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The crew of China's Shenzhou-20 mission returned to Earth Friday on the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft. The Shenzhou-21 return module touched down at 3:40 a.m. Eastern in the Dongfeng landing area in Inner Mongolia, close to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The crew of Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie returned after spending more than 200 days on the Tiangong space station. They were set to return on the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft that delivered them to Tiangong in April but Chinese officials said they deemed that spacecraft unsafe after finding a minor crack in a window, which they said was likely caused by space debris. The return of the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft appears to leave the Shenzhou-21 crew aboard Tiangong with no lifeboat in the case of an emergency in the short term. An uncrewed Shenzhou-22 spacecraft will launch to the station to serve as that contingency at a date yet to be announced. [SpaceNews]

Blue Origin's New Glenn launched a NASA Mars smallsat mission while the booster stuck the landing. The rocket launched from Cape Canaveral at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Thursday, nearly an hour into a roughly 90-minute launch window. New Glenn, on its second flight, successfully deployed NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft about 34 minutes after liftoff. The smallsats will spend the next year around the Earth-sun L2 point before swinging back by the Earth to head to Mars, where they will study space weather conditions there. The New Glenn booster landed on the ship Jacklyn in the Atlantic, the first time the booster landed successfully. [SpaceNews]

Quantum computing firm IonQ is expanding its space presence with the acquisition of Skyloom. IonQ announced this week that it is buying Skyloom, a Colorado-based provider of space-based optical communications terminals, for an undisclosed sum. Skyloom develops optical data transport links that enable high-bandwidth data transfer between satellites and ground stations. Its terminals have been deployed on U.S. military satellites produced by York Space Systems. Earlier this year, IonQ acquired radar imaging satellite company Capella Space as part of its efforts to develop a global, secure quantum network. [SpaceNews]

Amazon is changing the name of its low Earth orbit broadband constellation. The company said Thursday that Project Kuiper would now be known as Amazon Leo, and its Kuiper Government Solutions division is now called Leo for Government. Amazon said the rebrand is a simple nod to the orbit where it has deployed 153 of more than 3,200 proposed satellites so far, whereas Project Kuiper was a reference to the Kuiper Belt of objects in the outer solar system. [SpaceNews]

Members of Maryland's congressional delegation are seeking details from NASA about work to close facilities at the Goddard Space Flight Center. In a letter Thursday, nine of the 10 members of the delegation asked Acting Administrator Sean Duffy about ongoing work to close offices and labs at the Maryland center. That work has raised concerns about their effects on the workforce and for supporting key missions such as the Roman Space Telescope. The letter comes three days after the ranking member of the House Science Committee, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), sent her own letter about the consolidation to Duffy. NASA has not given a formal response to Lofgren but the center's acting director said in a statement that the consolidation is part of the center's master plan and has been coordinated to avoid disrupting missions. [SpaceNews]

Firefly Aerospace plans to make deeper inroads into the defense market with its acquisition of SciTec. In an earnings call this week, Firefly highlighted the company's alignment with the Pentagon's Golden Dome missile defense initiative and repeatedly cited the strategic value of the $855 million SciTec deal, which closed recently. Firefly CEO Jason Kim called SciTec a "force multiplier" that strengthens Firefly's ability to compete for complex defense programs, particularly in space-based missile warning and domain awareness. The company expects opportunities ranging from interceptor testing to hypersonic target launches. [SpaceNews]

Other News

An Atlas 5 launched a second Viasat broadband GEO satellite overnight. The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 lifted off at 10:04 p.m. Eastern Thursday from Cape Canaveral and deployed the ViaSat-3 F2 spacecraft into a geostationary transfer orbit about three and a half hours later. The Boeing-built satellite is set to arrive at 79 degrees west in GEO in about three months to provide services in the Americas. The satellite was scheduled to launch in 2023 but delayed after problems with the antenna on ViaSat-3 F1 caused it to lose 90% of its planned capacity. A third and final ViaSat-3 satellite is planned to launch next year to serve Asia. [SpaceNews]

Virgin Galactic says it is still on track to begin commercial service with a new spaceplane next year. The company said in an earnings call Thursday that it expects to begin test flights of its first Delta-class suborbital vehicle in the third quarter, with commercial research flights starting in the fourth quarter. Private astronaut missions will begin six to eight weeks after the start of research flights, and Virgin expects to fly most of its backlog of customers in 2027. [SpaceNews]

Canadian company SBQuantum won an ESA contract to provide a quantum magnetometer. The 800,000 euro ($932,000) contract announced this week covers work to upgrade a quantum diamond magnetometer delivered to ESA for testing and evaluation in 2024. The new version of the sensor will be customized to meet ESA requirements for sensitivity and accuracy. Quantum diamond magnetometers promise greater sensitivity than traditional space-based magnetometers for Earth observation applications. [SpaceNews]

France plans to significantly increase military space spending. In a speech Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to spend an additional 4.2 billion euros through 2030 on military space activities, citing the threat posed by Russia. The increased spending is part of a new French space strategy that includes work on reusable launchers and reducing dependence on third parties for key space capabilities. [AFP]

Part of an Indian lunar spacecraft has returned to the vicinity of the moon. The propulsion module for the Chandrayaan-3 lander mission maneuvered out of lunar orbit in October 2023, moving into cislunar space where it was subject to the influences of the Earth and moon. The Indian space agency ISRO said the spacecraft returned to the vicinity of the moon earlier this month, flying within a few thousand kilometers of the lunar surface on Nov. 6 and again Nov. 11. ISRO said the flybys provided "valuable insights" on spacecraft operations, although it was not clear if the flybys were intentional. [India Today]

The initial phases of a supernova explosion may have been lopsided. Astronomers took data of the first hours of a supernova in April 2024 in a nearby galaxy, offering their best look at the shape of the blast wave before it was disrupted by material surrounding the star. The data showed that the blast was not spherical but rather elongated, looking like an olive. That lends support to models where the blast wave is created by neutrinos that heat the upper layers of the star in an irregular pattern, which can create an elongated, rather than spherical, blast wave. [Science News]

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The E-Word

"In 2015, there were just over 2,000 satellites total, in all orbits, owned by all the countries and all the companies of the world combined. Just a decade later, there are more than five times as many on orbit, and continuing to proliferate — we don't use the word 'explode.'"

- Patricia Cooper, president and founder of Constellation Advisory, LLC, discussing the growth in the number of satellites during the LEO Satellite Policy Symposium on Thursday.

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