Astronomy Prints 🌌: No Vulcan national security launches expected before 2025

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11/22/2024

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The first national security launches by ULA's Vulcan rocket will likely slip into next year. The company had planned to perform two such launches this year after the second of two certification launches, Cert-2, in early October. However, an anomaly with one of two solid rocket boosters on Cert-2 has delayed certification of the rocket, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of the Space Force's Space Systems Command, said Thursday. It is now unlikely that either of the two national security missions that had been scheduled for this year, USSF-106 and USSF-87, will take place before the end of the year. Garrant said ULA was "making significant progress towards certification" but didn't offer an estimate of when that would be completed. He added that the Space Force is delaying awards for "Lane 2" of its NSSL Phase 3 procurement until after a final fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill is passed by Congress. [SpaceNews]

The incoming Trump administration is causing concerns in Europe about the future of space cooperation with the United States. In sessions at the Space Tech Expo Europe conference this week, officials said they were worried that an "America first" approach Trump promoted during the election campaign could weaken transatlantic space cooperation. That could push European governments to increase spending on space to build up sovereign capabilities. Those concerns are particularly strong in Germany, with the country heading towards elections in February and with reports that the government had been considering significant cuts in space spending. [SpaceNews]

Commercial space station developers have mixed opinions about a potential change in NASA's low Earth orbit strategy. NASA said last month that its desire for a continuous human presence in LEO may not necessarily mean a "continuous heartbeat," or people continuously in space, but instead a "continuous capability" to have people work in space for limited durations. At an investment conference this week, Axiom Space chief revenue officer Tejpaul Bhatia advocated to maintain a continuous heartbeat, calling a shift to continuous capability a potential step back in U.S. leadership. However, Vast Space CEO Max Haot said that requiring commercial space stations to be permanently crewed from the beginning will only delay their development. He said commercial stations could be crew-trended initially while operating in parallel with the International Space Station, later moving to be permanently crewed. [SpaceNews]

Maxar Intelligence is targeting early 2025 for the launch of its final pair of WorldView Legion imaging satellites. The company said itis in talks with SpaceX to schedule the launch of the fifth and sixth satellites on a Falcon 9, although the timing remains fluid given SpaceX's packed manifest of customers. The company launched its first four WorldView Legion satellites in May and August, and the final launch would give the company the capability to revisit some locations as many as 15 times a day. [SpaceNews]

Defense technology firm Anduril won a contract worth nearly $100 million to modernize the Space Surveillance Network (SSN). The company said Thursday it received the five-year contract with a maximum value of $99.7 million to develop artificial intelligence capabilities to enhance space domain awareness and threat detection. The company's Lattice software will autonomously process and distribute data from a global network of military space sensors, replacing legacy systems with a more advanced architecture. The contract builds on previous awards, including a $33.5 million series of contracts for SSN upgrades the company received over the past two years. [SpaceNews]

ESA and JAXA have agreed to expand cooperation on a range of space projects. The agencies announced this week the signing of an agreement outlining new cooperation in areas including planetary defense, Earth observation, post-ISS low Earth orbit activities, space science and Mars exploration. That includes a role for JAXA on ESA's RAMSES planetary defense mission to the asteroid Apophis as well as potential collaboration on small lander missions to Mars in the 2030s. [SpaceNews]

Other News

SpaceX launched a set of Starlink satellites Thursday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:07 a.m. Eastern and placed 24 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was the seventh in the last week for SpaceX, including six Falcon 9 launches and the Starship/Super Heavy test flight. [Space.com]

China tested out a small expandable module in orbit during the recent Shijian-19 mission. The Shijian-19 retrievable satellite launched on a Long March 2D rocket from Jiuquan Sept. 27 and landed Oct. 10 after performing a suite of experiments. That included, the China Academy of Space Technology revealed Thursday, deployment of an "inflatable flexible sealed module" by the spacecraft while in orbit. Inflatable modules could play a role in planned expansion of China's Tiangong space station. [SpaceNews]

A Chinese startup is planning flight tests of a spaceplane prototype next year. Space Transportation, or Lingkong Tianxing Technology, said flight tests of the Cuantianhou near-space reusable spaceplane prototype could begin in the second half of 2025. The prototype, about 12 meters long and weighing 4,500 kilograms, will be capable of flying to Mach 4 and altitudes of 20 kilometers. Space Transportation aims to have a passenger craft ready by 2027, a company executive said. [SpaceNews]

The next chairman of the FCC says it is unlikely that the commission will reinstate a Starlink broadband subsidy. Brendan Carr, a current FCC commissioner tapped to chair the FCC by President-elect Trump, said Thursday that while he was critical of the FCC's decision to revoke nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies previously awarded to SpaceX, he did not expect the commission to restore the award. He noted that SpaceX had not appealed or sought reconsideration of that decision. [Reuters]

NASA is preparing to start stacking the Space Launch System rocket that will be used on the Artemis 2 mission. Work started this week to begin assembling the two solid rocket boosters for the SLS, a process that starts a one-year clock on the certification of the rocket, although NASA waived that certification for the Artemis 1 mission after extensive delays. The start of the stacking process implies that NASA has determined what it will do to address heat shield erosion on the Orion spacecraft seen on Artemis 1, and suggests that extensive changes to the Orion heat shield for Artemis 2 that would significantly delay the launch are not necessary. [Ars Technica]

Astronomers have taken the first image of an individual star outside of the Milky Way galaxy. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer combined four telescopes to provide the image of WOH G64, a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud just outside the Milky Way, 160,000 light-years away. The massive star, weighing 1,500 times more than the sun, is surrounded by a halo of gas and dust that may be material ejected from the star. Astronomers said the star is on the verge of a supernova explosion, although it may still be up to 100,000 years from now. [Science News]

It's Never Too Early to Worry

"For the post-ISS area, this is something that is new ground. So, at the moment, I would say it is too early to worry about anything."

– Mark Wagner of ESA, when asked during a panel at Space Tech Expo Europe Thursday if there was anything that worried him about the transition from the ISS to commercial space stations.

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