Astronomy Prints 🌌: The good and the bad from Starship’s flight

A SpaceNews daily newsletter

01/17/2025

Top Stories

A SpaceX Starship vehicle broke apart on its latest test flight Thursday, dealing a setback to the company. The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase facility at Boca Chica, Texas, at 5:37 p.m. Eastern on the seventh test flight of the system. The Super Heavy booster was able to return to the launch site for a "catch" by the launch tower, repeating a feat first accomplished on a flight in October. However, SpaceX lost contact with the Starship upper stage nearly eight and a half minutes after liftoff, after telemetry showed that several of its Raptor engines had shut down. SpaceX later confirmed the vehicle was lost, and videos on social media showed debris from the vehicle falling through the skies above the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Dozens of airline flights in the region had to be rerouted to avoid the debris, which did not cause damage. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said a propellant leak likely triggered a fire in the vehicle. [SpaceNews]

The head of the Space Force's Space Development Agency (SDA) has been placed on administrative leave. The Department of the Air Force has removed Derek Tournear from his position as director of SDA Thursday pending the results of an investigation, but the department did not elaborate on the nature of the investigation. Sources claimed the investigation into Tournear may be linked to complaints from contractors about SDA's unconventional procurement methods and alleged improper sharing of proprietary information. Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of the Space Force's Space Systems Command, will step in as acting director of the SDA during the investigation. [SpaceNews]

The incoming Trump administration will nominate an NRO official to be Secretary of the Air Force. Trump has selected Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the NRO, to be the next Secretary of the Air Force, pending Senate confirmation. Meink is a senior intelligence official with extensive space and defense experience, and his selection indicates a strong emphasis on space capabilities for the incoming administration. Meink has championed the agency's shift toward a more distributed satellite architecture, a strategy aimed at making space-based intelligence capabilities more resilient to potential threats. SpaceX's Elon Musk reportedly advocated for Meink. [SpaceNews]

Sierra Space has passed an early review of an alternative navigation satellite design. The company said Thursday the satellite it is designing for the Resilient Global Positioning System (R-GPS) program passed a system requirements review. Sierra Space is one of four companies selected for the R-GPS program to bolster the existing GPS satellite constellation with a fleet of smaller and more affordable satellites. The other three companies are Astranis, Axient and L3Harris. The Space Force plans to select up to two companies in 2026 to produce eight satellites, scheduled for launch by 2028. [SpaceNews]

Government officials expect the incoming Trump administration to preserve space weather programs. Efforts to better understand the sun, produce timely warnings of heightened geomagnetic activity and mitigate their terrestrial impact have been reinforced by the last several administrations. Officials at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting this week said they expect that trend to continue in the next Trump administration. Space weather experts do anticipate some changes, including a shift of national space weather activities toward providing timely alerts and warnings to the Defense Department and increasing the resilience of military systems. [SpaceNews]

Voyager Space is changing its name to better reflect a focus on national security and defense markets. The company announced Thursday it has renamed itself Voyager Technologies and is restructuring its operations into three business segments: Defense and National Security, Space Solutions, and Starlab Space Stations. The changes, company executives said, are intended to highlight its work on national security capabilities, including missile propulsion, advanced navigation, and sensing solutions. [SpaceNews]

Other News

China launched a Pakistani remote sensing satellite Thursday night. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 11:07 p.m. Eastern from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It placed into orbit PRSC-EO1, the first of a series of three optical remote sensing satellites for Pakistan. These satellites will provide data for the fields of land mapping, agriculture classification and assessment, urban and rural planning, environmental monitoring, natural disaster monitoring and management, surveying, natural resources protection and others uses, according to Pakistan's space agency, SUPARCO. [SpaceNews]

German company Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has received a license from British regulators for its first launch. The Civil Aviation Authority announced Thursday it issued a launch license for the RFA ONE rocket, launching from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. The license allows RFA to conduct up to 10 launches a year. RFA says it is working towards a first test flight of RFA ONE later this year after suffering a setback last August when the first stage of the rocket was destroyed during a static-fire test. The license is the first for a vertical launch from the U.K. [SpaceNews]

Xplore has launched the first satellite of a planned 12-spacecraft constellation. The company's XCUBE-1 6U cubesat was among the payloads on the Transporter-12 rideshare mission Tuesday. Xplore says the spacecraft will supply data for space domain awareness, precision agriculture, forestry management, astronomy and other applications. The company is working on a constellation with a focus on collecting hyperspectral data. [SpaceNews]

Two NASA astronauts conducted repairs outside the International Space Station Thursday. Astronauts Nick Hague and Suni Williams spent six hours outside the station on a spacewalk, repairing an astrophysics instrument called NICER and replacing a rate gyro assembly used to control the station's attitude. They also replaced a reflector that is part of a docking system used for visiting vehicles and inspected the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer instrument ahead of future repairs of it. The spacewalk was the first in more than a year by NASA astronauts after suit problems postponed spacewalks planned for mid-2024. [Space.com]

The departing head of space acquisition at the Pentagon says his biggest regret is not getting a long-delayed GPS ground system completed. Frank Calvelli, outgoing assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, said he had hoped to get the Operational Control System (OCX) program completed in 2024, but the long-delayed effort has slipped into late 2025. OCX is needed to take full advantage of new capabilities on GPS 3 satellites. [Breaking Defense]

South Korea's space agency held talks with ESA about cooperation on various programs. A meeting this week between ESA and Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) officials discussed potential partnerships in Earth and space science as well as navigation and space weather. That could include cooperation on ESA's planned Vigil mission to study the sun from the Earth-sun L-5 Lagrange point and a proposed KASA mission to carry out similar studies from the Earth-sun L-4 point. [Chosun Ilbo]

Astro Dashcam

"Rubin Observatory will be our dashcam for the sky."

– Yusra AlSayyad of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, discussing at a briefing at the 245th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society Thursday how the observatory will be able to monitor the night sky for rare and unusual events.

What's New With SpaceNews?

Register now for updates and new episodes of our upcoming podcast, Space Minds, every Thursday starting Jan. 23. Join David Ariosto, Mike Gruss and journalists from the SpaceNews team for new episodes every Thursday on SpaceNews.com, YouTube and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.