Plus: Vega rocket's successful return to flight, and Boeing cuts jobs on Florida's Space Coast.
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 12/06/2024 | | | | | NASA has again delayed the next Artemis missions to the moon. At a briefing Thursday, NASA announced that the Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft, was now scheduled for launch in April 2026, a seven-month delay. NASA also delayed Artemis 3, the first crewed landing as part of the Artemis campaign, from September 2026 to mid-2027. The schedule came after the agency completed an investigation into heat shield erosion seen on the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft, concluding that the "skip reentry" technique caused gases to build up inside the heat shield material, leading to cracks and erosion. NASA will modify the reentry approach for Artemis 2 without changing the heat shield, and modify the heat shields for later missions. Agency leaders reaffirmed their support for the current Artemis architecture even as the incoming Trump administration is expected to review and potentially revise it. [SpaceNews]
Muon Space has won a Space Force contract to evaluate its satellite technology for military applications. The company said Thursday it won a $2.9 million contract to study how Muon's instruments can provide high-resolution imagery of cloud cover and weather conditions critical for military and intelligence operations. Muon is currently working with the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance to deploy a constellation of "FireSat" satellites in low Earth orbit to monitor wildfires and related environmental phenomena. The company said it is exploring dual-use applications of those satellites. [SpaceNews]
A Chinese megaconstellation is making progress in space and on the ground. A launch Wednesday night placed a third set of 18 Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, satellites into orbit, following launches in August and October. The satellites were developed by the Shanghai Microsatellite Engineering Center for Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology and are the first generation of Thousand Sails satellites. The company plans to have 600 satellites in orbit by the end of 2025 for a constellation that will ultimatelyr each 14,000 spacecraft. It recently reached a deal to provide services in Brazil starting in 2026. [SpaceNews]
Boeing is laying off dozens of employees on Florida's Space Coast. The company is laying off 141 people across Florida, including 47 in locations on the Space Coast such as the Kennedy Space Center. The company has not disclosed which specific positions are affected. Boeing said the layoffs are intended to help the company "align with our financial reality and a more focused set of priorities." [Florida Today]
A Ukrainian-American group is asking the FCC to halt expansion of SpaceX's Starlink constellation because of Elon Musk's alleged contacts with Russia. In a petition filed with the FCC this week, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America objected to SpaceX's proposal to add nearly 22,500 satellites to its next-generation Starlink constellation. It cited reports that Musk had regular conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that Russian forces have been using Starlink during their invasion of Ukraine. The group also said Musk's role as co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency committee also raises potential regulatory conflicts of interest. [CNBC]
| | | | | Europe's Vega C rocket successfully returned to flight Thursday, nearly two years after a launch failure. The Vega C lifted off from French Guiana at 4:20 p.m. Eastern and deployed the Sentinel-1C Earth observation satellite about an hour and 45 minutes later. The launch was the first for the Vega C since a December 2022 failure blamed on the nozzle of the second-stage solid-fuel motor. That motor was redesigned and tested on the ground twice before this launch. The launch helps bring to an end the "launcher crisis" in Europe that had forced ESA and the European Commission to go overseas to launch science and navigation satellites. Sentinel-1C, a radar mapping satellite that is part of the Copernicus program, replaces the Sentinel-1B satellite that failed nearly three years ago. [SpaceNews]
A Falcon 9 launched a spacecraft for satellite radio company SiriusXM Thursday. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:10 a.m. Eastern and placed the SXM-9 spacecraft into a geostationary transfer orbit. The Maxar-built satellite features a nine-meter deployable antenna for broadcasting digital radio services. [Spaceflight Now]
Iran launched what it claims is its heaviest payload yet. A Simorgh rocket launched Friday from the Imam Khomeini Spaceport east of Tehran, although government officials did not report a specific launch time. The rocket placed into low Earth orbit what officials called the Saman-1 "Orbital Transfer Block," a tug with a propulsion system for taking payloads to higher orbits, along with a cubesat and an unspecified research payload. The combined mass of the payloads, 300 kilograms, is the most an Iranian launch has placed into orbit. [Reuters]
A cargo Dragon spacecraft will spend some more time in orbit. The Dragon spacecraft for the CRS-31 resupply mission to the International Space Station was scheduled to undock and return to Earth this week, but NASA announced Thursday that Dragon will remain at the ISS until at least Dec. 12, citing unfavorable weather conditions at splashdown locations off the Florida coast. Dragon will return to Earth science experiments and other ISS hardware. [NASA]
ESA and the Indian space agency ISRO will cooperate on India's Gaganyaan human spaceflight program. The agencies announced Thursday the signing of an agreement under which ESA will provide communications services through its ground stations for Gaganyaan missions. India is expected to launch uncrewed test flights of the Gaganyaan spacecraft in 2025, although the first crewed mission, originally scheduled for 2022, is now expected no earlier than late 2026. [India Today]
| | | | | | Bring on the To-Do List
"You're going to ask an astronaut to do more on their mission? Bring it on. That's what we live for."
– Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis 2 mission, discussing at a briefing Thursday the possibility of adding more tasks to his mission to compensate for delays. | | | | | | What's New With SpaceNews? |  | | Check out the replay of our latest webinar, where SpaceNews Host David Ariosto chats with leading government, academic and commercial experts to explore how space technology is transforming the way we predict and address severe weather challenges. | | | | |
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