Plus: The Space Force's big budget for commercial satellite services
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 01/23/2025 | | | | | The U.S. Space Force expects to offer $2.3 billion in contracting opportunities for commercial satellite services in the coming year. The procurement forecast from the Commercial Satellite Communications Office outlines major initiatives for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. It includes a program worth about $900 million focused on maneuverable satellites in geostationary orbit, including both satellite services and custom-built small GEO satellites. Another major program is the Army's Satcom as a Managed Service program, worth about $200 million. [SpaceNews]
Rocket Lab announced a contract Wednesday to launch a set of wildfire detection satellites. The company said it would launch eight smallsats for German company OroraTech in the next few weeks on an Electron rocket from New Zealand. OroraTech has three satellites in orbit now and plans to launch two sets of eight this year to improve its ability to provide early detections of fires to aid first responders. Rocket Lab argued the contract demonstrates the advantages of dedicated small launch as such rockets face price competition from rideshare services. [SpaceNews]
NASA is shutting down its diversity programs to comply with an executive order. That order, issued by President Donald Trump hours after taking office Monday, directs federal agencies to shut down programs related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) and lay off staff working on them. In a memo to employees Wednesday, NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said the agency was shutting down those offices, with the websites for them going offline by the end of the day Wednesday. The memo told employees to report any changes to DEIA programs since the November election in an attempt to "disguise" them and warned of unspecified "adverse consequences" if employees failed to do so. The memo sent by Petro was identical to a version provided by the Office of Personnel Management to agencies. Petro, in a 2021 interview, said diversity efforts were important to NASA and to her personally. [SpaceNews]
China launched another batch of megaconstellation satellites Thursday. A Long March 6A lifted off at 12:11 a.m. Eastern from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center and placed into orbit 18 satellites for the Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, constellation. There are now 72 satellites in orbit for a constellation intended to ultimately reach 14,000 satellites. This was the tenth launch of a Long March 6A since its introduction in 2022, and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said it is planning to conduct more than 10 launches of the rocket this year. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | Eutelsat shares fell this week after a rating downgrade linked to OneWeb. Moody's downgraded Eutelsat from B2 to Ba3, citing limited revenue contributions from the OneWeb constellation. It added concerns about the "prospect of significant refinancing" for the company at a time when borrowing costs are high. Eutelsat shares fell after the ratings announcement Tuesday, causing shares to return to historic lows. [MarketScreener]
Thales Alenia Space signed a contract to build a NASA Earth science mission. The contract between Thales and the Italian space agency ASI, announced Wednesday, covers development of the Surface Biology and Geology - Thermal Infrared (SBG-TIR) mission. ASI and NASA previously agreed to cooperate on the SBG-TIR mission, with NASA providing one instrument and ASI another. Thales will build the spacecraft, based on its PRIMA-S bus, and integrate payloads into it. [Thales Alenia Space]
A comet that passed very close to the sun appears to have broken up. Images of Comet ATLAS taken shortly after it passed closer to the sun show the head of the comet becoming more diffuse, indicating that its icy nucleus had broken up. The comet remains visible in southern hemisphere twilight skies, as its tail contains dust ejected before the nucleus broke up. The comet came within 13 million kilometers of the sun earlier this month. [Sky& Telescope]
A tiny asteroid that became a temporary moon of the Earth last year is, in fact, a piece of the moon. The asteroid, 2024 PT5, is 10 meters across and was discovered last year in an orbit that kept it in the vicinity of the Earth for several months. Spectra of the asteroid showed that it did not match any known asteroid types but instead more closely resembled the moon, with silicate minerals seen in lunar rocks but not on asteroids. That composition, as well as its orbit, led scientists to conclude the asteroid is a piece of the moon ejected in an impact, likely in the last few thousand years. [NASA/JPL]
| | | | | | Rearview Mirror Cosmology
| | | | "When people measure nearby objects, they are just closer than the standard model would predict. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear."
– Daniel Scolnic, an astronomer at Duke University, on a new study revising distance scales in the universe. [Sky&Telescope]
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