 | Top Stories
SpaceX's Falcon 9 resumed launches early Saturday after a briefing grounding by the FAA. One Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 3:43 a.m. Eastern Saturday, followed by another at 4:48 a.m. Eastern from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Each launch placed 21 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launches came after the FAA announced late Friday it would allow SpaceX to resume launches that were put on hold two days earlier after a Falcon 9 booster tipped over and exploded upon landing on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into that incident continues, but the FAA concluded it did not pose a public safety risk. [SpaceNews]
General Dynamics won a $491 million contract extension from the Space Development Agency (SDA) for satellite ground systems. The extension, announced Friday, nearly doubles the company's existing contract to about $900 million through 2029. SDA selected General Dynamics in 2022 to build the ground operations and integration segment for the SDA's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a mesh network of satellites in low Earth orbit designed to support global military operations. [SpaceNews]
Launch vehicle developer ABL Space Systems announced a round of layoffs on Friday. The layoffs come after the company's second RS1 rocket was lost in a fire after a static-fire test in July at its launch site in Alaska. The company is looking to cut costs given difficulties raising more money, with the CEO citing a desire to "reset the cost structure of the business to be sustainable in any environment." The company did not disclose how many employees were laid off or how it would affect the schedule of development of the rocket. [SpaceNews]
NASA selected a veteran astronaut and rookie cosmonaut to remain on the Crew-9 mission to the ISS. NASA announced Friday that Nick Hague will serve as commander of the mission and Aleksandr Gorbunov would be mission specialist. The two had been previously assigned to the mission, with Hague as pilot, along with commander Zena Cardman and mission specialist Stephanie Wilson. NASA took Cardman and Wilson off the mission to free up seats that will be used by Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are remaining on the station after NASA decided to bring their Starliner spacecraft uncrewed. Cardman and Wilson will be reassigned to future missions. Crew-9 is set to launch as soon as Sept. 24. [SpaceNews]
A retired Space Force general will be an adviser to space infrastructure startup ThinkOrbital. The company announced Friday that retired Lt. Gen. John Shaw will advise the company, which is working on in-space assembly technologies. Shaw, one of the first general officers commissioned into the U.S. Space Force, most recently served as deputy commander of U.S. Space Command. He has been a vocal advocate for increased use of commercial space technologies in military operations. [SpaceNews]
German space company OHB says it has cleared all the regulatory obstacles for a deal that would effectively take the company private. OHB said last week that it received the final approvals for the deal announced a little more than a year ago with investment firm KKR where KKR would buy most of the shares of OHB not owned by the Fuchs family, which retains a 65% stake. That will allow OHB to delist from a German stock exchange. OHB had previously argued that the public markets didn't properly value smaller companies like it. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
China launched a new set of classified satellites Monday night. A Long March 4B lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 9:22 p.m. Eastern and deployed a set of satellites designated Yaogan-43 (02). No details regarding the satellites were released, as was the case with the first Yaogan-43 satellites last month. Chinese officials did not disclose how many satellites were on the launch, but its mission patch contained six stars; the patch for the Yaogan-43 satellites launched in August had nine stars and, later, nine satellites were tracked from the launch. [SpaceNews]
ESA is revising the trajectory of its BepiColombo mission to Mercury because of reduced thrust from its electric propulsion system. ESA said Monday that the spacecraft's next flyby of Mercury on Wednesday will be somewhat closer than previously planned. That will set up changes to its trajectory that will delay its entry into orbit around the innermost planet by 11 months to November 2026. Engineers concluded that "unexpected electric currents" between the spacecraft's solar arrays and a power distribution unit were reducing the power to its electric thrusters, keeping them from producing enough thrust to maintain the original trajectory. The delay, ESA added, will not affect the science goals of the mission. [SpaceNews]
NASA's Europa Clipper remains on track for a launch next month. NASA said last week that reviews concluded that transistors in the spacecraft will support its "baseline" mission that involves dozens of close approaches to Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter with a subsurface ocean. Testing earlier this year raised concerns that the transistors might fail in the harsh radiation environment around the planet. The mission is slated to launch during a three-week window that opens Oct. 10. [SpaceNews]
A real estate investor is starting work on a large industrial complex near Cape Canaveral. The company, Hines, is constructing three buildings with 60,000 square meters of space in the first phase of the Space Coast Innovation Park, located next to the Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville. The industrial park could later expand to 279,000 square meters. Hines hopes to tap into the growing demand for industrial space in the region linked to expansion in the space industry. The state government is providing $6 million for a road to link the industrial park to the airport. [SpaceNews]
Weird noises coming from the Starliner spacecraft were just an audio glitch. NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore advised mission controllers over the weekend that he was hearing a "strange noise" from a speaker inside the crew cabin. The pinging noise sounded similar to a sonar. NASA said Monday that the noise was an "audio configuration" issue and would not affect plans for the spacecraft's uncrewed departure from the station on Friday. [Ars Technica]
A statue honoring Challenger astronaut Christa McAuliffe is now on display at the New Hampshire state capitol. Officials, including Gov. Chris Sununu, unveiled the statue in a ceremony on the state capitol grounds on Monday, which would have been McAuliffe's 76th birthday. The statue depicts McAuliffe walking in her NASA flight suit as she did heading to the pad on the morning of the launch. [collectSPACE]
| |  | The Week Ahead
Tuesday: - Kourou, French Guiana: Scheduled launch of a Vega rocket carrying the Sentinel-2C satellite at 9:50 p.m. Eastern. This will be the final launch of the original version of Vega.
Wednesday: - Kennedy Space Center, Fla.: Rescheduled no-earlier-than date for the Falcon 9 launch of the Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission at 3:38 a.m. Eastern.
- Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 8:59 a.m. Eastern.
Thursday: - Online: The NASA Advisory Council's technology committee meets for updates on NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate programs and related activities.
- Washington/Online: NASA Headquarters hosts the Symposium on the Macroeconomics of Space to discuss space investment economics and the upcoming NASA Economic Impact Report.
- Taiyuan, China: Projected launch of a Long March 6 carrying an unidentified payload at 2:35 p.m. Eastern.
- Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying a classified NRO payload at 9:14 p.m. Eastern.
Friday: - Washington/Online: George Washington University's Space Policy Institute and The Aerospace Corporation hold a symposium on Commercial Developments in Low Earth Orbit: Challenges and Opportunities.
- International Space Station: Scheduled undocking of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner for an uncrewed return to Earth at 6:04 p.m. Eastern, with a landing at White Sands, New Mexico, at 12:03 a.m. Eastern Saturday.
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