January 5, 2025

Blue Origin Postpones Launch of New Glenn Maiden Rocket Until Jan. 8 (Source: Space Coast Daily)
Blue Origin announced that the maiden flight of its highly anticipated New Glenn rocket is now scheduled for January 8 at 1 a.m. This marks a significant milestone for the aerospace company as it seeks to expand its capabilities in reusable orbital launch systems. The launch will occur from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport when conditions are expected to be favorable. (1/4)

Space Force Tightens Access at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Patrick SFB (Source: Space Coast Daily)
The Trusted Traveler program has been suspended at Patrick SFB and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station until further notice. Any individuals without a DoD-approved access credential, such as CAC, dependent ID, or retiree ID, will be required to obtain a visitor pass, even when traveling with a DoD ID card holder. Event Bright tickets for rocket launches will be also terminated. (1/4)

ESA and NASA Deliver First Joint Picture of Greenland Ice Sheet Melting (Source: ESA)
Global warming is driving the rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, contributing to global sea level rise and disrupting weather patterns worldwide. Because of this, precise measurements of its changing shape are of critical importance for adapting to climate change. Now, scientists have delivered the first measurements of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s changing shape using data from ESA's CryoSat and NASA's ICESat-2 ice missions. Click here. (12/20)

Bezos Readies UK Broadband Service as He Takes On Musk (Source: The Telegraph)
Jeff Bezos is preparing to launch a satellite broadband service in Britain in a boost to his challenge to rival space rocket billionaire Elon Musk. Project Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite division, is planning to offer internet access via space as soon as this year, regulatory filings show. The venture hopes to target businesses and government contracts initially.

Amazon said it would be seeking increased access to Britain’s radio waves “over the next one to two years” as it “expands the capabilities of its first-generation system”, which will see internet traffic beamed from space to satellite dishes outside homes. The tech behemoth told the communications regulator Ofcom it believed Kuiper was “uniquely suited to reach hard-to-serve areas within the UK”.

It said its network could help “close the digital divide” suffered by businesses and people in rural areas not served by fast fixed-line or mobile broadband. Amazon said it was exploring building ground-based hubs to support its network, known as “gateways”, which are needed to connect satellites to the wider internet and boost speeds. Amazon has been courting British defence officials as it prepares to target military contracts for its satellite network. (1/4)

Musk’s Starship Rocket is Beating NASA in the Space Race (Source: The Guardian)
Many space engineers who believe that Starship is poised to make a major leap with a schedule that could see it carry out launches every two or three weeks. SpaceX engineers have learned how to reclaim and reuse its main booster stage and will do the same for its upper stage this year, they say. A total of 25 flights are now planned for the year ahead, an astonishingly ambitious program. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the schedule they work by is unprecedented,” says astrophysicist Ehud Behar.

For scientists, the benefits of Starship are straightforward. Costs of missions on the reusable launcher could plummet from present levels and make it possible for them to carry out research in space which they simply have not been able to afford. This point is crucial. Access to space has been too precious to risk failure in the past, and so components on NASA missions are tested over and over again, pushing up costs. “But with routine Starship flights, scientists will be able to take more chances, building instruments with cheap, off-the-shelf parts and launching them often.”

There is the likelihood that Starship could doom NASA’s own rocket system, the problem-plagued, vastly expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that the agency has been planning for decades. The other main problem for many scientists in dealing with SpaceX is that they find it difficult to accept Musk’s rightwing politics and his close association with Donald Trump. (1/4)

A Traffic Jam is Forming at US Spaceports (Source: Wall Street Journal)
A traffic jam is forming at U.S. rocket-launch sites. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other rocket companies are planning to increase flights in the years ahead as they ferry their own satellites or payloads for other customers to space. The problem: Only three sites in Florida and California handle most US rocket launches, and those locations are expected to become increasingly congested as companies and regulators schedule more missions. Government and industry officials fear that backed-up launch sites would restrict payloads from getting to space in a  timely manner.

A significant weather event or an accident could put one of the major spaceports out of commission for months or even years, said George Nield, the former top space official at the FAA. "We're so dependent on space, to put all your eggs in one basket is a risky strategy," he said. Operators of smaller and nascent spaceports, including those in landlocked states and at sea, are jockeying for new business, but face their own set of expansion hurdles. (1/5)

A Space Shuttle Was Ready to Launch from Vandenberg. What Scrapped the $2.5 Billion Plan? (Source: The Tribune)
After the Challenger disaster, the entire program underwent an audit, and it was discovered that the SLC-6 launch pad — recycled from previous canceled Air Force projects like the never-launched Manned Orbital Laboratory — would be destroyed by the force of the first shuttle launch. The effect would have been similar to the April 2023 SpaceX Starship launch in Texas that hurled concrete powder miles from the launch site and damaged the launch vehicle. (1/4)