Breakdown, It’s Alright
NASA offers up more of Artemis to JAXA, a Space Sustainability Strategy seeks to define the debris problem, and all the ways the U.S. space community is breaking things down into manageable parts.
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
We appreciate your attention during this brief pause in your analysis of the new Taylor Swift album, while we bring you the latest and greatest of cosmic current events. And even though the title might be a reference to all you Tom Petty fans out there, this week was defined by high emotions that kicked off with the most intense Bluey episode yet and then bookended with Swifties saying ‘I’m not crying you’re crying’ over sad little gems like So Long, London.
I will once again use this platform as an opportunity to ask Taylor to go all in on space for her next album. I can picture it now…
Lunar (Fortnight)
The Tortured ASCANs Department
My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Rockets
Failed Re-entry (aka Down Bad)
So Long, Earth
Fresh Out of Oxygen
Florida!!!
International Liability
Who’s Afraid of a Little Regolith?
I Can Fix Ingenuity (No Really I Can)
ECLSS
I Can Do It Tipped Over
The Smallest Planet That Isn’t Even Considered a Planet
Lunar Mining
Gwynne Shotwell
Laika
…. okay, you get the idea. And while I expect there is maybe a small overlap of people that are going to get both the space and T. Swift references, I had fun distracting myself from the aforementioned Bluey heartbreak. I’m fine, you’re fine.
And now, the space beat you actually came here for…
Top Headlines
A Beautiful Friendship – If all goes to plan, Japan will be the second nation to land astronauts on the lunar surface after the United States, according to a new agreement between the two nations announced on April 10th. And if you thought we were done talking lunar rovers after our last newsletter, well, you’re sorely mistaken. That is because one Moon-wagon lies at the heart of this arrangement. While the U.S. awaits designs of Lunar Terrain Vehicles from a trio of American firms, JAXA has decided to officially contribute their Lunar Cruiser to Artemis, with NASA committing to launch the vehicle in time for 2031’s Artemis 7 mission. According to the agencies, the pressurized rover extends the exploration reach beyond that achievable by the LTV works-in-progress, which will provide unpressurized mobility. With this valuable contribution, Japan secured two seats for JAXA astronauts on future Artemis landings – becoming the first country to do so. Though, we must note that the exact definition of “future” remains murky. Could it be by the end of the decade, like Kamala Harris teased in December?
Overheard at Symposium – The 39th Space Symposium was held in Colorado Springs last week, and among the topics discussed was – but of course – sustainability. NASA announced a Space Sustainability Strategy on April 9th that directs an in-depth analysis of the space debris situation before moving ahead with technology investments. Clearly, the agency is taking a page out of the Navy SEALS book, adopting a "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" approach – perhaps in the wake of recent budget cuts. NASA plans to work with international stakeholders on the framework, ensuring a wide and, for lack of a better word, sustainable solution. It’s the opinion of NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, who spoke at the Symposium, that investing now in a deep (space) dive – to examine existing debris as well as explore “cost-effective methods to limit debris creation” in the future – will ultimately save quite a lot of dough, not to mention the prevention of science losses or safety hazards. Also looking to work smarter, not harder is the U.S. Space Force, who used the Symposium as a platform to voice a new focus on “disaggregation.” In other words, the government branch intends to deploy a greater amount of cheaper, more specialized satellites – favored over bulky, resource-demanding spacecraft that can do it all – for key constellations like their Protected Tactical Satcom (PTS) and Global Positioning System (GPS). Of course, the commercial market now makes this possible, primarily with its more affordable launch opportunities.
MSR Updates – According to an April 15th briefing, NASA is looking to breathe new life into MSR, making lemonade out of lemons a small budget, if you will. Bill Nelson communicated that the current architecture’s total price tag of $8 to $11 billion is only possible to achieve – without affecting other key planetary science missions – if MSR delays to 2040. So the agency has put out the official request to the industry for proposals, which are due on May 17th. Should any vendor have a suitable, cost-saving alternative to current designs – such as that of the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) – they could find themselves with a NASA contract for a 90-day study. This new perspective on MSR seems to be part of an agency-wide inclination to restructure costly NASA flagship projects. Like its fellow ambitious science missions, the Earth System Observatory and the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, MSR has experienced a vicious cycle of cost overruns and schedule delays, leading to inconsistent budget allocation. The agency hopes that “decoupling” major elements of these large architectures – and then delegating those elements to international partners or industry vendors, for example – can create momentum, so that “missions fly when they’re ready,” in the words of NASA Earth science division director Karen St. Germain.
Honorable Mentions
Our final notable nuggets.
Last week, TESS took a quick break. On April 8th, the NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft inexplicably entered into “safe mode”. To the agency’s relief, the spacecraft returned to work as of April 17th, although the reason for the celestial hiatus is still under investigation. Listen, we get it. Burnout is real, and sometimes you just have to lock the doors and curl up in the fetal position for a couple days. Or, that’s what we hear, anyways…
The ISS officially welcomed its first female program manager on April 7th. Dana Weigel succeeds Joel Montalbano, as the station adds commercial missions and Artemis prep to its already crowded plate.
Known for intentionally bursting into flames on liftoff, the triple-core Delta IV Heavy successfully completed its final launch on Tuesday, April 9th.
Recently announced, the U.S. government’s space traffic coordination effort, TraCSS, will set up primary operations in Colorado, as well as a secondary location in Maryland.
We have our first images from PACE, NASA’s Earth observation satellite. With its impressive 200 wavelengths, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem spacecraft promised to produce invaluable data on our planet’s changing climate – and so far, it’s delivering.
NASA has officially taken responsibility for the piece of space debris that hurtled through a Florida home last month, which originated from an agency-owned battery mount from the International Space Station. NASA will use the unanticipated re-entry survival as a case study for safer practices.
Announced last week, the U.S. Space Force is planning a threat response scenario demonstration with vendors Rocket Lab and True Anomaly.
On Tuesday, NASA announced they’d be moving into the final design on Dragonfly, a flying “rotorcraft” tasked with exploring Titan, Saturn’s largest and dune-covered moon. Scheduled to launch in 2028, the Dragonfly mission will search for – yes – signs of life on the moon. Maybe they’ll even find Timothee Chalamet up there, or should we say, Lisan al Gaib.
The JWST Download
Tragically, the cosmic explosion known as the BOAT is not actually the Brightest Of All Time, after all. New analysis – courtesy of the JWST – shows that while the gamma-ray bursts were powerful enough to shake Earth’s outer atmosphere back in 2022, the violent stellar event was actually “not any brighter than previous supernovae."
For being so cold and isolated, this brown dwarf is serving looks. And by that we mean it’s emitting methane gas, an indicator that it could generate auroras. If that’s true, it would become the first discovered brown dwarf to have this ethereal ability.
This next update is coming to you live from a worthy JWST competitor, the Chile-based Very Large Telescope (VLT). After examining 9 years of observations, researchers now attribute the mysterious magnetic star inside the Dragon’s Egg nebula to stellar fratricide. Yikes. Who’s writing the celestial true crime podcast?
A Global Space
Switzerland – A country known for its neutrality, Switzerland is picking a side – and that side is sustainable space practices. At NASA headquarters on April 15th, the nation became the 37th to sign the Artemis Accords, and the 13th ESA member to do so. The action follows Switzerland’s formation of a new space policy just last year. State secretary for education, research and innovation Martina Hirayama clarifies that this policy is recognition that the country’s “ambitions can only be fulfilled in close cooperation with our partners in Europe and beyond.”
Sweden – Swiftly following Switzerland was Sweden, who became the 38th country to sign the Artemis Accords. Representing the nation was the minister for education and research, Mats Persson, who signed the peaceful principles also on Tuesday, April 16th at a ceremony in Stockholm. Bill Nelson would later reference the shared “bedrock principles” between the U.S. and Sweden, voicing an excitement to “expand these principles to the cosmos."
China – Notably not signing the Accords is China, and its growing space capabilities have some – *cough* the U.S. – sleeping with one eye open. Launched back in March, China’s Queqiao-2 satellite has now passed its mission tests with flying colors. Named after a mythological bridge made of magpies, Queqiao-2 will serve as a connection between ground stations and missions to the far side of the Moon. After completing a successful communication relay between Chang’e 4 – currently still exploring the far side of the Moon – and the ground, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) deemed Queqiao-2 qualified for the Chang’e 6 mission scheduled to launch in May. And this was not the only success story for the nation this week. State-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) successfully launched a commercial, wide-width optical remote sensing satellite into orbit on Monday, with the help of a Long March 2D rocket. The SuperView-3 (01), or Gaojing-3 (01) reportedly has the capability of providing 0.5-meter resolution, as well as 9-band combined image data. Earlier statements from CASC associate the SuperView system with an eventual total of 28 satellites. In a last order of business, the country rolled out a Long March-2F carrier rocket – partnered with a Shenzhou 18 spacecraft – to the launch pad at Jiuquan this week, in preparation for an April 25th crewed launch to China’s sovereign Tiangong space station.
ESA – Tentatively scheduled for a June liftoff, the inaugural Ariane 6 launch may not invite the same level of fanfare as it once could have, before its years of delays. It would seem that the rocket’s “fearless” leaders are attempting to avoid overhyping it – or, actively under-hyping it. At the 39th Space Symposium last week, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher set expectations fairly low, highlighting a statistic that “heavy-lift rockets have a 47% chance of experiencing a major anomaly,” as reported by European Spaceflight. While Aschbacher did not directly connect the fun fact to Ariane 6 and its decade-long development, it’s not hard to make the leap. Similarly lacking in hype is an EU space law, which officials have delayed for the second time. Although a draft has been teased over the last couple months, that first look at the law has now been postponed to after Parliamentary elections in June. However, the delay did not stop committee members and the European space community from speculating about the contents of the draft. The director of the European Space Policy Institute theorizes that the bill could contain some hindering regulations on the industry, leading to possible pressure from European space companies to buy time. Another Parliament member defended the decision to delay the law, citing the need for a “robust proposal to put an end to the Wild West in space.” The European Commission also appears to be holding a contract for the planned IRIS² constellation close to the vest, despite an industry proposal deadline in February.
Russia – A new, post-Soviet launch vehicle emerges with Russia’s Angara-A5, which successfully deployed a demonstration payload into LEO last week after a liftoff from Vostochny Cosmodrome. The demonstration was the third launch attempt that week, and ultimately the Angara-A5 took off just in time for Cosmonaut Day, the nation’s annual celebration of putting the first man in outer space. Initiated in the 90s, the Angara program is hugely important for Russia, and its first launch from Vostochny last Thursday symbolizes a reduction in the nation’s reliance on their rented spaceport in Kazakhstan. "With this launch,” Roscosmos announced, “flight design tests of the Amur space rocket complex with Angara heavy-class launch vehicles on Vostochny began."
South Korea – Some like it hot and some like it really hot. South Korea’s nuclear fusion reactor is really taking the phrase “hotter than the sun” seriously, recently breaking its own record when it sustained a temperature of 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius) in a plasma loop for 48 seconds. For anyone who doesn’t have Sun stats living rent free in their brains, the Sun’s core reaches temperatures of 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). In order to replicate the natural fusion that occurs in the core of a star, though, artificial fusion reactors have to counteract the much lower pressure here on Earth with a seriously high temperature. Here’s wishing the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor continued success in its journey towards a powerful and (eventually) climate-friendly energy solution.
Canada – Following the Canadian government’s generous investment in Telesat’s LEO Lightspeed constellation a couple weeks back, the nation announced the formation of a National Space Council this week. For context, the U.S. re-established its own National Space Council in 2017, after its original council presided from 1989 to 1992. Canada’s MDA Space of Canadarm fame – and more recently known for its work on the Lightspeed satellites – stands behind the council, the CEO flagging its importance in “maintaining [Canada’s] leadership position” in space. With Canadarm3 construction set to commence next year for an international effort as large as the Lunar Gateway, it’s not bad timing for an organizational council to emerge for the nation.
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! Keep an eye out for a new Saturday Space Reads in your inbox tomorrow as well as this coming Monday for Moonshot, our paid subscriber newsletter covering the commercial space sector. A big thank you to Tess Ryan for writing this edition with me and for keeping up with the cosmos! We hope you enjoyed reading Continuum this week and will share it with your friends. And if you really, really like us, then consider making it official and becoming a paid subscriber or spreading the space gospel and gifting a subscription.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum