 | Top Stories
Blue Origin reportedly suffered two recent mishaps involving upper stages for its New Glenn launch vehicle. In one incident, an upper stage crumpled when it was moved from an outdoor storage area into an air-conditioned hangar; valves to equalize pressure were misconfigured and as the air inside chilled, the stage crumpled. In the other incident, another upper stage failed stress testing and burst. The stages were meant for the second and third flights of New Glenn, and it is not clear what impact the incidents will have plans for the rocket's inaugural launch scheduled for this fall. [Bloomberg]
As NASA ships another component of the next Space Launch System vehicle to Florida, the agency is extending the contract for work on it in anticipation of future launch delays. NASA rolled out the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter (LVSA) for the SLS launching Artemis 2 Wednesday, placing it on a barge to ship from Alabama to Florida. The LVSA is used on the Block 1 version of SLS to connect the rocket's upper stage to the core stage. NASA, in a procurement filing last week, said it was extending the contract awarded a decade ago to Teledyne Brown Engineering to produce the LVSA by two years, to September 2026, to allow completion of the third and final adapter. That extension, though, includes six options for additional extensions that would push the contract's period of performance through the end of 2029. That suggests NASA is at least preparing for the possibility of extended delays in the launch of the next two SLS missions, currently scheduled for September 2025 and September 2026. [SpaceNews]
One factor that could cause delays in those upcoming missions is unresolved issues with the Orion heat shield. NASA is holding off work on stacking the SLS for the Artemis 2 mission until it understands the unexpected erosion in the heat shield seen on Artemis 1 in 2022. The head of NASA's exploration mission directorate said that the agency is still working to understand the root cause of that erosion and what changes, if any, are needed to the spacecraft or its mission profile to prevent it on Artemis 2. Major changes to the heat shield could delay the mission from late 2025 to potentially 2027. [Ars Technica]
Axiom Space is working with Nokia to provide high-speed wireless communications for Artemis lunar spacesuits. The companies announced Wednesday they are working together to adapt 4G/LTE cellular technologies for use on missions starting with Artemis 3. A "network in a box" on the lander will provide wireless communications to Axiom's suits at distances of up to two kilometers from the lander. That will allow the astronauts to stream high-definition video from their suits, among other applications. Nokia plans to test that technology on the IM-2 robotic lunar lander mission late this year, although the company said the use of the technology on the Axiom suits isn't dependent on the success of that mission. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
SpaceX is delaying the launch of a private astronaut mission by a day. The company said late Wednesday the Polaris Dawn mission is now scheduled to launch early next Tuesday on a Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center. The launch slipped a day, the company said, to provide "additional time for teams to complete preflight checkouts" ahead of the launch. The mission, scheduled to last five days, will feature the first spacewalk on a commercial mission and also the highest altitude for a crewed mission since Apollo 17 went to the moon in 1972. [X @SpaceX]
Port Canaveral is backtracking on plans to convert a berth used by SpaceX for booster recovery ships into a cruise terminal. The port's commissioners voted Wednesday to rescind an earlier decision that would have led to a construction of a cruise terminal at the port's North Cargo Berth 8. That is currently used primarily by SpaceX for ships recovering boosters and payload fairings, while Blue Origin also recently tested New Glenn booster recovery work there. State officials warned port officials recently that the planned development of the cruise terminal there could lead them to review state funding of port infrastructure. [Florida Today]
ESA is preparing for the controlled reentry of a set of space science satellites. The first of the four Cluster spacecraft, nicknamed "Salsa," is scheduled for reentry Sept. 8 over the South Pacific to ensure any debris that survives reentry does not fall over populated areas. The four Cluster spacecraft were launched in 2000 on what was initially designed to be a two-year mission to study the Earth's magnetosphere. ESA plans to study this reentry, including potential observations by an aircraft, and incorporate any changes into the reentry of the other three Cluster satellites — Rumba, Samba and Tango — for reentry between November 2025 and August 2026. [ESA]
India's space agency ISRO has completed the designs of its next two lunar missions. In an interview, the head of ISRO, S. Somanath, said the designs of Chandrayaan-4 and Chandrayaan-5 are complete and awaiting government approval to go into development. Chandrayaan-4 is a lunar sample return mission, while Chandrayaan-5 is now associated with a joint India-Japan mission called LUPEX that involves an Indian lander and Japanese rover. [ThePrint]
| |  | Really Big
"Space is big. We can afford to take our time."
– Adam Burgasser, a physicist at the University of California San Diego, on why astronomers were not worried about missing a star speeding out of the galaxy at a million miles per hour. [New York Times]
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