Plus: Three secretive launches
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: European manufacturers win OneWeb and IRIS² contracts, changes to China's Chang'e lunar program, three secretive launches 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 |
 |
Power Built for Where You're Going. Why choose between flight heritage and manufacturing scale? DragonSCALES™ delivers both: flight-proven silicon solar that scales with your program, from LEO constellations to lunar surface power. Resilient. Reliable. Ready to manufacture at volume. As mPower builds the future of space-grade silicon solar, we're proud to power the missions defining the next era of spaceflight. See why leading programs choose DragonSCALES™. |
|
|
|
|
Top Stories
European satellite manufacturers won billions of dollars in contracts for OneWeb and IRIS² satellites Thursday. Eutelsat ordered another 229 OneWeb satellites from Airbus to extend its low Earth orbit broadband constellation through 2034. The extra OneWeb satellites from Airbus will provide a platform for hosted payloads and include more advanced onboard processing capabilities than the 440 spacecraft already on order from the company. Separately, Airbus announced Thursday that it had been picked to build the platforms for the first layer of 66 Ka-band-only IRIS² LEO satellites, to be delivered in 2029. Aerospacelab of Belgium also announced plans to build and deliver the remaining 264 dual Ku/Ka-band satellites by 2030, under a contract it said is worth 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion). Thales Alenia Space said it signed a letter of agreement with Eutelsat to provide government payloads for all 330 LEO satellites for about 500 million euros, part of a broader IRIS² contract it expects to exceed 3 billion euros overall. [SpaceNews]
The Exploration Company won an ESA contract to fly a demonstration mission to the International Space Station. The contract announced Thursday is worth 310 million euros for a flight of the company's Nyx spacecraft to the ISS, currently scheduled for late 2028. It also includes options worth 450 million euros for two additional missions to the ISS or commercial stations. The contract is part of phase 2 of ESA's Low Earth Orbit Cargo Return Service, a program the agency has now renamed Aladdin. The Exploration Company received a phase 1 contract for the program in 2024 along with Thales Alenia Space, and ESA said it is still in contract discussions with Thales about a potential phase 2 award. [SpaceNews]
An Amazon executive said the company still expects to begin initial services with its Amazon Leo broadband constellation by the end of the year. In an interview, Chris Weber said the company plans to start offering services in higher latitudes in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere using the nearly 400 satellites currently in orbit. Deployment of the 3,200-satellite system has been slowed by problems with New Glenn and Vulcan, although Weber said he hoped that Vulcan could start launching Amazon Leo satellites later this fall. Amazon also has a contract for 10 Falcon 9 launches currently scheduled for 2027. The next set of Amazon Leo satellites are scheduled to launch in October on an Ariane 6. [SpaceNews]
Tomorrow.io has outlined plans for a new weather satellite constellation. The company said Thursday that York Space Systems will build a dozen satellites for the DeepSky weather-observation constellation under a $187 million contract. York will use its M-class bus for the contract, with each satellite expected to weigh 800 kilograms. Those satellites will carry a suite of instruments, including microwave sounders, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) radio occultation receivers, GNSS reflectometers, precipitation radars and optical and infrared cameras. The constellation is designed to improve forecasts and recommendations for enterprise and government customers. [SpaceNews]
China's human spaceflight agency has taken over and appears to be reconfiguring the country's robotic moon landing program. Chang'e-8 had been slated for launch in 2028 or 2029, testing in-situ resource utilization technologies such as 3D printing bricks that could be used for assembling lunar habitats. However, a presentation at a planetary science conference this week stated that the China Manned Space Agency had taken over the exploration program and that payloads planned for Chang'e-8 had been remanifested on later missions. It is unclear if Chang'e-8 will keep to its former schedule but with different payloads, or if the mission concept itself is changing, along with its schedule, as China moves from parallel lunar robotic and human spaceflight efforts to a combined program. [SpaceNews]
TrustPoint has ordered 40 satellites from EnduroSat for its planned LEO navigation network. EnduroSat's U.S. subsidiary will build the spacecraft and deliver them in three batches, TrustPoint said Thursday, but did not disclose a schedule or financial details. The order marks a significant increase in scale for TrustPoint, which has so far launched and operated three demonstration satellites carrying its C-band navigation payload and is building four more under a U.S. Space Force-backed program. The company is developing a commercial positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT, system intended to complement or provide an alternative to GPS and other government-operated navigation constellations using C-band signals. [SpaceNews]
|
|
|
|
|
Other News
SpaceX launched a classified Space Force mission Thursday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:42 a.m. Eastern on a mission designated USSF-153. Neither the Space Force nor SpaceX disclosed details about the payloads on the mission, although some speculated it could be a set of Starshield satellites. [Space.com]
China launched two groups of reconnaissance satellites Thursday. A Long March 4B lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 5 a.m. Eastern, placing an unspecified number of Yaogan-54 and Yaogan-56 satellites into orbit. Chinese media said the spacecraft are used for civil remote sensing applications, although the Yaogan satellite family is usually associated with military missions. [Xinhua]
Rocket Lab launched a satellite for a confidential customer overnight with no advance notice. The company said an Electron rocket lifted off at 11:28 p.m. Eastern from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on the "Happily Ever Faster" mission, placing a single Earth observation satellite into a 500-kilometer orbit. Rocket Lab did not announce the launch in advance and said the mission was for a confidential customer. Similar confidential launches in the past year have placed satellites into orbit for BlackSky, an operator of commercial imaging satellites. [Rocket Lab]
A SpaceX executive confirmed the next Starship launch will place Starlink satellite into orbit. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said at an event Thursday that the Flight 14 mission will be the first to place payloads into orbit, carrying a set of V3 Starlink satellites. SpaceX said last month that Flight 14 would be the vehicle's first orbital launch but has not provided updates since then. That launch, once planned for late August, is now expected no earlier than mid-September. Johnsen emphasized the importance of Starship for deploying next-generation Starlink satellites as well as direct-to-device and orbital data center spacecraft that will be based on the V3 Starlink design. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Space Force is expanding its use of simulation technology to train guardians for complex satellite operations. Auria Space received a $10.6 million contract for a system for satellite communications testing and training, while another contract with the company will expand the use of space warfare simulators in the training environment. Space Force leaders have acknowledged that training is a major challenge for a service whose primary weapons and communications systems are operating hundreds or thousands of kilometers above Earth and cannot easily be pulled away from their missions for tests or rehearsals. [SpaceNews]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No Letup
|
"Since the IPO, I have a couple friends that are like, 'Oh, at least you got through that. Now you can relax a bit.' I'm like, are you kidding me? It's more intense now."
|
– SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen, discussing the company's work on Starship, Starlink and other programs at a Goldman Sachs Research event Thursday.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment