By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: new questions about Rocket Lab's plans to buy Mynaric, China launches a new space station crew, the ISS marks 25 years of continuous crews and more.
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Top Stories
Rocket Lab's plans to acquire German laser communications company Mynaric may face new obstacles. Rocket Lab announced in March it would acquire Mynaric pending German government approval. That approval is still pending, a Rocket Lab executive said at a conference last week, and since the deal was announced the German government, along with others in Europe, have announced plans for significant increases in defense spending. That has raised new questions about whether the German government would approve the deal and, if it does, whether Mynaric would still be considered a European entity able to compete on projects such as the IRIS² broadband constellation. [SpaceNews]
China launched a new crew to the International Space Station on Friday. A Long March 2F rocket lifted off at 11:44 a.m. Eastern from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and placed the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft into orbit. The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong space station about three and a half hours later. Onboard Shenzhou-21 were commander Zhang Lu and crewmates Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei, who will spend the next six months on Tiangong. Shenzhou-20 commander Chen Dong and crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, who have been on Tiangong since April, will return to Earth this week. [SpaceNews]
Ukrainian telco Kyivstar plans to start testing Starlink direct-to-cell services in much of the country. The operator is planning nationwide tests that would extend the service to all mobile subscribers before the end of 2025, initially supporting text messaging at no additional cost. Voice calls and mobile broadband are set to follow in later phases. Kyivstar said the service will be particularly valuable for de-mining operations and other emergency or rural scenarios where terrestrial networks are unavailable. That service will not be available in border areas, active combat zones and territories occupied by Russian forces. [SpaceNews]
Latvia has signed the Artemis Accords. The country's Cabinet of Ministers approved plans to sign the Accords, which outline norms of behavior for safe space operations, in early October, although the decision was not widely communicated outside the country until a statement published last week. Latvia is one of four countries to sign the Accords in October, bringing the total number of signatories since 2020 to 60. [SpaceNews]
Logistics, from satellite life extension to in-space assembly, will become common elements of future military space operations. The space domain will increasingly look like the air domain, with the need for services like refueling and inspection, speakers at the MilSat Symposium said last week. They noted that, in space, all the money has traditionally been spent on assets with nothing on maintenance of them, unlike on air, sea and land. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
The International Space Station marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human presence amid questions about what will replace it and when. Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the first long-duration crew on the ISS, and since then there have always been people on board the station. With the ISS slated to be retired around 2030, NASA is supporting development of commercial stations, but a change in the agency's approach to backing them has prompted concerns about the potential of a gap between the ISS retirement and when those new stations will be ready. Some argue that any gap risked U.S. leadership in space, while others noted that the U.S. has successfully navigated similar human spaceflight gaps in the past. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX launched a rideshare mission Sunday that included a tech demo satellite from a commercial space station company. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:09 a.m. EDT on the Bandwagon-4 rideshare mission to a mid-inclination orbit. The largest payload on the launch was a South Korean reconnaissance satellite. Other payloads included Haven-Demo, a satellite built by Vast to test subsystems for its upcoming Haven-1 commercial space station. Vast said later Sunday that Haven-Demo was working well. Another payload was Starcloud-1, a tech demo mission for Starcloud, a startup with ambitions to develop orbital data centers. [SpaceNews]
India and China also conducted launches Sunday. An Indian LVM-3 rocket lifted off at 6:56 a.m. Eastern and placed the CMS-03 satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit. CMS-03 is a communications satellite that will support India's navy. The 4,400-kilogram satellite is the heaviest GEO satellite launched by LVM-3, a milestone achieved in part by placing the satellite into a transfer orbit with an apogee below GEO. A Chinese Long March 7A lifted off at 10:47 p.m. Eastern and put the Yaogan-46 satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit. The Yaogan series of satellites are used for military reconnaissance, but nearly all previous Yaogan spacecraft have operated in low Earth orbits rather than GEO. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX launched more Starlink satellites Friday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:41 p.m. Eastern, putting 28 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was the eighth Falcon 9 launch of the month from Vandenberg, equalling the company record for launches there in a month set in September. [Noozhawk]
A semiconductor startup plans to fly payloads on a series of Falcon 9 launches. Besxar announced last week that the company signed an agreement with SpaceX to fly payloads attached to the boosters of 12 Falcon 9 launches, starting as soon as late this year. The "Fabship" payloads, the size of a microwave oven, will test systems Besxar is developing to produce semiconductor wafers in the vacuum of space. The company argues that producing semiconductor wafers in space could be cheaper than on Earth, avoiding the increasingly enormous expenses needed for ultra-clean environments for producing them terrestrially. [SpaceNews]
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The Week Ahead
Monday: Monday-Tuesday: Monday-Thursday: Monday-Friday: Nicosia, Cyprus: The Committee on Space Research's COSPAR Symposium 2025 features sessions on space science research. São Paulo, Brazil: The Association of Space Explorers holds its 36th Planetary Congress featuring current and former astronauts and cosmonauts. Tuesday: Tuesday-Thursday: Wednesday: Inner Mongolia, China: Anticipated landing of China's Shenzhou-20 spacecraft returning three astronauts from a six-month mission on the Tiangong space station. Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand: Scheduled launch of an Electron rocket carrying a radar imaging satellite for Japanese company iQPS at 2:45 p.m. Eastern. Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 6:08 p.m. Eastern. Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of an Atlas 5 carrying the ViaSat03 F2 spacecraft at 10:24 p.m. Eastern. Wednesday-Thursday: Wednesday-Friday: Thursday: Thursday-Saturday: Friday: Saturday: Sunday:
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