Plus: Chinese astronauts inspect a damaged aircraft
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Chinese astronauts inspect a damaged spacecraft, a NASA Mars orbiter falls silent, a space solar power startup emerges from the shadows and more.
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Top Stories
Two Chinese astronauts performed a spacewalk to inspect a damaged Shenzhou spacecraft. Zhang Lu and Wu Fei spent more than eight hours outside the Tiangong space station in a spacewalk that ended at 5:42 a.m. Eastern Tuesday. The astronauts inspected the damaged window on the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft that led Chinese officials to abandon plans to use it to return a crew from the station last month, instead bringing them back on the newer Shenzhou-21 spacecraft and launching a replacement Shenzhou-22 spacecraft. The astronauts also installed new space debris shielding on parts of Tiangong, a frequent task for spacewalks there. Chinese officials said they will return Shenzhou-20 without a crew on board in the near future. [SpaceNews]
LeoLabs won a contract to provide space surveillance data for the U.S. government. The California-based space tracker is providing its full public catalog under the six-month contract, covering nearly 25,000 objects in low Earth orbit, as well as radar observations, object state updates and maneuver-detection data. That work includes supporting adversarial spacecraft monitoring and the TraCSS orbital traffic coordination platform due to enter full service early next year. [SpaceNews]
The Canadian government has awarded a contract to MDA Space and Telesat to study a proposed military communications satellite constellation. The $2.1 million contract covers various orbital altitudes and frequencies for the Enhanced Satellite Communications Project – Polar (ESCP-P), a system that would provide communications services for the Canadian armed forces in the Arctic. ESCP-P is one of the first major procurements being run through Canada's new Defence Investment Agency (DIA), created to accelerate acquisition timelines by bringing industry into the program definition phase earlier than in traditional procurements. [SpaceNews]
Navigation startup TrustPoint plans to begin providing services from satellites in low Earth orbit in 2027. The company is developing a constellation that could ultimately number 300 satellites to provide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services in C-band. It expects to have enough satellites in orbit by 2027 to soft-launch those services. The company is looking to government and commercial sources of funding to deploy the constellation, tapping into interest in services that can augment or replace GPS given its vulnerabilities to jamming and spoofing. [SpaceNews]
NASA has lost contact with one of its Mars orbiters. NASA said late Tuesday it lost contact with the MAVEN orbiter on Saturday when the Deep Space Network failed to pick up signals from MAVEN after it passed behind Mars. The agency provided few other details about what might have caused the loss of communications. MAVEN has been orbiting Mars since September 2014, studying the upper atmosphere of the planet while also serving as a communications relay for Mars rovers. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX appears to be pushing ahead with plans for an IPO. According to sources familiar with then company's plans, SpaceX is preparing for an IPO as soon as the second half of 2026 that would raise "significantly more" than $30 billion and value the company at $1.5 trillion. The company has talked about the possibility of an IPO as long ago as 2020, possibly as part of a Starlink spinoff, but pushed back the timing of any public offering. The company would use at least some of the money raised in an IPO to fund development of orbital data centers. [Bloomberg]
Check out our SpaceNews Intelligence briefing on how Starlink's explosive growth is transforming global communications.
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Other News
SpaceX launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on Tuesday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:16 p.m. Eastern on a mission designated NROL-77. The NRO said the launch was a success but disclosed no details about the payload on board. [Space.com]
China conducted two launches Tuesday. A Long March 3B lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 10:08 a.m. Eastern. It placed into orbit Shiyan-22, which Chinese media described as a satellite for testing communications technologies. A Kinetica-1, or Lijian-1, rocket lifted off from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 11:03 p.m. Eastern. It deployed nine satellites into low Earth orbit, including one satellite for monitoring power transmission lines and another from the UAE for Earth science. [Xinhua]
A South Korean satellite has jumped the queue in Rocket Lab's launch manifest. The company said Wednesday that its next Electron launch will be of the NEONSAT-1A Earth observation satellite by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, with liftoff scheduled for 7:45 p.m. Eastern Wednesday. It moves ahead of the launch of Japan's RAISE-4 satellite, which had previously been the next Electron mission. That satellite is now scheduled to launch Friday night (U.S. time) on another Electron. Both launches will take place from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. [Rocket Lab]
A space solar power startup has emerged from stealth after testing key technologies. Overview Energy announced Wednesday it successfully tested technologies to transmit power using a wide-beam near-infrared laser, flying the laser on an aircraft and beaming power to the ground. The company plans to next test the technology on a satellite in low Earth orbit in 2028, followed by operational spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit as soon as 2030. The satellites would beam megawatts of power to terrestrial solar facilities. The company was spun out of commercial space station developer Vast a few years ago and has raised $20 million, with plans to raise more funding as it moves into satellite development. [SpaceNews]
NASA no longer plans to use electric vans from a bankrupt company as astronaut transports. NASA had purchased three vans from Canoo in 2023 and outfitted them to serve as vans to transport astronauts to the launch pad for Artemis missions. NASA said earlier this year would continue to use the vans after Canoo filed for bankruptcy liquidation, having trained staff to maintain the vehicles. However, NASA now has dropped plans to use the vans, stating that Canoo "was no longer able to meet our mission requirements." For Artemis missions, NASA will instead use an Airstream "Astrovan" commissioned by Boeing for its commercial crew missions. [TechCrunch]
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FROM SPACENEWS |  | Meet the 2025 Icon Award Winners: This year's recipients range from a company that successfully landed on the moon to an agency leader who transformed NASA's relationship with industry, making room for commercial lunar landers in the first place. On Tuesday, Dec. 2 in Washington D.C., we awarded this year's Icon Awards during a program at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. Learn more about what made this year's class stand out. | | |
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And You Think It's Cold Here
| "Do you know what the temperature on Mars is today? It's cold."
| – Dava Newman, co-chair of a National Academies study on the science objectives of human Mars exploration, during a briefing Tuesday to discuss the study's final report.
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