Transcript
Maria Varmazas (0:01)
You're listening to the N2K space network.
Rahul Raghani (0:10)
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Maria Varmazas (0:54)
Today is February 26th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T Min T minus 20 seconds. Assembly is underway for Gateway Lunar Space Station's power and propulsion element 4. Ariane 6 and its passenger, the CSO3 satellite are scheduled to launch on March 3rd. Astro scales address J concludes phase one of the commercial removal of debris demonstration for JAX. SpaceX says a small liquid oxygen leak caused its Falcon 9 second stage to re enter Earth's atmosphere over Europe last week. AST Space Mobile has been awarded a contract in support of the U.S. space Development Agency through a prime contractor with a total expected revenue of 43 million doll and our guest today is Rahul Raghani, Chief Systems Engineer at arcasis. And I spoke to Rahul about developing a robotic platform for hosted payloads in low Earth orbit. So stick around for more on that after today's intelligence briefing. Happy hump day everybody. We're kicking off with more good news for AST Space Mobile. They're having a great week after successful live video call demonstrations. But the top news for them today is a contract award. AST Space Mobile has been awarded a contract in support of the U.S. space Development Agency through a prime contractor with total expected revenue of $43 million. This new contract follows successful testing on Blue Walker 3 in orbit under the previous contract announced in February 2024. AST will use its next generation block 2 Bluebird satellites to create robust and resilient communications solutions for the US government. AST's Block 2 Bluebird satellites feature the largest commercial phased array antennas ever deployed in low Earth orbit. They will span 2,400 square feet, which AST says will set a new standard for advanced connectivity and performance. It's been a week since reports of a fireball were shared across social media by users in the uk, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. The source was quickly confirmed to be a Falcon 9 second stage, with debris later found on the ground in Poland. SpaceX says that during the coast phase of the Starlink 114 mission, which was launched on February 1 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, a small liquid oxygen leak developed and that ultimately drove higher than expected vehicle body rates. SpaceX says they were unable to perform the deorbit burn and the vehicle was successfully passivated on orbit to remove sources of stored energy. Teams are actively assessing the root cause of the source of the leak and say that they have already implemented mitigations for future flights. SpaceX says it's working closely with the government of Poland on recovery and cleanup efforts. Moving over to Japan now Astro Scale's Address J concludes Phase one of the commercial removal of debris demonstration for Japan's space agency jaxa. To mark the occasion, astroscale Japan has unveiled the first ever footage captured during address J's ultra close approach, which reached just 15 meters from the rocket upper stage Address J successfully completed all observations of the debris required by the JAXA mission, including two fly around operations. These accomplishments have provided critical data to inform the follow on address J2 debris removal mission Ariane 6 and its passenger, the CSO3 satellite, are scheduled to launch on March 3rd. The VA263 mission will be the first commercial flight for Europe's new heavy lift launcher Ariane 6 after the successful inaugural flight in July last year. Air and Space will launch the CSO3 satellite for the French Defense Procurement and Technology Agency and the French space agency CNES on behalf of the French Air and Space Force's Space Command. This is a rescheduling of the mission that was originally planned for this week. Arianespace says additional operations on the ground are now completed, authorizing the company to launch on March 3rd at 1:24pm local time in Kourou, French Guiana. And turning our focus now to the United States, assembly is underway for Gateway's Power and Propulsion Element, which is the module that will power the Lunar Space Station's journey to and around the moon. As part of NASA's Artemis campaign, technicians are installing key hardware on the element's propulsion bus module following installation of both electric propulsion and chemical propulsion control modules. The Power and Propulsion Element is managed out of NASA's Glenn Research center in Cleveland and built by Maxar Space Systems in California. The Power and Propulsion Element will launch with Gateways habitation and Logistics Outpost, known as halo, ahead of NASA's Artemis 4 mission. And we've got a lot to look forward to this evening. Us space nerds N2K's senior producer Alice Carruth has more on that. Over to you, Alice.