 | Top Stories
NASA selected Intuitive Machines for a robotic lunar lander mission in 2027. The agency announced Thursday it awarded the company a task order valued at $116.9 million for the mission, which will deliver a set of six science and technology demonstration payloads to the south polar region of the moon. The award is the fourth for Intuitive Machines through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. It was also the first CLPS award NASA made in nearly 18 months, after program managers said they wanted to incorporate lessons learned from the first two CLPS missions into the program. NASA expects to award another CLPS mission by the end of the year. [SpaceNews]
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner will return to Earth next Friday without a crew on board. NASA said late Thursday that a flight readiness review approved plans to have Starliner undock from the ISS at 6:04 p.m. Eastern Sept. 6, landing six hours later at White Sands, New Mexico. That undocking would take place exactly three months after Starliner arrived at the station with two astronauts on board for the Crew Flight Test mission. NASA announced last Saturday that concerns about the performance of the thrusters on Starliner led them to have Starliner come back empty, with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams remaining on the ISS until early next year. [SpaceNews]
Raytheon Technologies won an Air Force Force Research Lab contract to develop satellite communications terminals for military aircraft. The three-year contract, worth $51.7 million, is part of the Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program that aims to create advanced satcom networks leveraging commercial space internet constellations. Under the contract, Raytheon will develop multi-band, high-throughput satellite communications antennas that can be integrated onto various military aircraft. [SpaceNews]
Firefly Aerospace has hired the former CEO of Millennium Space Systems as its new chief executive. Firefly announced Thursday that Jason Kim will start as CEO Oct. 1. He succeeds Bill Weber, who left the company in mid-July after misconduct allegations. The announcement came a day after reports that Kim had left Millennium Space, a Boeing-owned smallsat manufacturer, for reasons then undisclosed. Kim, in a statement, noted he was familiar with Firefly from having worked with the company on the launch of Victus Nox, a responsive space mission last year using a Millennium-built satellite launched on Firefly's Alpha rocket. [SpaceNews]
Chinese researchers say the country needs to improve its space situational awareness (SSA) capabilities to keep pace with the United States. A study by researchers, many of whom are affiliated with the Space Engineering University in Beijing, assessed U.S. SSA space-based capabilities that involve programs like the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) and Silentbarker. The authors concluded China needs to enhance its capabilities, although Western analysts note that China already appears to be doing so. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
Blue Origin flew six people, including a NASA-funded scientist, on a suborbital New Shepard mission Thursday. The vehicle lifted off from the company's West Texas facility at 9:07 a.m. Eastern, landing 10 minutes later after reaching a peak altitude of more than 105 kilometers. The six people on the NS-26 mission included Rob Ferl, a University of Florida professor who conducted experiments on how gene expression in one type of plant changes when exposed to different phases of flight, including microgravity. His flight was supported by NASA, the first time the agency funded the flight of a researcher on a commercial suborbital vehicle. [SpaceNews]
Verizon is starting an emergency messaging service using satellites for some Android smartphones. The company announced this week a partnership with Skylo, using L-band services from GEO satellites to provide messaging services for some Google and Samsung phones when out of reach fo terrestrial networks. Verizon said it will offer the service at no charge to customers. Apple started providing a similar service to iPhone users two years ago using Globalstar satellites. [SpaceNews]
Starlink has become entangled in a dispute between Elon Musk's X social network and a Brazilian judge. Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Starlink's bank accounts in the country frozen to guarantee payment of fines levied against X. Musk, who has stridently attacked de Moraes on X, said that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink services in Brazil at no charge while its accounts are frozen. X itself could be blocked in Brazil as part of the months-long dispute linked to efforts by the Brazilian government against misinformation on social media platforms. [CNBC]
Human spaceflight is a priority for the head of South Korea's new space agency. Yoon Young-bin, administrator of the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), said at a conference Thursday that he wants the agency to "foster new astronauts" through training programs and international partnerships. One South Korean, Yi So-yeon, has been to space so far, flying on a short-duration mission to the ISS in 2008 through an agreement with Russia. [JoongAng Daily]
A NASA smallsat has successfully deployed a solar sail. NASA said Thursday that Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) smallsat deployed its sail, according to telemetry relayed back to Earth earlier in the day. High-resolution images of the deployed sail will be downlinked next week. NASA will now test the ability of the 80-square-meter sail to adjust the orbit of the spacecraft. [NASA]
Note: FIRST UP will not publish on Monday in observance of Labor Day. We will be back on Tuesday.
| |  | Sailing, Not Swimming
"The European Service Module number 3 is actually in the water. It's left Bremen. It's in the Atlantic right now."
"It's not in the water."
"It's not in the water. You're right, Cathy. It is floating on a boat that is in the water."
– Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars Program, and Cathy Koerner, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development, discussing at a NASA Advisory Council committee meeting Thursday the transport of the Orion service module for the Artemis 3 mission on a ship en route to Florida.
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