa Quinn, previously head of the company's Seradata space data analysis team, will lead the division. The offices will work to secure more government and commercial customers for its space domain awareness services. [SpaceNews]
The Office of Space Commerce is seeking input on a proposal to reinstate orbital debris mitigation regulations for companies that receive commercial remote sensing licenses. The company dropped specific requirements for orbital debris mitigation plans for spacecraft it licenses in 2020 because, at the time, nearly all licensees also had FCC licenses, which had their own orbital debris regulations. However, the office states in an RFI to be published in the Federal Register that it has noticed an increasing number of companies seeking commercial remote sensing licenses that go outside the U.S. for spectrum licenses, or are considering optical communications technologies not licensed by the FCC. The office is studying whether and how this potential loophole should be closed. [SpaceNews]
Failure to pass a fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill could cost the Space Force nearly $4 billion. Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, said at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference Thursday that the service would lose out on $3.9 billion if Congress instead enacts a full-year continuing resolution, keeping funding at 2023 levels, instead of a regular appropriations bill. That would keep the Space Force from funding seven launches under the National Security Space Launch program, he said. The Defense Department is among the agencies operating under a continuing resolution through March 22 as Congress attempts to finalize a spending bill. [Breaking Defense]
Blue Origin seeks to launch its first lunar lander mission next year. A company executive said in a recent interview on the "60 Minutes" TV show that the first flight of its Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander was projected to take place in 12-16 months. That lander is a technology demonstrator for the Mark 2 lander Blue Origin is developing for NASA's Human Landing System program to carry astronauts to the lunar surface starting with the Artemis 5 mission. Blue Origin is self-funding two flights of Blue Moon Mark 1 to test technologies like its BE-7 engine and landing systems. Blue Moon will launch on the company's New Glenn rocket, which is expected to make its first flight later this year. [SpaceNews]
| | Other News
Spanish startup Sateliot is seeking to raise 100 million euros ($109 million) to build out an Internet of Things constellation. The company's CEO, Jaume Sanpera, said Thursday that he is looking to raise the money through a mix of equity and debt to allow the company to deploy a constellation of 100 smallsats. The company has launched two demonstration satellites to date and its first four commercial satellites are slated to launch in June. [Reuters]
Sierra Space has completed the first phase of environmental testing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft. The company said Thursday that the Dream Chaser vehicle Tenacity, along with its Shooting Star cargo module, wrapped up vibration testing at NASA's Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. They will now undergo thermal vacuum testing there before shipping to Florida for a launch later this year to the International Space Station. [Sierra Space]
NASA has selected 15 companies to provide services for two technology demonstration programs. The companies, which include those that operate high-altitude balloons, suborbital and orbital launch vehicles, and spacecraft, will be eligible to provide flight and payload integration services for its Flight Opportunities and Small Spacecraft Technology programs. The overall indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract has a maximum value of $45 million across all 15 companies over five years. [NASA]
Scientists who thought they found evidence of an interstellar meteor may have instead detected… a truck. Researchers in a paper last year described how they used seismic signals detected at a station in Papua New Guinea to narrow down the reentry location of a meteor they believed came from outside the solar system and could even have artificial origins. However, a reanalysis of the data by another team found that the seismic signals instead came from a truck driving by the station. That means that an expedition later mounted to grab fragments of the meteor from the sea floor went to the wrong location. "Whatever was found on the sea floor is totally unrelated to this meteor, regardless of whether it was a natural space rock or a piece of alien spacecraft," the lead scientist of the new study stated. [Johns Hopkins Univ.]
| | A Fun Cataclysm
"To any world nearby, a nova would be apocalyptic. But to stargazers in our world, some 3,000 light-years away, it 'is a fun and exciting upcoming cataclysm,' said Bradley Schaefer, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University."
– From a New York Times article about T Coronae Borealis, a star expected to brighten significant in the coming weeks or months, an occurrence that takes place only once every roughly 80 years.
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