 | Top Stories
SpaceX launched the long-awaited Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission early this morning. A Falcon 9 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 5:23 a.m. Eastern and placed a Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit. The four-person Polaris Dawn mission will go higher than any crewed mission since Apollo 17's trip to the moon in 1972. It will also conduct the first spacewalk on a private mission. The five-day mission had been delayed by nearly two weeks because of poor weather forecasts for splashdown off the Florida coast. [SpaceNews]
Lynk Global, a startup develop a satellite constellation for direct-to-smartphone communications, has shaken up its leadership team. The company announced Monday that chief commercial officer Dan Dooley would become CEO, replacing Charles Miller, who becomes chairman of the board of directors. The company also hired John Olson, a retired Air Force general, as its president of strategic development. The executive shakeup comes a few weeks after Lynk received a four-month extension to merge with Slam Corp, a SPAC led by former professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez. Lynk has also been seeking to raise capital alongside the SPAC merger, including plans for a $40 million Series B funding round, but has not provided an update. [SpaceNews]
A GAO report found technical challenges and delays for the Space Force's efforts to modernize GPS. The report, released Monday, found that the Space Force is grappling with technical hurdles in next-generation GPS satellites and ground systems. These challenges have eroded schedule margins, potentially pushing back the delivery of 24 M-code-capable satellites, with jamming-resistant signals crucial for military operations, through the 2030s. GAO also found risks in the development of user equipment, including microchips and cards that process M-code signals. [SpaceNews]
The orbiter from the Chang'e-6 lunar sample return mission has arrived at the Earth-sun L-2 Lagrange point. The orbiter set off on an extended mission after delivering samples to Earth in June collected on the lunar farside, and amateur radio trackers have located the spacecraft at the L-2 point about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. China's space authorities have yet to provide an update on the orbiter and its plans. However, the orbiter's voyage fits into a pattern of China using Chang'e spacecraft for extended missions as tests for future endeavors. [SpaceNews]
NASA cleared the Europa Clipper mission to proceed with final launch preparations. The agency announced Monday that the mission passed a review called Key Decision Point E, allowing it to prepare for a launch as soon as Oct. 10 on a Falcon Heavy. That decision came after a four-month review of transistors on the spacecraft after the agency learned they may fail at lower radiation levels than designed. Those reviews found that the transistors will be able to carry out the baseline mission for Europa Clipper without any changes to hardware or operations. Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030 and perform dozens of close flybys of the icy moon Europa to determine if its subsurface ocean is habitable. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
NASA is looking to use commercial services to support its Mars exploration efforts. NASA awarded study contracts earlier this year to nine companies to study how they could provide commercial services such as imagery and communications at the Red Planet. NASA plans to use the results from the studies, expected this fall, to support a long-term Mars exploration program that includes commercial and international partnerships. [SpaceNews]
Chinese researchers are studying how lava tubes on the moon could be used for development of a lunar base. A series of papers on lava tubes on the moon was recently published in a Chinese journal. The papers examine how the tubes, which are subsurface caverns that could serve as natural shelters, might be explored and incorporated into efforts like the Chinese-led International Lunar Research Station. The papers also suggest to some that China has a more cohesive overall lunar exploration strategy than the United States. [SpaceNews]
A typhoon has damaged launch facilities on China's Hainan Island. The island was hit this weekend by Super Typhoon Yagi, with winds as high as 245 kilometers per hour. The storm reportedly caused damage to launch facilities at the Wenchang spaceport there, but the severity of the damage was not immediately clear. [South China Morning Post]
Astronomers are using artificial intelligence to help them look for extraterrestrial intelligence. At a recent conference devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), scientists discussed how AI could be used to examine large data sets to look for signals that might be evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations. Those AI capabilities could allow astronomers to look at much larger parts of the sky rather than target efforts on specific stars, as has been traditionally the approach to SETI. It could also enable searches of different kinds of signals. [Space.com]
| |  | Searching for Signs of Life, or Skittles
"We're going to be looking at the chemistry of the system. That is both chemistry on the surface and in anything that's being emitted from the surface: any kind of plumes that we'll fly through and sort of taste — taste the rainbow at Europa — and get to tell what materials are being emitted."
– Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, speaking at a media briefing Monday about the science goals of the Europa Clipper mission scheduled to launch next month
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