Artemis 3's Delay Odds - SpaceNews This Week

Top stories of the week from SpaceNews

Welcome to our weekly roundup of the top SpaceNews stories of the week, brought to you every Friday! This week, additional Artemis 3 delays are likely, Kazakhstan joins the ILRS, Firefly completes a July 4 Alpha launch, and more. Our Top Story NASA assessment suggests potential additional delays for Artemis 3 lunar lander By Jeff Foust, July 3, 2024 As NASA pushes ahead with a crewed lunar landing on the Artemis 3 mission in September 2026, the agency's own analysis estimates a nearly one-in-three chance the lander will be at least a year and a half late. A confirmation review for the Human Landing System (HLS) Initial Capability project that took place in December 2023 set a schedule baseline of February 2028 for that project at a 70% joint confidence level. That means there is a 70% chance that Starship will be ready for a lunar landing — a milestone formally known as lunar orbit checkout review — by February 2028. That date is nearly a year and a half after NASA's current schedule of September 2026 for Artemis 3. The 70% joint confidence level also means that the agency believes there is a 30% chance that the Starship lander will not be ready until after February 2028. Other News From the Week CIVIL Kazakhstan joins China's ILRS moon base program The memorandum on cooperation on the China-led ILRS will also explore commercial use of each other's spaceports. The agreement was signed during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Kazakhstan July 3, which saw the signing of 30 documents between the two sides. The development further bolsters China's lunar exploration plans. SpaceX wins NASA contract to launch gamma-ray astronomy mission NASA announced July 2 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX to launch the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) spacecraft, a small Explorer-class, or SMEX, mission into low Earth orbit. The contract, valued at about $69 million, covers the August 2027 launch and related activities. LAUNCH Sentinel-2C ready for transatlantic trip to farewell Vega launch Sentinel-2C will now take a two-week trip across the Atlantic Ocean to the European spaceport in French Guiana, where Europe's latest Earth science satellite is due to launch on the final flight of the original version of the Vega rocket. Manufacturer Airbus said July 3 it had loaded the satellite onto Canopée, a sail-assisted cargo ship designed specifically to transport components for Europe's Ariane 6 rocket. Firefly Aerospace launches NASA-sponsored cubesats Firefly Aerospace placed eight cubesats into orbit on a mission funded by NASA on the first flight of the company's Alpha rocket since an upper stage malfunction more than half a year ago. The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:04 a.m. Eastern July 4. A launch attempt July 2 was scrubbed after a ground equipment issue halted the countdown just before ignition of the rocket's first stage engines. Commercial EnduroSat gets order for Botswana's debut satellite EnduroSat said engineers from Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) are joining the manufacturer's team in Bulgaria to help make Botsat-1, based on a three-unit (3U) standard cubesat structure. Chinese satellite manufacturer MinoSpace raises $137 million MinoSpace, also known as Beijing Weina Star Technology Co., Ltd., announced the funding June 24, now describing itself as a commercial space unicorn enterprise, having secured 1 billion yuan ($137 million). OPINION Regulating outer space after Loper Bright By James E. Dunstan, July 5, 2024 It's been a busy few weeks for the Supreme Court. Among the decisions that are being hailed as the most significant in decades, the court issued Loper Bright v. Raimondo, overturning the 40 year old Chevron Doctrine, which directed courts to defer to an agency's interpretation of their authorizing statutes. What does fishing for herring (the fact pattern of Loper Bright) have to do with developing outer space? A lot, actually. While space exploration began 67 years ago with the launch of Sputnik, the rules regulating commercial activities in outer space in many ways are just now being written. Agencies from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) all have open proceedings affecting outer space. And without Chevron deference, all of these agency actions may be subject to challenge. Read More Here Transferring the International Space Station into the future By Jean-Jacques Dordain and Michael D. Griffin July 1, 2024 Save Freedom: We must stop the destruction of the International Space Station By Rick Tumlinson, July 2, 2024 Can "AltPNT" Really Replace GPS? By Sean Gorman, July 2, 2024 Increasingly feasible, on-orbit servicing has a challenging road to market By Alexandre Corral, July 3, 2024 SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. Copyright (C) 2024 Multiverse Media Inc.. All rights reserved. You signed up to receive this newsletter on Spacenews.com. At times you may receive marketing material. Our mailing address is: Multiverse Media Inc. 100 Fillmore St. 5th Floor Denver, CO 80206 USA Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe