May 17, 2025

How IM-2 Payload Operators Made the Most of the Mission’s Landing Issues (Source: Space News)
MAPP operated during the eight days from launch to landing, said Forrest Meyen, chief strategy officer of Lunar Outpost. “We got data on the way to the moon,” he said. That was primarily diagnostic data about the rover, which executed 250 commands along the way. The rover, he added, survived the rough landing. “It stayed connected to the lander and transmitted data for 2.7 hours.” However, there was not enough bandwidth to collect images from a camera called RESOURCE provided by MIT.

For the team that worked on RESOURCE, the satisfaction came from taking an off-the-shelf Microsoft Azure Kinect camera and turning it into an instrument that could do 3D-mapping and even spectral analysis. “This simple camera we started toying with was actually a good instrument to detect variation in lunar regolith,” said Don Derek Haddad, who led development of software for RESOURCE. That also included creating a new data compression scheme that would have allowed RESOURCE to return data within the limited bandwidth available on a nominal mission. (5/15)

What Is Chandrayaan 5? India-Japan Lunar Mission to Drill Deep Into Moon’s South Pole for Water (Source: Business Today)
India and Japan are gearing up for a landmark joint venture in space with the Chandrayaan-5 mission — also known as the Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) mission. Designed to explore the uncharted depths of the Moon’s south pole, the collaboration marks a major step forward in global lunar exploration. It will be the fifth mission in India's Chandrayaan series and the first to involve Japan’s space agency JAXA, aiming to probe water reserves hidden in the lunar shadows. (5/16)

ISRO to Launch its 101st Satellite on Sunday (Source: Economic Times)
ISRO will launch its 101st satellite on May 18, its Chairman V Narayanan announced on Thursday, and asserted that the space agency's programs were planned to ensure the safety and security of the country. "We successfully launched the one-hundredth rocket from Sriharikota in January. India's 101st satellite - the Earth Observation Satellite RISAT-18 aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C61) - will be launched on May 18," the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization said. (5/15)

Quasars Reveal Gravity’s Hidden Rhythm (Source: SciTech Daily)
Gravitational waves are constantly washing over Earth, but an astrophysicist aims to capture them in an entirely new way—by watching distant quasars appear to wiggle due to spacetime distortions. Using data from the Gaia satellite, he’s searching for three-dimensional effects that previous techniques might have missed. (5/14)

NASA Picks Rocket Lab to Launch Shoebox-Sized Aspera Space Telescope in 2026 (Source: Space.com)
NASA has selected Rocket Lab to launch its Aspera smallsat mission, which will study gases in the vast regions of space between galaxies. Rocket Lab's Electron will launch Aspera, a cubesat being developed by the University of Arizona and NASA. The shoebox-sized satellite will use an onboard telescope to study the ultraviolet light emitted from gases adrift between galaxies. The launch is targeted for the first quarter of 2026, from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. (5/16)

Start-Ups are Trying to Close the U.S. Hypersonic Missile Gap with China (Source: Washington Post)
Last week's launch by Houston-based Venus Aerospace marked the first U.S.-based flight of a powerful new variety of rocket called a rotating detonation engine. The design has been theorized for decades as a way to significantly increase the fuel economy of rockets, but was only recently made practical by advances in materials, manufacturing and design software. Their initial use case is likely to be military, as super-fast hypersonic missiles.

Venus is one of a growing number of start-ups pushing the limits of aerospace engineering as they test engines and airframes to fulfill DoD’s desire for faster aircraft and missiles. On May 5, Stratolaunch said it had recently completed two successful test flights of its new hypersonic plane, which is powered by a rocket engine built by another start-up, Ursa Major. The Talon-A2 autonomous plane flew faster than Mach 5 (hypersonic aircraft are generally defined as flying faster than Mach 5, or 3,800 mph).

Other companies, including California-based Castelion and Georgia-based Hermeus, are also working on hypersonic engines and airframes. Work on the technology was once in the realm of only big-budget Pentagon programs run by giant defense contractors. Start-ups are also trying to find low-cost ways to test how rocket engines, airframes and internal components handle extreme heat and acceleration that would destroy parts meant for regular aircraft. (5/14)

Bandwidth Issues Require Biomass Satellite to be Turned Off Over the US, Europe (Source: The CoolDown)
So, why use P-band to make more direct measurements? According to MIT Technology Review, its large wavelengths are best for measuring trunks and large branches, where trees store most of their carbon. However, this came at a cost. Large P-band satellites tend to interfere with reconnaissance satellites. Because of this, manufacturers have to turn off Biomass' radar when it flies over North America and Europe. (5/15)

Golden Dome’s Price Tag Will Likely Exceed Half a Trillion Dollars (Source: Air and Space Forces)
The “Golden Dome” homeland missile defense system proposed by President Trump will likely cost more than half a trillion dollars, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said. He was asked if he thought the Congressional Budget Office’s $542 billion estimate for the largely space-based air and missile defense system was too high. He said he believed it was not. (5/15)

Senators Call for Inquiry Into Potential Corrupt Support to Musk During Trade Negotiations (Source: Via Satellite)
A group of Democratic Senators are calling for an ethics investigation into reporting that the Senators say shows the Trump Administration is “explicitly seeking” to assist Elon Musk’s Starlink business in tariff negotiations with foreign nations. “Suggesting that a foreign government adopt Starlink in exchange for relief on tariffs appears to be a textbook case of corruption,” Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, Mark Warner, and Jeanne Shaheen wrote.

Editor's Note: One might point to the Government's past and ongoing support to Boeing international aircraft sales, but Boeing is a sole US provider of large airliners. SpaceX has up-and-coming US competitors whose businesses could be hamstrung by the administration's favoritism. What is especially egregious is that this demonstrates a pay-to-play approach to US economic policy, where political donors get favorable treatment. (5/15)

Space Force Mulls Satellite Refueling Versus Expendables (Source: DefenseScoop)
The US Space Force is evaluating the benefits of in-space refueling against the use of inexpensive, expendable satellites. Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton says refueling could extend the life of satellites, but other components have finite lifespans. The service has contracted Northrop Grumman and Astroscale US for refueling demonstrations to assess the technology's value. (5/15)

Japan Affirms Lunar Mission Support Amid NASA Cuts (Source: Reuters)
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency President Hiroshi Yamakawa has expressed Japan's commitment to supporting US lunar missions despite President Donald Trump's proposed $6 billion cut to NASA's budget, which could affect the Artemis program. Japan has been a key partner in Artemis, and Yamakawa says Japan can provide high-precision landing technology, resupply capabilities and lunar data. (5/16)

Reflect Orbital Raises $20 Million in Series A Funding to Advance Satellite Constellation (Source: Space Daily)
Reflect Orbital has secured $20 million in Series A funding to accelerate the deployment of its satellite constellation designed to deliver sunlight on demand. The round was led by Lux Capital, with additional backing from Sequoia Capital and Starship Ventures.

The company is focused on creating a network of satellites capable of reflecting sunlight to Earth for large-scale lighting and energy solutions. This funding will enable the expansion of its engineering team, increase operational capacity, and support the execution of its first space missions. (5/15)

Two Earth Return Missions in Two Months Highlight Rocket Lab's Rapid Re-entry Capabilities (Source: Space Daily)
Rocket Lab has achieved a rapid turnaround of two Earth return missions within just two months, successfully delivering Varda Space Industries' W-3 capsule back to Earth. This marks the third overall success in Varda's W-series missions, highlighting Rocket Lab's growing expertise in hypersonic re-entry logistics. (5/15)

York Space Systems Bard Mission Set for Launch to Test Advanced Communications for NASA (Source: Space Daily)
York Space Systems confirmed its Bard mission is ready for launch. The mission will test the Polylingual Experimental Terminal (PExT), a cutting-edge communications system developed in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program.

This terminal is designed to provide real-time interoperability across government and commercial satellite relay networks, a critical capability as NASA shifts toward a more commercially driven communications architecture. Bard is one of five missions York plans to launch this year. (5/15)

Deploying a Practical Solution to Space Debris (Source: Space Daily)
At this moment, there are approximately 35,000 tracked human-generated objects in orbit around Earth. Of these, only about one-third are active payloads: science and communications satellites, research experiments, and other beneficial technology deployments. The rest are categorized as debris - defunct satellites, spent rocket bodies, and the detritus of hundreds of collisions, explosions, planned launch vehicle separations, and other "fragmentation events" that have occurred throughout humanity's 67 years of space launches. Click here. (5/15)

The 'Space Archaeologists' Hoping to Save Our Cosmic History (Source: BBC)
Space is being commercialized on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species' journey into space are in danger of being lost – both in orbit and down here on Earth. A new generation of "space archaeologists" are scrambling to save what's left of our recent space history artefacts.

Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programs. Click here. (5/16)

Starlink Could Augment GPS PNT Services (Source: Aviation Week)
SpaceX is proposing a Starlink-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service as a complement or alternative to conventional GPS. The company sees using its low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of satellites for PNT as “low-hanging fruit,” Jameson Dempsey, director of satellite policy, wrote. (5/15)

Virgin Galactic to Increase Price for Space Tourism Flights (Source: Bloomberg)
Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. said that it plans to charge more for its space tourism flights when it resumes sales in the first quarter of 2026. The Richard Branson-founded company had been selling tickets for suborbital joyrides on its forthcoming Delta spacecraft at about $600,000 a seat. Company executives didn’t disclose a new price tag during a call with analysts after Virgin Galactic reported results for the first quarter on Thursday. (5/15)

What it Takes to Bring Manufacturing to Space (Source: Marketplace)
It might sound kind of out there — or way out there — but space manufacturing is already happening on a small scale. There's a mini boom of companies looking to do more of it, according to recent reporting in Wired by journalist Jonathan O'Callaghan. He says space has some unique qualities that make it attractive for manufacturing. Click here. (5/15)