Plus: China eyes commercial space reform, and GPS 3F satellites face extended production delays
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | | | | The first set of new GPS satellites is running nearly a year behind schedule because of production problems. The Space Force says "technical and programmatic challenges" by prime contractor Lockheed Martin have delayed work on the first set of 10 GPS 3F satellites by 8 to 11 months. The GPS 3F satellites feature new capabilities that include resistance to jamming and cyberattacks as well as increased accuracy. Lockheed said it "proactively recognized our challenges" last fall and has been working with Space Systems Command on a production plan to overcome those challenges. [Bloomberg]
China is looking to provide greater support for its commercial space sector. In a speech Monday at the Zhuhai Commercial Space Development Forum, Li Guoping, chief engineer of the China National Space Administration, discussed potential changes to bolster Chinese space companies. That includes opening large-scale facilities funded by the government to commercial space enterprises and encouraging state-owned enterprises to support commercial space companies within their supply chains. Licensing reforms and the removal of restrictions on the production of satellites weighing more than 500 kilograms are also being considered. [SpaceNews]
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope achieved a milestone last week in its development. The telescope assembly for the spacecraft arrived at the Goddard Space Flight Center after testing by contractor L3Harris, joining the spacecraft bus and instruments for the first time. The delivery keeps work on the multibillion-dollar mission on budget and on schedule for launch by May 2027. [SpaceNews]
Another NASA astrophysics mission is still on schedule for launch next year after resolving a problem with a spacecraft component. The SPHEREx mission ran into problems with its reaction wheels this summer that required removing the wheels from the spacecraft and shipping them to their German manufacturer for rework. Those repairs have been completed and the reaction wheels are back on SPHEREx, with the repairs funded by project reserves. The spacecraft, formally known as Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, is scheduled to launch next April to map the sky at near-infrared wavelengths. [SpaceNews]
Millennium Space Systems has completed work on two spacecraft for a NASA space science mission. The company said it has finished the twin Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) spacecraft, slated for launch next year. The TRACERS spacecraft will study the solar wind's interaction with the Earth's magnetosphere. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | SpaceX performed two Falcon 9 launches from Florida four hours apart on Monday. One Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:22 p.m. Eastern from Kennedy Space Center, placing the Koreasat 6A GEO communications satellite into its planned transfer orbit. At 4:28 p.m. Eastern, another Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, deploying 24 Starlink satellites. The Starlink launch had been delayed a day because of weather at the droneship used for the booster landing. [Florida Today]
Former Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides has won a seat in Congress. Whitesides, a Democrat, defeated incumbent Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) in a district north of Los Angeles, with Garcia formally conceding Monday night even though media outlets like the Associated Press have yet to call the race. Whitesides was CEO of Virgin Galactic for a decade before stepping aside in 2020 for current CEO Michael Colglazier. He was previously chief of staff at NASA early in the Obama administration and executive director of the National Space Society. [AP]
The powerful radar at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico may have contributed to the telescope's collapse. A National Academies committee investigated the 2020 collapse, when cables broke and caused a platform suspended above the 305-meter dish to fall into it. The investigation found that a phenomenon called "zinc creep" weakened the sockets the cables were anchored in, and stress linked to winds from Hurricane Maria in 2017 caused the cables to eventually pull out. Zinc creep has not been seen in similar cable systems, and the committee concluded one contributing factor may have been a radar transmitter installed on the platform for planetary observations, which created electrical currents that could weaken the zinc. [Sky & Telescope]
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft may have visited the planet Uranus at the wrong time. The spacecraft flew by Uranus in January 1986, the only spacecraft to date to approach the planet, and found that the planet's magnetosphere was devoid of plasma, unlike those of Jupiter and Saturn. A new study published Monday found that Voyager 2 flew by Uranus during an intense solar storm that would have stripped the planet's magnetopshere of any plasma. Such conditions are rare, and had the spacecraft arrived just a week earlier would have seen a very different magnetosphere. [Washington Post]
| | | | | | Add That to the ISS Manual
"It's the little things, like sitting in a hard chair. My backside has not really sat on a hard thing for 235 days and, as part of some research activities, I've had to go sit on a bike for a long period of time and it's rather uncomfortable. I did not expect that. It wasn't in a book that I read: 'Hey, you're going to space, it's going to be hard to sit on a hard chair.'"
– NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, describing at a briefing Friday his readaptation after nearly eight months in microgravity on the International Space Station.
| | | | | | What's New With SpaceNews? | | Don't forget to sign up for our next webinar! |  | | Join us November 13 at 11:00 AM EST for a dynamic webinar that brings together key players from across the space industry to explore the growing need for a more collaborative approach to designing the next generation of satellite systems. | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment