Plus: An early return for Crew-11
| By Jeff Foust
In this today's edition: a medical issue forces an early return of Crew-11 from ISS, a billionaire funds development of a space telescope, a time of transition for Vulcan and ULA and more.
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| | | | | | Top Stories
For the first time in the agency's history, NASA is ending a crewed mission early because of a medical issue. NASA announced Thursday that the four members of Crew-11 will return to Earth in the "coming days" on their Crew Dragon spacecraft after one of them suffered an unspecified medical issue Wednesday. NASA did not disclose who suffered the issue or other details, but said the person was stable and that the issue was not serious enough to require an immediate emergency evacuation from the station. They added that the medical issue was not related to preparations for a spacewalk that had been scheduled for Thursday. NASA is considering moving up the Crew-12 mission, currently planned to launch as soon as mid-February. However, the agency expects that for at least a few weeks the ISS will be operated by a three-person crew, including one NASA astronaut, who arrived at the station in November on a Soyuz. [SpaceNews]
A billionaire-backed philanthropic organization is funding development of a large space telescope. Schmidt Sciences announced Wednesday its plans for Lazuli, a space telescope with a mirror three meters across, larger than Hubble. Lazuli will be equipped with a camera, spectrograph and coronagraph for observing exoplanets. The organization plans to develop Lazuli rapidly, with a launch as soon as 2028, and at a "ridiculously" low price in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a tenth of the cost of NASA flagship astrophysics missions. Schmidt Sciences is also developing three ground-based observatories to operate in conjunction with Lazuli. The organization is funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy; Eric Schmidt is also an investor in and CEO of launch company Relativity Space. [SpaceNews]
NASA's next large space telescope is on track to launch as soon as September. At a conference this week, officials with the Roman Space Telescope said the telescope is now fully assembled and will soon begin environmental testing ahead of a launch scheduled for late September. NASA emphasized that development of Roman has remained on budget and its launch is several months ahead of schedule, demonstrating the agency can complete large missions without the cost and schedule overruns of previous projects, such as the James Webb Space Telescope. [SpaceNews]
Rhea Space Activity is adapting navigation software originally developed by NASA for military use under a U.S. Space Force contract. The company is one of 10 firms selected last year by the Space Force's SpaceWERX organization under its Sustained Space Maneuver Challenge, an open competition designed to accelerate technologies that improve satellite mobility and resilience. As part of the award, Rhea Space Activity is developing autonomous navigation software through a project called Vanguard, or Vision-based Autonomous Navigation and Guidance for Unassisted Approach, Rendezvous and Deployment. It builds upon software developed at NASA for autonomous navigation that, in this case, would allow military spacecraft to navigate without the assistance of GPS. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | | Other News
The next Vulcan launch comes as a transitional time for both the rocket and United Launch Alliance. The USSF-87 launch, scheduled for Feb. 2, will deploy two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites, GSSAP-7 and GSSAP-8, into near-geosynchronous orbit. This will be the fourth launch of Vulcan as the Space Force pushes ULA to ramp up the pace of launches to address a backlog of national security missions. It will also be the first since longtime CEO Tory Bruno left the company last month to join Blue Origin. With little margin for additional slips, the transition adds another variable as Vulcan moves from demonstrating it can fly to demonstrating it can fly often. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX postponed a Falcon 9 launch that was scheduled for Thursday. The company did not disclose the reason why it delayed the launch from Cape Canaveral, carrying a set of Starlink satellites, although observers noted the satellite payload appeared to be late arriving to the launch site. The launch is now scheduled for a window that opens at 1:03 p.m. Eastern today. [Spaceflight Now]
Eutelsat is offering OneWeb services to the Canadian military in the Arctic as a potential alternative to Canada's own planned broadband constellation. French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly made the offer to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during last year's G7 summit, allowing the Canadian military to participate with the French military on an initiative to use OneWeb. Under the proposal, the Canadian military would own all of the OneWeb capacity in Arctic regions and control its use. One consideration is how the proposal would affect Lightspeed, the broadband constellation that Canadian company Telesat is developing. The Canadian military announced an agreement with Telesat and MDA Space in December to develop military satellite communications capabilities. [CBC]
A SpaceX executive says it will be up to airlines to decide whether to keep offering Starlink connectivity to passengers for free. Airlines that have agreed to install Starlink on their aircraft typically offer it to passengers for free. At the CES trade show this week, the head of Starlink's aviation business said he expected most airlines to continue to do so, perhaps monetizing it with ads during the login process. However, some low-cost carriers might elect to charge customers for the service to cover the costs of installing Starlink on their aircraft. [PC Magazine]
| | | | | FROM SPACENEWS |  | | How physics AI is transforming the future of space engineering: On this episode of Space Minds, host David Ariosto speaks with Juan Alonso — CTO and co-founder of Luminary Cloud and professor at Stanford University — about the rapid transformation underway in aerospace engineering. Alonso breaks down how advances in computational fluid dynamics and Physics AI are enabling designers to simulate complex aerodynamic behavior in seconds, dramatically accelerating how rockets, aircraft and hypersonic systems are conceived and tested. Watch and listen to this episode. | | | | | | Senator Takes a Controversial Stand
| "Pluto isn't a planet in my opinion — not anymore — but I'm still proud it was discovered here in Arizona."
| | – Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in a video message during a plenary session of an American Astronomical Society conference in Phoenix this week.
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