Seth Kurkowski

Lockheed Martin won a contract to build Space Force’s brand new constellation of missile warning satellites for $4.9 billion. This comes after another contract in 2018 to start research and development for these new satellites. This constellation of satellites will replace the Space Based Infrared System currently in operation.

While SpaceX earns most of the headlines for booster recovery efforts, Blue Origin also plans to launch and recover their orbital rocket New Glenn as early as this year. Blue Origin currently has two rockets in various stages of development, and a sentimental step toward flying the larger of the two rockets was reached this week.

Blue Origin’s sub-orbital rocket New Shepherd currently flies and lands, but it’s still in a stage of testing before it flies paying customers to space and back. They also have been developing the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket that is already competing against SpaceX and ULA for commercial and government launch contracts.

The Federal Aviation Administration has granted a temporary flight restriction (TFR) for Brownsville, Texas, that gives the correct clearance for SpaceX to attempt its second-ever Starship 12.5 km flight. Starship serial number 9 (SN9) is set to fly — and potentially even land in one piece — as soon as Friday, January 8.

Ever since NASA has started sending spacecraft to other planetary bodies, we have had a system in place to make sure life here on Earth doesn’t tag along for the trip. This has been left up to NASA historically, but now the National Space Council is working on their own set of guidelines for commercial and governmental agencies to use.

NASA tapped Astra, Firefly, and Relativity Space for its Venture Class Launch Services Demo 2 program, giving each company a contract to launch a group of smallsats into orbit to demonstrate the capabilities of their new vehicles. NASA didn’t share their reasoning for the selections or who else submitted proposals in that announcement. This information is found in a source selection statement published later in the month that addresses each company’s strengths and weaknesses.

SpaceX is working hard to get Starship SN9 ready to fly the next 12.5 km flight early this month, but there are still a few tests that need to be done prior to the next milestone.

Production at SpaceX’s Starship facility in Boca Chica, Texas, has increased with SN10 receiving its nose cone and SN11 having all of its fuel tanks stacked. Alongside the progressing next vehicles to fly are scattered ring sections ready to be assembled into SN12 and beyond. SpaceX seems to have no shortage of Starships to continue testing after SN9’s flight — even if it doesn’t survive the landing again.

After the successful test flight of Starship SN8, SpaceX had a lot of data to go over to learn how Starship flies and what changes might be needed for future flights. The SN9 flight is much more likely to stick its landing because of this.

Space Explored’s Zac Hall and Seth Kurkowski go over the achievements and top stories of the major players in space while previewing the year ahead of what’s to come.

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Elon Musk shared that SpaceX is thinking about catching Starship’s Super Heavy rocket booster by its four grid fins using the launch mount tower that will be on future versions of the Starship launch mount.

Before now, we’ve thought Super Heavy landing would be similar to how SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lands its first stage booster back on land. That would require the use of landing legs and either having a landing pad next to the launch mount or landing directly on the launch mount to be able to reload another Starship on top of the booster to launch again.

While most satellites these days use the highest grade metals that can withstand the harsh environment of space, Japan has started developing a satellite that will be made out of wood to help prevent space junk and harmful particles from falling off as they re-enter the atmosphere.

NASA has added two new science missions to its slate of future explorations to study the Sun. The two missions will cost just over $100 million to better understand how the Sun works and how it affects us here on Earth.

The Extreme Ultraviolet High-Throughput Spectroscopic Telescope Epsilon Mission, or EUVST, and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer, or EZIE will help NASA and an international cooperation of researchers study how the Sun’s atmosphere and Earth’s magnetosphere work, two parts of the solar system we still don’t fully understand.

SpaceX plans to launch its first dedicated ridesharing mission in January called Transporter-1. ExoLaunch will be providing integration and dispensing services for their new EXOport cubesats.

The United Arab Emeritus has been in the process over last year to select its next class of astronauts that will begin training to join the international team of researchers on the International Space Station. With the help of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Anne McClain, they will choose two new astronauts out 14 candidates.

Humans first orbited the Moon on this day in 1968, and while on their first pass around the backside of the Moon, they first saw with their own eyes Earthrise over the horizon.

While we didn’t see much from Firefly during 2020 in terms of launches, we did see them in the news plenty for making deals for launches and testing their new Alpha launcher which plans to debut early next year. Firefly says they already have an almost full launch manifest for 2021 with two launches going to Adaptive Launch Solutions.

After a busy year for the newer small sat launcher, Rocket Lab released a video recapping all of their achievements over 2020.

The California based small sat launcher provider conducted seven launches across 2020 and experienced its first failure of the Electron in flight. Rocket Lab was able to return to flying just two months later. While headquartered in California, Rocket Lab currently conducts most of its operations in New Zealand where they have their own launch complex with one operational launch pad with a second pad nearing completion.