 | Top Stories
NASA is delaying the launch of the next crew to the International Space Station by more than a month while it continues to review Boeing's Starliner. NASA announced late Tuesday that the Crew-9 mission, which had been scheduled to launch as soon as Aug. 18, will slip to no earlier than Sept. 24. That delay will give NASA what it calls "operational flexibility" regarding the return of Starliner and whether that spacecraft will be cleared to return with astronauts on board. NASA provided no other details about the delay but will hold a briefing later today to discuss the status of Starliner. [SpaceNews]
Impulse Space is offering a rideshare program for GEO spacecraft. The company announced Tuesday it is working with Exolaunch on the program that will use Helios, a high-energy kick stage that Impulse is developing, to offer rides to GEO for smaller spacecraft. Such spacecraft, the company argues, have few good options to get to GEO today. The first rideshare mission is planned for 2027. Impulse Space also announced upgrades to its smaller Mira tug that will allow it to be used in conjunction with Helios. Mira completed its first mission in low Earth orbit in July and Impulse plans to launch a second this fall. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Army is considering the creation of a dedicated space career field for enlisted soldiers. Such a career field could allow the service to expand its pool of space experts needed to face the technological challenges of modern warfare. The proposal, yet to be approved by Army leadership, has the support of Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commander of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, who mentioned it at the Space and Missile Defense Conference Tuesday. This initiative is part of a broader effort to establish an Army space branch, which has gained renewed momentum after previously slowing down due to the establishment of the U.S. Space Force. [SpaceNews]
Safran plans to open a new electric propulsion production facility in the United States. The French company announced this week it will set up a production line for its EPS X00, or "X-hundred," thrusters in Colorado, with the first units to be completed by early 2026. The U.S. line will mirror the existing one in France but use U.S. electronics and serve American commercial and government customers. Each line will be able to produce up to 200 thrusters a year, intended for use on small GEO and larger LEO spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
Italian ground segment service provider Leaf Space has deployed its first ground station with a Ka-band link. The company said this week the new antenna in Iceland, which started service in June, can suport X-, S- and Ka-band communications. Other Leaf Space antennas supported only X- and S-band and UHF communications. The company says current and potential customers are demanding the faster speeds Ka-band offers to downlink increasingly larger amounts of data generated in orbit. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
BAE Systems won a $48 million Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) contract to further develop an existing data analytics platform used by military intelligence analysts that incorporates space and other data. The contract is to add new features and enhancements to a data analytics platform called Insight. AFRL wants to improve the system's capabilities to integrate and analyze data from multiple sources, including sensors, satellites, drones and human intelligence. Under the new AFRL contract, BAE Systems will build upon previous work, focusing on techniques for generating intelligence from multiple sensors, domains and information types. [SpaceNews]
German startup Dcubed raised 4.4 million euros ($4.8 million) in a Series A funding round to work on space manufacturing. Dcubed will use the funding to expand production, demonstrate in-space manufacturing and open a U.S. office, the company announced this week. For the first mission, Dcubed is working with space mobility provider Exotrail. Dcubed's payload will include Solestial's thin, flexible silicon solar blanket. In orbit, Dcubed will unfurl the solar blanket and manufacture support structures for a 100-watt solar array. Expansion Aerospace Ventures and BayBG Venture Capital led the round. [SpaceNews]
Space weather startup Perceptive Space raised $2.8 million in a pre-seed round. The Toronto-based company is developing a space weather forecasting system it says will be more accurate and offer longer lead times than existing government forecasts. Perceptive Space plans to introduce its space weather platform to space and defense organizations in the United States and allied countries, with its first product scheduled for release in 2025. [SpaceNews]
Florida government officials are concerned that Port Canaveral is favoring cruise lines over the space industry. In a letter last week, the state's commerce and transportation secretaries said they were dismayed that the port was investing in infrastructure for cruise lines to the "direct detriment" of the space industry, which also uses the port for booster recoveries and other logistics. State officials said they would review whether the port was following the terms of a grant awarded in 2018 primarily to support aerospace industry operations there and would not certify applications for projects related to the cruise industry. Port Canaveral is the second-busiest cruise port in the world, behind only Miami. [News Service of Florida]
Axiom Space CEO Mike Suffredini is stepping down. Axiom announced Tuesday that Suffredini was stepping down as CEO after eight years effective Aug. 9, but would serve on the company's board of directors and be an adviser. He cited only "personal reasons" for ending his tenure as CEO of the commercial space station company. Kam Ghaffarian, co-founder and executive chairman of Axiom, will serve as interim CEO while the company looks for a permanent replacement. [Axiom Space]
| |  | We All Scream for Space Debris
"They had an ice cream called Space Debris. I wanted to try that, so I went over to the Space Debris bucket, but it was empty. They were out of Space Debris, which is a good thing."
– Mark Harter of The MITRE Corporation, describing at the Small Satellite Conference on Tuesday a flavor of ice cream called Aggie Space Debris ("huckleberry flavored ice cream with huckleberry and raspberry swirls, as well as white and dark chocolate flakes") offered during a break at the conference on Monday.
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