Seth Kurkowski

On Wednesday the FAA announced it has closed the mishap investigation it oversaw of Blue Origin’s failed NS-23 mission that took place one year ago. With the investigation now finished, Blue Origin plans to return to flight “soon.”

NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle is receiving some wind tunnel treatment as the agency and its partners continue to development a rocket capable of launching from Mars. However, doubts as to its feasibility politically are still up in the air.

With the Sun now in view at their landing site, ISRO has yet to hear back from Chandrayaan-3’s lunar lander and rover. While ISRO will continues to ping the spacecraft, time is running out before another lunar night arrives.

Jeff Bezos announced to his space company Monday that Bob Smith, the six year CEO of Blue Origin, will be replaced by former Amazon executive Dave Limp. Limp’s first day at Blue will be December 4 while Smith will stay on to help with the transition until January 2.

Over the weekend NASA recovered its first asteroid samples from a desert in Utah. The OSIRIS-REx sample container is now in Houston, Texas where scientists will catalog everything and begin distribution to institutions world wide.

We are still awaiting word from the FAA on when SpaceX will be allowed to launch its next Starship rocket. While excitement from earlier this month might have seemed it was just around the corner but according to the FAA, we could be another month or more away.

This week turned out rather more exciting than originally expected when I discussed the week’s launches on Monday. Tuesday morning, Rocket Lab’s eighth Electron launch of the year suffered a failure on the second stage and SpaceX yet again broke its reuse record on a single booster.

Early Tuesday morning Rocket Lab attempted its eighth launch of 2023 out of New Zealand. Sadly this mission would not make it to orbit after suffering a failure during flight.

Last Friday morning a fresh crew of two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut lifted off from Kazakhstan and arrived at the International Space Station. While relieving three crew members on the station, it also marks the start of another year long stint in space for Russia.

Dare I say this week is rather… boring? Both SpaceX and Rocket Lab are launching this week for a total of three missions which like a year ago would be cause for celebration. However, both companies are continuing their deployment of constellation satellites, leaving much to be desired on the excitement level, but should we really be complaining?

According to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger, We might finally see a Blue Origin rocket launch after a year of down time. The flight would be the company’s first since suffering a failure of the New Shepard booster which led to the loss of the booster.

If you’ve taken a cruise in the past, I don’t know, ever? You’ll know that internet connection is spotty at best. I mean you are floating out in the ocean. However, thanks to advancements in internet services via satellites, your next cruise might get much better internet and this partnership between SpaceX and SES might make it happen.

Virgin Galactic’s Galactic 03 mission was different from its previous missions in a number of ways. One of those additions was the carrying on of fossilized bones of ancient human ancestors by one of the participants. This act has raised some questions by scientist in the field.

Today Axiom Space announced who will be flying to the ISS early next year on the third private astronaut mission. This mission will feature a return Axiom astronaut as well as an all European crew.

Friday Virgin Galactic launched its latest commercial missions out of New Mexico. However this time there was no fanfare, livestream, or post launch interviews with the customers. They simply went up, had fun, and came back down.

With ULA sneaking in its first Atlas V launch between issues in this series, the only exciting launch I have to discuss this week is Russia’s crew rotation to the ISS. While it might seem like the only topic, it is indeed a significant event. MS-24, a crewed Soyuz mission, will replace the crew of MS-22, who have been in space for approximately a year.

After months of investigations by both SpaceX and the FAA, both parties have finished going over all the data and have signed off on the root causes of Starship’s first launch. The FAA was the final one to do so and signed off on the plan SpaceX proposed to ensure Starship won’t fail again (in the same way at least).

India’s lunar lander and rover have completed its main missions and have now moved on to secondary goals, one of which will see if it can survive the lunar night. The other was a bold hop across the surface to gather science in some slightly different pastures.

After completing the stacking of the company’s second Starship rocket, Elon Musk announced the rocket is ready to launch. However there are a few more hurdles to finish that could lead to some down time before it can really fly.

A pension fund is suing Amazon over its contract to launch Kuiper satellites on Blue Origin, ULA, and Arianespace rockets because SpaceX was not included in the discussion. The suit argues that Bezos’ rivalry with Elon Musk created contracts that did not best meet the company’s fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

SpaceX is seemingly all in on X as its media distribution tool. Over the weekend the commercial launch provider ended streaming its launches and Dragon operations on YouTube in favor of exclusive coverage on the social media platform also owned by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.