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Intelsat has signed a deal to buy much more capacity on Eutelsat's OneWeb satellite constellation. The companies announced Tuesday that Intelsat will buy $250 million of capacity on the constellation over six years, starting in the middle of this year, with an option to buy $250 million more. The agreement marks a major step up from Intelsat's commitment a year ago to buy $45 million worth of LEO capacity. Intelsat CEO David Wajsgras said demand has "changed significantly" in the last 18 months, prompting Intelsat to buy more capacity. While the initial agreement only covered Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, the expanded partnership is global, although Intelsat is focused on using that capacity primarily for aviation and government customers. The agreement also allows Intelsat to help shape Eutelsat's plans to begin replacing OneWeb satellites as they near the end of their design life late this decade. [SpaceNews]
China launched a lunar data relay satellite Tuesday night. A Long March 8 rocket lifted off at 8:31 p.m. Eastern from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center and place the Queqiao-2 satellite on a trajectory to the moon. Queqiao-2 will go into an elliptical inclined orbit around the moon so it can relay communications from other lunar missions, such as the Chang'e-6 farside lunar sample return mission expected to launch in May. Chinese officials said that Queqiao-2 could be used by lunar missions from other countries as well. The launch also carried a pair of small experimental satellites named Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 for navigation and communications technology verification. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX says it could be ready to launch its next Starship mission in early May. Speaking at the Satellite 2024 conference Tuesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company was still analyzing data from last week's launch but that the company expected to "get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks." She added it was unlikely, as some had speculated, that the next Starship launch would carry Starlink satellites as the company focuses on trying to successfully bring back both the Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster. That schedule will depend on the FAA approving a mishap report about last week's launch, but at a separate event Monday the head of the FAA's commercial space transportation office said he did not see "anything major" from a safety perspective that would slow that down. [SpaceNews]
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is taking a larger role in supporting the Space Force's responsive launch efforts. DIU, the Pentagon's outpost in Silicon Valley tasked with integrating commercial technologies into the military, is working with the Space Force's Space Safari office to identify and select commercial providers for an upcoming responsive mission named Victus Haze. That mission will follow the Victus Nox operation last September, where the Space Force was able to launch a small satellite made by Millennium Space on a Firefly rocket in a record-breaking 27 hours. [SpaceNews]
ESA has awarded three contracts to develop advanced navigation satellite missions. The awards, with a combined value of 233.4 million euros ($253 million), are part of the agency's FutureNAV program whose funding was oversubscribed at the 2022 ministerial conference. One contract will go to a consortium led by OHB Italia to develop Genesis, a spacecraft to improve the accuracy of the reference frame used for navigation and Earth science applications. Two others, one to GMV and OHB System and the other to Thales Alenia Space, will support LEO-PNT, an effort to demonstrate the feasibility of a low Earth orbit constellation to provide navigation services. The LEO-PNT satellites will launch by 2027 and Genesis in 2028. [SpaceNews]
Blackwave, a German startup developing carbon fiber structures for space applications, has raised $6.6 million. The company announced the seed extension round Tuesday led by Alpine Space Ventures. Blackwave, which has developed carbon fiber structures for other industries for several years, said the seed round will allow them to offer carbon fiber high-pressure tanks for launch vehicles, satellites and other space-related applications. [SpaceNews]
Space traffic management startup Neuraspace has unveiled a free service. The Portuguese company says it is providing a free version of its space traffic management platform to foster more collaboration among satellite operators. Operators signed up for the service would get a common view of conjunction alerts, which would also automatically open up a chat room between them to discuss how best to avoid the collision risk. The company also offers a premium version that also includes collision avoidance maneuver suggestions and more powerful conjunction analysis tools. [SpaceNews]
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SpaceX will sell laser inter-satellite links it has developed to other companies. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at Satellite 2024 Tuesday that the company will offer the "Plug and Plaser" systems, which it developed for its Starlink constellation. Those links will also be demonstrated on the Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission using a Crew Dragon spacecraft later this year. [Reuters]
The European Commission is finalizing a agreement to launch Galileo navigation satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9. European Union officials said that they have approved a security agreement that would give them special access to launch facilities required for Galileo satellites. That agreement is expected to be formally signed by E.U. and U.S. officials next week. The European Commissions said last fall it planned to launch four Galileo satellites on two Falcon 9 rockets in 2024 because of delays in the development of the Ariane 6. [Politico]
An Indian startup will use a Loft Orbital spacecraft to demonstrate edge computing capabilities for Earth observation. SkyServe announced a partnership with Loft Orbital Tuesday to use Loft's YAM-6 satellite to demonstrate the use of AI technologies to analyze optical and hyperspectral images in space, returning insights back to Earth. Loft launched YAM-6 earlier this month as its first "virtual mission" spacecraft, where the spacecraft can be configured by software to perform different missions based on customer requirements. [SpaceNews]
The launch of a joint U.S.-Indian Earth science mission has slipped to the second half of the year. The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) spacecraft was scheduled to launch this spring on a GSLV launch vehicle. The head of ISRO, S. Somanath, said in an interview that the launch would instead likely take place in the second half of the year because of ongoing tests of the spacecraft. He did not discuss any specific issues that caused the tests to be delayed. [The Times of India]
NASA's Swift astronomy spacecraft is in a safe mode. The spacecraft, launched nearly 20 years ago, went into safe mode because of degrading performance of one of its three gyros on March 15, NASA said Monday. NASA is working to update the spacecraft's flight software to allow it to continue operations using the other two gyros, but did not state how long that process would take. Swift is used to monitor gamma-ray bursts. [NASA]
Engineers are working to remove a layer of ice from an instrument on ESA's Euclid space telescope. A very thin layer of ice, estimated to be the width of a strand of DNA, has formed on the optics of Euclid's main camera. That ice is likely water, absorbed during assembly and launch preparations, that is outgassing in space. While that layer of ice is very thin, it is enough to affect the instrument's precise optics. Engineers have been working to heat part parts of the optics to remove the ice without affecting other parts of the spacecraft. ESA said Wednesday that initial results show that de-icing effort appears to be working. [ESA]
| | Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxies
"In six and a half years, your cosmology friends will tell you what the answer to life, the universe and everything is, and it's just one number. It can't be 42 or we break physics."
– Carole Mundell, ESA's director of science, discussing measurements of the cosmological constant planned using data from the Euclid spacecraft during a presentation Tuesday at the National Academies' Space Science Week.
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