Top Stories of the Week From SpaceNews
11/29/2024 | View in Browser | Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, SpaceX celebrated multiple wins, starting with a $256.6 million contract to launch NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan. SpaceX was also granted conditional approval for direct-to-smartphone Starlink service, and is progressing toward approval for an increased Starship launch cadence. The company also won a NASA contract for lunar surface cargo missions alongside Blue Origin, which last week launched its ninth crewed, suborbital New Shepard mission. | | |
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By Jeff Foust, Nov. 26, 2024 |
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NASA has selected SpaceX's Falcon Heavy to launch a multibillion-dollar mission to Saturn's moon Titan in 2028.
NASA announced Nov. 25 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the Falcon Heavy launch of Dragonfly during a window that runs from July 5 to July 25 in 2028. The contract is valued at $256.6 million for the launch and related services.
That value is significantly more than some other NASA science missions launching on Falcon Heavy. The launch of Europa Clipper, which took place Oct. 14 on a Falcon Heavy, cost NASA $178 million under a contract awarded in 2021. The Psyche asteroid mission, which launched a year earlier on another Falcon Heavy, cost NASA $117 million under a 2020 contract. Read More |
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SpaceX gets conditional approval for direct-to-smartphone service The Federal Communications Commission granted SpaceX conditional approval Nov. 26 to use Starlink broadband satellites to keep T-Mobile smartphone users connected in cellular dead zones across the United States. SpaceX has permission to use T-Mobile's cellular frequencies on up to 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites to provide Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS), provided it does not interfere with other networks. Read More
Firefly sets January launch date for first lunar lander mission
Firefly announced Nov. 25 that it is planning to launch its Blue Ghost 1 lander mission during a six-day window in mid-January. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Florida. This means that none of the three commercial lander missions once slated to launch in the fourth quarter of this year will do so. Read More
EnduroSat orders 100 Enpulsion propulsion systems
Bulgaria-based microsatellite specialist EnduroSat has ordered 100 electric propulsion systems from Austria's Enpulsion as demand for larger spacecraft continues to rise. EnduroSat provides satellites starting from a one-unit (1U) standard cubesat structure measuring 10 centimeters a side, but a company spokesperson said Nov. 25 that demand is shifting away from tiny spacecraft. Read More | | |
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| | FAA updates environmental review for increased Starship launches The Federal Aviation Administration released Nov. 20 an updated version of a draft environmental assessment for an increase in the number of annual launches and landings of Starship/Super Heavy from its Starbase test site at Boca Chica, Texas. The assessment examined the impacts of up to 25 launches a year, along with 25 landings each of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stages. Read More
Blue Origin launches ninth crewed New Shepard suborbital mission Blue Origin flew six people, including a pair of repeat customers and a science communicator, on the latest New Shepard suborbital spaceflight mission Nov. 22. The New Shepard vehicle lifted off from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. The flight lifted off on schedule without any of the countdown holds common during previous flights. Read More | | |
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 | CIVIL |
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| NASA outlines impacts of VIPER on CLPS lunar lander program NASA estimated it would have to cancel up to four commercial lunar lander missions and delay up to four more to fly a rover mission originally scheduled for Sept. 2025 that the agency announced in July it planned to cancel over cost and schedule overruns. Read More
Slingshot selected to design user experience for U.S. space traffic system Slingshot Aerospace has been awarded a $5.3 million contract by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Space Commerce to design the user experience for a next-generation space traffic coordination platform. The 12-month contract, announced on Nov. 26, includes options for four additional years, bringing the potential total value to $13.3 million. Read More
NASA to make lunar cargo delivery awards to Blue Origin and SpaceX NASA announced it will add work to existing contracts for development of cargo versions of Blue Origin's Blue Moon and SpaceX's Starship to deliver payloads such as a pressurized rover and surface habitat to the surface of the moon in the early 2030s, the first such awards since the agency announced in January that it was directing the two companies to work on cargo versions of their Human Landing System (HLS) spacecraft. Read More |
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| | OPINION |
|  | By Sean Gorman, Nov. 27, 2024
| GPS threats are increasing at a record rate.
Escalating conflicts around the world are undermining GPS reliability as a surge of interference attacks continues to impact vast areas of Europe and the Middle East, causing significant disruptions for civilians. At the same time, more criminals increasingly use jammers for drug trafficking, cargo truck thefts and other criminal operations in North America. Sporadic GPS jamming and spoofing incidents have disrupted key American airports in recent years. Even everyday American citizens are now purchasing low-cost retail jammers as privacy fears and anti-government conspiracy theories spread.
America urgently needs an automated national detection system that can pinpoint GPS interference the moment it occurs and provide accurate real-time maps of where the impact is actually occurring. Read More
Overregulation is stifling the commercial space industry. The Launch Communications Act is a good start. By Eric Schmitt
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