September 15, 2025

Vast Supports NASA's Commercial Space Station Approach (Source: Space News)
The CEO of commercial space station developer Vast said he supports NASA’s revised approach to supporting such stations. Speaking at the Global Aerospace Summit last week, Max Haot said NASA’s new approach, which includes awarding several funded Space Act Agreements, would enable companies to go faster and provide backups should one awardee falter. Having a four-person, 30-day demonstration mission, a controversial aspect of the new strategy, is a “steppingstone” to permanently crewed stations, he said, and more effective than trying to start with a permanently crewed station. (9/15)

China Test Fires Long March 10 Again (Source: Space News)
China conducted another static-fire test of its Long March 10 lunar rocket. A shortened Long March 10 rocket first stage test article with seven engines fired for 320 seconds during a test Friday at a pad at Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Hainan island.  The test focused on evaluating the performance and capabilities of the seven clustered engines for the rocket’s first stage for low-thrust operating conditions and secondary restart capabilities, Chinese officials stated. They called the test a “complete success.” Long March 10 is a three-core, three-stage rocket designed for China’s crewed lunar landing program. (9/15)

Airbus, Leonardo, Thales Making Progress on Joint Venture (Source: Reuters)
Airbus, Leonardo and Thales are making progress on creating a joint venture of their space businesses. Industry sources said the three companies are attempting to complete an initial agreement creating the joint venture, valued at 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion), in the coming weeks after earlier negotiations stalled in the summer. The CEO of Airbus said last week that his company was still committed to the effort, which seeks to create a “European champion” in space better able to compete with American firms. (9/15)

L3Harris Technologies Opens Satellite Manufacturing Facility on Space Coast (Source: Aerospace Manufacturing and Design)
In partnership with L3Harris Technologies, The Austin Co. announces the completion of a new spacecraft manufacturing facility in Palm Bay, Florida. The state-of-the-art complex marks a significant milestone in L3Harris' continued investment in advanced aerospace manufacturing. Austin Co. served as the design-build partner, delivering comprehensive services including planning, architecture, engineering, preconstruction, and construction management. (9/15)

Did the Dwarf Planet Ceres Once Host Life? Astronomers Suggest Chemical Energy Could Have Fueled Microbes Long Ago (Source: Smithsonian)
Ceres, the only dwarf planet in our inner solar system, is covered in ice and salt deposits. Its daytime temperatures range from a frigid minus 136 degrees to minus 28 degrees Fahrenheit. “Looking at this barren, frozen, gray world, we might be [forgiven] for thinking it the last place likely to host life in our solar system,” said Iain Todd. And yet, researchers now suggest Ceres might have once been habitable. The dwarf planet has an underground reservoir of salty water as well as organic material in the form of carbon molecules. (9/9)

Nudists Declare War on SpaceX (Source: Futurism)
Members of the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) — yes, that's a real group — were among those protesting the Elon Musk-owned company's proposed use of Kennedy Space Center on the Sunshine State's so-called Space Coast. Among the many potential impacts associated with bringing SpaceX to Florida — including hearing damage to local residents and flight delays across the state, per various opponents — is the repeat closure of Playalinda Beach, a remote location on the Canaveral National Seashore that's one of Florida's four main public beaches where nudity is legal. Popular among the clothing-optional set, Playalinda could be closed up to 60 times per year due to Starship operations. (9/14)

Musk on His Washington Tenure: ‘The Government is Basically Unfixable’ (Source: The Hill)
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he believes the federal government is irreparably broken, following his brief stint leading the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) this year. “The government is basically unfixable,” he said. “It’s good to have talented people in the administration, but at the end of the day, if you look at our national debt, which is insanely high, the interest payments exceed the [Pentagon] budget and they keep rising... If AI and robots don’t solve our national debt, we’re toast.” (9/10)

Fewer Federal Executives Will Be Considered Top Performers Under OPM Final Rule (Source: FNN)
Agencies will soon have to set much stricter limits on how many federal senior executives can earn high marks on their performance reviews. A new final rule from the Office of Personnel Management has officially paved the way for creating a “forced distribution system” to measure the performance of career members of the Senior Executive Service. In practice, the new system will cap how many SES members agencies can rate at the top two of five levels in the government’s performance review system. (9/12)

Chinese Laser Comms From GEO Beats Starlink's LEO Approach (Source: Supercar Blondie)
The position of the fastest and best satellite speeds has, up until recently, gone to Elon Musk’s Starlink. But it looks like Musk had better watch his back, as some Chinese scientists are coming for Starlink’s crown. Allegedly, scientists from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences were known to be testing a new satellite, designed to be better than Musk’s in many different ways. The satellite was being tested in geostationary orbit, which is approximately 36,000 km above Earth, which we can all agree is very far away.

The Chinese satellite is a direct threat to Starlink due to its high-tech laser technology. Although the laser fitted onto the satellite only uses two watts, the fact that it’s getting the results it is from so far away is mind-blowing. The results have been impressive: one gigabit per second downlink speed far surpasses any of Starlink’s real-user speeds under normal conditions. The difference between the Chinese satellite and the SpaceX satellite is stark. Starlink uses thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, broadcasting via radio frequencies, so bandwidth and interference limits are always a possibility. (9/14)

NASA Satellites Spot Brand-New Island in Alaska Formed by Melting Glacier (Source: Space.com)
NASA satellite imagery has revealed a new island off Alaska's coast that emerged after long-standing glacial ice melted, isolating a small mountain that was once part of the mainland. (9/14)

New Nuclear Rocket Concept Could Slash Mars Travel Time in Half (Source: Gizmodo)
Nuclear thermal propulsion is currently at the forefront of new engine technologies aiming to significantly reduce travel time while allowing for heavier payloads. Nuclear propulsion uses a nuclear reactor to heat a liquid propellant to extremely high temperatures, turning it into a gas that’s expelled through a nozzle and used to generate thrust. The newly developed engine concept, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), uses liquid uranium to heat rocket propellant directly. In doing so, the engine promises more efficiency than traditional chemical rockets, as well as other nuclear propulsion engines.

Editor's Note: Officials at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport are concerned that the spaceport has limited capacity to support the growing collection of nuclear space systems (rockets, satellite 'batteries', lunar power systems) now under consideration. The spaceport has only one or two facilities qualified for processing such nuclear systems. (9/14)

Aussie Researchers Say They Can Bring The Iron Age To Mars (Source: Hackaday)
The silicate rock of the Martian crust and regolith is very rich in iron oxide. Now Australian researchers claim they know how to break that iron loose. The key to the process seems to be simple pyrolysis: they describe putting dirt that is geochemically analogous to Martian regolith into a furnace, and heating to 1000 °C under Martian atmospheric conditions to get iron metal. At 1400 °C, they were getting iron-silicon alloys– likely the stuff steelmakers call ferrosilicon. (9/13)