12/13/2024 | View in Browser | Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, the Artemis Accords reached 50 signatories, JPL concluded its investigation into the Ingenuity Mars helicopter's crash landing, NASA Administrator nominee Isaacman called on industry leaders to outpace China in space, and more. | | |
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By Jeff Foust, Dec. 12, 2024 |
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Panama and Austria signed the Artemis Accords Dec. 11 as the document, outlining principles for responsible space exploration, hit a milestone of 50 signatories.
In separate ceremonies at NASA Headquarters, Panama's and Austria's ambassadors to the United States signed the Accords. The document, which the United States and seven other nations initially signed in 2020, describes best practices that countries commit to following in spaceflight in areas ranging from sharing of scientific data to utilization of space resources.
With the addition of the two countries, 50 nations have now signed the Accords, a milestone celebrated by NASA. "Can you believe it, 50? This is almost a quarter of all of the nations of the world," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in remarks at the signing ceremony for Austria, the 50th signatory of the Accords. "These 50 nations have affirmed that the challenges of our time, including the challenge of exploration, are faced best when we face them together in the spirit of collaboration rather than go it alone." Read More |
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JPL completes investigation of Ingenuity's final flight Leaders of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory briefed the results of what they have dubbed the "first aircraft accident investigation on another world" at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union Dec. 11, explaining that they believe Ingenuity's navigation system was confused by the featureless terrain it was flying over during its 72nd and final flight in January. Read More
Heliophysics decadal survey recommends two flagship missions for NASA A new decadal survey for solar and space physics recommends that NASA's heliophysics program pursue two billion-dollar missions even as the agency proposes to cancel a recommendation from the previous decadal. The National Academies advocated that NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration pursue an ambitious program of ground- and space-based facilities to study the sun and its interaction with the Earth. Read More
ESCAPADE looking at 2025 and 2026 launch options
NASA's Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission was scheduled to launch in October on the first Blue Origin New Glenn flight. The twin spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, would have arrived in orbit around Mars about 11 months later, beginning a mission to study the interaction of the solar wind with the planet's magnetosphere, but will now launch in 2025 or 2026. Read More
Omani space company signs up to China's ILRS moon base project Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration project and head of the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL), signed a memorandum of understanding with Omani company Oman Lens on the China-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) Dec. 2. Read More | | |
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| | Fleet Space raises $100 million to advance mineral exploration on Earth and beyond Teachers' Venture Growth, part of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, led the nine-year-old Australian company's Series D funding round. The latest investment brings Fleet's total venture funding to more than $165 million and values the company at $525 million, more than double its valuation from a Series C round last year. Read More
LeoLabs expands space-monitoring network with radar site in Arizona The radar installation, the company's seventh, features next-generation Ultra High Frequency (UHF) technology designed to track activities in low and very low Earth orbit (LEO), as well as potential future applications in missile and hypersonic glide vehicle detection. Read More
Virgin Galactic signs agreement to study suborbital spaceflights from Italian spaceport
The company announced Dec. 12 that it signed a cooperative agreement with Ente Nazionale per l'Aviazione Civile (ENAC), Italy's civil aviation regulator, to study the feasibility of operating the company's Delta-class suborbital spaceplanes from Grottaglie Airport in southern Italy. Read More
Maxar partners with Satellogic to enhance monitoring for defense agencies Satellite imagery provider Maxar Intelligence has struck a strategic partnership with another Earth observation firm, Satellogic — a move aimed at bolstering geospatial intelligence capabilities for national security agencies. The exclusive agreement announced Dec. 11 allows Maxar to task, collect and distribute imagery from Satellogic's satellite constellation. Read More | | |
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 | Highlights from the 2024 Spacepower Conference |
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| Jared Isaacman on U.S. space competitiveness: 'We can't be second' Speaking at the Spacepower Conference hosted by the Space Force Association, Isaacman — who has been picked by President-elect Donald Trump to lead NASA — did not comment directly on the nomination and spoke broadly about American competitiveness in space, warning against falling behind international rivals, particularly China. Read More
U.S. Space Force unit in Europe navigates critical satellite operations A U.S. Space Force unit based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, serves as a pivotal coordinator of space-based intelligence and protection amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, highlighting the increasingly critical role of commercial and military satellite technologies in modern warfare. The U.S. has dramatically accelerated intelligence sharing, now delivering critical data to users within just 90 minutes, but adversaries are simultaneously working to disrupt communication networks. Read More
L3Harris ramps up satellite production in response to military demand L3Harris, one of the primary contractors for the U.S. military's missile-tracking satellite constellation, has secured orders for 38 satellites from the Space Development Agency Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture program. The company is scaling up satellite manufacturing and is moving to automate the production of infrared sensor payloads, a senior company executive said. Read More |
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| | OPINION |
|  | By David Steitz, Dec. 9, 2024
| While Congress debates incremental changes to our energy policy, China is racing to secure perhaps the most transformative energy technology since nuclear power: the ability to beam limitless solar energy from space to Earth. Unless America acts soon, we may find ourselves buying this game-changing capability from Beijing rather than developing it for ourselves.
This isn't science fiction. At a recent congressional briefing, experts laid out how space-based solar power (SBSP) could revolutionize our energy landscape. The concept is elegantly simple: satellites collect solar power in space and beam it back to Earth using safe microwave transmission, similar to WiFi. Unlike ground-based solar farms, these systems could deliver clean power 24/7, unaffected by weather or nighttime.
While America dithers, China is charging ahead, announcing plans to build a prototype SBSP system by 2030 that would become the largest human-made object in space. This isn't just about energy — it's about demonstrating space capabilities that could revolutionize military operations and industrial development in orbit. Read More
Space data centers will connect us faster and more sustainably than ever before By Stewart Marsh
Trump's second term can achieve the bipartisan goal of resilient satellites
By Brian G. Chow
Mars Next and "All of the Above"
By Rick Tumlinson
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