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Stratolaunch successfully launched its first Talon vehicle intended for hypersonics research. The Talon TA-1 vehicle launched from the company's Roc aircraft Saturday off the coast of central California, after the plane took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port. Stratolaunch said TA-1 reached its intended "high supersonic" speeds approaching Mach 5 on the flight, then glided to a splashdown in the Pacific. Stratolaunch was founded more than a decade ago to develop an air-launch system, but pivoted to hypersonics after the death of its founder, Paul Allen. The launch was also the first flight of Ursa Major's Hadley engine, which powers the TA-1, and the companies said the engine performed as planned. Stratolaunch is now turning its attention to its TA-2 reusable hypersonic vehicle, with flight tests slated to begin later this year. [SpaceNews]
A final fiscal year 2024 spending bill is in place for part of the government, including NASA, NOAA and the FAA. The Senate passed the bill Friday, two days after the House and just before funding for the agencies was set to expire. The bill provides $24.875 billion for NASA, 8.5% less than its original request and more than 2% below what it received in 2023. The bill offered a mixed bag for NOAA weather satellite programs, with existing programs getting full funding but next-generation systems suffering cuts. It also fully funds the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, but does not include the additional $5 million for the office the House added to its version of the bill. Congress now turns its attention to remaining spending bills, including for the Defense Department, while the White House plans to release its fiscal year 2025 budget request today. [SpaceNews]
China is working towards a 2030 launch of a Mars sample return mission. The Tianwen-3 mission would use two Long March 5 launches, one carrying a lander and ascent vehicle and the other an orbiter and return vehicle, to collect samples from Mars and return them to Earth. Three landing sites are under consideration at Amazonis Planitia, Utopia Planitia — the area within which the Zhurong Tianwen-1 rover landed in 2021 — and Chryse Planitia. [SpaceNews]
BlackSky has won a pair of contracts from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to provide images. The Air Force said Friday it awarded a $3.5 million contract to BlackSky to supply satellite imagery and analysis in support of "global moving target engagement." That comes four days after a $2 million award to supply the Air Force with satellite imagery data and access to the BlackSky data analytics platform. The $3.5 million contract is the first task under a contract worth up to $23 million over four years. The use of satellites to track moving targets has emerged as a top priority for the U.S. Air Force as it transitions away from traditional airborne platforms to space-based systems. [SpaceNews]
The first crewed flight of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner has slipped to May because of a space station traffic jam. NASA said late Friday that the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously slated for late April, had been pushed back to early May "due to space station scheduling." NASA officials earlier said that final preparations for the CFT mission were going well, but its launch would depend on ISS activities that include the arrival and departure of a cargo mission scheduled to launch in mid-March for a one-month stay. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will fly on CFT, spending up to two weeks on the station as a final test of the spacecraft before NASA certifies it for regular crew rotation flights. [SpaceNews]
| | Other News
SpaceX launched a pair of Starlink missions five hours apart Sunday night. One Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 7:05 p.m. Eastern and placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. A second Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:09 a.m. Eastern from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and placed another set of 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. [Space.com]
The first launch attempt by a privately developed Japanese rocket was scrubbed Friday because of a range issue. The Kairos rocket by Space One was scheduled to lift off shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern from a launch site in southern Honshu but was scrubbed because of what officials later said was a ship in restricted waters offshore. The launch, the first for the small launch vehicle, has been rescheduled for Tuesday night (U.S. time). [Japan Times]
A pallet of batteries from the ISS reentered over the Gulf of Mexico Friday. The used batteries, weighing more than 2,600 kilograms, reentered at 2:29 p.m. Eastern while passing between Mexico and Cuba. The pallet, the largest debris from the ISS to reenter to date, was supposed to make a controlled reentry attached to a Japanese HTV cargo spacecraft. However, scheduling problems linked to the delayed launch of a new crew to the station in 2018 meant that the pallet was left on the station without a ride home when the HTV program ended in 2020. Instead, controllers released the pallet into orbit in 2021, allowing its orbit to naturally decay and reenter in an uncontrolled fashion. [Ars Technica]
The Voyager project team is seeing progress in restoring a faulty computer on Voyager 1. That spacecraft has been unable to properly transmit data since last November, instead sending "gibberish" because of an apparent problem with its flight data system. Engineers now say that, after months of work, the computer appears to be improving, sending back data that, while not correct, looks more familiar to them than what it had previously been transmitting. Those recovery efforts have been painstaking because of the long round-trip travel time for communications with the spacecraft, as well as going through computer source code developed a half-century ago. [Pasadena (Calif.) Star-News]
NASA has unveiled a plaque that will go on its Europa Clipper mission. The plaque, a tantalum plate that is part of a vault on the spacecraft protecting its electronics, is engraved on one wide with waveforms representing the sound of the word for water in 103 languages. The other side includes a poem written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón for the mission, the Drake Equation and a portrait of the late planetary scientist Ron Greeley. Europa Clipper will launch in October to go to Jupiter, making dozens of close approaches to the potentially habitable moon Europa. [NASA/JPL]
The Pentagon says none of the sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in its records show signs of extraterrestrial origin. A report released Friday, requested by Congress, said there was no evidence that any UAPs had an origin beyond Earth and that there was no evidence that the government was covering up any evidence along those lines. Most sightings, a Pentagon spokesperson said, "were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification." [New York Times]
| | The Week Ahead
Monday: Monday-Friday: - Online: The Portuguese Space Agency and the U.N. Office of Outer Space Affairs hosts a Policy Symposium to prepare for the Management and Sustainability of Outer Space Activities conference in May.
- The Woodlands, Texas/Online: The 55th Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference (LPSC) includes sessions on planetary science research as well as updates from NASA.
Tuesday: - Off the Florida Coast: Scheduled splashdown of the Crew-7 Crew Dragon spacecraft around 5:35 a.m. Eastern.
- Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand: Rescheduled launch of an Electron rocket carrying a Synspective radar imaging satellite at 10 a.m. Eastern.
- Spaceport Kii, Japan: Rescheduled inaugural launch of the Kairos rocket by Japanese company Space One at 10:01 p.m. Eastern.
Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: | | | |
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