Plus: Space Force considers offloading legacy capabilities and Suni and Butch are home
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| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 03/19/2025 | | | | | A Crew Dragon returned four people from the International Space Station Tuesday, including two who were on the station far longer than originally planned. The Crew-9 mission ended with a splashdown of the Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom at 5:57 p.m. Eastern off the Florida coast near Tallahassee. They arrived nearly 17 hours after departing the ISS. The Crew Dragon returned NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who launched to the station on that spacecraft in September, and NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who arrived on the ISS in June on the Boeing CST-100 Starliner test flight. The return of Wilmore and Williams, often mischaracterized as being "stranded" on the ISS, became a political story as President Trump said he worked to bring the two home earlier. NASA officials said they followed a plan announced last August to bring the two back at the end of the Crew-9 mission but that Trump's interest "gave us some energy" as they carried out those plans. [SpaceNews]
A Space Force general says the service may abandon traditional procurement models in favor of commercially available solutions and allied technologies. Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said at a conference Tuesday that the Space Force is considering "offloading some of our legacy capabilities" to companies or allies to save money. The Space Force has identified several areas where it will seek additional funding, including space superiority technologies, capabilities that enable unhindered U.S. operations in orbit despite potential space-based threats. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. government has restored Ukrainian access to commercial satellite imagery. A spokesperson for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency confirmed Tuesday that Ukraine has regained access to a commercial satellite imagery platform that has been a crucial component of its intelligence-gathering capabilities since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. That access was cut off earlier in the month amid tensions between the two countries about terms of a potential ceasefire in Ukraine's ongoing war with Russia. The Ukrainian military had relied on that optical and radar imagery to track Russian troop movements and plan counteroffensives. [SpaceNews]
A European consortium has secured government funds to test an inflatable drag sail in space that could help deorbit satellites. Two-year-old Portuguese startup Spaceo is leading the consortium, which announced a 3 million euro ($3.3 million) contract from ESA Tuesday for the demonstration in low Earth orbit. The sail, to be tested as soon as 2028, would expand from 20 square centimeters to 1.5 square meters, increasing atmospheric drag on the spacecraft it is attached to and thus speeding up its reentry. The sail will be tested with a 12U cubesat but could be used on spacecraft as large as 200 kilograms. [SpaceNews]
Two startups are joining forces to work on nuclear-powered spacecraft. Exlabs, which is developing a line of spacecraft for deep space missions, will work with Antares to incorporate that company's nuclear microreactor on future spacecraft. Exlabs plans to send a spacecraft equipped with an Antares nuclear microreactor to geostationary orbit in late 2028 or 2029. The companies argue that nuclear power is essential for "extended, long-duration" missions, providing power for larger payloads and missions where solar power is less effective. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink satellites Tuesday afternoon. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 3:57 p.m. Eastern and placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX now has more than 7,100 Starlink satellites in orbit. [Spaceflight Now]
Samara Aerospace has raised funding for spaceflight testing of its satellite-pointing technology. The startup has raised a pre-seed round of undisclosed size from several investors. The funding will go toward testing of a technology called Multifunctional Structures for Attitude Control that can provide attitude control for a flat satellite concept called Hummingbird. The initial flight test of the technology will be as a hosted payload on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission in October. [SpaceNews]
Indian edge computing startup SkyServe is working with JPL to test artificial intelligence models in space. SkyServe completed testing of the models this month on an edge computing system installed on a D-Orbit ION transfer vehicle in orbit. The models, developed as part of NASA's New Observations Strategies Sensorweb, are designed for near-real-time monitoring of wildfires, floods, urban heat islands and other phenomena for scientific research and disaster monitoring, and can be used for onboard preprocessing of data. [SpaceNews]
A Russian government official says he will soon meet with Elon Musk to discuss Mars exploration. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's Direct Investment Fund, said he planned to talk with Musk about cooperation on Mars missions, offering "strong expertise" from Roscosmos and Russian nuclear agency Rosatom. It was unclear if Musk would be participating in the meeting in his role as SpaceX CEO or as a senior adviser to President Trump. [Moscow Times]
A telescope has provided astronomers with the best 'baby pictures' yet of the early universe. Astronomers released data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, a radio telescope in Chile that has mapped the cosmic microwave background created shortly after the Big Bang. The data shows how gases moved in the early universe, and astronomers said the results fit well with standard models of cosmology. The data release is the last from the telescope, which is being replaced by the more powerful Simons Observatory, that will start observations in the coming months. [Science]
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"We had a huge impact, right? There is a large number of people across this nation that now know what the corona is. They can spell it and it's more than a beer."
โ Joe Westlake, director of NASA's heliophysics division, discussing NASA's public outreach efforts linked to last year's solar eclipse during a session of the Space Weather Workshop on Tuesday.
| | | | | | | 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, Awais Ahmed, CEO and Founder of Pixxel, shared his journey of starting Pixxel at the age of 20, driven by his passion for space and early experiences working with satellite teams and participating in the Hyperloop competition. He discussed the challenges of raising capital for a hardware startup in the space industry and how Pixxel secured early investment despite initial skepticism.
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