| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 03/04/2025 | | | | | Maxar announced a contract Monday for a commercial GEO satellite from an unidentified customer. Maxar said the satellite will be based on its 1300 series platform, the largest in the manufacturer's product line with a mass of up to 6,800 kilograms. It is the first order for a Maxar commercial GEO satellite in nearly two years, and one of just a handful of such satellites ordered in the last decade without disclosing the customer. Manufacturers used to vie for 15-20 large GEO orders annually, but only six for commercial communications were placed in 2024, the lowest number in two decades. [SpaceNews]
The Space Force's top general is calling on members of the service to see themselves as warfighters. Speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association's Warfare Conference Monday, Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, insisted that guardians, as Space Force personnel are known, must view themselves as warfighters on par with their counterparts in other military branches. Saltzman's remarks come in the wake of a recent report that called into question the Space Force's "warfighting ethos," suggesting the service has prioritized defensive satellite protection over developing offensive capabilities needed to deter adversaries. "Space control is how the Space Force achieves space superiority," Saltzman said, announcing that the service will soon publish new doctrine and guidance on space control. [SpaceNews]
BAE Systems won a $151 million contract to develop a next-generation ground system for U.S. Space Force missile-warning satellites. BAE Systems will lead the second phase of the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) command and control (C2) ground system program, known as FORGE C2. That program aims to modernize the ground infrastructure that controls and tracks spacecraft from the military's constellation of missile-warning satellites in both geostationary and polar orbits. The contract award follows a competition that began in November 2023, when the Space Systems Command awarded $9.7 million contracts to four companies to develop FORGE C2 designs. [SpaceNews]
A Falcon 9 booster was lost after a droneship landing, the latest incident involving the workhorse rocket. SpaceX said Monday that the booster that launched a set of Starlink satellites Sunday night suffered an "off-nominal fire" that damaged a landing leg, causing the booster to tip over. It is the latest in a series of anomalies for the rocket since last summer, although only one of the incidents has led to the loss of its payload. SpaceX had been separately working on undisclosed issues with another Falcon 9 that will launch NASA's SPHEREx and PUNCH space science missions. That launch has now slipped to no earlier than Thursday. [SpaceNews]
Earth-observation startup Albedo won a U.S. Air Force Strategic Funding Increase contract. The award, worth up to $12 million, supports Albedo's efforts to send satellites into very low Earth orbit to gather visible and thermal imagery. Albedo's first satellite, the phone-booth sized Clarity-1, is scheduled to launch within days on the SpaceX Transporter-13 rideshare. Clarity-1 is designed to collect 10-centimeter visible imagery and thermal infrared imagery with a resolution of two meters per pixel. [SpaceNews]
Voyager Technologies is looking for partnership opportunities to win work on the Golden Dome missile-defense system. The company, previously known as Voyager Space, is emphasizing work in national security and one executive says there should be ways for Voyager to work on ground systems, space sensors, and interceptor missile components. A takeaway by Voyager from recent discussions on Golden Dome is that the Department of Defense intends to break from its traditional procurement approach and will seek to leverage a broader supplier base. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | SpaceX scrubbed a Starship launch attempt Monday evening because of technical issues. The countdown halted at T-40 seconds ahead of the 6:45 p.m. Eastern launch, going into a hold initially to address an issue with the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX suggested that problem was corrected but there were other issues with the Starship upper stage, and the company ran out of time to fix them, calling off the launch. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said later there were "too many question marks about this flight" and that the company would try again in a day or two. As of early Tuesday, SpaceX had not announced a new launch date for the suborbital test flight. [SpaceNews]
Arianespace scrubbed an Ariane 6 launch attempt Monday. The company said problems with "ground means" that interface with the rocket prompted the scrub, announced less than an hour before the scheduled 11:24 a.m. Eastern launch from French Guiana. Arianespace did not announce a new launch date. The launch, just the second for the Ariane 6, is carrying a French reconnaissance satellite. [Arianespace]
Intuitive Machines and ispace announced landing dates for their lunar landers Monday. Intuitive Machines said its IM-2 lander, which entered lunar orbit early Monday, will attempt a landing in the south polar regions of the moon on Thursday at 12:27 p.m. Eastern. Separately, Japanese company ispace said its Resilience lander, launched on the same Falcon 9 as Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost 1, will touch down on the moon June 5 at 3:24 p.m. Eastern. Resilience is on a low-energy trajectory to minimize fuel use, flying by the moon last month before returning to enter lunar orbit in early May. [Intuitive Machines | ispace]
Spire announced it demonstrated laser intersatellite links between two cubesats. The 6U cubesats, equipped with an optical communications payload about the size of a tissue box, transmitted data as far as 5,000 kilometers. The optical intersatellite links were demonstrated by cubesats launched in 2023. Spire plans to launch three additional Lemur cubesats with the links this year, two on the upcoming Transporter-13 rideshare launch. [SpaceNews]
The saga of Europa Clipper's electronics provides lessons for future missions. The spacecraft launched on time in October but only after electronics components known as MOSFETs were found to fail at lower levels of radiation than originally claimed by their producer. That prompted work by a JPL "tiger team" to analyze the MOSFETs on Europa Clipper, concluding that the components did not need to be replaced, which would have delayed the launch, instead taking measures to speed up the annealing process to repair any radiation damage encountered while orbiting Jupiter. Engineers involved in the effort said it showed the need to perform testing of components and not solely rely on any mil-spec rating those components have. [SpaceNews]
Eutelsat shares are soaring on the prospect that its OneWeb network might replace Starlink in Ukraine. Shares in the satellite operator have nearly tripled since Friday on the belief that Ukraine might switch to OneWeb after a contentious meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump on Friday. Eutelsat said Monday it would work to provide more satellite capacity for Europe. Eutelsat was recently trading at all-time lows because of investor concerns about losses on its GEO satellites. [Reuters]
| Well, When You Put It That Way
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"Gayle's Natal Mars is at 17° in Pisces, which signals risks in travel, especially in unpredictable environments...think space or deep waters. With transit Jupiter squaring (a hard aspect) her Natal Mars, those risks get amplified, bringing potential overconfidence or unforeseen dangers. Space travel? It's a hard NO."
– Ashley Sipes, an astrologer, warning CBS Morning News anchor Gayle King not to go to space on an upcoming Blue Origin suborbital flight announced last week. [Instagram]
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