The Senate voted 67-30 to confirm Jared Isaacman as NASA’s next administrator. The vote Wednesday afternoon came after little floor debate, with no senators speaking in opposition to the nomination. Sixteen Democrats joined 51 Republicans in voting for Isaacman, while all 30 no votes came from Democrats. The vote ended a journey that started more than a year ago with then-President-elect Trump’s announcement he would nominate Isaacman. The White House withdrew the nomination at the end of May, only to renominate Isaacman last month.
The space community celebrated Isaacman’s confirmation while also expressing relief that the agency now had a permanent leader in place. Companies and industry groups widely praised the confirmation, noting that Isaacman’s background in business and his commercial spaceflight experience should serve NASA well. They also noted the importance of having a Senate-confirmed administrator in place after a year that has seen a 20% reduction in agency civil servants and proposed major budget cuts. During his first nomination, Isaacman outlined potential plans for the agency in a confidential document, Project Athena, that later leaked. Isaacman said he stood behind the document although it’s uncertain what aspects of it he will seek to implement. (12/18)
Canadian Startup CSMC Rebrands and Pivots Away from Space Mining (Source: SpaceQ)
Space mining will one day be a viable commercially supported business, but that’s down a long road. So for startup Canadian Space Mining Corporation, which has ambitions beyond space mining, a name change was due. The company will keep the initials CSMC but they now stand for Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation which you will notice does not contain the word space anymore. Whereas they had an inflexible name before, they now have a lot of flexibility. The company now defines itself as “a Canadian space and defence company developing mission-critical technologies at the intersection of energy, resources, and sovereignty.” (12/18)
Lux Aeterna Plans Reentry/Recovery of Reusable Satellite at Australian Site (Source: Space News)
Reusable spacecraft startup Lux Aeterna plans to use an Australian range to recover its spacecraft. The company announced an agreement with Southern Launch to use the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia for its first mission, launching in early 2027, as well as another in 2028. Lux Aeterna is seeing demand for reusable satellite architecture across defense, intelligence and commercial markets. Targeted applications include short-duration technology demonstrations, hypersonic and materials testing, in-orbit servicing and in-space manufacturing missions. Varda Space Industries also uses Koonibba Test Range for the reentry of its W-series capsules. (12/18)
Rocket Lab Launches DoD DiskSats From Virginia (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab launched a mission for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program overnight. An Electron lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Island, Virginia, on the STP-S30 mission for the Space Test Program. The launch placed into low Earth orbit four DiskSat satellites developed by The Aerospace Corporation as an alternative to the cubesat form factor for smallsats. The launch was a rare orbital mission by Rocket Lab from Wallops, which has primarily used that launch site for the HASTE suborbital variant of Electron. This was the 20th launch by Electron this year. (12/17)
SpaceX Launches Starlink Missions on Wednesday From Florida and California (Source: Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX performed a Starlink launch doubleheader Wednesday as the company wraps up its busiest launch year yet. One Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, putting 29 Starlink satellites into orbit. That was followed by another Falcon 9 launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, putting 27 Starlink satellites into orbit. The two launches bring the total number of Falcon 9 launches to 165 this year. Two more launches are scheduled before the end of the year, one carrying Starlink satellites and another a COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation for Italy. (12/18)
Kenya Proposes Spaceport Development (Source: NairobiWire)
The government of Kenya is proposing to develop a spaceport. The government released a procurement for advisory services for the spaceport project, to be located on Kenya’s coast, taking advantage of eastward trajectories over the Indian Ocean near the Equator. The spaceport would be developed as a public-private partnership, but the government did not disclose a schedule or cost estimate for the project. It’s unclear what vehicles would launch from the site, but the spaceport is intended to allow African satellite developers to launch their spacecraft from the continent. (12/17)
Titan May Not Have a Subsurface Ocean (Source: Space.com)
Saturn’s moon Titan may not have a subsurface ocean. Scientists reanalyzed data from the Cassini mission, finding that the moon is not flexing as much from gravitational forces from Saturn. That suggests that Titan may not have a subsurface ocean as previously thought, but instead a layer of ice near the surface with pockets of liquid water within it. Scientists said the finding may mean worlds with subsurface oceans may be less common than previously thought, but doesn’t affect the potential habitability of Titan, which has seas of liquid hydrocarbons on its surface and a dense atmosphere. (12/17)
ULA Launches Amazon Leo Satellites at Florida Spaceport (Source: SPACErePORT)
ULA successfully launched 27 more of Amazon's Leo internet satellites from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport on December 16, using an Atlas V rocket. This mission, known as Leo 4, boosts Amazon's constellation to 108 satellites. (12/17)
Callisto Ground Support Robot Ready for Shipment (Source: European Spaceflight)
French engineering group Technip Energies is in the process of completing Factory Acceptance Tests for a robot that will be used to connect and disconnect umbilicals from the Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator before and after liftoff. Callisto is being jointly developed by CNES, DLR, and JAXA to mature key technologies for future reusable launch vehicles. CNES is responsible for the project’s ground segment, which includes the construction of the launch and landing facility at the Guiana Space Center. (12/16)
Starlink Tech Outpaces Regulators (Source: Sky News)
Elon Musk is winning the space race. SpaceX alone now dominates the majority of global rocket launches, and Starlink satellites make up more than half of the satellites in the sky. But Sky News analysis shows that unauthorized use of Starlink is widespread. Click here. (12/16)
Kongsberg Acquiring 90% Stake in Zone 5 (Source: DM&A Daily)
Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a 90% stake in Zone 5 Technologies, LLC, a California-based developer and manufacturer of long range strike and anti-drone missiles for private sector and U.S. federal government aerospace, defense, and missile defense markets. Eirik Lie of Kongsberg said Zone 5 is "a strong match with Kongsberg's ambitions of expanding our strike missile portfolio and developing Full Spectrum Air Defense capabilities, while further advancing our presence in the United States." (12/17)
ONE Bow River Acquires Leap Space (Source: DM&A Daily)
ONE Bow River has acquired Leap Space, a Colorado-based developer of rapid-response, mass-producible launch vehicles for private sector and U.S. federal government defense and logistics markets. ONE Bow River stated that the acquisition "will enable LEAP to accelerate vehicle development, expand manufacturing capacity, and scale flight operations to meet strong demand from government and commercial customers." (12/17)
NASA Just Lost Contact with a Mars Orbiter, and Will Soon Lose Another One (Source: Ars Technica)
NASA has lost contact with one of its three spacecraft orbiting Mars, the agency announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, a second Mars orbiter is perilously close to running out of fuel, and the third mission is running well past its warranty. Ground teams last heard from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on Saturday, December 6. “Telemetry from MAVEN had showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind the red planet,” NASA said in a short statement. “After the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars, NASA’s Deep Space Network did not observe a signal.”
But NASA’s two other Mars orbiters have been in space for more than 20 years. The older of the two, named Mars Odyssey, has been at Mars since 2001 and will soon run out of fuel, probably sometime in the next couple of years. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2005, is healthy for its age, with enough fuel to last into the 2030s. MRO is also important to NASA because it has the best camera at Mars, with the ability to map landing sites for future missions.
Two European spacecraft, Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, have radios to relay data between mission controllers and NASA’s landers on the Martian surface. Mars Express, now 22 years old, suffers from the same aging concerns as Mars Odyssey and MRO. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is newer, having arrived at Mars in 2016, but is also operating beyond its original lifetime. (12/10)
Starfighters Space Raises $40 Million Through IPO (Source: Starfighters Space)
Starfighters Space, owner and operator of the world's largest commercial supersonic aircraft fleet, out of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, announced the completion of its Initial Public Offering, raising $40 million through the sale of 11,142,061 shares of common stock at a public offering price of $3.59 per share. Starfighters’ Common Stock is expected to trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) American under the ticker symbol “FJET”. (12/17)
Space Force Seeks Tech for Space-Based Missile Interceptors (Source: Defense News)
A new solicitation from the US Space Force calls for information on advanced interceptor technologies that enable tracking of missiles in the boost phase. The solicitation supports the ongoing Golden Dome program. "Current state-of-the-art interceptors demonstrate high performance but are significantly larger and not optimized for rapid deployment or distributed constellations," states the Small Business Innovation Research announcement. (12/16)
Debunking the Cooling Constraint in Space Data Centers (Source: Mach 33)
Are radiators a physics blocker for Space Data Centers? Space cooling is often framed as a binary: either space is an “infinite heat sink” or cooling is impossible without air. Neither is accurate. In orbit, there’s no convection, so the system lives or dies by radiating heat to space. That turns the radiator question into something more tractable: how hot can we run the radiator, how much area does that require, and how much mass does that area translate into?
We analyze what happens when a Starlink-class spacecraft scales from ~20 kW to ~100 kW. Using Starlink V3 as a reference platform, we examine how increasing onboard power by ~5× reshapes spacecraft area and mass, with a focus on whether radiative cooling becomes a limiting factor.
Radiative cooling is not a physics blocker in that transition. First-principles scaling shows that rejecting heat at the 100 kW class is a predictable engineering trade between operating temperature, surface area, and mass, not a fundamental physical limit. (12/17)
We've Now Found 40,000 Asteroids That Could Pose a Threat to Earth. It's the Tip of the Iceberg (Source: BBC)
Astronomers have announced they've catalogued the 40,000th near-Earth asteroid. The announcement marks a milestone in the detection of space rocks that orbit close to Earth and, scientists say, highlights the threat posed by space rocks to our home planet. Near-Earth asteroids can range from a few meters to several kilometers across and travel on orbits that bring them relatively close to Earth. This makes them objects of immense interest to both scientists and planetary defense experts.
As the next generation of telescopes enter operation, we expect the number of known NEAs to continue to grow at an even higher pace. ESA says the largest NEAs (over 1 kilometre across) are easiest to detect. These would cause global damage if they hit Earth, but scientists say they're confident the vast majority have already been discovered. Now the focus is on the mid-sized population, which are 100–300 metres across. These are harder to spot but could cause regional damage. Current predictions suggest we've only found only about 30% of the mid-sized asteroids. (12/16)
DiskSat Flat Satellite Platform Targets High Power Missions and Very Low Earth Orbit (Source: Space Daily)
The Aerospace Corporation's DiskSat concept introduces a flat, disk-shaped small satellite bus designed to provide more power, surface area, and payload volume than a traditional CubeSat while keeping a standardized, containerized launch interface. A representative DiskSat demonstrator measures about 1 meter in diameter and roughly 2.5 centimeters thick, with an internal volume comparable to a 20U CubeSat and structural mass under 3 kilograms.
NASA's Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems program is funding the design and flight of a four-satellite DiskSat technology demonstration to validate the new form factor and its launch dispenser. For launch, multiple DiskSats are stacked inside a fully enclosed container that rides as a secondary payload and then deploys the spacecraft one at a time once on orbit, an approach aimed at supporting future constellations of up to 20 or more DiskSats in a single mission. (12/17)
Mission Space to Fly Second Space Weather Payload with Rogue Space (Source: Space Daily)
Mission Space will launch its second payload in orbit in partnership with Rogue Space, extending its commercial space weather measurement network. The first Mission Space payload, ZOHAR-I, launched in March 2025 and recently received the 2025 Global Tech Award for advances in high-cadence radiation monitoring from orbit. The second mission builds on that work by adding a new data point and introducing neutral-density tracking, which supports prediction of atmospheric drag, orbital shifts, and maneuver uncertainty during geomagnetic events. (12/14)
Arab Satellite 813 Launch Deepens UAE China Space Partnership (Source: Space Daily)
A Kinetica 1 rocket has placed the Arab Satellite 813 into orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, marking a new phase of cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and China in space activities, according to the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites. The satellite, described as a multirole mission platform, was launched from the Gobi Desert site in northwestern China and injected into its planned orbit on Wednesday.
Arab Satellite 813 carries a hyperspectral imager, a panchromatic imager and an atmospheric polarimeter designed to collect data on vegetation, water bodies and land use, as well as to support detailed mapping and surface feature detection. (12/16)
GoMars Model Simulates Martian Dust Storms to Improve Mission Safety (Source: Space Daily)
Researchers in China have used a Mars general circulation model to simulate 50 years of Martian dust activity, aiming to improve forecasts of global dust storms that can disrupt exploration missions.
Mars is dominated by a dry, dusty desert landscape where winds and rotating columns of air lift fine particles into the atmosphere and later return them to the surface. The resulting dust cycle depends on surface - atmosphere interactions, seasonal changes, and the development of occasional planet-encircling dust storms. (12/16)
Space RCO Solicitation for Agile Space Effort Held Up By SBIR/STTR Funding Issue (Source: Via Satellite)
The U.S. Space Force’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) is preparing a request for proposals (RFP) around agile space capabilities, but it is held up due to the status of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), RCO Director Kelly Hammett said. The current NDAA does not renew SBIR and small business technology transfer (STTR) authorities for 2026. This is also impacting contracts for threat warning radar satellite payloads. (12/14)
Canada Seeks U.S. Help for $400-Million Canadian Forces Space Project (Source: Ottawa Citizen)
The Department of National Defence is looking to the U.S. military as it sets the stage for a new Canadian Forces space project that could cost up to $400 million. The department has contacted the U.S. Space Systems Command as part of the early stages for Canada’s proposed Space Command and Control (Space C2) project. (12/16)
Northrop Building Classified Payload For Future OPIR Polar Sats (Source: Aviation Week)
Northrop Grumman is supplying an extra, classified payload to be integrated onto the U.S. Space Force’s next-generation overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) polar-based satellites. The company is building two satellites under the program moniker Next-Generation Polar (NGP). (12/16)
Seoul Accelerates Mars Exploration Roadmap with Potential SpaceX Partnership (Source: Korea Bizwire)
South Korea's national space agency said Tuesday it is exploring the use of SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket to launch the country's first Mars payload as early as 2030, part of a broader strategy to accelerate its participation in international deep-space exploration. (12/16)
FCC Told to Deny or Condition EchoStar Waivers Tied to SpaceX Spectrum Transfer (Source: Broadband Breakfast)
The Federal Communications Commission was told Monday it should deny or sharply condition EchoStar’s request for permanent waivers of its terrestrial buildout requirements, tied to its proposed spectrum transfers to SpaceX. The objections were filed by wireless carriers, an infrastructure company, and mobile network operator targeting EchoStar’s bid to waive rules requiring that its AWS-4, AWS-3, and H-Block spectrum support terrestrial wireless networks. (12/16)
Maryland Congressional Delegation Holds Meeting to Discuss Future of NASA, Maryland’s Role in Space Innovation (Source: Rep. Steny Hoyer)
Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) and Members of Maryland’s Congressional Delegation met with NASA officials and stakeholders to discuss protecting and supporting Maryland-based efforts to advance American leadership in space science and innovation. They received updates on and discussed the importance of NASA Goddard’s workforce and missions, as well as other missions being built, led, and supported across Maryland. Video of the members’ press availability following the meeting is available here.
“NASA Goddard is vital not only to our local community in Maryland but to the entire country and world. Home to one of the greatest concentrations of scientists in the world, the team at Goddard is deepening our understanding of our planet and what lies beyond. In the course of that pursuit, they are also helping America continue to stay ahead of China and other competitors when it comes to science, technology, innovation, and economic growth. I was pleased our delegation could meet today to discuss how we can best support Goddard in that important mission,” said Congressman Hoyer. (12/16)
Experts: Copying SpaceX Rockets Doesn't Guarantee Success (Source: WESH)
A growing number of Chinese companies are creating rockets similar to SpaceX’s, and they are not hiding it. "A lot of these companies overpromise," said Ken Kremer. "They promise the moon, and then they fail to deliver anything." Kremer said many failed startups have emerged from China with similarly ambitious ideas.
Don Platt, department head for Florida Tech’s Spaceport Education Center, said copycats date back decades. "We saw something similar with the Soviets, actually, with the space shuttle," Platt said. "They had a vehicle called the Buran that was essentially a copy of the space shuttle, with a few modifications." While many rockets may imitate one another, analysts argue it is about what is on the inside and how it performs. "Reliability isn't something you can replicate," Platt said. (12/16)
Relativity Burned Through Its Cash, Then Eric Schmidt Swooped In (Source: Bloomberg)
Relativity Space tried to build spacecraft with 3D printing. After a series of setbacks, Google’s former chief has taken the helm — and the old boss’s big idea is being left behind. Schmidt took over as CEO in early 2025, injecting capital and shifting the strategy away from full 3D printing toward a hybrid approach, including a focus on the larger Terran R rocket.
The company struggled to scale its ambitious 3D printing tech for larger rockets, leading to the decision to use traditional manufacturing for many parts and spin off the 3D printing tech. (12/16)
PLD Space Outlines its Plans for €169M in ELC Funds (Source: Payload)
Spanish launcher PLD Space is poised to receive up to €169.1M in funds as part of the European Launcher Challenge. At ESA’s 2025 ministerial meeting last month, European contributing states were given the option to contribute to as many of the five challengers as they wished. The Spanish government committed to investing the entirety of its €169M ELC funds in the local launcher, while the German government committed the last €100,000.
The European Launcher Challenge is split into two components. The first is for launch services to be performed between 2026 and 2030, while the second is dedicated to capacity upgrades. For PLD, the funds from ELC are heavily weighted towards the latter. The investment from the Spanish and German governments breaks down as follows: €36.9M to support demonstration flights of PLD’s Miura 5 launch vehicle; and €132.2M to invest in the development of a capacity upgrade, which the company will use to begin to explore reusable launch capabilities. (12/17)
Mission Control Awarded Contract for iSPI+ Instrument on Canada’s Lunar Utility Rover (Source: SpaceQ)
Mission Control was awarded up to $2 million by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to provide its iSPI+ infrared sensing system for Canada’s Lunar Utility Rover. iSPI+, which stands for Intelligent Sensing and Perception in Infrared: Parallelizing Lunar Utility and Science, is an AI-powered, thermal-infrared sensor being developed by Mission Control. (12/17)
No comments:
Post a Comment