January 1, 2023

Latest Launch Marks 64th Mission for China in 2022 (Source: Space Daily)
China launched a Long March 3B carrier rocket on Thursday afternoon to transport an experimental satellite into space, completing the busiest year in terms of launch numbers for the country's space industry. The rocket blasted off at 12:43 pm at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China's Sichuan province and then deployed the Shiyan 10-02 experimental satellite into a preset orbit. The satellite will have the task of demonstrating new technologies for space environmental monitoring and other purposes. (1/1)

Planet to Launch 36 SuperDove Satellites with SpaceX (Source: Space Daily)
Planet Labs plans to launch 36 of its SuperDove satellites, Flock 4y, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Tuesday, January 3. Flock 4y is planned to launch on SpaceX's Transporter-6 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (1/1)

New Year, New Space Stuff: A Look Ahead at 2023 in Space Memorabilia (Source: CollectSpace)
Sometime soon, in the first few weeks or perhaps months of 2023, NASA will begin distributing something it has not had in more than 50 years: new patches, flags and other souvenirs that took a trip around the moon.

The Artemis I Official Flight Kit (OFK), with its nearly 10,000 mementos from the recently-completed, uncrewed lunar mission, arrived back at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday after splashing down and crossing the country by truck. Once unpacked from the Orion spacecraft that carried it to the moon and back, the contents of the OFK will be presented and sent out to the organizations and individuals who supported the history-making Artemis I mission. (1/1)

Booming Satellite Market Could See First Scottish Spaceport Launches in 2023 (Source: The Scotsman)
Colin Macleod, a Stornoway-born former hill farm worker who went on to work in the nuclear and national security sectors, now heads a new 55-strong space regulation team at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), several members of whom are based north of the Border. The CAA is already assessing a licence application from SaxaVord spaceport on Unst in Shetland.

CAA expects to also receive bids from the other Scottish sites, all of which apart from Prestwick are for vertical rocket launches. The authoiry conducted a consultation in November on the environmental impact of the SaxaVord plans, for the Lamba Ness peninsula on the most northerly of the Shetland islands. Mr Macleod said: “I’m hoping the first Scottish licences will be by mid-2023, with the first orbital launch with a payload in late 2023 or 2024. (12/31)

SpaceX Will Try to Follow Record-Breaking 2022 with Busier 2023 (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
SpaceX has shattered the record for launches in a calendar year by a single rocket type while making large strides toward getting the successor vehicle off the ground, despite a few struggles with Falcon 9 launch delays and Starship testing mishaps. The record launch cadence is planned to be broken again in 2023, with as many as 100 launches planned according to Elon Musk.

Starship, the eventual successor to the Falcon 9, did not fly this year as had been planned but is currently on track for its first orbital test flight as early as the first quarter of 2023. The Falcon 9 Block 5, the current operational workhorse of the SpaceX rocket fleet, launched 60 times in 2022, with all flights successfully completing their missions. This cadence has set an all-time US and worldwide record for flights by a single type in one calendar year.

The previous record was set by the Soviet Soyuz-U launcher in 1979, with 45 successful launches out of 47 overall that year. This year’s record launch cadence for Falcon 9 was made possible by the availability of a number of used boosters and payload fairings. Other factors included the need to continue to fly out the Starlink broadband constellation and some new geostationary satellites replacing older ones due to a requirement to clear some parts of the C-band. (12/31)

Juno Spacecraft Recovering its Memory After Mind-Blowing Jupiter Flyby (Source: Space.com)
NASA's Juno probe is continuing to recover its memory at Jupiter after a data disruption interrupted communications between the spacecraft and its operators on Earth following a flyby of the giant planet in December. The Juno spacecraft's latest flyby of Jupiter, its 47th close pass of the planet, was completed on Dec. 14. But as its operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory were receiving science data from the flyby they found they could no longer directly access the spacecraft's memory.

The team successfully rebooted Juno's computer and on Dec. 17 they placed the spacecraft into "safe mode" with only essential systems operating as a precaution. As of a Dec. 22 NASA update(opens in new tab), steps taken by the team to recover Juno's science data had been proceeding positively. Juno's operators are now successfully downlinking the flyby data. "The science data from the solar-powered spacecraft's most recent flyby of Jupiter and its moon Io appears to be intact," NASA wrote in the update. (12/31)

2023 Promises to be Another Packed Year for Florida Rocket Launches (Source: Florida Today)
If this year is anything like 2022 – and it likely will be – Florida's Space Coast is in for a whopping cadence of rocket launches and other space-related activities. After hosting 57 launches in 2022, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center are gearing up for roughly just as many, if not more, missions this year. That pace eclipses not only 2021's previous record of 31, but goes even beyond the area's historic Space Race programs like Gemini and Apollo.

This year could also see promises from several companies finally come to reality in the form of new rockets, some of which are massive heavy-lift systems, after years of design and development. Here's what's on tap for 2023. (12/30)