Astronomy Prints 🌌: 🌕 China’s Chang’e-6 prepares for lunar landing

A SpaceNews daily newsletter | Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Top Stories

A Falcon 9 launched an Earth science satellite for Europe and Japan Tuesday. The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 6:20 p.m. and placed the EarthCARE satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit. EarthCARE was developed by ESA with contributions from the Japanese space agency JAXA to study clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere. The mission suffered lengthy delays in its development from technical issues as well as the pandemic. EarthCARE was planned to launch on a Soyuz but ESA shifted the mission first to a Vega C and then to Falcon 9. [SpaceNews]

A Japanese company has ordered a GEO communications satellite from Thales Alenia Space in what continues to be a slow year for the industry. SKY Perfect JSAT said Monday it had ordered the JSAT-31 satellite from Thales Alenia Space for a launch in 2027 to provide broadband across Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. JSAT-31 will use the Space INSPIRE software-defined satellite platform. The spacecraft is just the third commercial GEO satellite ordered so far this year after Astranis won two orders in March, the same number ordered at this point last year. [SpaceNews]

China's Chang'e-6 sample return mission is expected to land on the moon this weekend. The landing, in Apollo Crater on the lunar farside, is expected at about 8 p.m. Eastern Saturday according to ESA, which has a Swedish-built payload on the lander. Chang'e-6 is designed to collect up to two kilograms of lunar materials and place them into an ascent vehicle that will be launched into lunar orbit. That vehicle will dock with the Chang'e-6 orbiter to return the samples to Earth around June 25 if all goes according to plan. Chang'e-6 is China's second lunar sample return mission and the first by any country to attempt to bring back samples from the far side of the moon. [SpaceNews]

Open Cosmos has won a contract to build a smallsat constellation for the government of Greece. The company announced Wednesday it won a contract worth 60 million euros ($65 million) to build seven smallsats with optical and hyperspectral imagers, as well as Internet of Things and AIS receivers. The project is also a capacity-building effort by Greece, with Open Cosmos agreeing to build the satellites in the country. The company did not disclose when the satellites are projected to launch. [SpaceNews]

ThinkOrbital is developing a robotic arm with an X-ray imager that could be used to repair satellites. The startup recently conducted an automated welding experiment in space, flying it as a hosted payload on a Falcon 9 booster. ThinkOrbital now plans to fly a robotic arm in October equipped with an electron beam welder that can also generate X-rays to inspect objects. ThinkOrbital has secured a U.S. Air Force Phase 1 Small Business Innovative Research contract to investigate satellite-to-satellite X-ray inspection and is applying for Phase 2 funding. [SpaceNews]

Space computing startup Colossus has gained flight heritage for a new processor. The company says its Kestrel processor, on Loft Orbital's YAM-6 satellite, is working well in orbit. Kestrel will serve as a compute resource for Loft's virtual missions, supporting applications ranging from image processing to artificial intelligence. [SpaceNews]

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Other News

SpaceX launched a set of Starlink satellites Tuesday after a one-day delay. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 10:24 a.m. Eastern, placing 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was scheduled for Monday but postponed by SpaceX for reasons the company did not disclose. [Spaceflight Now]

A Chinese commercial rocket launched from a ship early Wednesday. The Ceres-1 rocket lifted off from a ship off the coast of Shedong province at 4:12 a.m. Eastern. The rocket placed four unnamed satellites into orbit. [Xinhua]

Two Chinese astronauts performed a spacewalk outside the Tiangong space station Tuesday. Ye Guangfu and Li Guangsu spent eight and a half hours outside the station, a record for the longest Chinese spacewalk. The astronauts installed a "space debris protection device" and inspected the station's exterior during the spacewalk. The spacewalk was the first for Li and the second for Ye, who did a spacewalk at the station in 2021. [Space.com]

One Progress cargo spacecraft has left the International Space Station, clearing the way for another to launch to the station. The Progress MS-25 spacecraft undocked from the station's Poisk module at 4:39 a.m. Eastern Tuesday and reentered several hours later. Its departure frees up the docking port for the Progress MS-27 spacecraft, scheduled to launch Thursday at 5:43 a.m. Eastern. It will arrive at the station on Saturday. [NASA]

A Japanese lunar lander missed a window to communicate with Earth. JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) did not respond to signals sent to it earlier this week during a brief period when the lander's solar panels were illuminated. SLIM landed on the moon off-kilter in January, limiting communications, but the spacecraft did come back to life in February, March and April despite not being designed to survive the lunar night. JAXA said it will try to make contract with SLIM again in June. [Japan Times]

Scientists have found new evidence for volcanic activity in decades-old radar images. Researchers reported this week that new analysis of radar images taken by NASA's Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s have revealed two lava flows on the planet's surface. The discovery adds to evidence that the planet is volcanically active today. [New York Times]

Going Second

"I was asked, after some manipulation, some machination, to go up on Blue Horizons' spaceship. It was my idea to go up there first, but they said, no, Jeff Bezos is going to go first, you can go second. I don't want to go second. But I got to know Mr. Bezos a little bit and it's his money, so he went first."

– William Shatner, describing his 2021 suborbital spaceflight on New Shepard by Blue Origin (not Blue Horizons) when accepting an award from the National Space Society at its International Space Development Conference last Friday.

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