Plus: New Glenn explosion linked to rocket valve
Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, the Senate confirmed Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess to lead the Space Force, Blue Origin identified the cause of its New Glenn explosion, NASA and SpaceX are looking for ways to prevent upper stage collisions with the moon and more.
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OUR TOP STORY
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By Sandra Erwin The U.S. Senate on Aug. 6 confirmed Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess as the next chief of space operations, installing a career missile and space officer to lead the Space Force as it prepares for a sharp expansion in funding, personnel and military missions driven by growing competition with China.
Schiess, who has served as the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for operations since late 2025, succeeds Gen. Chance Saltzman as the service’s top uniformed officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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FROM SPACENEWS |
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CIVIL
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The European Commission announced Aug. 7 it completed negotiations with the SpaceRISE industrial consortium on the IRIS² constellation, a milestone known formally as Rendezvous 1, increasing the number of satellites as well as its cost.
NASA and Roscosmos have agreed to continue exchanging seats between Soyuz and Crew Dragon spacecraft, but that agreement does not yet extend to Starliner.
With a Falcon 9 upper stage crashing into the moon earlier this week, SpaceX says it is working with NASA on ways to prevent similar collisions in the future.
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LAUNCH
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Blue Origin has traced the explosion of its New Glenn rocket during a static-fire test in May to a valve in the rocket’s BE-4 engine. The issue that could also affect United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur.
A Redwire subsidiary called Space Microgravity Development working on space biotech and pharmaceutical applications has signed an agreement to fly 32 microgravity research payloads on SpaceX’s Starfall reentry vehicle.
SpaceX plans to start deploying upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit on the next flight of its Starship vehicle, scheduled for as soon as the end of the month. The company will also attempt to catch the upper stage back at the launch site. |
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COMMERCIAL
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The National Reconnaissance Office has awarded contracts to Capella Space, Iceye U.S. and Umbra to expand the U.S. government’s use of commercial synthetic aperture radar.
EchoStar’s Hughes geostationary satellite broadband business has filed for bankruptcy in the United States after years of mounting competition from SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
Rocketdyne is returning as an independent company as AE Industrial Partners completes its purchase of L3Harris Technologies’ space propulsion, power and electronics units, separating a 1,300-person space supplier from the missile businesses L3Harris plans to keep. |
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