June 22, 2025

Transporter 14 Rideshare Mission From California Pushed to Monday (Source: NSF)
SpaceX’s latest Transporter small payload rideshare mission, Transporter 14, was delayed from Sunday to Monday afternoon at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The second stage and rideshare payloads will initially enter a parking orbit before a second burn circularizes the orbit by raising its perigee. The payloads are typically released in multiple sequences, and the German company Exolaunch is deploying 45 satellites with their payload deployment hardware on this flight. Other service providers are also launching payloads for customers, and there are two reentry capsules onboard. (6/22)

Satellite Imagery Not Conclusive on Iran Attack Results (Source: Bloomberg)
President Trump said heavily fortified sites were “totally obliterated” late Saturday, but independent analysis has yet to verify that claim. International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remain in Iran and were inspecting more than one site a day before Israel started the bombing campaign on June 13. They are still trying to assess the extent of damage

Satellite images taken on Sunday of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged. There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported.

New pictures of Natanz show a new crater about 5.5 meters (18 feet) in diameter. Maxar said in a statement that the new hole was visible in the dirt directly over a part of the underground enrichment facility. The image doesn’t offer conclusive evidence that the attack breached the underground site, buried 40 meters under ground and reinforced with an 8-meter think concrete and steel shell. (6/22)

May 2024 Solar Storm Cost $500 Million in Damages to Farmers, New Study Reveals (Source: Space.com)
Location signals beamed to Earth by GPS satellites were off by hundreds of feet during the Gannon Solar Storm in May last year, and the disruption lasted for up to two days in some U.S. regions, a new study has revealed. The outage wreaked havoc across the farming sector, which suffered losses of more than $500 million as a result.

A succession of powerful solar eruptions in early May last year triggered the most powerful solar storm to hit Earth in 20 years. Later named after the deceased space weather scientist Jennifer Gannon, the solar storm produced awe-inspiring auroras visible as far south as Mexico, Portugal and Spain. It also made GPS go haywire for days. (6/22)

Airbus Says Space Business Turnaround Going Well (Source: Space News)
Airbus executives say they are making good progress to turn around the company’s space business unit even as they consider combining it with those at two other European companies. In briefings at the Paris Air Show, as well as at a separate “Business Update” event held in Paris June 18, executives said they were seeing signs of improvement in its space business after taking 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in charges in 2024 and 600 million euros in 2023.

The problems at Airbus stemmed from poor cost and schedule performance on satellite programs, which company leadership said last year was linked to not properly evaluating technology risks on those programs and not being selective enough when making “bid/no-bid” decisions. (6/21)

ESA Moves Forward While NASA Prepares to Step Back in S&T (Source: Space Policy Online)
One of NASA’s oldest partners, ESA is moving forward despite global uncertainty in general and cooperation with NASA in particular. The deep cuts in President Trump’s FY2026 budget request could affect many NASA-ESA joint programs including NASA’s participation in the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA. Nonetheless, ESA optimistically signed an agreement with OHB to begin LISA’s construction.

Cooperation with NASA has been a mainstay of ESA’s activities throughout the decades both in science and human spaceflight.  That would change if the Trump Administration’s FY2026 NASA budget request becomes budget reality with its $6 billion (24.3 percent) cut to NASA’s budget overall, including a 47 percent reduction to science. Instead of the $24.8 billion NASA received for FY2025, it would get $18.8 billion for FY2026 and remain at that level, unadjusted for inflation, through FY2030.

Reacting to news of the impending cuts, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said ESA remains open to cooperation with NASA, but would assess the impacts. Looking only at the space science portfolio, ESA Director of Science Carole Mundell said at a press conference last week that of the 19 joint programs right now, ESA can “potentially mitigate” the impacts on 16 of them, but not three others — LISA, the EnVision Venus probe, or the NewAthena x-ray space telescope. (6/21)

SpaceX Halts Countdown with 58 Seconds Left on Starlink Mission at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
According to the SpaceX webcast, an abort triggered with 58 seconds remaining on the countdown. Why? The launch director cited "a poor FTS signal," a likely reference to the rocket's flight termination system. SpaceX announced crews are now targeting 1:25 a.m. Monday to again attempt to launch the Falcon 9. Backup opportunities will remain available until 5:47 a.m. (6/21)

Judge Blocks the Trump Administration’s National Science Foundation Research Cuts (Source: AP)
A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump ‘s administration from making drastic cuts to research funding provided by the National Science Foundation. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston struck down on Friday a policy change that could have stripped universities of tens of millions of dollars in research funding. The universities argued the move threatened critical work in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, semiconductors and other technology fields. (6/21)

HyPrSpace to Launch Baguette One Demonstrator from Mainland France (Source: European Spaceflight)
French rocket builder HyPrSpace will launch its Baguette One demonstrator from a missile testing site in mainland France, after signing an agreement with the country’s defence procurement agency. Founded in 2019, French startup HyPrSpace is developing a hybrid rocket motor that will power its future Orbital Baguette 1 (OB-1) launch vehicle. Before the rocket’s inaugural flight, the company will launch a smaller, single-stage suborbital demonstrator called the Baguette One. (6/22)

United Launch Alliance Plans Rescheduled Atlas V Kuiper 2 Launch on Monday Morning (Source: WHNT)
ULA was originally meant to send Amazon satellites to space in the Kuiper 2 mission on June 16. On Saturday, ULA said the Atlas V 551 rocket will send the second Kuiper mission into Low Earth Orbit on Monday, June 23. The launch is scheduled for 6:54 a.m. EDT at the opening of a 30-minute window. (6/22)

SpaceX’s Transporter 14 Carries More Than 150 Capsules of DNA, Human Remains (Source: Space.com)
Celestis has been a pioneering force in space-burial services since 1994. The Houston-based company has sent the DNA and other remains of loved ones, pets and celebrities into outer space on a series of missions using a variety of rockets. Now, Celestis has announced that it has entered into a new launch services collaboration with European spacecraft manufacturer The Exploration Company (TEC).

TEC will host a special Celestis Memorial Spaceflight payload on its upcoming "Mission Possible" flight, which is slated to blast off atop a Falcon 9 rocket on SpaceX's Transporter 14 rideshare mission on Sunday (June 22) at 5:18 p.m. EDT from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. (6/22)

Blue Origin Scrubs 33rd New Shepard Launch for Texas Winds (Source: Space.com)
Blue Origin was scheduled to launch six people to suborbital space on Saturday but the weather did not cooperate. "We’re scrubbing today’s NS-33 launch due to persistent high winds at Launch Site One. We’re egressing the astronauts and will assess our next launch opportunity," the company posted on social media. The mission — known as NS-33, because it will be the 33rd overall flight of the company's New Shepard vehicle. (6/21)

OneWeb Gets Breather as India Extends Deadline for Provisional Spectrum Use (Source: LiveMint)
The government has extended the trial spectrum usage period for satellite internet providers such as Bharti Enterprises-backed Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio Satellite by another six months, until November, offering them crucial breathing space to comply with India's stringent security requirements. The extension comes as a relief for the operators that were yet to comply with the government's recently introduced security guidelines, a prerequisite for launching commercial services in India. (6/20)