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The U.S. Space Force has provided $1.8 billion in additional funding to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for national security launches. The service cited a significant growth in projected missions under the five-year agreements awarded in 2020 for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 program. ULA will see its contract value rise by $1.1 billion, bringing its total to $4.5 billion over the five-year period. SpaceX's contract will increase by $661 million, reaching a new total of $4 billion. The original NSSL Phase 2 contracts included 34 launches with a 60-40 split in favor of ULA; the revisions bring the total launches to 49, with SpaceX conducting 54% because of Vulcan delays. [SpaceNews]
Satellite problems had mixed results on earnings for Yahsat. The Emirati operator reported a 3% drop in sales in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period of 2023, which it blamed on the failure of the L-band payload on its aging Thuraya 3 satellite in April. Yahsat said it remains in control of Thuraya 3 but has exhausted most recovery options for the payload. The company is also facing delays in the launch of Thuraya 4, which has slipped from the second half of 2023 to late this year because of manufacturing delays by Airbus. Yahsat said it received $30 million in damages from Airbus due to that delay. [SpaceNews]
Companies working on alternative concepts for Mars Sample Return (MSR) released some details about their plans. NASA selected seven companies in June for 90-day studies to look at ways to revise some or all of the MSR architecture to reduce costs and accelerate the return of samples. At a session of the AIAA ASCEND conference Tuesday, Northrop Grumman said it is looking at ways to reduce the mass of the Mars Ascent Vehicle rocket that launches the samples into Martian orbit. Quantum Space is exploring how its Ranger spacecraft, designed to operate in cislunar space, could serve as the "anchor leg" in the return of samples to Earth. Lockheed Martin is looking at revising the overall architecture that includes "ruthless" mass control, but offered few specifics. A fourth company, Boeing, pitched an approach using a large lander delivered by the SLS, but noted its concept was not selected by NASA as one of the industry studies. [SpaceNews]
SES won a $46.8 million contract to provide satellite communications services to the U.S. Air Force. SES Space & Defense, the U.S. arm of Luxembourg-based SES, said it won the multi-year contract for GEO Ku-band satellite communications services for the Air Combat Command's remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) training and testing program. SES will provide those services over the continental United States, Hawaii, Alaska and the Pacific Ocean. [SpaceNews]
GHGSat has received NASA approval to start providing its methane emissions data to researchers. The company said Wednesday that the data from its satellites passed a "rigorous" evaluation by NASA to allow it to be available to scientists through the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program. Now that the quality has been verified, GHGSat data will soon be available for scientific and other noncommercial applications through NASA's Earthdata portal. GHGSat is one of several companies with contracts to provide commercial Earth science data through that NASA program. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
Chinese scientists are proposing a range of lunar infrastructure projects. The concepts, published in a journal article last month, include a comprehensive system providing data communication, positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), as well as space situational monitoring services for ground-based, near-Earth, cislunar, lunar surface and deep space users. Those systems would include satellites in "frozen" lunar orbits as well as Earth-moon Lagrange points and elsewhere in cislunar space. The cislunar space infrastructure is designed to support major national lunar exploration projects and also to accelerate the development of China's space industry. [SpaceNews]
A new study finds that the growth of the space industry is largely uncorrelated with other market sectors. The study by venture capital firm SpaceFund, presented at the ASCEND conference Tuesday, found that the growth rate for the space economy was weakly correlated, at most, with major stock market indices and other asset classes, like oil and gold. That likely reflects the strong government funding going into the space industry, the company argues, adding it presents an opportunity for institutional investors seeking to diversify their portfolios. [SpaceNews]
Tuesday's Atlas 5 launch was a success. The Space Force's Space Systems Command confirmed seven hours after the liftoff of the rocket on the USSF-51 that the classified payload was placed in its planned orbit. The launch was the final national security mission for the Atlas 5 as ULA moves those launches to its new Vulcan rocket after its completes its certification later this year. [Space Systems Command]
Rocket Lab scrubbed an Electron launch Tuesday because of weather. The company called off the launch of a Synspective radar imaging satellite a few hours before the scheduled liftoff, citing rain and clouds in the area. Poor weather is forecast to persist for several days, and the company has rescheduled the launch for 12:15 p.m. Eastern Friday. [X @RocketLab]
ESA says an initial review of the data from the inaugural Ariane 6 launch confirmed the performance of the rocket. ESA said Wednesday that reviews of data showed the vehicle's ascent to orbit and deployment of satellite payloads matched expectations, offering "great confidence in the validity and predictions" made before launch. The launch pad was also in good condition after the liftoff. A problem with the upper stage's auxiliary propulsion unit prevented a final burn of the upper stage to allow it to reenter, though, and ESA said that problem remains under investigation. [ESA]
| |  | The Right Number of Miracles
"What you try to do is try to bring the number of miracles down, a miracle being a new technology, something we don't know yet. I don't want to be in the business of zero miracles. That's boring as hell. Let some other agency do that. But if you have many miracles, the problem is they start interacting. If you have n miracles, the complexity goes with n-squared."
– Thomas Zurbuchen, former NASA associate administrator for science, discussing the balance of technology risk and performance on science missions during a panel discussion Tuesday at the AIAA ASCEND conference in Las Vegas.
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