 | Top Stories
The Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission ended with a successful splashdown early Sunday. The Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico west of Key West, Florida, at 3:36 a.m. Eastern, nearly five days after its launch. The mission featured the first spacewalk on a commercial mission and the highest altitude that any crewed mission has flown since Apollo 17 went to the moon in 1972. The four-person crew also performed dozens of experiments ans tested the use of SpaceX's Starlink constellation for communications through laser intersatellite links. [SpaceNews]
Telesat announced Friday it has finalized government funding for its Lightspeed constellation. The combined 2.54 billion Canadian dollars ($1.9 billion) of funding from the governments of Canada and Quebec comprise a mixture of loans and warrants that can be exchanged for stakes in Lightspeed, a constellation of 198 satellites slated to begin launches in mid-2026. That government funding accounts for more than half of the $3.5 billion cost of Lightspeed, with the rest coming from an unidentified vendor and Telesat itself. Separately, MDA announced Friday it is expanding a production facility in Quebec where it will manufacture the Lightspeed satellites, based on its software-defined Aurora platform. [SpaceNews]
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) selected 10 companies to compete for contracts for commercial satellite imagery and data analytics services. The companies will be part of the Luno A program, making them eligible to compete for up to $290 million in awards over the next five years. The Luno A initiative aims to harness commercial data analytics and satellite imagery services to gather insights on global economic and environmental activities, as well as foreign military capabilities. [SpaceNews]
United Airlines is shifting from GEO satellite operators to SpaceX's Starlink for in-flight broadband services. United said Friday it will start equipping the more than 1,000 planes in its international fleet with Starlink connectivity next year, a process that will take several years to complete. The airline will offer Starlink services to its customers for free. United currently uses GEO satellites for in-flight connectivity through Viasat, Panasonic, Thales and Intelsat. The deal is the biggest yet for Starlink in the aviation market, the last satellite broadband market where the constellation had yet to gain significant traction. [SpaceNews]
Revenue from Starlink and other non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations will overtake GEO satellites in four years, a new study predicts. The analysis by Novaspace, published Sunday, found that while the GEO market represented around 85% of the $12 billion in total satellite capacity revenue in 2023, NGSO systems will see their revenue grow by 27% annually to around $18 billion by 2033. NGSO revenue will exceed that of GEO systems in 2028. The flood of capacity that NGSO systems provide will also cause the average revenue per user to drop significantly. [SpaceNews]
The two astronauts left behind on the International Space Station after their Starliner spacecraft returned home uncrewed say they have adjusted to a long-term stay on the station. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore said at a press conference Friday they made a nearly "instantaneous" shift in mindset to being long-term occupants of the station when NASA decided it was not safe for them to return on Starliner. They said they accepted the decision but suggested that, if NASA had more time, it might have been able to conclude it was acceptable for them to return on the spacecraft. Starliner made a safe landing in the New Mexico desert earlier this month. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
Iran's Revolutionary Guard launched a small satellite Saturday. The launch of the Qaem-100 rocket took place around 2 a.m. Eastern from a site near the city of Shahroud, east of Tehran. The rocket placed into low Earth orbit a 60-kilogram satellite called Chamran-1 that the government said would be used for technology demonstrations. American officials have warned that development of satellite launch vehicles will help Iran develop long-range ballistic missiles. [AP]
A Chinese satellite servicing startup has secured an initial round of funding. Sustain Space raised a "pre-A+" funding round of $1.4 million, the company announced last week. Sustain Space is engaged in the development of on-orbit servicing operation technologies, including satellite and active debris removal, satellite refueling and life extension, and on-orbit satellite repair and manufacturing. The company is a subsidiary of Emposat, which specializes in satellite management, focusing on commercial satellite operations and control. [SpaceNews]
Defense technology company Anduril is moving into space systems. The company announced plans Friday to design, build and launch its own fully integrated space systems by the end of 2025. The company intends to develop spacecraft for applications like space domain awareness, on-orbit sensor data processing and satellite defense. Anduril's expansion into space builds on the company's broader strategy of developing autonomous systems that require minimal human intervention. [SpaceNews]
Apex unveiled a larger, more powerful satellite bus. The company announced Monday the Nova bus, which will accommodate payloads of up to 300 kilograms in its baseline version and 500 kilograms in a larger version. The company, which currently sells the smaller Aries bus, said it is seeing strong interest for Nova from U.S. and allied government customers. The first Nova spacecraft will be delivered to customers the company did not disclose in the third quarter of 2025. [SpaceNews]
ESA plans to test space traffic management services offered by Portuguese startup Neuraspace. ESA's Space Debris Office will integrate Neuraspace services with its existing tools to assess conjunctions at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Germany under a contract announced Monday. For Neuraspace, collaboration with ESOC will provide an opportunity for it to refine its services and benefit from the agency's expertise. [SpaceNews]
Two Russian cosmonauts have now spent one year on the ISS. Oleg Kononenko and cosmonaut Nikolai Chub marked one year in space during their current mission on Saturday. They arrived on the ISS last September and Roscosmos extended their stay so the agency could fly a Belarusian guest cosmonaut on a short-duration mission to the station in March. Kononenko and Chub are scheduled to return to Earth in a week along with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, who has been on the station since March. [TASS]
| |  | The Week Ahead
Monday: Monday-Wednesday: Monday-Friday: Tuesday: Tuesday-Wednesday: Tuesday-Thursday: - Didcot, U.K.: The SPAICE Conference 2024 will examine applications for artificial intelligence in spaceflight.
Wednesday: Wednesday-Friday: - Wailea, Hawaii/Online: The 2024 AMOS Conference will discuss space situational awareness and space domain awareness technologies and policies.
Thursday: - Online: The National Academies committee working on A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars will hold a town hall meeting at 12 p.m. Eastern.
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