Space Explored

According to Bloomberg, an offer to purchase shares of Elon Musk‘s rocket company, SpaceX, show a valuation of $175 billion. This is an increase of $25 billion from its last valuation this summer.

Since launching in October, NASA has begun turning on Psyche‘s scientific instruments and perform early test to ensure everything is working correctly. This lead to the spacecraft capturing its first photo in space on Monday.

According to NASA, Starship‘s third flight test will feature a major demonstration needed for the overall success of landing humans on the Moon with the Artemis program. In a meeting, slides showed Starship Flight 3 being the first mission to demonstrate in-orbit propellent transfer. However, the schedule is still up in the air.

Avio, the company that builds ESA‘s Vega launcher, lost a pair of tanks for the AVUM fourth stage. While the company eventually found them, they were no longer useable, leading to a scramble to save the final Vega launch.

This week we are tracking the possibility of seeing seven launches from both the United States and China. On the US side, all of those launches will be coming from SpaceX with three being Starlink and one being a Falcon Heavy for the Space Force.

Last week Firefly completed a test fire of its Miranda engine that will be used on its Medium Launch Vehicle and Northrop Grumman‘s Antares 330 rocket. This was a first for the company and a quick one as the company only signed the contract from Northrop just over one year ago.

Because of budget deals on the hill, NASA is working on how to deal with limited budget increases over the next few years. One mission that will suffer from that is Dragonfly, who is seeing a delay to an important review to set a launch timeline and pricing.

ESA has shared a timeline for what is left for Ariane 6 before launching its first mission. The new heavy lift rocket has two more ground tests on the booster and upper stage before a launch window opens up targeting mid-June to July 2024.

A slight feud played out between Relativity CEO Tim Ellis and Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck about the usefulness of launch contracts for rockets still in development. Ellis explained why they do it and the benefits it gives both them and the customer.

In a rather surprising and weird move, Amazon has purchased three Falcon 9 flights with SpaceX to deploy its Project Kuiper satellites into low Earth orbit. The launch contract comes after Amazon bought 77 launches from SpaceX competitors and receiving a lawsuit from a pension fund for not including SpaceX in the bids, the most reliable and successful launch provider on the market.

NASA stated that it has paused scientific operations on the Hubble Space Telescope while its in a self imposed safe mode after it experienced yet again more gyro issues. This isn’t the first time Hubble has experienced this sort of trouble and it only seems to be getting worse as the space observatory ages.

In a rare move, SpaceX has acquired one of its vendors for $2.2 million after the parachute manufacturer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month. Named Pioneer Aerospace, the company built and sold parachute systems to both SpaceX, NASA, and the Department of Defense.

Earth and Mars are now home to flight testing programs to develop better future Martian helicopters for NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission. NASA now has new blades for a future Martian helicopter while Ingenuity on Mars has been pushing the limits it was designed for.

The historic RL10 rocket engine, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, is getting a big upgrade after operating for almost six decades. Using additive manufacturing, Aerojet hopes to bring new life and increased production to the engine that helped humans first reach for the stars.

According to a SEC filing, Astra Space has received another short term bridge loan to further solve its long term funding woes. The loan came from the same two providers that bailed out the company at the end of last month.

Spotted up above in a fly over, the first potential flight hardware of Blue Origin‘s New Glenn rocket might have just been seen near the company’s Florida rocket factory. The hardware appears to be a part of New Glenn’s first stage, sporting a clean coat of paint.

Rocket Lab completed payload integration of the Japanese iQPS satellite at its facility in New Zealand. The company now has a wet dress rehearsal to complete ahead of a launch, which has a NET date set for December 13.

This week we are only seeing two launches and both are from SpaceX. The obligatory SLC-40 Starlink launch and a fun little RTLS launch out of Vandenberg. By “fun little” I mean a reconnaissance satellite for the South Korean government. That mission however is also launching the first satellite for the nation of Ireland.

In two posts on his social media platform, X, Elon Musk shared that a version 2 of Starship is around the corner and will bring various improvements to the rocket. However, it sounds like there will still be a few “V1” Starships left to be tested before moving to V2.

On Thanksgiving day here in the US, ESA conducted a simulated launch static fire of the Ariane 6 first stage booster. Powered by a single Vulcain 2.1 engine, the stage burned through almost 150 tons of fuel over a seven minute burn.

A NASA official’s notes during an Advisory Council meeting shares that Blue Origin‘s first New Glenn launch could come no earlier than August 2024. NASA expects its ESCAPADE mission to be on top of that rocket, but is less confident in the launch date.

Through the year we in the media and the public regularly take shots at NASA and criticize them on a number of issues. While that’s our job to keep the agency accountable, sometimes it can sound like continued negativism.

So like what many of you here in the US will be doing tonight around the dinner table, here are three reasons I’m thankful for NASA this year.