 | Top Stories
Amazon says initial tests of its Project Kuiper broadband constellation will be delayed to next year. Amazon had earlier aimed to start deploying more than 3,200 satellites in the first half of 2024 to begin beta trials with potential customers later in the year. Amazon now says the first production satellites will launch on an Atlas 5 in the fourth quarter of this year. The company provided the revised schedule at the opening of a new factory in Kirkland, Washington, where it will produce up to five Kuiper satellites a day. The company has a July 2026 deadline from the FCC to have half the constellation in orbit. [SpaceNews]
A defunct Russian satellites has broken up in low Earth orbit, creating potentially hundreds of pieces of debris. U.S. Space Command said Thursday that the Resurs P1 remote sensing satellite suffered a breakup event around 12 p.m. Eastern Wednesday. The debris from the breakup briefly caused the International Space Station crew to shelter in their spacecraft. LeoLabs said it was tracking at least 180 pieces of debris from the event. Resurs P1 is a 6,000-kilogram spacecraft that was decommissioned in late 2021 and is in a low orbit expected to decay by the end of the year. It was not clear if the breakup was caused by an event on the spacecraft itself or a collision. [SpaceNews]
Another Russian satellite continues to make unusual maneuvers in geostationary orbit. Slingshot Aerospace said Thursday that the Luch 2 spacecraft made a large maneuver several days ago, suggesting it was moving towards the Intelsat 10-02 satellite. Since its launch, Luch 2 has been notably active, making several significant maneuvers during its first 14 months in orbit that have taken it close to several communications satellites in GEO. That has raised suspicions that the spacecraft is eavesdropping on the signals being routed through those satellites. [SpaceNews]
China's Chang'e-6 spacecraft returned nearly two kilograms of samples from the far side of the moon. Chinese officials said Friday that the capsule that landed Tuesday had 1,935.3 grams of material the mission collected from Apollo Crater on the lunar farside. The mission was designed to collect up to two kilograms, and the amount returned is more than the 1,731 grams brought back by Chang'e-5 in 2020. Chinese officials also confirmed plans to launch the Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return and comet rendezvous mission in 2025, followed by the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission and Tianwen-4 Jupiter mission, both around 2030. [SpaceNews]
MDA Space has received a contract worth $1 billion Canadian ($730 million) from the Canadian Space Agency to continue work on a robotic arm for the lunar Gateway. The company said Thursday it received the contract to cover Phase C design work and Phase D assembly and testing work for Canadarm3. That robotic arm, based on systems developed for the shuttle and station, is Canada's contribution to the Gateway. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
Viasat won an order for eight satellite communications terminals for Spain's military's maritime patrol aircraft. The contract, announced Thursday, is for terminals that will be installed in Spain's fleet of C295 maritime surveillance aircraft. The terminal is a hybrid Ka- and Ku-band aviation satcom terminal designed to communicate with constellations in different orbits and frequencies. [SpaceNews]
Firefly Aerospace plans to launch its Alpha rocket from a Swedish site. The company said Thursday that it reached an agreement with the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) to launch Alpha from Esrange Space Centre in northern Sweden starting in 2026. Firefly and SSC say they expect the site to support Alpha launches for commercial, civil and defense customers. The announcement comes days after Firefly said it will launch Alpha from Wallops Island in Virginia. All Alpha launches to date have taken place from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, including one rescheduled for Sunday or Monday. [SpaceNews]
Weather has pushed back the launch of the next H3 rocket. JAXA said Friday that it has rescheduled the H3 launch of the ALOS-4 Earth observation satellite to late Sunday, citing a forecast of poor weather for the previous launch date of Saturday. The launch will be the third for the H3, after an unsuccessful launch last year and successful second launch earlier this year. [JAXA]
A Supreme Court ruling on a case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission could affect SpaceX's lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The court, in a ruling Thursday, did not weigh in on whether the SEC's administrative law judges are unconstitutional, leaving in place a ruling from a lower court that they are. SpaceX has made a similar argument about the NLRB's administrative law judges in its efforts to throw out cases the board has filed against the company. Legal experts, though, say differences between the agencies may limit the power of any precedent. [Bloomberg Law]
| |  | Who Could That Be
"There's somebody else around here that needs to learn from this kind of build quality in the process."
– San. Maria Cantewell (D-Wash.), speaking Thursday at an event to open Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite factory in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, Washington, a comment seen as a veiled reference to Boeing. [GeekWire]
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