Plus: New contract awards from the Texas Space Commission
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 02/11/2025 | | | | | MDA Space confirmed Monday it is building a new generation of Apple-funded satellites for Globalstar. The Canadian company said it was building more than 50 satellites, based on its new reprogrammable Aurora platform, under a contract valued at 1.1 billion Canadian dollars ($768 million). Few details were provided about the latest contract, first teased in 2023 after MDA Space disclosed it had received initial funding from an unnamed customer to kick off the project. MDA previously won a contract to refresh Globalstar's existing constellation, which Apple uses to provide emergency SOS services for iPhones. [SpaceNews]
BlackSky will start launching a new series of Earth imaging satellites this month. The first Gen-3 satellite is scheduled to launch as soon as Feb. 18 on a Rocket Lab Electron from New Zealand, BlackSky announced Monday. The satellite will provide high-resolution 35-centimeter imagery, an improvement that aligns with demands from U.S. and international government customers. The Gen-3 satellites will have capabilities that include short-wave infrared sensors that can penetrate smoke and haze, as well as the ability to conduct multiple observations of the same location within a day. They also will use laser intersatellite links. [SpaceNews]
Airbus Defence and Space will build a pair of radar imaging satellites for the U.K. military. Airbus won a contract worth 127 million pounds ($157 million) to build the two SAR satellites for the Oberon program for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence. The satellites are part of a broader initiative called ISTARI to develop a U.K. military satellite reconnaissance constellation. The first satellite of that constellation, an optical imaging satellite named Tyche, launched in August. The Oberon satellites are projected to launch in 2027. [SpaceNews]
A Texas state agency awarded $47.7 million in grants to five space companies Monday. The Texas Space Commission selected Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, SpaceX and Starlab Space for awards ranging from $7 million to $15 million each for construction and development projects in the state. The grants are part of a $150 million Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund program funded by the state government. The commission did not disclose how it selected these five companies for grants, but previously stated it had received 284 applications worth a combined $3.46 billion for the program. [SpaceNews]
DARPA selected two projects for the next phase of an in-space manufacturing program. The agency said it will fund flight projects for its Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program led by Caltech and the University of Illinois. Caltech will demonstrate in-space assembly of a truss on a Momentus spacecraft while the University of Illinois will test innovative materials and manufacturing processes on the Bishop airlock module of the International Space Station. [SpaceNews]
NASA picked SpaceX to launch an astrophysics smallsat mission as a rideshare payload. NASA said Monday it awarded a task order to SpaceX for the launch of the Pandora spacecraft. The smallsat will operate in low Earth orbit, observing 20 stars known to have exoplanets over one year to determine if spectral signatures from them are linked to the presence of hydrogen and water in the planets' atmospheres or are instead artifacts of the variability of the stars. NASA did not disclose details about when or how Pandora will launch, but the project's leaders previously said they were planning to launch as a rideshare as soon as September. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | The first Long March 8A launched early Tuesday carrying a set of broadband satellites. The Long March 8A lifted off at 4:30 a.m. Eastern from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center and placed into orbit an unspecified number of satellites for the Guowang (SatNet) broadband megaconstellation. The Long March 8A is an upgraded variant of the standard Long March 8 with a redesigned second stage. The rocket can carry around 7,000 kilograms to a 700-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites Monday night. A Falcon 9 lifted off at 9:09 p.m. Eastern from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and deployed the Starlink satellites into orbit. The twilight launch created a plume backlit by the sun that was visible as far away as Arizona and Utah. [Space.com]
NASA is expanding testing of distributed autonomy for its first satellite swarm, Starling. The four cubesats tested autonomous operations in Earth orbit during an initial phase of the mission, launched in 2023, including sharing information with each other. New instructions sent to the satellites last week will focus on increasing their scientific value. Project officials say the technology could benefit future science missions, in which one satellite detects something and informs others to take followup observations without input from ground controllers. [SpaceNews]
NASA is rolling out an upgrade to flight software systems used across the agency. A government-only version of NASA core Flight System (cFS) with enhanced security, artificial intelligence, robotics support and autonomy features will be released in mid-2025 for space agency programs. An update to the open-source version of cFS, widely used by missions worldwide, will be available soon after the government version is released. [SpaceNews]
NASA astronaut Suni Williams pushed back against claims that she and Butch Wilmore have been "abandoned" on the ISS. In an interview, Williams said comments last month by President Trump that the two had been "virtually abandoned" on the ISS were not accurate, as they were "part of the team" on the ISS busy with research and other activities. The two astronauts arrived on the ISS in June for what was intended to be a stay of as little as eight days, but problems with their Starliner spacecraft forced it to return home uncrewed. Williams and Wilmore will come back on the Crew-9 Crew Dragon spacecraft as early as late March. [CBS]
A European spacecraft has discovered a phenomenon known as an Einstein ring. The discovery by the Euclid space telescope, announced Monday, shows a distant galaxy whose light has been warped by gravitational lensing from a closer galaxy in the line of sight, creating a ring. The distant galaxy bent into a ring is 4.4 billion light-years away, astronomers said, while the nearby galaxy whose gravity created the ring is 590 million light-years away. [Science]
| | | | | | | | | "I know of an Earth observation constellation today flying on Windows 95. This is not a joke. Our governments have technologies on the ground from the '70s, from the '80s, from the '90s. I've seen floppy disks in satellite control centers recently."
– Alvaro Alonso Ruiz, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Leanspace, contrasting interest in AI technologies in the space industry with antiquated ground systems during a panel at the Smallsat Symposium last week.
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