We Ride At Dawn (On Monday, Maybe)
Polaris Dawn prepares to defy orbital heights, Intuitive Machines nabs another CLPS contract, and a solo Starliner leaves it all behind for greener pastures -- er, White Sands (Space Harbor).
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
I don’t know if it’s the apocalyptic heat wave in Los Angeles right now (seriously, the projected high temperature for today is 110 degrees Fahrenheit or 43 degrees Celsius for our international readers), Starliner woes, or just a general sense of delay happening in the space sector right now…but things could definitely pick up.
However, I know all too well that some of the best progress is made out of the limelight. So perhaps, we are just gearing up for some real momentum building in Q4?
Either way, at least we’ve got Polaris Dawn to look forward to (despite all the delays), as well as Crew 9, Hera, and Europa Clipper on the horizon. But with the latter two missions not on the docket until October, I might still be singing to the tune of Wake Me Up When September Ends for the next handful of weeks.
I don’t know or maybe I just need an ice bath.
And now, the space beat you came here for…
This edition of Continuum is brought to you by the Space Resources program at the Colorado School of Mines.
Top Headlines
So Intuitive – Order up: NASA will take another round of Intuitive Machines. Adding to three prior NASA contracts – all part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program – the Houston-based space exploration company will now launch a new mission to the lunar south pole in 2027. The $116.9 million CLPS contract is the first to be awarded since March 2023, when NASA contracted Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander for a mission to the lunar farside launching later this year. According to the agency’s CLPS lead, the hiatus between awards allowed NASA to assess its previous commercial lunar contracts and “make some changes to the most current task order.” Under this new order, Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander will deliver four payloads for NASA, one for the University of Colorado Boulder and one for ESA. The latter, known as PROSPECT, will drill into the lunar surface in search of water ice – an experiment clearly in line with US and European interests around a sustained lunar presence. The number of science-focused payloads certainly sets the stakes high for Intuitive Machines, but having already successfully (ish) landed on the Moon, the company is up for the task.
Polaris Dawn – Two billionaires will attempt to make history, but not without an inevitable series of delays. Polaris Dawn, a “civilian astronaut” spaceflight led by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and entrepreneur-slash-spaceman Jared Isaacman, was forced to postpone its launch several times over the past week due to helium leaks, weather conditions and an FAA grounding of the Falcon 9 rocket after a fiery booster landing. In other words, the mission was delayed in every possible way it could be. But let us not tempt fate. The current plan will now see the team of four to the skies no earlier than Monday, September 9th. And the mission is no casual suborbital flight; in fact, Polaris Dawn intends to travel well into space, past the International Space Station, to what could be the farthest distance traveled by humans since 1972. In addition to its distance dreams, the Isaacman-funded mission also plans to execute the first spacewalk by privately trained astronauts. Surely, someone will bring a camera to capture SpaceX’s new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits in action. Or not – the conspiracy theorists will say it’s a green screen anyway.
Here's Lookin' At You, Butch – Just as Rose left Jack in the middle of the ocean (unforgivable), Starliner will leave its passengers behind to return to Earth today, empty handed. As per an official decision by NASA, its abandoned astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain at the ISS until next year, when they will fly home as part of SpaceX’s Crew 9. It’s not the ending that Boeing and the US space agency hoped for in their first Crew Flight Test (CFT), nor was the strange sonar-like sound pulsating from Starliner’s speakers on anyone’s mission bingo card. But as Mick Jagger says, you can’t always get what you want. Also heeding this lesson are two NASA astronauts, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, who got booted off of Crew 9 to make room for Wilmore and Williams. Those that did make the cut are NASA vet Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who will travel to the space station later this month and return with Starliner’s exiles in February of next year.
Honorable Mentions
Our final notable nuggets.
(Solar) Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away – At the end of August, NASA completed a successful test of its “sail-hoisting boom system,” designed to deploy reflective solar sails in orbit. You can check @NASAAmes on social media to find out when to see the tennis court-sized panel passing over your area.
School of Rock – The Artemis II crew just took a trip to Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park to practice their rock skills – er, go through “lunar geology training.” Apparently, the volcanic rock and icy soil of the remote region bears resemblance to the lunar south pole, making it a perfect place for faux-spacewalking. And if you are dying for more Icelandic astronaut training, you can check out our 3-part Celestial Expeditions series where our favorite analog astronaut, Bailey Burns, takes us on a journey retracing the footsteps of the Apollo astronauts.
Europa Clipper – After some initial concern around the hardiness of its electronics, NASA has approved the Europa Clipper for (deep) spaceflight in October.
The JWST Download
The JWST is going rogue with its new discovery of six planet-like worlds, a thousand lightyears away, simply existing – without a gravitational tether to a star like the Sun. Astrophysicists hope the findings will lead to understanding star formation. We hope so too, because right now the only image coming to mind for being untethered in space is Sandra Bullock screaming into the void.
The universe literally just hit astronomers with a "?"! The JWST spotted a wild optical illusion where two galaxies, 7 billion light-years away, are bending space (thanks, gravitational lensing) to form what looks like a cosmic question mark. Even Einstein's got to be smiling at this one.
Cosmology crisis averted: new data from the JWST suggests that galaxies of the early universe may not actually be as concerningly massive as we feared. Hence, our long-held theories about the Big Bang are probably not uprooted – at least, not yet.
While we may not have to worry about rewriting our model of cosmology, we could have another upset coming with Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid and target of a current NASA mission. Recent JWST observations found the presence of hydroxyl on Psyche, which might have come from impacts with other asteroids – or, the
call is coming from inside the housethe hydrated minerals are coming from inside of the asteroid’s core.
This edition of Continuum is supported by the Open Lunar Foundation. Open Lunar's work sets precedents, creates pathways, and builds projects that enable a peaceful, cooperative lunar presence. Learn more about Open Lunar's work by joining their upcoming events.
A Global Space
Europe – Goodnight, Vega. With a successful deployment of Sentinel-2C – a powerful (and expensive) Earth observation satellite for the EU’s flagship Copernicus program – Europe’s Vega rocket officially retired on Wednesday, September 4th. As the first gen rocket lays to rest, its replacement, the larger Vega-C, is scheduled to return to service in November – nearly two years after a launch failure in December 2022. Neither the Vega nor the Vega-C have been able to break into commercial industry thus far, but it seems they’ll always be championed by Europe, as the rockets (now rocket) guarantee the continent “autonomous access to space,” in the words of Stéphane Israël, the CEO of Vega’s launch provider Arianspace. And if you’re no good at goodbyes, you can always relive the glory days by watching “Vega for ESA: the story.”
ESA/JAXA – This week, ESA announced that its Mercury-focused mission with JAXA will be changing course. Launched in 2018, the collaborative mission, known as BepiColombo, has conducted multiple flybys of Mercury, but an anomaly in its thrusters earlier this year forced the agencies to rethink its trajectory. Now, the spacecraft will take a detour to account for the reduced thrust, pushing its arrival into Mercury’s orbit from December 2025 to November 2026. Hey, what’s an extra year in space? Just ask Butch and Suni.
Senegal – As of this week, Senegal is the latest nation to join the China-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) initiative. The head of ASES, the Senegalese Space Study Agency, signed an agreement with the China National Space Administration yesterday at a conference in Eastern China. The move comes after the African nation launched its first satellite earlier this month.
Korea – The chief of the Korean AeroSpace Administration (KASA) announced that the country would be reinstating an astronaut training program, in an effort to send the second Korean astronaut into space and hence keep in step with the global space momentum. The last time an astronaut represented Korea in space was in 2008.
China – A new group of classified Yaogan-43 satellites made their way into space on a Chinese Long March 3B rocket this week. The lack of public detail of course points to a probable military nature of these spacecraft, but who are we to assume? The nation was far more willing to be transparent about its Mars sample return mission, known as Tianwen-3, which is now set to launch in 2028. Should that schedule hold firm, China may in fact beat the US to the punch, with NASA continuing to grapple with its own MSR. That is, unless any new ideas shake things up.
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! 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 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