February 17, 2025

SpaceX Team Visits FAA to Offer Air Traffic Improvements (Source: AOL)
Officials from Elon Musk’s SpaceX are visiting the FAA, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced. In a lengthy post on the social platform X, Duffy said the country deserves top-of-the-line air travel, and he will comply with President Trump’s order to revamp the industry. “To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country,” Duffy said.

Duffy then said employees from SpaceX, Musk’s space technology company, will be visiting the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to “get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current roles, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.” (2/17)

Eutelsat Pivots Away From Consumer Broadband (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat is moving away from consumer broadband as Starlink's dominance in that sector grows. Eutelsat announced Friday it is repurposing Konnect VHTS, the 500-gigabit-per-second satellite launched to GEO in 2022 for consumer broadband over Europe and Africa, to serve higher-paying mobility customers in other markets. Eutelsat is closely reviewing future GEO investment needs amid a general shift in the market toward LEO for connectivity. Eutelsat owns OneWeb, the only meaningful competitor today for Starlink in LEO, but a global rollout of OneWeb services continues to be delayed by ground infrastructure and regulatory issues. (2/17)

Firefly's Blue Ghost Enters Lunar Orbit (Source: Space News)
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander has entered orbit around the moon. The lander performed a maneuver late last week to enter an elliptical orbit around the moon and will maneuver in the coming days to move into a circular orbit. The lander is scheduled to touch down early March 2 near Mare Crisium on the near side of the moon. Blue Ghost 1 launched last month on the same Falcon 9 as ispace's Resilience lander, which made a flyby of the moon on Friday. Resilience is following a low-energy trajectory and the flyby put it on course to return and enter lunar orbit in early May. (2/17)

China Seeks Bids for Lunar Imager Satellite (Source: Space News)
China is seeking bids for a lunar imaging satellite. The China Manned Space Engineering Office released a call for proposals Friday for what it described as a "lunar remote sensing satellite" that would provide high-resolution images of the moon, map mineral distributions and support future crewed landings. The mission will focus on low-latitude regions of the moon, suggesting that China's first crewed mission to the moon will go to equatorial regions and not the poles as NASA is targeting with Artemis. (2/17)

Disabled Astronaut Cleared for ISS Missions (Source: Space News)
A European astronaut with a physical disability has been medically cleared for long-duration missions to the International Space Station. A multinational medical board has certified John McFall, an ESA reserve astronaut who lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident at the age of 19 and wears a prosthesis. ESA selected McFall in its 2022 astronaut class as part of an effort to see if people who have certain disabilities but who would otherwise qualify to be astronauts could fly in space. ESA officials said Friday that while McFall is approved medically for a flight, the agency has not assigned him to a mission yet and he will have to compete for limited opportunities to send ESA astronauts to the station. (2/17)

Ravyn Aims to Distrupt Missile Sector (Source: Space News)
Startup Ravyn Technology is trying to enter the market for hypersonic vehicles and solid rocket motors. The company aims to bring down the cost of missiles tenfold with its Mobile Mass Missile System. Ravyn missiles are designed to travel 1,600 kilometers in space, reaching speeds of Mach 10 or higher, before gliding on reentry for extended range. It wants to cut the cost of missiles through design simplification, economies of scale and vertical integration. (2/17)

Redwire Wins ESA Study Contract for Astrophysics Mission (Source: Redwire)
Redwire has won a study contract for an ESA astrophysics mission. The company's Belgian subsidiary received a contract from ESA for initial work on the Analysis of Resolved Remnants for Accreted galaxies as a Key Instrument for Halo Surveys (ARRAKIHS) spacecraft, which would study dark matter. Another company, AVS, also received a study contract from ESA for the ARRAKIHS mission, and the agency will later pick one of the companies to build the spacecraft. (2/17)

Apollo Film Offers Immersive Experience (Source: CollectSpace)
A film that offers an immersive experience about the Apollo missions is now screening in Houston. The Moonwalkers, narrated by Tom Hanks, premiered in London in late 2023 and started playing earlier this month at Space Center Houston, the visitors' center for the Johnson Space Center. The film uses not just a single screen in front but also screens on the side and extending onto the floor to tell the story of Apollo. Houston The movie will also be screened this spring at the Kennedy Center's Earth to Space Festival in Washington. (2/17)