Plus: Musk reportedly lobbying for SpaceX executives to take Pentagon roles
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | | | | Viasat is in negotiations with Telesat to purchase capacity on Telesat's future Lightspeed constellation. Viasat disclosed the talks in an earnings call this week after previously announcing a deal to use capacity from Eutelsat's OneWeb LEO constellation to provide low-latency broadband through its NexusWave multi-orbit service for the maritime market. Viasat faces mounting competition from SpaceX's Starlink network throughout its satellite communications business. In the call, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg said the company is searching for financial and capital structure alternatives to help realize the value of assets that he argued are underappreciated on the stock market. [SpaceNews]
BlackSky has taken full ownership of the LeoStella satellite manufacturing joint venture. BlackSky announced in an earnings call Thursday that it acquired the 50% of LeoStella it did not already own from Thales Alenia Space. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal. BlackSky and Thales Alenia created LeoStella in 2018 to build satellites for both BlackSky and other customers. BlackSky, though, has remained the largest customer for LeoStella's smallsats, and BlackSky said taking full ownership of LeoStella will give it greater control over the production of its new Gen-3 imaging satellites. The first Gen-3 satellite is in final testing ahead of a launch on an Electron rocket, but BlackSky did not disclose a specific launch date for the spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
Government officials said space export control reforms will proceed through the upcoming presidential transition. At a public meeting this week to discuss export control rule changes announced last month, officials said that there is bipartisan support for the changes to improve the competitiveness of U.S. companies, and thus they don't believe there will be any significant changes to them. The Commerce and State Departments are currently soliciting comments on proposed rules to move some space technologies from the U.S. Munitions List to the less restrictive Commerce Control list, a process that will continue until Nov. 22. [SpaceNews]
NASA defended the selection of two proposals for an astrophysics mission for further study despite concerns from the scientific community the two are not on an equal footing. NASA announced last month it awarded study contracts with $5 million each to teams that proposed an X-ray observatory called AXIS and far-infrared telescope called PRIMA, allowing them to refine their designs ahead of a NASA decision in 2026 to select one of them for development as the first probe-class mission, with a projected cost of $1 billion. At a meeting Thursday of the Astrophysics Advisory Committee, NASA defended the selection of the two concepts amid questions from the committee and broader astrophysics community about whether those missions were the highest ranked ones in the evaluation process, with specific concerns about the technical maturity of AXIS. Mark Clampin, director of NASA's astrophysics division, said AXIS and PRIMA "were the best science investigations, so that's why they were picked." [SpaceNews]
Elon Musk is lobbying the incoming Trump administration to hire SpaceX executives at the Defense Department. Even before this week's election, Musk asked Trump to consider two SpaceX executives for unspecified positions at the Pentagon. The Trump transition team and SpaceX did not comment on the claims. Musk's support for Trump in the campaign is widely expected to translate into benefits for SpaceX and Musk's other companies. [New York Times]
| | | | | SpaceX launched a set of Starlink satellites Thursday after several days of delays. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 3:19 p.m. Eastern and deployed 23 Starlink satellites. A problem with ground equipment supplying helium to the rocket's first stage scrubbed a launch attempt Sunday and the company postponed a launch attempt Wednesday. [Spaceflight Now]
Sierra Space is targeting no earlier than next May for the first flight of its Dream Chaser spaceplane. The vehicle was scheduled to launch this year on the second flight of ULA's Vulcan Centaur, but delays in development and testing of the first Dream Chaser vehicle, Tenacity, meant it would not be ready in time for a launch by this fall as required by ULA. Sierra Space is working on a second Dream Chaser, Reverence, which the company estimated will be ready 18 months after the team supporting Tenacity testing at the Kennedy Space Center returns to the company's Colorado factory. [SpaceNews]
Commercial space station developer Vast Space has signed an agreement with the government of the Czech Republic. The memorandum of understanding, announced Friday, will allow Vast to work with the Czech Ministry of Transport on potential partnerships that could involve flying a Czech astronaut on either a Vast-led private astronaut mission to the International Space Station or to Vast's Haven-1 commercial station. The agreement also covers support for the emerging Czech space industry. [SpaceNews]
Intuitive Machines showed off a prototype of the lunar rover it is offering to NASA. The company unveiled the Moon RACER rover Thursday in Houston, driving it in the parking lot of Space Center Houston. Moon RACER, or Reusable Autonomous Crewed Exploration Rover, is one of three rover concepts being supported by NASA in the first phase of its Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services program to develop a lunar rover for use on future Artemis missions. NASA will use the rover on a services basis, and the company that provides the rover will be able to use it for other customers when not needed by NASA. The Moon RACER team, led by Intuitive Machines, includes several aerospace and automotive companies, from Boeing and Northrop Grumman to Michelin and Roush. [collectSPACE]
No, NASA astronaut Suni Williams is not sick on the International Space Station. NASA issued a statement Thursday announcing that Williams, on the station since June, is in "good health" and that the agency was not "tracking any concerns" with her health or those of other astronauts on the station. Several tabloids in recent days claimed that Williams appeared ill, based on a single doctor's assessment of one image of Williams where the doctor claimed she looked "gaunt"; those claims were later amplified by Indian media. [Space.com]
| | | | | | Space Tuba
"You can also see it's a very, certainly to my eyes, strange-looking spacecraft. It kind of looks a bit like a tuba."
– Mark Clampin, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters, describing the SPHEREx spacecraft being assembled for launch next year during a meeting of the Astrophysics Advisory Committee Thursday. The spacecraft features a set of cones to protect its infrared instruments.
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