Plus: A new head of US government business at Vantor
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Landspace sticks the landing on its second Zhuque-3 launch, Firefly Aerospace and Zeno Power team up for testing radioisotope heat sources, Vantor names a new head of its U.S. government business and more.
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Top Stories
Chinese launch company Landspace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket for the first time in a flight Tuesday evening. The rocket lifted off at 7:35 p.m. Eastern from the commercial space zone at the national Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. After stage separation, the first stage completed a powered descent and vertical landing at a landing site about 390 kilometers downrange. The landing is China's second booster recovery, occurring roughly one month after China became the second country to recover an orbital booster with the Long March 10B, that time using a drone vessel at sea equipped with a net-capture system. This was the second launch of the medium-class rocket, which successfully reached orbit on its first flight last December but failed to land the booster. This launch placed into orbit Honghu 03, a satellite built by Landspace's satellite manufacturing affiliate, Hongqing Technology. [SpaceNews]
Rocket Lab plans to use one of its Photon spacecraft for an in-orbit demonstration of the U.S. Space Force's Space Data Network (SDN) in 2027. The company was one of five selected by the Space Force last week for a $60 million effort to demonstrate how different commercial satellite systems can connect to the SDN. Rocket Lab said that, under its $12 million contract, it will use a Photon satellite with optical communications and networking hardware to demonstrate interoperability in orbit. Amazon LEO for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and York Space Systems also received $12 million each to conduct similar interoperability tests. [SpaceNews]
Firefly Aerospace and Zeno Power are partnering to test a radioisotope heat source on a lunar lander. The companies announced Wednesday that a Blue Ghost lander Firefly is building for a 2028 mission will carry a "survive the night" package from Zeno Power that includes a five-watt radioisotope heating unit (RHU). That payload is designed to operate for at least five days into the lunar night, sending a signal after those five days to demonstrate it is still operating. RHUs use the heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes, in this case americium-241, to keep payloads or entire spacecraft warm. The mission, the companies said, will also test regulatory processes for the commercial launch of radioisotope payloads. [SpaceNews]
Space nuclear programs face both near- and long-term challenges. At a symposium last week, government and industry officials said that, as programs like NASA's Space Reactor 1 and Lunar Reactor 1 start up, they will have to address issues such as access to suitable fuels, a small workforce trained in both space and nuclear technologies, and limited access to testing facilities. That is complicated by the growth of other nuclear power programs in industry and government. In the longer term, one concern is how NASA's programs will manage the transition to the next administration in 2029. That requires starting work early on follow-on missions and also getting Congress to "own" the program and provide multi-year funding. [SpaceNews]
Geospatial intelligence company Vantor has named a new head of its U.S. government business. The company announced Wednesday Will Cocos will take over as executive vice president and general manager of the U.S. government business. He had been the company's chief transformation officer since 2023. Susanne Hake, who led Vantor's U.S. government operations since 2023, announced Wednesday that she is leaving the company. The leadership change comes as Vantor, formerly Maxar Intelligence, seeks to expand beyond its traditional business supplying high-resolution satellite imagery to the U.S. government and sell a broader set of software, data and intelligence capabilities. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
SpaceX launched a new set of Starlink satellites overnight. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, placing 24 Starlink satellites into orbit. This was the 97th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 100th overall for SpaceX, counting Falcon Heavy and Starship flights. [Space.com]
Spacewalking astronauts removed a broken antenna outside the International Space Station Tuesday but ran out of time to install its replacement. NASA astronaut Anil Menon and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot spent six hours and 23 minutes outside the ISS, working to remove an antenna used for space-to-ground communications. The astronauts ran into problems removing cables and unbolting the antenna, and controllers concluded there was not enough time for them to install its replacement. Another spacewalk is scheduled for next Tuesday, and station managers are studying whether to install the antenna on that spacewalk or proceed with previously planned maintenance tasks. [Spaceflight Now]
The Indian space agency ISRO is preparing for its first launch since a failure in January. ISRO is expected to launch in early September the GISAT-1A Earth observation satellite on a GSLV rocket. The launch will be the first by ISRO since a PSLV launch in January failed because of a problem with the rocket's third stage, the second consecutive failure of that rocket. ISRO has not disclosed many details about either PSLV failure. [Indian Express]
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured images of the crater created by the impact of a Falcon 9 upper stage. The LRO images, released Wednesday, showed a crater about 18 meters across and no more than 3 meters deep overlapping an older crater. The new crater was created when the upper stage, from the launch last year of two lunar lander missions, hit the moon Aug. 5 at about 8,700 kilometers per hour. [AP]
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Budding Space Fans
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"Paulo Hercílio Viegas Rodrigues, of the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, has perhaps the best conversion story: Rodrigues once spent just over a year in Florida on sabbatical, during which he visited Disney World 52 times, never thinking to check out the nearby Kennedy Space Center. 'I'm a professor of flowers,' he says in his office in Piracicaba, which is now covered in space memorabilia."
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– From a National Geographic article about Brazilian researchers working on plants adapted for spaceflight who have become interested in space themselves.
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