 | Top Stories
NASA has delayed until late August a decision on Starliner's return from the International Space Station. At a briefing Wednesday, agency officials said they are continuing to study whether to have Starliner return to Earth with astronauts on board as they examine problems with the spacecraft's thrusters experienced during its approach to the station in June. NASA previously said it would make a decision in mid-August, but now expects to reach a decision late next week or early the following week. If NASA elects to return Starliner uncrewed, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on the station until early next year, returning on the Crew-9 Crew Dragon launching next month. [SpaceNews]
Northrop Grumman plans to lay off several hundred employees work in space programs in Southern California. The company filed this week notices of 550 layoffs at at its space business facilities in Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach, California. This latest round of layoffs follows a separate action earlier this year that resulted in 600 employees being redeployed across the company. Northrop has not specified the reasons behind the job cuts even as the company reports growth in its space business, particularly in military programs. [SpaceNews]
Telesat says it is close to securing government funds needed to develop its Lightspeed broadband constellation. The Canadian federal government in March agreed on terms for a loan worth 2.14 billion Canadian dollars ($1.6 billion) for the 198-satellite constellation, and Telesat expects to finalize 400 million Canadian dollars of funding from the Quebec provincial government by the end of the summer. The satellites, built by MDA for Telesat, are scheduled to start launching in 2026. [SpaceNews]
Redwire is acquiring small satellite manufacturer Hera Systems to bolster its defense business. Redwire announced the acquisition of Hera Systems on Thursday, terms of which the companies did not disclose. The deal is expected to close later this quarter. Hera Systems develops small satellite technologies, and its geostationary satellite platform was selected for the U.S. Space Force's Tetra 5 in-orbit refueling experiment planned for 2025. The acquisition aligns with Redwire's efforts to strengthen its foothold in the defense market and support specialized national security space missions in GEO. [SpaceNews]
Apex has unveiled a GEO version of its Aries small satellite bus. The GEO Aries bus, announced Thursday, is designed for a variety of missions in GEO from space domain awareness to communications. The bus has a five-year lifetime and can accommodate payloads of up to 120 kilograms. Apex has sold the first GEO Aries to an undisclosed government customer. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
Russia launched a Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station Wednesday night. A Soyuz-2.1a rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 11:20 p.m. Eastern and placed the Progress MS-28 spacecraft into orbit. The spacecraft, carrying nearly three tons of cargo, is scheduled to dock with the ISS early Saturday. [Space.com]
A Senate bill would establish a center that would study ways to mitigate the effects of satellite constellations on astronomy. The bipartisan Dark and Quiet Skies Act, introduced earlier this month, would establish a center of excellence overseen by NIST to examine how to reduce the effects of reflected sunlight and radio emissions from satellites on astronomy. If enacted, the center would join efforts like a center established by the International Astronomical Union that recently won an NSF grant to develop software to help astronomers schedule observations around satellite passes. Separately, SpaceX and the NSF reached an agreement last week to implement a technique where Starlink satellites will adjust their beam patterns as they pass over radio observatories to avoid transmitting directly into them. [SpaceNews]
United Launch Alliance is struggling to retain engineers. The company has lost 45 of 105 launch operations engineers in Florida this year alone as they took jobs with other space companies. That has affected work on future missions, and ULA had to fly in workers from other locations to support an Atlas 5 launch last month. A lower launch cadence this year has reduced revenue, although the company says it remains profitable for the year. [Bloomberg]
A GPS advisory committee is frustrated with the lack of attention the navigation satellite system is getting from the government. In a recent memo, Thad Allen, chair of the President's National Space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board, warned that the GPS network is vulnerable to disruption and that issues about it have not received "their rightful prominence in the national policy agenda." The committee called for a "fresh look" at how GPS and related PNT policies are handled. [GPS World]
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is preparing to climb out of Jezero Crater. NASA said Wednesday that the rover will soon start to ascend the western rim of the crater, two and a half years after it landed in the crater floor on the remnants of a river delta. That will involve some of the steepest climbs by the rover to date as it ascends 300 meters to the crater rim for the next phase of its mission to collect samples for return to Earth. [NASA/JPL]
| |  | Backup Plans All the Way Down
"We're NASA. We have backup plans for our backup plans."
– Emily Nelson, chief flight director in NASA's Flight Operations Directorate, discussing planning for Starliner's return to Earth at a briefing Wednesday.
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