By Jeff Foust

In this today's edition: European companies band together for an imaging constellation, ispace reveals the cause of its lunar lander crash, first images from a new telescope and more.

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Top Stories

The Exploration Company says the flight of a large reentry capsule launched Monday was only partially successful. The European firm flew its Mission Possible spacecraft, a 1.6-ton capsule to test reentry technologies, on the SpaceX Transporter-14 rideshare mission that launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Monday afternoon. The company said the capsule operated well in space and reentered as planned a few hours after launch, with communications reestablished after the reentry blackout. However, an unspecified issue caused a loss of communications minutes before splashdown, and the company suggested the capsule was lost. The spacecraft was designed to test technologies for its Nyx cargo spacecraft and also carried 300 kilograms of payloads for customers. [SpaceNews]

Another payload on Transporter-14 was the first in a series of York Space System satellites for the Space Development Agency (SDA). The Dragoon spacecraft flown on the mission is the first of 12 York is building for SDA's Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) effort to test secure communications. The mission also included the debut of York's new LX-class satellite bus, designed to support payloads of up to 300 kilograms. The Transporter-14 mission overall carried 70 payloads, including the Otter Pup 2 servicing spacecraft for Starfish Space and W-4 reentry spacecraft for Varda. [SpaceNews]

A consortium of Ukrainian, Nordic and Eastern European companies is raising money for an Earth observation constellation intended to reduce dependence on the United States. The project is working to raise more than 100 million euros ($115 million) by the end of 2026 to deploy a constellation or more than 70 optical and radar imaging satellites by the end of the decade. The dual-use satellite constellation, dubbed Intermarsat, would provide daily revisits across the belt between the Baltic and the Mediterranean Sea, covering countries as far north as Finland and Estonia and as far south as Bulgaria. The consortium started the project after the U.S. government briefly halted sharing of commercial satellite imagery with Ukraine earlier this year. [SpaceNews]

Japanese company ispace said problems with a laser rangefinder caused its second lunar lander to crash earlier this month. The company said in a briefing late Monday that while the laser rangefinder was designed to operate at least three kilometers above the surface, it did not start providing data until less than 900 meters above the surface, delaying the firing of thrusters to brake the spacecraft for landing. Those thrusters could not slow the spacecraft down in time, causing a crash landing. Ispace concluded several factors could have affected the laser rangefinder's performance, including low power of the laser or decreased reflectivity of the lunar surface. The company plans to consider replacing the laser rangefinder on future landers and augment it with other systems, like lidars and navigation cameras. That work will not delay the company's next two missions, scheduled for launch in 2027. [SpaceNews]

NASA has given the green light for the launch of a private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. NASA said Monday it has agreed with Axiom Space to attempt a launch of the Ax-4 mission Wednesday at 2:31 a.m. Eastern. The mission, which had been scheduled to launch early this month, was postponed first by an issue with its Falcon 9 rocket and then with studies of an air leak on the ISS. NASA did not provide an update on the air leak. [NASA]

Other News

Amazon and United Launch Alliance confirmed the success Monday of the second launch of Project Kuiper satellites. The companies said a little more than an hour after the 6:54 a.m. Eastern launch that the 27 Kuiper satellites on board were deployed from the Centaur upper stage into their planned orbits at 450 kilometers. The satellites will later move to operational orbits at 630 kilometers. Amazon now has 54 operational Kuiper satellites in orbit out of a planned constellation of more than 3,200 satellites. [SpaceNews]

A former astronaut is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Terry Virts announced Monday he will seek the Democratic nomination in 2026 for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican. Virts, selected as an astronaut in 2000, was pilot on the STS-130 shuttle mission in 2010 and spent six months on the ISS in 2014-2015, retiring from NASA in 2016. Virts said he plans to run as a "common sense Democrat" and was critical of both Republicans and Democrats in his campaign announcement. [New York Times]

ESA has released the first images from its Biomass Earth science satellite. The images, released at a conference Monday, were the first from the spacecraft, launched less than two months ago. The spacecraft carries a synthetic aperture radar designed to penetrate forest canopies and accurately measure the overall biomass in forests. ESA noted that the spacecraft is still going through the commissioning process, but the images show that it is working well. [ESA]

Lunar dust may not be as dangerous to humans as once thought. Medical researchers had been concerned that lunar dust could cause respiratory problems when inhaled, based on the experience from the Apollo missions. A new study, using simulated lunar regolith and lung cells, found that lunar dust can irritate cells, but not as bad as particles from terrestrial pollution. The study concluded that while dust on the moon could cause a "lunar hay fever," it is unlikely to cause more serious lung diseases. [Space.com]

The first images from a new telescope have excited astronomers. At an event Monday, astronomers released the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, an 8.4-meter telescope in Chile with a wide field of view and a 3,200-megapixel camera. The telescope is designed to scan the sky every few days in great depth, and images from a test run showed rich detail of stars and galaxies. That test run also discovered more than 2,000 asteroids. Rubin will operate for at least 10 years, building up a catalog of billions of galaxies and millions of asteroids among other expected discoveries. [Nature]

Rewrite the Rules

"I live in a fictional world. If I don't like the way things are working, I change the basic ideas."

– Science fiction author Joe Haldeman during a panel on the challenges of Mars exploration at the International Space Development Conference on Saturday.

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