 | Top Stories
An Atlas 5 lifted off this morning on the rocket's final national security launch. The Atlas 5 551 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 6:45 a.m. Eastern. The mission, designed USSF-51, is carrying a classified payload to geostationary orbit. The launch is the 100th national security mission for United Launch Alliance but the final one for the Atlas 5, as ULA shifts to the new Vulcan rocket. [SpaceNews]
The launch of a joint U.S.-Indian Earth science mission is likely to slip to next year. NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO had planned to launch the NISAR radar mapping mission in the spring on an Indian GSLV rocket, but delayed the launch to ship the spacecraft's deployable antenna back the United States to make fixes to it after finding that the antenna would face higher-than-expected temperatures while stowed. NASA said in an update Monday that the work is nearly complete and that the antenna would be shipped back to India to be reinstalled on the NISAR spacecraft. NASA did not disclose a launch date but noted that a launch is not possible from early October to early February because of lighting conditions that would create temperature fluctuations in the antenna. An Indian government minister last week did not include NISAR among the missions ISRO expected to launch this year. [SpaceNews]
A British financial adviser is seeking to raise a venture capital fund focused on sustainability-focused space opportunities. Citicourt & Co is looking to raise £100 million ($129 million) for the fund, which would support companies in Series A and B rounds seeking to scale up their businesses. Citicourt plans to use a scoring system to identify ventures deemed to have a clear path to positively impacting Earth, such as the sustainable production of food, deforestation and carbon mitigation. [SpaceNews]
NASA is proceeding with an August launch of the Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. Officials said Friday they were still targeting a mid-August launch for the mission despite the Falcon 9 upper-stage anomaly that grounded the rocket earlier this month. The rocket has since returned to flight on three Starlink missions. SpaceX says that Polaris Dawn, another Crew Dragon mission that had been scheduled to launch at the end of July, is now planned for "late summer" after Crew-9. NASA also announced that the first operational Starliner mission, Starliner-1, has been delayed from February to August 2025, with Crew-10 now slated to launch in February. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
SpaceX is in talks to recover or even land Starship vehicles in Australia. The company is reportedly exploring towing Starship vehicles that splash down in the Indian Ocean to Australia, which could be a precursor for landing or even launching Starships in the country. Those efforts could also be tied to SpaceX's work for the Air Force Research Lab on its "rocket cargo" initiative that seeks to deliver cargo around the world within an hour. [Reuters]
An Astroscale spacecraft has completed a fly-around of an upper stage left in low Earth orbit. The company announced Tuesday that its ADRAS-J spacecraft performed two loops around the H-2A upper stage, maintaining a distance of 50 meters from the stage. A previous fly-around in June was aborted one-third of the way around because of an attitude anomaly. The inspections by ADRAS-J showed that the stage's payload attach fitting remains intact; that fitting will be used by a follow-on Astroscale mission to grapple the stage and deorbit it. [Astroscale]
The trainer for a major European soccer club is lending his expertise in exercise to NASA. Antonio Pintus, performance director and head fitness coach for Real Madrid, visited the Johnson Space Center recently at the invitation of a Spanish engineer and Real Madrid fan there. Pintus discussed how his training methods, known for their intensity and reliance on data, could be used on Orion missions where there is limited room and equipment for exercising. [The Athletic]
NASA TV is soon going off the air. The agency said Monday that it plans to shut down the linear TV broadcast in late August in favor of NASA+, its streaming service. NASA TV has, for decades, provided live coverage of missions along with documentaries and educational programming. Those will continue on NASA+, along with new programs. [NASA]
| |  | First, Not Last
"This is going to be my first mission and I hope not my last one, so I do hope to have an opportunity in the future to compare training and flying on Soyuz and Dragon."
– Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov, who will be making his first flight to space on Crew-9, discussing the differences between Dragon and Soyuz at a briefing about the Crew-9 mission Friday.
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