Astronomy Prints 🌌: The push to improve space weather data

A SpaceNews daily newsletter

03/20/2025

Top Stories

A Chinese company is making plans for commercial human spaceflight missions. The chairman of Beijing Ziwei Yutong Technology Co., Ltd., also known as AZSpace, told a Chinese publication last week that his company planned to conduct orbital crewed test flights in 2027 or 2028. AZSpace, founded in 2019, focuses on spacecraft manufacturing and space tourism, with backing from venture capital firms, but it's unclear if the company has the funding and expertise to carry out crewed orbital missions or if it will have access to state-owned technology. Several other Chinese startups have announced plans for suborbital human spaceflight. [SpaceNews]

NASA says it is working with Boeing on options for another Starliner test flight. At a briefing after the end of the Crew-9 mission this week, NASA said it wants Boeing to perform another test flight of Starliner, with or without people on board. The flight would be used to test changes to the spacecraft's propulsion system intended to correct helium leaks and thruster malfunctions seen on the Crew Flight Test mission last year. If that is successful, NASA expects Starliner to begin crew rotation missions like what SpaceX's Crew Dragon has been doing since 2020. NASA said it still has several months to determine if Starliner will be ready for the next available mission opportunity in early 2026. [SpaceNews]

The U.S. Space Force released a new strategy blueprint outlining how it plans to integrate AI into its operations. The strategy, released Wednesday, outlines plans to incorporate AI into its systems for "maintaining space superiority." Based on trends in the private sector, space domain awareness represents a primary focus area for AI implementation to help the service track space objects and identify anomalies or unusual activities. The plan acknowledges the need for digital fluency among Space Force personnel, emphasizing AI literacy as necessary for addressing operational challenges. [SpaceNews]

Satellite operators say they need better data on space weather. During a session of the Space Weather Workshop this week, representatives from industry and academia said that space weather events like last May's major storm increase atmospheric density and thus drag, reducing the accuracy of their predicted orbits and making collision avoidance more difficult. That drag also reduces the lifetime of satellites. They said operators need more accurate space weather forecasts, or at least better understanding of their uncertainties, and improved atmospheric models. A former Capella Space engineer who led that company's efforts to respond to shortened lifetimes of its satellites caused by drag has started a new company, Leonid Space, which will offer satellite operators improved predictions of satellite lifetimes. [SpaceNews]

Other News

Rocket Lab's next launch will be for a German company. Rocket Lab said its next Electron launch, scheduled for as soon as March 27 from New Zealand, will place eight satellites into orbit for OroraTech, a company developing a constellation of satellites for detecting wildfires. The launch is scheduled for just four months after the companies signed the launch contract for the mission. [Rocket Lab]

A former head of India's space agency ISRO has a new position advising an Indian state government. The state of Andhra Pradesh announced this week it appointed S. Somanath as its new space technology adviser. In that role, Somanath will advise the state government on the use of space technologies in various programs and to build up a space technology sector in the state, which is located in eastern India. Somanath completed a three-year term as chairman of ISRO in January. [India Today]

The European Space Agency has released the first batch of data from its Euclid space telescope. The data, released Wednesday, include 26 million galaxies at distances of up to 10.5 billion light-years in three regions of the sky covering 63 square degrees. The data includes classification of 380,000 of those galaxies using an AI system that was trained by human volunteers. Euclid will study those three regions in detail over the next several years to provide insights into the nature and distribution of dark matter and dark energy. [ESA]

Data from another survey has raised new questions about dark energy. Results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) gathered over three years of observations at an Arizona observatory show evidence that dark energy, which controls the accelerating expansion of the universe, may be changing over time. Dark energy is showing signs of weakening according to the DESI analysis, which means the universe's expansion could slow to a constant rate over time. The finding is the "biggest hint" about what dark matter is since it was discovered a quarter century ago, according to one astronomer. [New Scientist]

The Language of Love

"We talk about budgets, right? That's Washington. What is Washington? Love is where you fund it. I mean, that's not what we said on the appropriations committee, but you know what I'm getting at."

– Kevin Kelly, partner at Actum LLC and a former staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, during a panel discussion on space science and exploration policy at the Goddard Space Science Symposium on Wednesday.

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