July 22, 2025

Making a New Case for Space nuclear Power (Source: Space Review)
DARPA and NASA recently cancelled a project to demonstrate a nuclear thermal propulsion system in orbit. Jeff Foust reports on the end of DRACO and a new study that calls for a reinvigorated effort to develop space nuclear power systems. Click here. (7/21)
 
Beams in the Sky: the Grumman Beam Builder (Source: Space Review)
In the 1970s, NASA investigated ways to built large structures in space. Dwayne Day examines one of those efforts that involving testing a “beam builder” that could have been flown on the shuttle. Click here. (7/21)
 
The National Cathedral Version of the Space Force Hymn: “Creator of the Universe” (Source: Space Review)
The Space Force has adopted many of the traditions of other services, including having an unofficial hymn. James Linzey describes the creation of that hymn and the value it has to a 21st century service. Click here. (7/21)

Eutelsat to Deliver LEO Connectivity for UK Government Operations Worldwide (Source: Business Wire)
Eutelsat has signed an agreement with NSSLGlobal, a provider in satellite communications systems to the maritime, enterprise, defence and government sectors and the UK’s FCDO Services (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office), to deliver OneWeb low Earth orbit (LEO) connectivity services. This strategic partnership will support a broad range of critical UK government activities worldwide – including diplomatic missions, policing, resilience, defense and other essential operations. (7/21)

Lynk Plans SPAC (Source: Space News)
Lynk Global has ended plans to go public through a SPAC merger. The company said Monday that it reached an agreement with Slam Corp., the SPAC founded by former baseball player Alex Rodriguez, to break off the planned merger. Slam had recently filed suit against Lynk in a bid to keep Lynk from walking away from the merger, announced nearly a year and a half ago. The companies did not disclose details about the breakup agreement.

Lynk had initially expected the SPAC deal to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund development of a satellite constellation to provide direct-to-device services, but Slam had lost all but $23.7 million of its SPAC proceeds due to shareholder redemptions. Meanwhile, Lynk has raised at least $85 million in a Series B round from investors that include satellite operator SES, which is now reportedly Lynk’s second-largest shareholder. (7/22)

Space Force Wargames CASR (Source: Space News)
The Space Force conducted a wargame earlier this month to test how commercial space companies could augment military capabilities in a crisis. The two-day exercise marked the second in a series of Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) wargames designed to refine how the military could leverage private sector space assets during conflicts or emergencies, with a focus in this wargame on space domain awareness. The Space Force last year awarded contracts collectively worth $1.1 million to four undisclosed space monitoring companies for CASR wargaming. The scenario tested how CASR contracts might be activated to track such events and coordinate responses when satellites face destruction from debris impacts or intentional actions. (7/22)

NRO Extends Hydrosat Contract for Thermal Imagery (Source: Space News)
The NRO has extended a contract with Hydrosat for thermal imagery data. The new agreement, announced Monday, grants the agency access to data from Hydrosat’s first two satellite missions. Those spacecraft are designed to detect minute temperature variations on the Earth’s surface, and can be used by defense agencies for nighttime ship tracking, monitoring industrial activity and identifying construction of new infrastructure. (7/22)

Joint NASA/ISRO NISAR Mission Ready for Launch (Source: Space News)
An Earth science mission jointly developed by NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO is finally ready for launch. The agencies announced Monday that the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission will launch July 30 on an Indian GSLV Mark 2 rocket. NISAR carries L- and S-band radar antennas for studying land and ice surfaces, mapping them worldwide twice every 12 days.

NASA and ISRO are pressing ahead with the launch despite the failure of a PSLV launch in May and an anomaly on an Indian spacecraft launched in January. NASA deferred to ISRO at a press conference Monday about how it concluded it was safe to proceed with the NISAR launch. ISRO was not represented at the briefing. (7/22)

Iran Conducts Suborbital Launch (Source: Reuters)
Iran performed a suborbital test flight of its Qased launch vehicle. The flight, announced Monday by a semi-official news agency, was designed to “improve the performance” of the vehicle, but with no additional details about the launch. Qased has been used for three orbital launches of small reconnaissance satellites since 2020. (7/22)

Norway and Sweden at Odds Over Kiruna Spaceport Launches (Source: The Times of London)
Norway and Sweden are sparring over plans for orbital launches from a Swedish site. Norway’s aerospace regulator warned that proposed launches from Kiruna, in northern Sweden, posed risks to Norway. Proposed orbital launches from Kiruna would travel over northern Norway, raising concerns should the vehicles malfunction. Swedish officials countered that the Norwegian assessment is faulty and is an effort by Norway to “veto” Swedish launches while promoting its own launch site at Andøya in northern Norway. (7/22)

Crypto Billionaire Gets $28 Million Seat on New Shepard (Source: GeekWire)
A crypto billionaire who paid $28 million for a seat on the first crewed New Shepard flight is finally going to space. Blue Origin announced the people flying on its next New Shepard mission, NS-34, on Monday, a lineup that includes Justin Sun. In 2021, Sun was the winning bidder for a seat on the first crewed New Shepard flight, but backed out because of what the company said were scheduling conflicts.

Sun and Blue Origin later announced plans for a dedicated New Shepard flight, but instead Sun will fly with five other people on NS-34. Sun gained his wealth through cryptocurrency ventures, but until recently had been under federal investigation for market manipulation and unregistered sale of securities. Blue Origin did not announce a date for the NS-34 launch, but the company usually makes crew announcements within a couple weeks of the launch. (7/22)

UCF Researchers Developing New Methods to Passively Mitigate Lunar Dust (Source: UCF)
A team of NASA-funded UCF researchers is pioneering a new nanocoating to passively mitigate the effects of lunar dust, protect equipment and ultimately extend future lunar missions. UCF’s research team aims to conduct testing as true to a lunar environment as possible through modeling and the use of a simulated regolith in vacuum chamber to mimic lunar conditions and exclude the effects of Earth’s atmosphere.

The goal is to understand how lunar dust interacts with surfaces and which surface properties, such as surface structures, polarity and electrical conductivity, are key to repelling the dust, even in complex lunar charged particle and light radiation environments. “This project is really focusing on passive ways to change the surface so that dust just doesn’t stick as well in the first place,” Dove says. “So, if we do things like shake it off or blow some air on it the dust comes off more easily.” (7/21)

Blocks All Stacked for NASA’s Future Artemis Tower at KSC (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
There’s still more than a year’s worth of work to do on NASA’s future Artemis launch tower at Kennedy Space Center, but all of the big pieces have been put in place. The last of seven modular steel blocks that make up the bulk of the tower’s height was put into place on July 2 by the tower’s contractor Bechtel. The block called Mod 10 brings it to 377 feet tall from the base structure. (7/22)

ULA Vulcan to Launch U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command USSF-106 (Source: SatNews)
The first U.S. national security launch aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket will be the United States Space Force (USSF)-106 mission. Liftoff will occur from Space Launch Complex-41 at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida. A Vulcan Centaur VC4S rocket, with four solid rocket boosters will send USSF-106 directly to geosynchronous orbit for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command. The launch is tentatively scheduled for July 29. (7/21)

Blocks all stacked for NASA’s future Artemis tower at KSC (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
There’s still more than a year’s worth of work to do on NASA’s future Artemis launch tower at Kennedy Space Center, but all of the big pieces have been put in place. The last of seven modular steel blocks that make up the bulk of the tower’s height was put into place on July 2 by the tower’s contractor Bechtel.

The block called Mod 10 brings it to 377 feet tall from the base structure. “This achievement underscores our ongoing partnership with NASA and local unions, and the team’s steady progress toward safe delivery of this critical infrastructure,” the company said in an emailed statement. (7/22)

Nearly 3,000 People are Leaving NASA (Source: Ars Technica)
Goddard is the largest of NASA's 10 field centers primarily devoted to scientific research and development of robotic space missions, with a budget and workforce comparable to NASA's human spaceflight centers in Texas, Florida, and Alabama. Officials at Goddard manage the James Webb and Hubble telescopes in space, and Goddard engineers are assembling the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, another flagship observatory scheduled for launch late next year.

It's important to note that Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, would suffer outsize impacts from the Trump administration's proposed budget cuts. Several NASA facilities operate under Goddard management, including Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginia, White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas.

Another NASA facility girding for cutbacks is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research center managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL has been the architect of most of NASA's robotic missions exploring the Solar System. (7/21)

Hundreds of NASA Employees, Past and Present, Sign Letter of Formal Dissent (Source: New York Times)
A public letter from NASA employees on Monday urges leaders of the space agency not to carry out deep cuts sought by the Trump administration.  “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement and efficient use of public resources,” the employees wrote in the letter. It is addressed to Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, whom President Trump appointed this month as acting NASA administrator.

Cuts to NASA programs have been arbitrary and in defiance of priorities set by Congress, the NASA employees said. “The consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire,” they wrote. (7/22)

SpaceX's Starbase Neighbors Cut Off From County Water Deliveries (Source: San Antonio Express-News)
The South Texas county that’s home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX has cut off water deliveries for dozens of residents in and around company town Starbase — the latest example of growing tensions between the new city and surrounding communities. For years, Cameron County has trucked in fresh water for nearly 40 properties along Texas 4 between Brownsville and Boca Chica Beach. The desolate area doesn’t have running water.

But the county suddenly stopped the $15 monthly service — with no notice — earlier this month, said Keith Reynolds, a Starbase resident unaffiliated with SpaceX. (7/22)

ESA Recertifies ExoMars Parachutes After Years in Storage (Source: European Spaceflight)
The European Space Agency announced on 21 July that it had retested a pair of parachutes designed to enable its Rosalind Franklin rover to land safely on the surface of Mars. The ExoMars mission is currently scheduled for launch in 2028.

Initially expected to launch in 2022, the ExoMars mission, a joint initiative between ESA and Roscosmos, was abandoned in its existing form in March 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted ESA to cut all ties with the country. In November 2022, ESA Member States voted to continue the ExoMars mission under full agency funding. In April 2024, ESA awarded Thales Alenia Space a €522 million contract to carry out this mandate.

One of the most important elements of the ExoMars mission is the system designed to slow the descent module from 21,000 km/h to a soft landing on the surface of Mars. This system consists of a thermal shield, two main parachutes, each deployed by its own pilot chute, and a retro-rocket that will fire 20 seconds before touchdown. (7/21)

Quantum Internet Meets Space-Time in This New Ingenious Idea (Source: Stevens Institute)
Quantum networking is being rapidly developed world-wide. It is a key quantum technology that will enable a global quantum internet: the ability to deploy secure communication at scale, and to connect quantum computers globally. The race to realize this vision is in full swing, both on Earth and in space.

Now, a new research result suggests that quantum networks are more versatile than previously thought. In the paper titled Probing Curved Spacetime with a Distributed Atomic Processor Clock, just published in the journal PRX Quantum, the researchers show that this technology can probe how curved space-time affects quantum theory — a first test of this kind. (7/21)

Ghana Has a Rare Treasure, a Crater Made When a Meteor Hit Earth: Why it Needs to be Protected (Source: Phys.org)
Most of the recognized impact craters on Earth are buried under sediments or have been deeply eroded. That means they no longer preserve their initial forms. The Bosumtwi impact crater in Ghana is different, however. It is well preserved (not deeply eroded or buried under sediments). Its well-defined, near-circular basin, filled by a lake, is surrounded by a prominent crater rim that rises above the surface of the lake and an outer circular plateau. This makes it a target for several research questions. (7/21)

Texas-to-Taiwan Suborbital Point-to-Point Idea Needs More Study (Source: Focus Taiwan)
As the United States pushes forward with its spaceport program, which could cut travel time between Houston and Taiwan to 2.5 hours, Taiwan said Monday it welcomed the initiative but that specific plans still required further evaluation. In a Facebook post Monday, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan, said bilateral space cooperation has been expanding, "including possible spaceport cooperation."

"If suborbital flights were used, travel time between Taipei and Houston could be shortened to as little as 2.5 hours," the AIT said, noting that Ellington Airport -- one of the three major airports in the Texas city -- already holds a legal spaceport license. "The potential cooperation initially could focus on unmanned cargo missions, and as the technology matures, manned flights could also be considered in the future," the AIT said. (7/22)

‘Democratizing Space’ is More Than Just Adding New Players – it Comes with Questions Around Sustainability and Sovereignty (Source: The Conversation)
Over the past decade, many countries have established new space programs, including multiple African nations. India and Israel – nations that were not technical contributors to the space race in the 1960s and ‘70s – have attempted landings on the lunar surface. With more countries joining the evolving space economy, many of our colleagues in space strategy, policy ethics and law have celebrated the democratization of space: the hope that space is now more accessible for diverse participants.

Emerging new players in space, like other countries, commercial interests and nongovernmental organizations, may have divergent goals and rationales. Unexpected new initiatives from these newcomers could shift perceptions of space from something to dominate and possess to something more inclusive, equitable and democratic. (7/21)