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A new crew launched to China's Tiangong space station Thursday. A Long March 2F rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 8:59 a.m. Eastern and placed the three-person Shenzhou-18 spacecraft into orbit. The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station six and a half hours later. The Shenzhou-18 crew of Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu will relieve the Shenzhou-17 crew of Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin, who have been on Tiangong since late October. Shenzhou-17 is scheduled to return to Earth April 30. [SpaceNews]
The first crewed flight of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner is a step closer to launch. NASA completed a flight test readiness review Thursday for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, giving approval to proceed with a launch scheduled for May 6. NASA said they are only dealing with a few minor issues with the spacecraft and launch pad, but the launch will also depend on the schedule of the departure of a cargo Dragon spacecraft from the International Space Station and relocation of a Crew Dragon spacecraft to free up a docking port for Starliner. The CFT mission, flown by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, is a final test of the spacecraft before certified by NASA for crew rotation missions to the station. [SpaceNews]
True Anomaly, a startup that recently won a Space Force contract for a tactically responsive space mission, is laying off about a quarter of its workforce. About 30 people were laid off from the company this week, which the company said came after an assessment found "duplication of roles and functions across the company." True Anomaly raised $100 million in December and won a Space Force contract for the Victus Haze mission earlier this month. True Anomaly said the layoffs will not affect its ability to carry out that project or other work. The company is working on spacecraft intended for various military applications requiring in-orbit maneuvering and object interaction. [SpaceNews]
Gravitics, a company developing modules for commercial space stations, has won a Space Force contract. The company announced Thursday it won a $1.7 million SBIR from SpaceWERX, the Space Force's innovation arm, and the Space Systems Command's Space Safari Program Office. The contract will cover work to use the company's technologies for tactically responsive space applications. The announcement provided few details about that work, but a Space Force official said the company's module technology "offers an unconventional and potentially game-changing solution" for tactically responsive space. [SpaceNews]
| | Footprints on the Moon Begin with L3Harris
For six decades, L3Harris has teamed with NASA to develop technology that's been critical to the evolution of human spaceflight. In fact, our technology has been part of every crewed NASA mission: from Project Mercury to Apollo to the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station era and now beyond – as part of NASA's Artemis campaign. L3Harris' contributions to NASA's Artemis missions include propulsion, communications and launch avionics for NASA's Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and Gateway lunar space station. Learn more. | | Other News
Two cosmonauts wrapped up an ISS spacewalk ahead of schedule Thursday. Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub were scheduled to spend up to seven hours outside the station installing equipment, but finished their tasks in about four and a half hours. The two completed the deployment of a radar antenna on the Nauka module that was started in a spacewalk last year, installed and adjusted other hardware, and fetched a biological exposure experiment. [Space.com]
Japan is targeting the end of June for the next flight of its H3 rocket. The Japanese space agency JAXA said the next launch is scheduled for no earlier than June 30 and will carry ALOS-4, an Earth observation satellite. This will be the third flight of the H3 after a failed inaugural launch last year and a successful second launch in February. [AP]
NASA has set a new distance record for an optical communications demonstration. The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment on the Psyche spacecraft transmitted data to Earth using a laser earlier this month from a distance of 226 million kilometers. The test was also the first time that the experiment, which had only been transmitting test data, sent telemetry from Psyche. DSOC is designed to demonstrate the ability of laser systems to provide high-bandwidth communications at interplanetary distances. [NASA/JPL]
NASA's TESS mission is back in safe mode. The spacecraft went into safe mode Tuesday during a "routine activity," halting science operations. Engineers are investigating the problem to see if it is related to one that triggered a safe mode earlier in the month. TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched six years ago to map the sky and discover exoplanets. [NASA]
Tree seeds flown on the Artemis 1 mission are starting to take root. The Orion spacecraft flew more than 1,000 tree seeds on that late 2022 mission, and a sapling from one of those seeds was delivered to the North Carolina governor's mansion this week by Artemis 2 astronaut Christina Koch, a native of the state. NASA is offering the seeds to educational and community organizations in a program modeled on Apollo "moon trees" grown from seeds flown on the Apollo 14 mission. [collectSPACE]
| | Awesome Spacecraft
"This spacecraft is awesome. I worked with our other friends for a little while, too, and that spacecraft is also awesome."
– NASA astronaut Suni Williams when asked Thursday to compare the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft she will be flying in next month with SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
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