Civil
Stories about US and international civil space missions, including those led by NASA and ESA.
Pentagon Establishes Office of Strategic Capital
The Pentagon is getting into investing. Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin established a new Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), which aims to give the DoD the ability to work more closely with private capital. Why get into capital markets? Right now, the DoD’s mechanisms for helping new, important technologies hop the “valley of death”…
ICON Wins NASA Contract for Lunar 3D Printing
Within a decade, a startup known for building cheap 3D-printed houses on Earth is hoping to bring the materials cost for building structures on the lunar surface down to zero. Austin-based ICON said this morning that it won a $57.2M Phase III SBIR award from NASA that will bring its 3D printing technology all the…
South Korea Releases Space Economy Roadmap
South Korea is set to soon get its own NASA counterpart. That’s the plan, President Yoon Suk-yeol said Monday. Yoon laid out ambitious plans for bolstering his nation’s space economy, including goals to land a spacecraft on the Moon by 2032 and Mars by 2045. The 2045 Mars landing is aptly timed for the 100th…
SpaceX, NASA Launch Cargo Resupply Mission to Space Station
SpaceX launched its 26th ISS resupply mission on Saturday, hoisting roughly 7,700 pounds of hardware, food, cubesats, and scientific experiments to the station. NASA and SpaceX scrubbed a liftoff earlier in the week due to uncooperative weather. For the CRS-26 mission, SpaceX used a brand-new Falcon 9 booster (tail number B1076) and Cargo Dragon capsule.…
Artemis I Cubesats Fail to Power Up
Since launching on November 16, the Artemis I core mission has gone off practically without a hitch (unless you count damage to the elevator doors near the pad as a vital loss). SLS successfully carried the Orion capsule out of the Earth’s atmosphere and sent it on its trajectory to the Moon, where it made…
A Q&A with Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson
Figuring out how the US remains a leader in low Earth orbit after the ISS plummets into the ocean should be a top priority for Congress in 2023, according to outgoing Science, Space and Technology Committee chair Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX.) There are no follow-on plans for a government-run space station in low Earth…
NASA Launches Artemis I
We’re on our way back to the Moon. In the wee hours of the morning, NASA finally got the 322-foot-tall Artemis I off the ground. This was the third attempt to launch the $4.1B Mega Moon Rocket. Previous attempts dating back to August were foiled by leaky hydrogen lines, faulty sensors, and two hurricanes. The…
RFA Secures New Test Site for Helix Engines
Rocket Factory Augsburg has struck an agreement with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to test its Helix engines at the historic Institute of Space Propulsion in Lampoldshausen. Who’s who in the zoo: RFA currently does all its engine testing at the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. Lampoldshausen is significantly closer to the company’s manufacturing facility…
Euroconsult Releases Space Exploration Report
Expect new players in the spacefaring game, says Euroconsult. Analysts from the space market intelligence firm have released their third annual report on the state of space exploration. Gone are the days when only a few major powers monopolized spacefaring—instead, Euroconsult sees a future where many more nations are active participants and investors in space…
Trade Groups; Industry Look Ahead to Space Council Sessions
Trade groups are urging the White House to use a “light touch” to regulate new orbital sectors, ahead of companies making their own appeals later this month. Mike French, VP for space systems at the Aerospace Industries Association, said AIA is working with members to help shape the process by which industry receives authorization for…
FCC Announces Space Bureau
The Federal Communications Commission is building a new home for space activities. Last week, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel revealed a new plan to split the International Bureau into two distinct offices: the Office of International Affairs and the Space Bureau. The thought process: “A new Space Bureau at the FCC will ensure that the agency’s…
Australia Bans Direct-Ascent ASAT Testing
In an effort to make the orbital environment a little bit safer, Australia has joined the US-led pledge not to conduct any destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) tests. The story so far: Last November, Russia fired an ASAT missile at a defunct Soviet satellite, exploding it into a cloud of 1,500+ pieces of debris that forced…
CONFERS Highlights: Policy, Transparency, and Future Plans
Government officials and industry gathered just outside DC last week at the CONFERS Global Satellite Servicing Forum to brainstorm solutions for challenges facing the satellite servicing industry. CONFERS = the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations, an industry group with 60+ members that started in 2017. Here’s a dispatch from the two-day conference…
