By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Blue Origin is working on seven lunar landers, Iridium completes its purchase of Aireon, a Canadian astronaut will retire after flying around the moon and more.
If someone forwarded you this edition, sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday. Have thoughts or feedback? You can hit reply to let me know.
|
|
|
|
|
|
SPONSORED |
 |
Powering Golden Dome for America with mission-proven advanced avionics for missile warning and tracking space sensors, space-based interceptors, and traditional interceptors. Innoflight delivers affordable, mature, low-size, weight, and power solutions, including high-assurance encryption (point-to-point and mesh network HAIPE®), communications, networking, high-performance processing, and precision timing. Our technologies help prime contractors reduce costs, accelerate integration and deployment, and enable the resilient mesh network architecture central to Golden Dome. Partner with Innoflight to help shape the future of missile defense. |
|
|
|
|
Top Stories
Recent multibillion-dollar awards to SpaceX have raised questions about the Pentagon's commitment to competition. The awards, worth nearly $6.5 billion, put SpaceX at the forefront of efforts to build a global military surveillance network and a space-based communications backbone for missile defense. The Pentagon is seeking to expand military space capabilities while simultaneously urging industry to invest in manufacturing capacity and scale production. However, its efforts to create a competitive market for proliferated military satellites is running into rising operational urgency, resulting in an increased reliance on one company — SpaceX — that has mastered industrial-scale production. Some in Congress have raised concerns about that strategy, pushing the Defense Department to increase competition in major procurements as a way to reduce costs, encourage innovation and preserve industrial capacity. [SpaceNews]
Blue Origin is pressing ahead with development of lunar landers as it recovers from the New Glenn pad explosion. At a conference Monday, a Blue Origin executive said the company has seven Blue Moon Mark 1 and Mark 2 landers in various stages of production, including a Mark 1 lander that was nearly complete at the time of the late May explosion. The company is still working on that and other landers needed for NASA's Artemis program, including an updated version of its Mark 2 crewed lander that incorporates changes reflecting NASA's decision not to build the lunar Gateway. Blue Origin is still pushing to rebuild its launch pad and resume New Glenn launches by the end of the year. [SpaceNews]
Iridium Communications has completed its takeover of Aireon, bringing the aircraft-tracking venture fully in-house. Iridium said Monday that it bought the remaining 61% of Aireon it did not already own from air navigation service providers in several countries, completing a $367 million deal announced in May. Aireon, which has provided an aviation safety service since 2019 using Iridium satellites and the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) signals aircraft broadcast, will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. The Aireon purchase closed a week after Iridium agreed to be acquired by Rocket Lab for $8 billion. Rocket Lab has not discussed specific plans for Aireon but said it wants to enhance Iridium services in general. [SpaceNews]
BAE Systems says a microprocessor intended for use in military space applications has passed key tests. The company said the Endura processor performed reliably in testing designed to simulate both the natural radiation environment of space and the more severe strategic radiation conditions required for certain defense missions. Endura integrates multiple onboard computing functions into a single device used to power satellites operating in the harsh environment of space. BAE Systems says it is discussing use of the chip with multiple prime contractors for missile defense applications. [SpaceNews]
Simera Space will provide multispectral imagers for a Spanish wildfire-tracking satellite system. The Belgian company said it is building eight MultiScape100 sensors for Telespazio's Spanish subsidiary, which recently won 21.3 million euros ($24.4 million) from the local Canary Islands government to be prime contractor for the Earth observation constellation. The imagers will be placed on three satellites slated to launch in the second half of 2028. The constellation, using satellites from Spanish company AVS, would be optimized specifically for the environmental and operational challenges facing the islands. [SpaceNews]
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other News
Isar Aerospace has signed a contract to develop a launch site in Canada. Isar announced Tuesday it completed an agreement with Maritime Launch Services (MLS) for a launch pad at Spaceport Nova Scotia, the launch site MLS operates, for its Spectrum rocket. The pad is slated to be ready to host launches in 2028. In May, Isar Aerospace announced an agreement with German shipbuilder TKMS to be part of that company's bid to win a contract to build submarines for the Canadian navy; an Isar launch site in Canada would be part of the proposal's industrial offset package. The Canadian government announced Monday it selected TKMS for that submarine contract. [SpaceNews]
Three European companies have joined a NASA contract vehicle for acquiring commercial Earth science data. Kuva Space, OroraTech and Satlantis were among the eight companies added to the Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition program last month. In that program, NASA acquires Earth observation data from companies for use by researchers. Airbus and Iceye were already part of the program. The new awards, company officials argue, show that European companies are at the forefront of the Earth observation sector. [SpaceNews]
NASA issued a draft request for proposals for the next phase of its commercial space station program. The draft RFP for the next phase of the Commercial LEO Destinations program comes after NASA said last month it would not pursue an alternative approach involving a government-procured core module for the International Space Station that commercial modules would attach to. Instead, NASA says it is following the desire of industry to issue fixed-price contracts to advance development of commercial stations, with the agency planning to make at least two awards for early station development, and then one or more for final design and certification. Feedback on the draft RFP is due to NASA late this month. [NASA]
Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen is retiring three months after flying around the moon on Artemis 2. Hansen said Monday he will leave the Canadian Space Agency as well as full-time duty in the Royal Canadian Air Force in September. He will remain with the military as a reservist. Hansen was selected as an astronaut in 2009 but did not fly in space until the Artemis 2 mission in April, becoming the first non-American to leave Earth orbit. He said the decision to leave the Canadian astronaut corps while remaining an air force reservist is "a deliberate launchpad designed to leave the door open for creative, ongoing ways to support and enable the vital work happening in Canada with respect to space." With his retirement, Canada has three active astronauts, including Joshua Kutryk, who will fly to the ISS this fall on the Crew-13 mission. [CBC]
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM SPACENEWS |
 |
Honor the icons shaping space: Since 2017, the SpaceNews Icon Awards have celebrated the companies, teams and individuals driving breakthroughs across civil, commercial and military space. Nominate the innovators, collaborators and leaders whose work over the past year — or an entire career — has left a lasting mark on the industry. Submit your nomination today. |
|
|
|
|
|
Exciting Unpredictability
|
"If you tried to predict what was going to be the biggest opportunity for space companies five to seven years ago, no one would have mentioned data centers in orbit. Now that's all the rage. The unpredictability of this industry is what makes it so exciting."
|
– Adam Spice, Rocket Lab's chief financial officer, speaking at the Spacetide conference on Tuesday.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment