 | Top Stories
A static-fire test of a new Chinese launch vehicle became very dynamic Sunday. The booster for Space Pioneer's Tianlong-3 rocket broke free of its moorings during the test and ascended. The engines shut down and the stage crashed back to Earth 50 seconds after it took off, about 1.5 kilometers from the test site, with no casualties reported. Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, a vehicle with performance similar to the Falcon 9. The company, which raised $207 million earlier in the month, said there was a structural failure in the connection between the rocket and the test bench. [SpaceNews]
NASA and Boeing are keeping the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft at the International Space Station for the foreseeable future to conduct more tests. In a briefing Friday, officials said they have not set a new departure date for Starliner, which has been at the station since June 6, because they want to perform ground tests of thrusters to better understand why some were shut down during the spacecraft's approach to the station. Those tests will take at least two weeks, and could be followed by more tests of the thrusters on Starliner itself. Those officials emphasized that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the station on Starliner, are not "stranded" there and that the spacecraft could return them safely in the event of an emergency. They said they are extending the mission to collect more data, particularly from the service module that is not recovered after the mission. NASA also announced at that briefing that an ISS spacewalk that was scheduled for this week has been postponed to late July while they study a water leak during a scrubbed spacewalk last week. [SpaceNews]
Eumetsat will launch its next weather satellite on a Falcon 9 rather than an Ariane 6, a move that stunned European space officials. The weather agency said late Friday it will launch the MTG-S1 geostationary weather satellite on a Falcon 9 in 2025, rather than on an Ariane 6 previously scheduled for early next year. Eumetsat said only that "exceptional circumstances" led them to switch rockets. The decision took space agency leaders by surprise, who publicly said that they didn't understand why Eumetsat made this change, particularly within two weeks of the inaugural flight of the Ariane 6. [SpaceNews]
Yahsat has selected SpaceX to launch a pair of communications satellites. Yahsat announced Monday that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the Falcon 9 launches of Al Yah 4 and 5 in 2027 and 2028, respectively. The geostationary broadband satellites are being built by Airbus under a contract finalized last month. The UAE government awarded Yahsat a $5.1 billion contract last year to provide communications services until at least 2043 using those two satellites, which will cost $1.1 billion to build and launch. [SpaceNews]
NASA and SpaceX are studying ways to change reentry procedures to mitigate debris from reentering Dragon trunk sections. Those sections, which are currently jettisoned from the Dragon capsule before the capsule does its deorbit burn, reenter months later in an uncontrolled fashion, and large pieces of debris from them have been found in several locations. One change being studied would be to release the trunk after the deorbit burn in order to provide a more controlled reentry of the trunk and ensure that any debris falls in the ocean. [SpaceNews]
U.S. Space Command says it will closely monitor the impending reentry of about 100 Starlink satellites. SpaceX said in February it would perform controlled reentries of those older spacecraft because of a common design flaw that could prevent them from maneuvering in the future. Space Command said that reentry information for each satellite will be available on Space-Track.org, a public catalog used to track orbital objects and prevent potential collisions. Those reentries are expected to take place over six months. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
A Falcon 9 launched the second set of reconnaissance satellites for an NRO constellation Friday. The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 11:14 p.m. Eastern and deployed an undisclosed number of satellites on the NROL-186 mission. The launch came just over a month after the first launch of those satellites on another Falcon 9. About half a dozen launches are scheduled for this year to deploy the satellites, developed by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, with more launches planned through 2028. [SpaceNews]
An H3 rocket launched a Japanese Earth science satellite Sunday night. The H3 lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 11:06 p.m. Eastern and deployed the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 (ALOS-4) into a sun-synchronous orbit. ALOS-4, built by prime contractor Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, carries a phased array type L-band synthetic aperture radar that is an improvement over the one on ALOS-2. The launch was the second successful flight of the H3 after a launch in February that carried a test payload and two smallsats. The inaugural launch of the rocket last year, carrying ALOS-3, failed. [SpaceNews]
China launched a communications satellite Saturday. A Long March 7A lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site at 7:57 a.m. Eastern and placed the Zhongxing-3A into orbit. The geostationary satellite will provide various communications services. [Xinhua]
A proposal to observe asteroids close to the sun has won a prize. The B612 Foundation announced Friday it awarded the inaugural Schweickart Prize to Joseph DeMartini, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Maryland, for a concept to perform twilight observations to detect near Earth asteroids that are closer to the sun than the Earth. Such asteroids are difficult to observe and thus pose a challenge to efforts to find potentially hazardous asteroids. The $10,000 prize, named after B612 founder and Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, includes access to a network of people and organizations that could help carry out his proposal. [SpaceNews]
A new Earth science satellite has returned the first views of structures inside clouds. ESA and JAXA said last week that the cloud profiling radar instrument, part of the EarthCARE satellite launched in late May, is working well and provided the first views of the interior of clouds. The radar is designed to monitor the concentration and velocities of particles in clouds, helping scientists understand their dynamics. The first data from three other instruments on EarthCARE will be released in the coming weeks and months. [ESA]
An organization has announced a contest to fly an Indian on a Blue Origin suborbital flight. The Space Exploration and Research Agency (SERA) said Monday it will offer a seat on a future New Shepard flight through a contest. Indians can register for the contest online for a $2.50 fee, with a three-phase voting process to follow to select the winning person. SERA, formerly known as the Crypto Space Agency, announced a similar contest last month to fly a Nigerian to space. SERA says it is seeking to fly people from "underrepresented countries" on New Shepard, although the previous flight of the vehicle in May included an Indian among its crew. [The Hindu]
| |  | The Week Ahead
Monday-Friday: Tuesday: - Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Rescheduled launch of a Firefly Alpha rocket on the "Noise of Summer" mission at 12:03 a.m. Eastern.
- Online: SpaceNews hosts the webinar "Race to the Moon" at 11 a.m. Eastern.
Wednesday: - Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 2:01 a.m. Eastern.
Thursday: - Taiyuan, China: Projected launch of a Long March 6A rocket carrying an unidentified payload at 7 p.m. Eastern.
Friday: - Jiuquan, China: Projected launch of a Hyperbola 1 rocket with an unidentified payload at about 7:40 p.m. Eastern.
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