August 8, 2023

France's Exotrail to Establish U.S. Presence, Looking for Home State (Source: Space News)
French space mobility company Exotrail has created two U.S. subsidiaries as part of efforts to serve a growing number of American customers. Exotrail announced Aug. 7 that it has created Exotrail U.S. Inc. and Exotrail U.S. Federal Inc. to serve the American market. Tyler Browder, co-founder and former chief executive of space software company Kubos, is chief executive of Exotrail U.S. The two subsidiaries will serve different customers. “Exotrail U.S. is focused on commercial entities, helping them bring in technologies from France,” Browder said in an interview. “The federal one is exclusively focused on U.S. government work, whether civil or defense related.”

In the next year, Exotrail plans to establish a production facility in the United States for its spaceware thrusters. It will also be an integration facility for spacedrop vehicles so that U.S. customers don’t need to ship their satellites to Europe for integration and then back to the U.S. for launch. “We’re looking for a city that makes the most sense for our customer base, our supply chain and our talent base,” Browder said. The company’s goal is to start production of spaceware thrusters from that U.S. site by the end of 2024. (7/8)

Minding the Space Station Gap (Source: Space Review)
Even as the International Space Station is reaching its peak potential as a research outpost, its retirement is becoming a key issue. Jeff Foust reports on the issues discussed at a recent meeting about transferring work done on the ISS to future commercial space stations. Click here. (8/8)
 
Debate and Hopes for Consensus at UN Space Resource Meetings (Source: Space Review)
The United Nations’ Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has started discussions about setting up frameworks for the use of space resources. Dennis O’Brien examines what is known about those closed-door meetings and prospects for reaching consensus. Click here. (8/8)
 
Effect of Upgrades to Starlink Generation 2 Satellites on Visual Brightness (Source: Space Review)
SpaceX has been working to reduce the brightness of its Starlink satellites to mitigate their effect on astronomers, but how effective has that effort been? Brad Young and Jay Respler discuss observations of newer Starlink satellites to see how those larger spacecraft compare to smaller versions. Click here. (8/8)
 
Meanwhile, on Mars… (Source: Space Review)
The show of the summer, at least for space enthusiasts, has been Fox’s “Stars on Mars” reality TV series. Dwayne Day updates the progress of the show and how, in some respects, it offers better drama than some dramatic series set on Mars. Click here. (8/8)

Amazon Shifts Launch of its First Internet Satellites to Atlas V Rocket (Source: Ars Technica)
Amazon has confirmed it now plans to launch the first two test satellites for the company's Kuiper broadband network on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as soon as next month, shifting the payloads off of the inaugural flight of ULA's new Vulcan rocket. The shift has been rumored for several weeks after ULA delayed the first flight of its Vulcan rocket from the summer until the fourth quarter of the year. The delay will allow time for ULA to beef up the structure of the Vulcan upper stage's liquid hydrogen tank, which sprang a leak that resulted in a destructive fireball on a test stand in March.

The first Vulcan rocket was slated to launch the first two prototype satellites for Amazon's Kuiper constellation, a network of more than 3,200 broadband satellites that the retail and tech giant plans to deploy over the next few years. The Kuiper network is similar to SpaceX's Starlink "mega-constellation," which already has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit. Amazon delivered the two Kuiper test satellites to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the Vulcan launch earlier this year, and the spacecraft have been sitting in storage since March, waiting for Vulcan to fly. (8/7)

Starliner Undergoing Three Independent Investigations as Flight Slips to 2024 (Source: Ars Technica)
A Boeing official said Monday that the company has delayed a crewed flight test of its Starliner spacecraft until at least March 2024. The manager for the company's Commercial Crew Program, Mark Nappi, said the spacecraft should be ready for flight by early March, or seven months from now. However, Nappi said that date is conditional on availability of an Atlas V rocket, provided by United Launch Alliance, and an opening in NASA's visiting vehicles schedule.

According to NASA's internal schedule, there is a docking port available from early April to late June 2024 on the International Space Station. So barring a schedule change to delay a cargo mission, the likely no-earlier-than launch date for Starliner's crewed test flight is April 2024. (8/7)

Dish and EchoStar to Merge (Source: CNBC)
Dish Network will merge with EchoStar, the companies announced this morning. The companies will combine in an all-stock deal, reuniting them 15 years after they were split. EchoStar, which provides broadband services, has a value of $2 billion while direct-to-home satellite TV company Dish is valued at $4 billion. Billionaire Charlie Ergen is the majority owner of both companies, and had been reported last month to be considering combining them. (8/8)

Eutelsat and Thaicom to Share GEO Satellite (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat and Thaicom will share a high-throughput geostationary satellite serving Asia. Eutelsat said Monday it will buy half the capacity on the satellite that Thaicom is procuring for launch in 2027. The satellite, operating from 119.5 degrees east in GEO, will provide each operator with about 50 gigabits per second of capacity over Asia. Thaicom said the joint satellite also sets the operators up for expanding their partnership in the future to chase other growth opportunities. (8/8)

Germany's RFA Raises $33 Million for Small Launcher (Source: Space News)
German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has raised 30 million euros ($33 million) from private equity firm KKR. The funding, announced Monday, will allow RFA to complete development of its RFA ONE rocket and conduct an inaugural launch scheduled for the second quarter of 2024. The funding was tied to a separate deal where KKR will become a minority owner of OHB, buying shares not owned by the controlling Fuchs family and taking the German space company private. (8/8)

Lockheed Martin's SDA Trache 1 Satellite Design Passes CDR (Source: Space News)
A Lockheed Martin satellite design for the Space Development Agency (SDA) has passed its critical design review. Lockheed is building 42 of the Transport Later Tranche 1 satellites under a $700 million contract awarded last year. Lockheed is using satellite buses from Terran Orbital for that contract. For the design review, Lockheed Martin 3D-printed a full-size replica of the Tranche 1 satellite, and the company performed an optical communications terminal interoperability test. SDA expects to start launching Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites in late 2024. (8/8)

Momentus Offers Satellite Bus Based on Vigoride OTV (Source: Space News)
Momentus is offering a satellite bus based on its Vigoride tug. The M-1000 bus, recently announced by the company, is similar to the Vigoride tug but without the propulsion system. The company said it offered the bus to the SDA in the recent call for proposals for the Tranche 2 Transport Layer Alpha program, but has not signed any customers for it yet. Momentus says it can build up to 50 M-1000 buses a year in the same facility where it also produces Vigoride vehicles. (8/8)

NanoAvionics Integrates 6U Satellite for Space Science (Source: Space News)
NanoAvionics is preparing to ship a nanosatellite slated to launch this fall to study black holes and neutron stars from low Earth orbit. The company provided its 6U satellite platform for the NinjaSat mission, and integrated it with a payload from Japanese research institute Riken to measure X-rays emitted by those objects. NinjaSat is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Transporter mission this fall. (8/8)

Russia Launches Glonass Satellite (Source: TASS)
Russia launched a Glonass navigation satellite Monday. A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 9:20 a.m. Eastern and placed the Cosmos 2569 satellite into orbit. The spacecraft is a Glonass-K2 navigation satellite, Russian officials said before the launch. (8/8)

SpaceX Launches More Starlink Satellites From California (Source: Space.com)
For SpaceX, it was another day and another Starlink launch Monday. A Falcon 9 launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:57 p.m. Eastern and placed 15 Starlink v2 mini satellites into orbit. The launch took place a little more than 24 hours after another Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral. (8/8)

NASA's TROPICS Cubesats Performing Well (Source: Space News)
NASA's four TROPICS hurricane-monitoring cubesats are performing well after launch. Two Rocket Lab Electron rockets launched the four cubesats in May, and the mission team has been working since then to calibrate their microwave radiometers that will collect temperature and humidity data on tropical storms. The constellation will be able to monitor storms on an hourly frequency, much better than possible with similar instruments on larger polar-orbiting weather satellites. The data should be available to support forecasters during the Atlantic hurricane season, the mission's principal investigator said in a conference talk over the weekend. (8/8)

Frontgrade Acquires Aethercomm (Source: Space News)
Frontgrade Technologies has acquired spacecraft component supplier Aethercomm, the companies announced Monday. Aethercomm is a manufacturer of high-power amplifier modules and switches. The acquisition gives Frontgrade active radio-frequency components to complement its line of radiation-hardened electronics. Frontgrade was known as CAES Space Systems, the former electronics unit of British defense and aerospace contractor Cobham, before being purchased early this year by Veritas. (8/8)

Solestial Provides Solar Arrays for Atomos OTV (Source: Space News)
Solestial will supply solar arrays for space tugs developed by Atomos Space. Atomos plans to test a small Solestial photovoltaic panel on an orbital transfer vehicle demonstration set to launch on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare flight in early 2024, after which Solestial will provide large solar blankets for use on Atomos OTVs launching in late 2024 and early 2025. Atomos said it selected the solar power systems from Solestial because they offered the best performance in terms of power per unit mass. For Solestial, the Atomos contract is important validation given the power demands that Atomos has for its vehicles. (8/8)

Benchmark Offers Upgraded Station-Keeping Features for Satellites (Source: Space News)
Benchmark Space Systems is offering "driver assistance" features for satellites. Benchmark's Smart Advanced In-Space Mobility, or SmartAIM, technology is embedded in the company's propulsion systems and allows satellite operators to select among tiers of autonomous flight. Those capabilities include performing station-keeping, payload pointing, collision avoidance and maneuver planning. For collision avoidance, Benchmark plans to integrate Kayhan Space's Pathfinder spaceflight safety service with SmartAIM. (8/8)

Japan's Pale Blue Provides Water Vapor Thrusters for South Korean Cubesats (Source: Space News)
Japanese startup Pale Blue will supply water vapor thrusters for South Korea's Yonsei University. Pale Blue, a University of Tokyo spinoff founded in 2020, will supply Yonsei University with water vapor propulsion systems for a pair of six-unit cubesats that will carry out formation flight demonstrations and test optical communications. Pale Blue proved its thruster in orbit for the first time in March on a Sony Corp. Star Sphere satellite. (8/8)

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Makes Emergency Landing (Source: NASA)
The Ingenuity Mars helicopter is flying again after an unscheduled landing. The helicopter was supposed to fly for 136 seconds on July 22, scouting a path for the Perseverance rover. However, the helicopter abruptly ended the flight after 74 seconds, and engineers concluded that the helicopter made the landing when images from its navigation camera didn't match up with data from an inertial measurement unit. To test this, Ingenuity performed a quick up-and-down flight last week. The project team says they think the helicopter can now resume normal flights. (8/8)

NASA to Send 3 Rovers to the Moon in 2024 (Sources: Electronics Weekly, New Atlas)
NASA announced plans to send three miniature rovers to the moon on the Artemis II mission next year as part of the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration, or CADRE, project. CADRE will test the ability of the rovers, which will be equipped with cameras and radar to create a 3D map of the moon's surface, to communicate with a base station on the moon without human supervision. (8/7)

IBM Collaborates with NASA to Launch Geospatial AI on Hugging Face (Source: Space Daily)
IBM, in partnership with Hugging Face, has released its advanced geospatial foundation model developed using NASA's satellite data, marking it as the most extensive geospatial model on the Hugging Face platform. Notably, it's also the premier open-source AI foundation model that boasts a collaborative creation process with NASA. (8/6)

Ozband Passes at 72 (Source: Talk of Titusville)
The American Space Museum is sad to report that long-time volunteer and a fixture at Space View Park rocket launches for four decades, Robert "Ozzie" Osband has died on Aug. 6, 2023. Osband is the person responsible for the "3-2-1" telephone area code for the Space Coast that went into effective Nov. 1, 1999. (He claimed as his own the phone number 321-LiftOff.) Since the mid-1980s, Ozzie rarely missed a rocket launch at Space View Park in Downtown Titusville, providing commentary about the mission and sharing the live broadcast on a speaker system. (8/7)

FAA Puts ‘Hold’ on Return-to-Office Plans After Union Pushback (Source: FNN)
The FAA is rethinking its return-to-office plans following pushback from its unions. The FAA announced on July 20 that its employees would come into the office at least three days per week — or six days per pay period — starting on Oct. 9. This was in line with a directive from the Office of Management and Budget to have the entire federal workforce increase “meaningful” in-person work this fall — especially within the D.C. metro area. But the FAA is putting a temporary pause on its return-to-office plans, after unions claimed the announcement was made unilaterally, and in violation of their collective bargaining agreements. (8/4)

More on Draper Labs' Expansion Near the Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
Draper this past week announced a purchase of over five acres of land near the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex for $2.2 million. In a release, the company said it plans to provide engineering and research and development services for national security, space systems and electronic systems customers at the new campus. No information was provided on how many jobs the new campus could create on the Space Coast.

The company has a storied reputation within the space industry after developing the guidance computer for the Apollo program nearly six decades ago. That tradition in the space industry continues into the modern day. This year Draper was recognized for its contribution to the Blue Origin moon landing system. (8/6)

Boeing Aims to Get Starliner Spacecraft Ready by Next March (Source: Bloomberg)
Boeing aims to have its Starliner capsule ready for its first flight to the International Space Station with astronauts on board around next March, with a long-delayed launch following NASA approval. Boeing’s target hinges on a successful high-altitude drop test of parachute upgrades, currently slated for around November, a company spokesperson said, as well as satisfying other crucial technical and safety concerns both internally and at NASA. (8/6)

Boeing's Mulholland Urges Vocal Advocacy for ISS Amid Budget Gloom (Source: Space Policy Online)
Boeing Vice President John Mulholland is urging International Space Station researchers to get busy advocating for the ISS to guard against budget cuts while Congress faces difficult funding decisions. Although Boeing agrees that commercial space stations are the future, ISS will be needed until they are ready. Increased funding is required to pay for a deorbit space tug and to ensure robust science results, including upgrading the 12-year-old AMS-02 cosmic ray detector. (8/1)

Germany's OHB Gets Offer to Take It Private From KKR (Source: MarketWatch)
OHB said it has received a voluntary takeover bid from U.S. investment company KKR and will seek delisting from the stock exchange. Investors will receive 44 euros ($48.45) in cash per share, a premium of 36.6% to the closing price Friday, the German space and technology group said. The deal values the company at EUR764.3 million, based on OHB's share-count data provided by FactSet. The Fuchs family will remain majority shareholders and Marco Fuchs will continue to lead the company as chief executive officer, it said. (8/7)

Thailand Speeds Spaceport Feasibility Study (Source: Bangkok Post)
The government is speeding up a feasibility study into a spaceport so it can make money from space-related industries, says spokeswoman Tipanan Sirichana. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered officials to expedite the plan so the country can gain benefits from the space business, she said on Sunday. The Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency began the study last year and is expected to complete the research in the next two years.

An initial study showed Thailand has the potential to build a spaceport due to its geographical location near the equator, which will assist rocket launches, she said. Thailand also has two coastal sites on the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand that are fit for a spaceport, she said, adding the seas around Thailand can be safe landing zones for spacecraft. (8/7)

Spaceport America Set to Launch Second Commercial Space Flight (Source: KOB4)
Another historic spaceflight is set to take off from New Mexico in a few days. Spaceport America will be the site of another space tourism launch Thursday. This will be the second commercial spaceflight in southern New Mexico for Virgin Galactic and its founder Richard Branson. This is the first with “private customers.” There will be three of them: an Olympian, and the first mother-daughter duo to go up to space. An astronaut will join them to take them on a 90-minute flight. Virgin Galactic’s first space tourism flight successfully went up six weeks ago from Spaceport America. Three members of the Italian Air Force were on that one. The company wants to launch paying customers to go up once a month from New Mexico. (8/7)