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Maria Varmazas (0:01)
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Maria Varmazas (0:47)
It's a bit of a quiet news day today. Undoubtedly a lot of folks in the United States are getting ready for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Not a great time to drop major announcements and normally on a Friday we do a space related dad joke. Though I admittedly am not really much of a dad joke person. Mom jokes though, are those a thing? Anyway, I've come to learn over the last year of Friday jokes that truly not all space jokes are terrible. You just have to plan it better. Otherwise it mars the punchline. You can tell them all at once or bit by bit. Okay, I'll stop. T minus 20 seconds to Los TDRS, go for deploy. Roger roll. Today is November 22, 2024. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T minus Vulcan launches for the Space Force officially on hold until next year, China tests an inflatable in space New Shepard 28 brings the 100th woman to space, and today being Friday in the second half of our show, we have the space Traffic report by alesia Siegel from NASASpaceflight.com reviewing the week's launches that were and taking a look ahead at the launches coming up. That's the second half. Stay tuned. Happy Friday everybody. Here's your briefing for today, confirming what many had already suspected. United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket will not be carrying out its first military launches this year, and it's delaying two Space Force missions that were originally scheduled for late this year. The delay is because the Space Force and ULA are still reviewing data from Vulcan's second test flight in October, which, despite a nominal October test, did encounter a solid rocket booster anomaly, and that of course prompts an investigation. Space Systems Command, though, does expect certification in the coming weeks. The missions that are now officially delayed include USSF106, which will carry the experimental NTS3 or Navigation Technology Satellite 3 to test GPS augmentation capabilities, as well as the classified USSF 87 mission. Ula says both launches are now planned for early 2025. China has successfully tested an inflatable capsule in orbit aboard the Xijian 19 satellite, according to the China Academy of Space Technology. During the test, the capsule demonstrated successful inflation, pressure, maintenance and structural performance under launch and orbital conditions. All performance indicators such as airtightness and temperature regulation met expectations. Lightweight inflatables for use in space are designed to unfold and inflate, go figure in space, offering a high efficiency alternative, typical metal tube construction that we often see in space for large sealed enclosures welcome back to Earth to the crew of New Shepard 28. Blue Origin completed its ninth human spaceflight with the NS28 launch this morning. The crew included Emily Calandrelli, Sharon and Mark Hagel, who were Both on their second flight, by the way, Austin Litterall, J.D. russell and Hank Wolfond. Today's jaunt above the Carmen line brings the total number of individuals flown to space by new shepherd to 47, including three repeat passengers. It also made Emily Calandrelli, aka the Space Gal and Emily of Emily's Wonder lab officially the 100th woman to fly to space. I know I can't wait to tell my little space and science loving girl about what her favorite TV personality did today. There were a lot of VIPs at the sixth SpaceX Starship launch from Texas on November 19th. President Trump being just one of them. U.S. space Force Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman was there as well, and not just for sightsee. Lt. Gen. Philip Garant, Commander of Space Systems Command, says the Space Force sees Starship's unmatched payload capacity as a potential game changer for global military logistics through the Point to Point Delivery Program, which aims to rapidly deliver supplies to remote locations. Of course, one of the primary goals of the rocket is to accelerate the deployment of satellite constellations in low Earth orbit as well, which is of special interest to the Space Force, as you might imagine. Starship, I should note, is not yet certified for national security missions, but little surprised that the Space Force is watching its progress with significant interest. And speaking of the Space Force, they are running a pilot program to attract civilian talent through the Defense Civilian Training Corps, or dctc, which is a congressionally mandated initiative similar to the ROTC but focused specifically on civilian careers. Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital Katherine Kelly says the program's goal is to introduce students to Space Force projects during summer breaks, offering guaranteed civilian jobs upon graduation. The program aims to address a lack of awareness about civilian opportunities in the military and participants will grow their skills in research, problem solving and use of technologies critical to space operations. DCTC currently partners with North Carolina Agricultural and Technical, State University, Purdue University, the University of Arizona and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Revolve Space, a European startup specializing in high performance mechanisms and power systems for small satellites, has announced the upcoming in orbit demonstration of its flagship product, sara, or the Solar Array Rotating Assembly. SARA is an autonomous fail safe solar array drive assembly designed to enhance the performance of small satellites by optimizing solar panel orientation for maximum energy efficiency and this demo follows A successful 2.6 million euro investment round led by Primo Space Fund with participation from Takeoff, which was aimed at accelerating Revolve Space's growth and scaling production capabilities. To meet the increasing demand for advanced satellite components, The European Space Agency, or ESA, has awarded 9.8 million euros, or nearly US$10.2 million in a contract to French aerospace and defense company Himeria. The contract is to design, build and operate its first space weather nanosatellite, Swing, which is short for Space Weather Ionosphere Nanosat Generation, scheduled for launch in 2026. Swing will monitor Earth's ionosphere, which is a region that significantly impacts communication and navigation systems, and the nanosatellite is based on Himeria's HP IoT platform and will carry instruments from France, Finland and Norway, including a radiation monitor, an X ray monitor, a Langmuir probe and a GNSS radio occultation instrument. Once it's operational in 2027, Swing's data will enhance space weather models, providing real time ionospheric forecasts and supporting scientific research on the upper atmosphere. Himeria will oversee the satellite's development, launch and operations with Plaintech, which is an Italian space research and technology company managing the Mission Operations center to deliver data to ESA Talk about Precision Flying The European Space Agency's Proba 3 mission, set to launch on December 4th of this year, will demonstrate precision formation flying with two satellites maintaining millimeter scale alignment. This alignment is achieved through a laser metrology system where one satellite emits a laser beam towards a retroreflector on the other, enabling precise distance measurements. And the technology allows the occulter satellite to cast a shadow onto the coronagraph satellite, facilitating extended observations of the Sun's corona. The mission is a collaboration led by Spain's senair, involving over 29 companies from 14 countries with satellite integration by Redwire in Belgium. And that's it for our intel briefing for today. As always, more links for you are in our show notes for some weekend reading and you can always check out links you might have missed from previous episodes over at space.n2k.com hey t minus crew, Tune in tomorrow for my chat with Salem El Nimri from AWS and Nadine Alame from the Taylor Geospatial Institute, and they'll be telling us all about the Generative AI for Geospatial Challenge as part of our AWS in Orbit series. Check it out While you're enjoying your weekend, getting ready to travel for U.S. thanksgiving, or panicking shopping for all the cooking that you need to do, like I will be, you can catch more episodes from this AWS in Orbit series over@space.n2k.com AWS.