December 22, 2025

Roscosmos Defines Advantageous Location for Lunar Base (Source: TASS)
The most advantageous location for a lunar base has already been determined, and a lunar rover will explore it, Deputy Director of the Space Systems Department of Russia’s state-run corporation Roscosmos Denis Kutovoy reported. "A lunar rover will travel through a designated area on the Moon — the most advantageous from the perspective of creating a lunar base. It will travel there and study the soil," he noted, speaking within the framework of the "100 Projects of Russia’s Future" program.

The Russian state space corporation is currently laying an "experimental foundation" for formulating further goals for human exploration of space, he emphasized. President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov said earlier that financing of Russia’s new lunar program, which is aimed at building a station on the Moon, would start in 2025. "As for the lunar program, it includes seven lunar missions with various scientific tasks. ... This is a large and very responsible program and, of course, a serious challenge for our academic institutions. Financing of this program will start already this year," he said.

At the first stage, research is suggested to be carried out with the help of automatic flights, Krasnikov said, adding that exploration of the Moon's poles where the largest ice clusters have been found, and collection of soil for analysis lie ahead. Later moon research vehicles will be sent there for terrain analysis and preparation for placement of the future lunar station. (12/16)

Japanese H3 Rocket Fails to Put Geolocation Satellite Into Orbit (Source: Kyodo News)
A Japanese H3 rocket carrying the sixth satellite in a seven-orbiter geolocation system failed to deliver its payload into the target orbit after liftoff on Monday, the country's space agency said. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is assessing the situation and gathering relevant data regarding the second-stage engine's premature cutoff that occurred about 30 minutes after liftoff from the Tanegashima Space Center. It marked the second launch failure for an H3 rocket, the first one being in March 2023, which was followed by five successful launches. (12/22)

It’s Time to Unburden Space Cooperation with China (Source: Space News)
The time is ripe to end the “Wolf Amendment,” a congressional bar inhibiting civil collaboration between the United States and China in space. The impetus for the law was noble — an attempt to challenge human rights conditions in China and prevent leaks of space-related technology — but in practice the ban harms our security and future in space. Given recent approvals to operate around the ban and NASA’s history of successful cooperation in space and modern diplomacy efforts, now is the time to allow our nation’s best and brightest in space to forge new relationships. (12/22)

Europe in the Shadow of American Space Superiority (Source: Spacewatch Global)
When the White House published its executive order Ensuring American Space Superiority in December, it did more than clarify U.S. space policy. It quietly reset the terms of reference for allies - especially Europe. (12/22)

Exolaunch to Deploy 22 Sats on SpaceX Twilight Mission (Source: Payload)
SpaceX is ready to bring customers on a sunset cruise. In a new class of rideshare mission, scheduled for early next year, SpaceX will bring customer satellites to a unique sun-synchronous orbit over the Earth’s terminator—an orbit that allows satellites to scrutinize our planet at the moment of dawn and dusk.

Naturally, launch integrator Exolaunch is filling up the manifest. The German company, which has integrated sats on all of SpaceX’s Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare flights to date, will deploy 22 satellites on the Twilight mission. The payloads include six microsats, one ESA-funded tech demonstration, and over a dozen cubesats. (12/22)

Desert Works Propulsion Expands U.S. Ion Propulsion Capability Through Domestic Manufacturing Partnership (Source: Space News)
Desert Works Propulsion announced the expansion of its domestic electric propulsion development and testing capabilities to address growing demand for advanced in-space mobility across national security and commercial space sectors. The expanded capabilities support next-generation ion propulsion systems designed for higher efficiency, longer operational life, and greater mission flexibility. Desert Works has established an integrated development model that combines advanced propulsion design, in-house vacuum testing, and domestic fabrication, in partnership with Jaguar Precision Machine in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (12/22)

SpaceForest Advocates for a Permanent Launch Site in Poland (Source: European Spaceflight)
Polish rocket builder SpaceForest is lobbying for the creation of a permanent launch site in the country to support at least three domestically developed suborbital launch vehicles. SpaceForest is developing a suborbital rocket called Perun, which it recently launched for the third time from Poland’s Central Air Force Test Range in Ustka. The company expects to attempt a fourth flight no earlier than March next year.

SpaceForest currently uses mobile launch infrastructure, which it must transport to and from the Central Air Force Test Range in Ustka. The company has also signed agreements with EuroSpaceport to conduct launches from a floating platform in the North Sea and with the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium to launch from the Portuguese island of Santa Maria. At the same time, SpaceForest is advocating for the establishment of a domestic spaceport to reinforce sovereign Polish launch capabilities. (12/22)

Five New Planets and the Battle for Their Atmospheres (Source: Universe Today)
One of the primary goals of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to detect atmospheres around exoplanets, to try to suss out whether or not they could potentially support life. But, in order to do that, scientists have to know where to look, and the exoplanet has to actually have an atmosphere. While scientists know the location of about 6000 exoplanets currently, they also believe that many of them don’t have atmospheres and that, of the ones that do, many aren’t really Earth-sized.

And of those, many are around stars that are too bright for our current crop of telescopes to see their atmosphere. All those restrictions mean, ultimately, even with 6000 potential candidates, the number of Earth-sized ones that we could find an atmosphere for is relatively small. So a new paper available on arXiv from Jonathan Barrientos of Cal Tech and his co-authors that describes five new exoplanets around M-dwarf stars - two of which may have an atmosphere - is big news for astrobiologists and exoplanet hunters alike. (12/22)

Astronauts, Launch Teams Practice Artemis 2 Countdown (Source: Spaceflight Now)
In a prelude to the real deal, the four astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission boarded their Orion spacecraft inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon. The three Americans and one Canadian participated in a launch day rehearsal referred to as the countdown demonstration test or CDDT. It was the first opportunity for everyone involved with the mission to be on hand and to go through the motions of the big day with the fully integrated rocket in the loop, instead of just data simulations. The test appeared to reach its conclusion with a cutoff of the simulated countdown at the T-29 seconds point. (12/21)

Engineering the First Reusable Launchpads on the Moon (Source: Universe Today)
Engineers need good data to build lasting things. Even the designers of the Great Pyramids knew the limestone they used to build these massive structures would be steady when stacked on top of one another, even if they didn’t have tables of the compressive strength of those stones. But when attempting to build structures on other worlds, such as the Moon, engineers don’t yet know much about the local materials. Still, due to the costs of getting large amounts of materials off of Earth, they will need to learn to use those materials even for critical applications like a landing pad to support the landing / ascent of massive rockets used in re-supply operations.

A new paper describes how to build a lunar landing pad with just a minimal amount of prior knowledge of the material properties of the regolith used to build it. Why build a landing pad at all, though? Couldn’t Starship or a similarly heavy capacity rocket simply land wherever its flight algorithm deems is a flat enough patch of ground? In theory, yes, however, the plume from the retrograde rockets will kick up a massive amount of rock and dust, potentially damaging not only nearby structures (like a fledgling lunar base), but also potentially the rocket itself. Click here. (12/21)