Plus: Developing more career paths to space and the latest inductees to the Astronaut HOF
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 01/31/2025 | | | | | NASA and Boeing are making progress into resolving issues on Starliner's flawed test flight last year, but have yet to fix problems with its thrusters. NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel stated at a meeting Thursday that NASA and Boeing teams had made "significant progress" on closing out anomalies that took place during the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission last summer. Starliner launched two astronauts to the International Space Station on CFT in June, but returned three months later uncrewed because of NASA concerns about the performance of its thrusters. The panel said that NASA and Boeing have yet to find the root cause of the thruster problems and did not offer a schedule for doing so. NASA and Boeing have said little about Starliner since the spacecraft's return in September and have not scheduled the vehicle's next flight to the station. [SpaceNews]
Local Chinese governments are playing a major role in the development of the country's space industry. Across the country, local governments are rolling out policies to cultivate commercial space industries and attempting to position their regions as key players in the burgeoning space sector. New initiatives include tax incentives, subsidies, industrial clusters and commercial spaceports. This approach allows provinces to experiment with commercial space initiatives as part of decentralized efforts for economic growth. [SpaceNews]
The space industry needs to develop standardized career paths to ensure future growth. During a panel at the SpaceCom conference this week, industry officials said the space industry can be a "scary place" for people moving into it from other industries because there is often no clear roadmap for career progression. A lack of structured workforce pathways could make it difficult for the industry to attract workers, along with salaries that don't keep pace with the high cost of living in the regions of the country with concentrations of space companies. [SpaceNews]
Spanish company Added Value Solutions (AVS) has won an ESA study contract for a science mission. AVS said Thursday that it was one of two companies that received contracts from ESA to perform Phase A and B work on an astrophysics mission called ARRAKIHS scheduled to launch into Earth orbit in 2030. ESA will later select which company to build the spacecraft. AVS, a company best known for work in scientific instrumentation, is moving into the space sector, launching its first smallsat last year. The company wants to focus on "high performance" smallsat missions rather than mass manufacturing of standardized spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | Two astronauts completed a spacewalk outside the ISS Thursday. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spent about five and a half hours outside the station on the spacewalk, retrieving a malfunctioning antenna that two previous spacewalks had been unable to detach from the station's exterior. The astronauts also swabbed sections of the station to see if any microbial life can survive there. This was the fifth spacewalk for Wilmore and ninth for Williams, who has spent more than 62 hours in space on those spacewalks. She broke the record for cumulative spacewalking time by a female astronaut, a mark that had been held by Peggy Whitson. [CBS]
Russia says the Trump administration's plans for an "Iron Dome for America" missile defense system is a ploy to weaponize space. A spokesperson for Russia's Foreign Ministry said Friday that the proposal, announced earlier this week, was proof of American interest "on turning space into an arena of armed confrontation." That plan, the ministry said, could prevent talks between the United States and Russia on nuclear arms control. [Reuters]
Commercial space station developer Vast is working with SpaceX to solicit proposals for research related to human habitation in space. The companies said they are interested in research that could be performed on private astronaut missions to the ISS on on Vast's Haven-1 station in development. The companies are looking for "high-impact research projects to support humanity on Earth and advance our capacity to live and work in Earth orbit and beyond." Vast and SpaceX said they would not directly fund any research projects they select but will offer payload accommodations and crew time to conduct the research. [Vast]
Former NASA astronauts Bernard Harris and Peggy Whitson are the latest inductees to the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Harris flew on two shuttle missions in the 1990s, one to the Russian space station Mir, and is the first Black astronaut to perform a spacewalk. Whitson flew on three long-duration missions to the ISS for NASA and holds the U.S. record for cumulative time in space at 675 days. After leaving NASA, she commanded the Ax-2 private astronaut mission to the station for Axiom Space and is preparing for the Ax-4 mission, which could overlap with the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in late May. [collectSPACE]
| | | | | | | | | "I live very close to the [Redstone] Arsenal and there's nothing better than having your windows rattle every other evening, almost it seems, about dinnertime. I hope they sell windows on Amazon because I may need some."
– Joseph Pelfrey, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, discussing engine tests by Blue Origin at the center during a panel at the SpaceCom conference Thursday.
| | | | What's New With SpaceNews? |  | | Check out the latest episode of our new podcast, Space Minds. Join David Ariosto, Mike Gruss and journalists from the SpaceNews team for compelling interviews with scientists, founders and experts who love to talk about space, and their takes on the week's biggest news.
New episodes come out every Thursday on SpaceNews.com, YouTube and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
| | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment