Plus: Shrinking the board of SES and a new rocket could launch Thursday
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| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 03/18/2025 | | | | | A Crew Dragon spacecraft is on its way back to Earth with four people on board, including two who have been in space since last June. The Crew-9 Crew Dragon spacecraft undocked from the station at 1:05 a.m. Eastern today, with the spacecraft scheduled to splash down off Florida's Gulf coast at 5:57 p.m. Eastern today. The spacecraft is returning NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who launched to the station last September on the same spacecraft, as well as NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who arrived on the station last June on a CST-100 Starliner test flight. [NASA]
SES is shrinking its board of directors in an effort to appease an activist shareholder. The company said Monday it will reduce its board from 11 to 9 members while proposing to add to the board Ellen Lord, former undersecretary of defense for acquisition, and retired Space Force general John Shaw. Appaloosa, a hedge fund which owns 7% of SES, had called for an overhaul of SES's share capital and board structure. Appaloosa said it welcomed the changes but called on SES to make additional steps, such as returning cash to shareholders. Appaloosa also sought to reduce the control the government of Luxembourg has on SES, but the company said the government's special Class B shares cannot be taken away by a vote of other shareholders. [SpaceNews]
Firefly Aerospace said its Blue Ghost 1 lander has completed a successful mission on the surface of the moon. The lander made its final transmission to controllers Sunday evening, more than two weeks after landing. Firefly said the lander met 100% of its objectives, with its 10 NASA payloads returning lunar science and technology development data. Blue Ghost 1 also returned stunning images of an eclipse as the Earth passed in front of the sun on Friday. [SpaceNews]
Isar Aerospace is preparing for a first launch of its Spectrum rocket as soon as Thursday. The company said Monday it received a launch license from Norwegian regulators for the inaugural Spectrum mission, scheduled to launch between March 20 and March 31 from Andรธya Spaceport in northern Norway. The test flight of the rocket carries no customer payloads, and Isar said it will use the launch to test "each and every component and system" of the rocket. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | Chinese commercial launch company Galactic Energy successfully sent eight satellites into orbit early Monday. The company's Ceres-1 rocket lifted off at 4:07 a.m. Eastern from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, placing its payloads into sun-synchronous orbits. The payloads consisted of six Yunyao-1 (55-60) satellites, each equipped with GNSS occultation payloads to collect weather data, along with the AIRSAT (Zhongke) 06 and 07 satellites, equipped with multispectral imager payloads. Galactic Energy has launched 18 of the solid-fuel Ceres-1 rockets, all but one of which have been successful. [SpaceNews]
Rocket Lab completed the deployment of a constellation for French company Kinรฉis with a launch Monday night. An Electron rocket lifted off from the company's New Zealand launch site at 9:31 p.m. Eastern, deploying five satellites into sun-synchronous orbits a little more than an hour later. The launch was the fifth and final mission under a 2021 contract between Rocket Lab and Kinรฉis to deploy a constellation of 25 satellites for Internet-of-Things and Automatic Identification System tracking. Kinรฉis says the full constellation will enter commercial service in June. The launch was the second in a little more than three days for Rocket Lab. [SpaceNews]
A Commerce Department official responsible for rural broadband projects is leaving the agency and warning that SpaceX's Starlink system may benefit. Evan Feinman stepped down as director of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program at the department and said he was concerned Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and a close adviser to President Trump, would use the $42.5 billion program to award contracts to Starlink. BEAD was designed to provide grants for rural broadband projects, with an emphasis on fiber, but the program was criticized for a slow rollout. The Commerce Department is expected to shift to a "technology neutral" approach to BEAD projects that could include satellite broadband. Separately, Starlink service is now available at the White House โ sort of. While the Starlink internet service is available in White House offices, the antennas are located at a data center several miles away, with service routed through cables. Musk reportedly is providing the service as a gift, but that has raised both ethical and cybersecurity questions. [Politico | New York Times]
India's space agency ISRO has won approval for another lunar mission. The Chandrayaan-5 mission, a joint effort with Japan once known as LUPEX, will deliver a 250-kilogram rover to the moon. ISRO did not announce a launch date for Chandrayaan-5. The agency is already working on Chandrayaan-4, a lunar sample return mission slated to launch in 2027. [PTI]
South Korea's space agency KASA is creating a task force for Mars exploration, anticipating potential shifts in U.S. space exploration policy. The committee will look at ways South Korea can cooperate in Mars exploration, something KASA had not put on its roadmap until 2045. KASA officials noted that they do not expect major changes to Artemis but want to prepare for a greater emphasis on Mars they expect from the Trump administration. KASA will also participate in an "international day" hosted by SpaceX next month at its Starbase test site. [Chosun Ilbo]
| OK to Liberate
| |
"It's a foam material that did its job on the way to orbit, and then it's OK if it liberates."
โ Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at SpaceX, discussing a panel seen floating away from the Crew Dragon spacecraft after launch Friday. The panel was a piece of foam insulation from a tank in the Falcon 9 upper stage that posed no issues for the rocket or spacecraft.
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