Plus: Two Indian satellite docked and record government spending in 2023
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 01/16/2025 | | | | | Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its inaugural launch early Thursday, but the booster didn't stick the landing. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:03 a.m. Eastern. The first and second stages worked as planned during the rocket's ascent to orbit, with the upper stage performing a second burn to enter an elliptical medium Earth orbit. The booster, though, failed to make a landing on a ship in the Atlantic. The company didn't disclose details of what went wrong on its descent. Blue Origin has been working on New Glenn for more than a decade and the vehicle's first flight was delayed by several years. A second New Glenn launch could take place in the spring, CEO Dave Limp said in a post-launch statement. [SpaceNews]
Stoke Space has raised $260 million to continue development of its own reusable launch vehicle. The company announced the Series C round Wednesday involving a range of new and returning investors. The company is working on Nova, a medium-class rocket whose first and second stages are designed to be reused. The company said the funding will allow it to complete development of Nova and its launch site at Cape Canaveral, but the company has not disclosed a schedule for its first launch. [SpaceNews]
Two Indian satellites docked in orbit overnight. The twin satellites of the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) mission docked late Wednesday night, the Indian space agency ISRO announced. The docking had been scheduled for last week but delayed by technical issues, and ISRO officials had recently suggested they might wait until March to make another docking attempt. SpaDeX is designed to demonstrate docking technologies needed for India's human spaceflight program and upcoming Chandrayaan-4 lunar south pole sampling mission, expected to launch around 2027 or 2028. [SpaceNews]
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) selected 13 companies for a $200 million contract for commercial satellite imagery and analysis. Under the Luno B contract, the selected companies will compete for individual task orders for commercial satellite imagery analysis and insights over the next five years. The contract follows a $290 million Luno A procurement announced in September and represents the intelligence community's growing embrace of commercial space technology. Ten of the 13 companies selected for Luno B are also part of Luno A. [SpaceNews]
Global government space spending hit a record $135 billion in 2024 according to a new report. The assessment by Novaspace, published Wednesday, found that government space budgets grew 10% from 2023, driven largely by defense-related investments that reached $73 billion. While the United States remains the dominant player with 59% of global government space spending, other countries like China are increasing their spending. [SpaceNews]
The former head of space policy at the Defense Department has joined satellite manufacturer startup K2 Space. The company announced Wednesday it hired John Plumb, who served as the first assistant secretary of defense for space policy from 2022 to 2024, as its new head of strategy. K2 Space is developing large satellite buses and seeks to make inroads into the defense market, winning a U.S. Space Force contract last year to demonstrate its capabilities in medium Earth orbit. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | Potential budget cuts to the Hubble Space Telescope could impact its science and increase the risk of problems. At an American Astronomical Society conference this week, officials with the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble, outlined how they are addressing cuts of potentially more than 20% in Hubble operations in the next few years as part of a NASA senior review of astrophysics missions. That could result in reduced support for some Hubble instruments, sharp reductions in grant funding and "increased mission risk" as staff running the telescope is cut. The institute has already reduced spending on grants and public outreach to accommodate planned reductions in 2025. [SpaceNews]
Emirati operator Space42 launched its second synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellite on a rideshare mission. The company said its Foresight-2 satellite, built by Finnish company Iceye, was operating well after launch on the Transporer-12 rideshare mission Tuesday. Space42, created last year by the merger of satellite operator Yahsat and geospatial artificial intelligence provider Bayanat, has a deal with Iceye for at least five SAR satellites, the first of which was launched last year. [SpaceNews]
Slingshot Aerospace won a Space Force contract to detect interference with GPS signals. The Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research contract, awarded through the Space Force's SpaceWERX innovation arm, will focus on the use of artificial intelligence tools to identify potential threats to GPS signals. Slingshot is adapting an AI model called Agatha, developed to identify unusual behavior in satellite constellations, to distinguish between accidental interference and deliberate jamming or spoofing attempts. [SpaceNews]
The Indian government has approved plans to build a third launch pad at the country's main spaceport. The government said it will allocate nearly 40 billion rupees ($460 million) to build a third launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The new pad would support the existing LVM3 rocket as well as the planned Next Generation Launch Vehicle. The pad will take about four years to complete. [Business Standard]
ESA's Gaia spacecraft is ending its science mission. Gaia, launched in late 2013, has measured the positions of about two billion stars and other objects in the Milky Way galaxy to unprecedented precision. The nitrogen gas the spacecraft uses for stationkeeping is running out, so science observations are ending this week and the spacecraft will be retired and moved out of the Earth-Sun L-2 Lagrange point in March after final technical tests. Data collected by Gaia continues to be analyzed, with two major releases of Gaia data planned in the next several years. [Sky & Telescope]
Outgoing NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy is the winner of the 2025 National Space Trophy. The Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation announced this week it is giving the award to Melroy, to be awarded at an event in Houston in April. Melroy is departing NASA after three and a half years as deputy administrator. She previously was a NASA astronaut who flew on three shuttle missions, and is just one of two women to command a shuttle mission. [NASA]
| | | | | | | | | "Trump 2.0 is coming in with the shock and awe that we're hearing about, and the question is always how much shock in ratio to the actual awe."
– Courtney Stadd, Executive Vice President of the Beyond Earth Institute, discussing potential changes to NASA by the incoming Trump administration during a SpaceNews webinar Wednesday.
| | | | What's New With SpaceNews? |  | | Check out the replay of our latest webinar, where SpaceNews Host David Ariosto and a panel of experts discussed the coming Trump administration and its impacts on space policy, commercialization and competitiveness. | | | | | | |
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