 | Top Stories
The breakup of a Chinese rocket stage has created more than 700 pieces of debris in low Earth orbit. The Long March 6A upper stage broke up shortly after it deployed a set of 18 Qianfan broadband satellites earlier this week. Space tracking company LeoLabs said it is tracking more than 700, and potentially more than 900, pieces of debris from the stage. The debris is about 800 kilometers high, meaning they will remain in orbit for potentially decades, creating hazards for other spacecraft. A November 2022 breakup of another Long March 6A stage created more than 500 pieces of debris, with other launches of the same rocket creating smaller clouds of debris. [SpaceNews]
Viasat's shares soared Thursday after it raised annual revenue expectations amid strong government and aviation broadband business growth. Shares in the satellite operator closed up 38% a day after the company raised its revenue projections for 2025. Revenues rose 6% in the quarter ending June 30 to $1.1 billion, driven by its Defense and Advanced Technologies business unit, comprising cybersecurity and ground equipment products, and communication services in the aviation market. However, its residential broadband business suffered an 18% loss, and the company now has only 257,000 U.S. fixed broadband subscribers, compared to 603,000 four years ago. [SpaceNews]
Rocket Lab has test-fired a new engine for its upcoming Neutron rocket. The company announced Thursday a successful hot-firing of the Archimedes engine, including running it to 102% of its rated power. Rocket Lab said the test keeps development of Neutron on track for a first launch as soon as mid-2025. The announcement was tied to a company earnings call where it announced record quarterly revenues of $106 million in the second quarter. Rocket Lab acknowledged, though, that Electron launches will fall short of earlier projections of 22 launches this year, with 15-18 now expected because of customer delays. [SpaceNews]
The Commerce Department still expects to turn on the first version of a civil space traffic coordination system next month. In a presentation this week at the Small Satellite Conference, the Office of Space Commerce said phase 1.0 of the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, will start in September. That will provide conjunction data messages to a set of beta testers. The office is taking a "phased, agile development approach" to TraCSS, with plans to roll out improvements and new capabilities while bringing in more users over the next year. [SpaceNews]
Virgin Galactic has provided more details about the economics of its next suborbital spaceplanes. In an earnings call this week, the company said it can conduct 125 flights a year using two of its Delta-class vehicles and one aircraft from Spaceport America, enough to generate $450 million in revenue and about $100 million in adjusted EBITDA. Those numbers grow as it adds spaceplanes and, later, additional spaceports. Virgin, which retired its existing VSS Unity spaceplane after a June flight, said work on the Delta vehicles remains on schedule to allow commercial flights to begin in 2026. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
The town of Logan, Utah, is preparing for life after the Small Satellite Conference. The conference's organizers announced this week that the event, held for decades at Utah State University in town, would move to Salt Lake City in 2025 as the conference outgrows the city. Local officials, who heard about the conference's plan a few hours before they were publicly announced, said they had expected the conference to remain in town at least through 2026. The 2024 conference, which concluded Thursday, was projected to provide $6.4 million to the area, mostly through hotels and restaurants. [SpaceNews]
A California commission has approved plans for additional launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base, but not without environmental concerns. The California Coastal Commission voted Thursday to increase the number of SpaceX launches at Vandenberg form 6 to 36 per year. Commissioners had sought a number of conditions related to environmental monitoring of the launches, but the Space Force rejected some of them and declined to answer questions about its plans from commissioners. The service is planning a comprehensive environmental impact study to assess the effects of going to as many as 100 launches a year from the spaceport. [Noozhawk]
Florida officials are backing plans by SpaceX to build more landing pads for its boosters. Space Florida directors discussed at a meeting Thursday "Project Liftoff," a $27 million effort to build three additional landing pads at Space Launch Complex 40 and Launch Complex 39A. SpaceX currently has two landing pads at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 13 for landing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters; the new pads may replace those or be used by future Starship launches. [Florida Today]
India plans to launch an Earth observation satellite on a small launch vehicle next week. The Indian space agency ISRO said it has scheduled the launch of the EOS-08 satellite for Aug. 15 on its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). The 175-kilogram satellite carries an optical and infrared camera and an instrument for performing reflectometry using navigation satellite signals. It also carried a radiation dosimeter instrument to collect data for India's Gaganyaan human spaceflight program. The launch will be just the third for the SSLV, which failed in its debut two years ago but had a successful second flight in early 2023. [India Today]
It may be easier — or, rather, not as overwhelmingly difficult — to terraform Mars. A paper published this week offered a new approach for making the planet habitable, through the injection of microscopic particles made of iron and aluminum into the atmosphere. Placing two million tons of such particles in the atmosphere annually could increase its temperature by 10 degrees Celsius. Manufacturing and injecting those particles would still be a massive undertaking, but scientists noted it would use materials that could be mined on Mars rather than imported from Earth. Others noted that increasing the temperature of the Martian atmosphere is only one step needed to truly terraform the planet. [Science]
| |  | Analyst Scrum
"Well, I'm going to horrify you, Jason. Because I'm from New Zealand, I only know rugby. So a baseball analogy is lost on me completely."
– Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, when asked on an earnings call Thursday by Jason Gursky with Citi what inning the company was in regarding the development of a satellite constellation.
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