Plus: The challenge in toppling defense primes and the tie between Golden Dome and the Manhattan Project
| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 03/06/2025 | | | | | NASA has yet to restore communications with a lunar science mission launched a week ago as chances for its recovery fade. Lunar Trailblazer was a secondary payload on last week's launch of the IM-2 lunar lander mission, but communications with the spacecraft were lost less than 12 hours after deployment. NASA says it is still working to restore contact with and commanding of Lunar Trailblazer, currently spinning in a "low-power state," but noted that because the spacecraft was not able to perform scheduled maneuvers after deployment, it will not be able to enter its planned orbit around the moon. NASA is studying alternative approaches to get the spacecraft to the moon if control is restored. The low-cost mission was to map the presence of water on the moon. It is part of a NASA line of small planetary missions that have suffered failures or other problems. [SpaceNews]
A Space Force general says the Golden Dome missile-defense program will require a level of effort comparable to the Manhattan Project. Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, said Golden Dome represents a significant challenge that demands unprecedented collaboration across defense and intelligence agencies. He said Wednesday that the service is in "full planning mode" on its role in Golden Dome, and will provide its thoughts to the White House by the end of the month. The Space Force will play a crucial role due to its space-based capabilities, but Guetlein said which organization will lead Golden Dome has yet to be determined. [SpaceNews]
Silicon Valley looks to follow SpaceX's lead into upending the defense sector. Industry executives see an opportunity for Silicon Valley's biggest players, like Palantir and Anduril, to challenge traditional prime contractors across defense and space programs. Those companies have found some success with efforts like AI-powered drones, but executives noted that the defense industry is as much about bureaucratic navigation as it is about innovation. Those executives added they did not see their companies toppling current defense primes like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman in the near future, saying that it's "a question for 10 or 20 years from now." [SpaceNews]
AST SpaceMobile is planning to create a jointly owned European satellite operator for direct-to-smartphone services. The company announced a partnership with European telecom giant Vodafone, which was already set to provide the cellular spectrum needed to launch its services in 10 countries and ultimately aims to extend coverage across the entire continent. The agreement lays the groundwork for a network of gateways essential to integrating satellites with more terrestrial mobile networks, paving the way to expand partnerships to three times as many countries. The move underscores a broader trend in Europe toward securing independent space-based capabilities, particularly in the face of rising geopolitical tensions and regulatory scrutiny over foreign satellite operators. [SpaceNews]
Israeli chipmaker SatixFy won U.K. Space Agency funding to develop software for reprogrammable satellites. The £1.8 million ($2.3 million) program aims to advance digital beamforming software over the next two years, which the company said would enable real-time control and monitoring of satellite payloads powered by its chips. It would eliminate the downtime that software-defined payloads suffer when reconfigured, and could enable AI systems to automatically reconfigure payloads based on used demand without intervention from ground controllers. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | Intuitive Machines' second mission will attempt a lunar landing later today. The IM-2 lander is scheduled to touch down on a plateau called Mons Mouton near the south pole of the moon at 12:32 p.m. Eastern. The lander, also called Athena, is carrying a NASA lunar drilling payload called PRIME-1 as well as several commercial payloads. The landing will take place a little more than a year after the IM-1 mission made a hard landing on the moon, and will be the second landing in less than five days after Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost 1 landed early Sunday. [CBS]
Firefly announced a mid-March date for its next Alpha launch. The company said Wednesday the sixth flight of Alpha is scheduled for no earlier than the morning of March 15. The rocket is carrying a Lockheed Martin LM 400 satellite on a technology demonstration mission. This will be the first Alpha launch since a flight last July carrying a set of NASA-sponsored cubesats. [Firefly Aerospace]
SpaceX is denying claims that the company is seeking to take over an FAA contract for air traffic communications. In a statement Wednesday, SpaceX said it is working with L3Harris and the FAA on ways to upgrade communications networks linking air traffic control centers by using its Starlink satellite system. It rejected reports that SpaceX was trying to take over a $2.4 billion contract previously awarded to Verizon to perform those upgrades, leveraging the influence SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has with the Trump administration. [Reuters]
Construction has started on a second Indian spaceport. A ceremony Wednesday marked the start of work on a launch site at Kulasekaranpattinam in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The launch site, expected to take two years to build, will support launches of India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) to polar orbits. It will increase the SSLV's payload capacity to those orbits by launching directly to the south, avoiding a dogleg maneuver required for launches from the Satish Dhawan Space Center. [ETV Bharat]
NASA is shutting off instruments on the two Voyager spacecraft to conserve power. The cosmic ray subsystem instrument on Voyager 1 was shut off last week and the low-energy charged particle instrument on Voyager 2 will be turned off later this month, NASA announced Wednesday. The shutdowns will conserve power on the spacecraft as their aging radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) generate less power. Each spacecraft will now have three functioning instruments as they speed out of the solar system, with hopes that both can continue to operate with at least one working instrument into the 2030s. [NASA/JPL]
| Careful, The Space Debris Is Hot
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"If you read that alert, it says, 'Entering space debris between Hawaii and the West Coast. Use caution.' What is a pilot supposed to do with that information? If the waiter says, 'Be careful, the plate is hot,' you can take action. But, be careful, you might have space junk crash into your airplane?"
– Ruth Stilwell of Aerospace Policy Solutions, discussing a warning to pilots about reentering space debris during a session of the 11th Annual Space Traffic Management Conference on Wednesday.
| | | | | | | What's New With SpaceNews? |  | | Check out the latest episode of Commercial Space Transformers, our new video series featuring conversations between SpaceNews Senior Staff Writer Jason Rainbow and the people driving the space industry's commercial transformation. This week, Tess Hatch, Managing Partner at Stifel Venture Banking, covers the evolving landscape of space investment and commercialization. Hatch, a former venture investor now in a banking role, discusses the shift in financing for space startups, moving from equity investments to debt financing. She highlights a significant trend where many space companies are now branding themselves as defense tech firms due to updated government contracting methods, making defense-focused business models more attractive to investors.
Watch out for new episodes every Tuesday on SpaceNews.com and on the SpaceNews YouTube channel.
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