Plus: NASA plans to consolidate its launch procurements
Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, NASA eased up some spacesuit requirements for early Artemis missions, a Falcon Heavy launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and more.
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OUR TOP STORY
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By Jeff Foust
NASA is revising requirements and providing additional resources to Axiom Space to ensure a lunar spacesuit the company is developing is ready in time for Artemis 4.
During an Aug. 31 meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, committee members said NASA was working closely with Axiom on the company’s Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or AxEMU, intended for use by astronauts walking on the lunar surface.
NASA is revising the requirements of the suit to have a version of the suit ready for Artemis 4 while deferring upgrades to later missions.
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CIVIL
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Aug. 28 creating a commission to study establishing a United States Space Academy analogous to those for the military services.
NASA awarded a $700 million contract to Blue Origin on Sept. 1 to build the Mars Telecommunications Network, intended for launch in just over two years. The mission, previously known as the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, was funded in a budget reconciliation package enacted in July 2025.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s communications and technology subcommittee favorably reported H.R. 8255, the Satellite and Telecommunications (SAT) Streamlining Act, on a voice vote during a Sept. 1 markup. The vote sends the bill to the full committee for consideration.
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LAUNCH
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A Falcon Heavy launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship telescope, Aug. 30 on a mission to study the nature of the universe and discover thousands of exoplanets.
NASA officials mentioned at the SmallSat Conference the creation of a new Commercial Access to Space program office within the Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate. The office would be responsible for all launch activities at NASA except those for human spaceflight.
Chinese commercial launch company Galactic Energy successfully launched its first Pallas-1 rocket late Monday, with future flights to attempt first stage recovery. The second stage achieved orbit, but no payload was reported. |
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COMMERCIAL
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Sierra Space said it has signed national security and commercial customers to fly payloads on the first orbital mission of its Dream Chaser spaceplane, as the long-delayed vehicle moves toward a debut flight later this year.
York Space Systems unveiled a new satellite platform designed to operate in very low Earth orbit. The new bus is intended to operate at roughly 300 kilometers, an altitude where being closer to Earth can improve sensing performance but where atmospheric drag makes sustained operations significantly harder.
Boeing has delivered the final three of 13 O3b mPower broadband satellites to SES in Florida, where they are slated to launch to medium Earth orbit on a Falcon 9 later this month. |
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SPONSORED CONTENT
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By Dr. James Mitch Stevison, Frontgrade Technologies I have spent much of my career looking at the defense industrial base from different vantage points: as a warfighter, inside major defense companies, and now leading a company whose electronics sit deep within many of the systems our customers ultimately deliver. Those perspectives have reinforced a simple lesson: you cannot accelerate the top of the supply chain without understanding what is happening underneath it. |
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Latest Press Releases
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