By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Starship is on deck for its next test flight, a French space startup goes dark, Russia sells ad space on spacecraft and more.
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Top Stories
SpaceX is set to perform its next Starship test flight tonight. The vehicle, on its 11th integrated flight test, is scheduled for liftoff at 7:15 p.m. Eastern from Starbase in south Texas. The mission will fly a similar suborbital profile to the previous flight in August, including tests of satellite deployments, the vehicle's thermal protection system and alternative engine configurations for bringing the Super Heavy booster back. This will be the final flight of version 2 of the vehicle as SpaceX prepares version 3 for a debut as soon as the end of the year. The company is also emphasizing the limited impact Starship launches have on airspace, noting that for Flight 10 all airspace was cleared within nine minutes of launch. This comes after concerns that Starship launches from Florida could have severe impacts on airports in the region. [SpaceNews]
Dark, a French startup working on space defense technologies, has turned off the lights. The company announced last week that it shut down after four years of operations and $11 million raised. Dark was founded by veterans from European defense contractors MBDA and Thales with the goal of demonstrating a space weapon system that would launch from a modified commercial aircraft, navigate to orbital targets, capture them and deposit them in the South Pacific Ocean. However, the company said the conditions needed to advance its vision "never materialized for us in France." [SpaceNews]
The Japanese space agency JAXA has signed a contract with Rocket Lab for two Electron launches. The first launch, under a contract disclosed Friday, will be for the RAISE-4 technology demonstration satellite, set to fly in December. The second launch, early next year, will be for eight tech demo cubesats. RAISE-4 and the cubesats, collectively known as Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration-4, were originally planned to launch together on a Japanese Epsilon-S rocket. However, Epsilon has been grounded since a 2022 launch failure and the subsequent failures of static-fire tests of upgraded motors. JAXA acknowledged it moved the satellites to Electron because of the continued delays with Epsilon. [SpaceNews]
Planet announced plans to develop a new line of imaging satellites to replace its Dove cubesats. The company said last week it is developing Owl, a satellite capable of providing one-meter imagery, sharper than the three- to four-meter imagery from current SuperDove satellites. The Owl satellites will also have Nvidia processors for AI applications, such as onboard processing of images. The Owl satellite is larger than the 3U cubesat form factor of SuperDoves, but the company did not disclose specifics. The first Owl satellite will launch in late 2026 with a full constellation to provide daily Earth imaging deployed in the coming years. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
Chinese launch startup Orienspace successfully conducted its second launch late Friday. The company's Gravity-1 rocket lifted off at 10:20 p.m. Eastern from a ship off the coast of Haiyang, Shandong Province. The launch carried three satellites into near-polar orbits: the Jilin-1 Wideband 02B07 Earth observation satellite for Changguang Satellite Technology, and the Shutian Yuxing-01 and -02 satellites developed by Geespace, the space arm of automaker Geely. Gravity-1 rocket consists of three stages and four boosters and can place up to 6,500 kilograms into low Earth orbit. Orienspace is working on Gravity-2, a liquid-propellant reusable rocket that could make its first launch before the end of the year. [SpaceNews]
Blue Origin plans to add to infrastructure at its Florida launch site. Local government filings show that the company plans to build a refurbishment facility for New Glenn boosters near its Launch Complex 36 pad at Cape Canaveral. The company said the facility would support refurbishment of first stages needed "to support a higher launch cadence and meet customer needs." The company now employs nearly 4,000 people in the Space Coast region spread across 11 sites. [Florida Today]
The Russian government has approved plans to allow advertising on its spacecraft. Roscosmos said that changes in federal law will allow it, starting in January, to place advertising on the exterior of spacecraft, provided the ads do not jeopardize safety. The policy change is intended to provide a new revenue stream for the cash-strapped Russian space program. There is precedent for such advertising: a quarter-century ago Pizza Hut paid $1 million to place its logo on a Proton rocket launching the Zvezda module for the International Space Station. [Ars Technica]
Astronomers have captured the first image of two black holes orbiting each other. The image, taken from a network of ground-based radio telescopes along with a Russian spacecraft, confirm that a quasar designated OJ287 contains two black holes orbiting one another. Astronomers had speculated that the object, five billion light-years away, contained a pair of black holes because of periodic changes in its brightness. [Space.com]
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The Week Ahead
Monday: Starbase, Texas: Scheduled launch of SpaceX's Starship/Super Heavy on its 11th suborbital test flight at 7:15 p.m. Eastern. Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Rescheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Amazon Project Kuiper satellites at 8:08 p.m. Eastern. Tuesday: Mahia Peninsula, N.Z.: Scheduled launch of an Electron carrying a StriX radar imaging satellite for Synspective at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying a set of Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites for the Space Development Agency at 7:12 p.m. Eastern. Wednesday: Greenbelt, Md.: Scott Pace, director of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute, speaks at a Maryland Space Business Roundtable luncheon. Wenchang, China: Anticipated launch of a Long March 8A carrying an undisclosed payload at 9:33 p.m. Eastern. Thursday: Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 2:42 a.m. Eastern. International Space Station: Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Aleksei Zubritsky will perform a spacewalk to install experiment hardware.
Thursday-Saturday: Friday: Sunday:
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