Astronomy Prints 🌌: 🛰️ Global coverage, minus India

A SpaceNews daily newsletter | Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Top Stories

Boeing has again delayed the first crewed flight of its CST-100 Starliner because of a spacecraft issue. The company said Tuesday that the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, which had been scheduled to launch Friday, has been delayed to no earlier than May 21 to address a helium leak in the spacecraft's propulsion system. It was unclear when the leak was first detected or if it would have prevented a launch last week. That earlier attempt was scrubbed because of a valve in the Atlas 5's Centaur upper stage. That valve has been replaced and tested to confirm it is working properly. [SpaceNews]

Regulatory delays in India will prevent OneWeb from achieving its goal of serving 90% of the world with its broadband constellation by this summer. Eutelsat, which acquired OneWeb last year, said the system was on track to meet its mid-2024 coverage goal "with the exception of India." It was unclear when it would finalize regulatory approvals in India. Eutelsat expects that most of its revenue growth in the years ahead will come from OneWeb rather than the company's legacy geostationary satellite fleet, and the company remains on track to pick manufacturers to develop a second-generation constellation for OneWeb in early summer. [SpaceNews]

Terran Orbital took a financial hit in the first quarter when it changed propulsion suppliers for a satellite program. The company said it took a $13 million charge against revenues in the first quarter because it had to switch to a new propulsion supplier. Terran Orbital did not disclose the affected program or the propulsion supplier, but the company noted last November is was bringing on a second company as a backup propulsion supplier on its 42-satellite Transport Layer Tranche 1 contract because of problems with Astra Space, the original propulsion supplier. Terran Orbital provided few updates on its ongoing strategic review, but did disclose it held an in-person meeting with Lockheed Martin last month before that company withdrew its offer to acquire Terran Orbital. [SpaceNews]

Tomorrow.io won a Defense Department contract to provide two satellites to collect weather data. The company said it won a $10.2 million contract to build two smallsats with microwave sounders by next May. These instruments will measure atmospheric temperature and moisture, feeding data into weather prediction models used by the Air Force's Weather Systems Branch. The company is developing a commercial constellation of weather satellites equipped with radars and microwave sounders to support its real-time weather forecasting services. [SpaceNews]

India plans to include the private sector on a lunar sample return mission. The proposed Chandrayaan-4 mission would send a spacecraft to the same site as where the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft landed last year, collecting samples for return to Earth no earlier than 2028. An official with the Indian space agency ISRO said recently that India's growing commercial space industry "is going to be involved in a big way" but did not elaborate on the roles envisioned for industry. [SpaceNews]

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Other News

SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink satellites Tuesday in the company's 50th orbital launch this year. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:39 p.m. Eastern and placed 20 Starlink satellites into orbit. Thirteen of those satellites have direct-to-cell payloads. The launch was the 50th this year of Falcon rockets, 35 of which have been devoted to Starlink satellites. [Space.com]

Intuitive Machines is making upgrades to its second lunar lander. The company said in an earnings call Tuesday that it will improve communications, tracking and landing systems on the lander for its IM-2 mission based on lessons learned from the IM-1 mission in February. IM-2 remains on schedule to launch late this year, followed by IM-3 in 2025. The company then plans to fly a fully commercial lander mission that, unlike the first three, will not have NASA as an anchor customer. [SpaceNews]

The first crewed suborbital flight by Blue Origin's New Shepard in more than 21 months is scheduled for Sunday. The company announced Tuesday that its NS-25 mission is scheduled to launch at 9:30 a.m. Eastern from its West Texas site. The flight will be the first New Shepard mission to carry people since early August 2022. Blue Origin announced last month the six people who will fly on NS-25, including Ed Dwight, who in the early 1960s was the first Black man to train as a potential astronaut, but was ultimately not selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. [Blue Origin]

The sun produced its biggest solar flare in nearly two decades Tuesday, but is unlikely to affect the Earth. The flare, rated an X8.7 by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, is the strongest since 2005. The flare, though, occurred near the limb of the sun that is rotating out of view from the Earth, and scientists said that, unlike other recent activity, this is not likely to produce auroral displays. [AP]

Maybe Something's Chasing Them

"Interestingly they're all quite fast — hundreds of kilometers per second, going the wrong way. They're on the run! We don't know why that's the case, but it was the piece to the puzzle that we needed, and that I didn't quite anticipate when we started."

– Anna Frebel, professor pf physics at MIT, on the recent discovery of ancient stars in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy moving in the opposite direction of other stars there. [MIT]