Plus: NASA withholds Orion heat shield insights, and China prepares its next Tiangong crew mission.
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About 500 pieces of debris have been tracked from an Intelsat communications satellite that broke up earlier this month. ExoAnalytic Solutions says it has spotted fragments of the satellite ranging in size from a softball to a car door from Intelsat-33e after it broke apart Oct. 19. Intelsat is still investigating what caused the in-orbit breakup of Intelsat-33e, the second in a series of four EpicNG high throughput satellites Boeing built for the operator. ExoAnalytic says it is working with the U.S. Space Force and others to monitor the debris and the threat it poses to other satellites in geostationary orbit. [SpaceNews]
NASA says it now understands why the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft eroded more than expected on the Artemis 1 mission, but won't disclose that reason for now. At meetings Monday, NASA officials said they had identified the root cause of the unexpected "char loss" on the heat shield during Orion's reentry at the end of the Artemis 1 mission in December 2022. However, those officials declined to discuss that root cause while additional testing is in progress on ways to mitigate the problem for the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed Orion flight. Those tests are scheduled to wrap up by the end of November with more details on the root cause and mitigation steps to be released by the end of the year. Artemis 2 is still officially scheduled for launch no earlier than September 2025. [SpaceNews]
Satellite servicing companies are finding it difficult to convince the Defense Department to use their capabilities. The U.S. military is potentially a key customer for companies offering ways to extend the life or repair satellites, but the DoD is focused for now on only refueling capabilities. An Air Force Research Lab official said at the MilSat Symposium last week that in-orbit servicing demonstrations are innovative, but they're focused on things that don't necessarily meet military demands, adding that elaborate in-orbit repair missions are questionable given their cost and complexity. [SpaceNews]
China will launch its next crewed mission to the Tiangong space station today. Chinese officials confirmed Monday that the Shenzhou-19 spacecraft is scheduled for launch at 4:27 p.m. Eastern Tuesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It will dock with Tiangong about 6.5 hours after launch, delivering Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze to the station for a six-month stay. Cai, commander of Shenzhou-19, flew to Tiangong in 2022, while Song and Wang, China's only female spaceflight engineer, will be making their first flights. [Xinhua]
China has selected two designs for a lunar rover for future crewed missions. Teams from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) and the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), both groups under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), have been selected to work on prototype designs, the Chinese government announced Tuesday. The rover will have a mass of 200 kilograms and have a range of 10 kilometers, and is intended to be ready in time for China's first crewed landing on the moon by 2030. [SpaceNews]
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| |  | LMV is Lockheed Martin's Venture Capital arm, and about a third of its portfolio is invested in space. Some of its most notable space Investments include launchers Rocket Lab and ABL Space. | | | Other News |
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SpaceX postponed a Starlink launch that had been scheduled for this morning. A Falcon 9 was scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:44 a.m. Eastern, but SpaceX announced earlier this morning that the launch had been delayed a day to 7:07 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, without further explanation. The rocket is carrying 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which have direct-to-cell payloads. [Spaceflight Now]
Austrian space domain awareness startup iSEE Global has set up an American subsidiary. The U.S. subsidiary of Impact Space Expedition & Exploration Global Corp. will be led by Andy Bowyer, former CEO of Kleos Space. The company is proposing to develop a "radar fence constellation" of satellites to improve tracking of space objects, and the U.S. office will allow it to market its services to U.S. government customers. [SpaceNews]
NASA has installed a key instrument on its next large space telescope. NASA announced Monday it installed the Roman Coronagraph Instrument into a part of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope spacecraft called the instrument carrier. The space telescope is being assembled at the Goddard Space Flight Center for a launch by May 2027 to study dark energy and exoplanets, among other astronomical phenomena. The coronagraph is a technology demonstration of ways to block starlight to directly image exoplanets orbiting those stars. [NASA/GSFC]
The head of NASA's educational efforts and its chief economist are both leaving the agency. NASA announced Monday the retirement of Mike Kincaid, associate administrator of the Office of STEM Engagement, effective at the end of November, and of Alex MacDonald, chief economist, at the end of the year. Kincaid will be replaced on an acting basis by Kris Brown, deputy associate administrator for strategy and integration in the Office of STEM Engagement, while Akhil Rao from NASA's Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy will serve as acting chief economist. [NASA]
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Artemis Roll Tide
"One of the greatest instruments of national power that this government has come up with with respect to space exploration has been the Artemis Accords. Man, that is a win with a big W. Not to go too deep into college football here, but that's an Alabama beatdown of Missouri over the weekend."
– Damon Feltman, a retired Space Force brigadier general, discussing the Artemis Accords during a panel Monday at the American Astronautical Society's von Braun Space Exploration Symposium. Alabama beat Missouri 34-0 on Saturday.
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