HOUSTON (Intuitive Machines PR) — Intuitive Machines continues its mission to build a cislunar economy with its third mission (IM-3) to the Moon that will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket.

Video Caption: Join me as I take a tour of SpaceX’s Starbase launchpad with Elon Musk as our tour guide! This is part 3 or 3, so if you haven’t seen parts one and two, definitely start there!

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — It’s time again for one of the biggest meteor showers of the year! The Perseids are already showing up in our night skies—and when they peak in mid-August, it’s likely to be one of our most impressive skywatching opportunities for a while.

Exodus Orbitals, a Canadian startup developing an innovative “satellites-as-a-service” platform, is one of five recent graduates from Australia’s first space-focused incubator program — Moonshot.

TORONTO, August 10, 2021 (Exodus Orbitals PR)  — Having successfully graduated from the 12-week Moonshot program, Exodus Orbitals are aiming to make space exploration more accessible for businesses across a wide range of sectors. They are building an ambitious solution for the challenges of the space industry, offering a way for customers to run their software payloads on a shared “satellite-as-a-service” platform.

With Exodus Orbitals, businesses will no longer have to pay the price of a full satellite mission, instead saving money and time by booking time, sharing hardware and running their applications directly on the satellite on-board computer. This groundbreaking approach dramatically lowers cost for businesses and allows almost instant access for hundreds of application cases in Earth Observation, Communication and Surveillance domains.

Xplore’s XLEO commercial spacecraft will provide affordable, multi-year hosting services to test Accion’s ultra-efficient ionic liquid electrospray propulsion system in LEO

REDMOND, Wash. and BOSTON, Mass., August 10, 2021 (Xplore PR) — Xplore Inc., a commercial space company providing Space as a Service®, today announced a cooperative Memorandum of Understanding with Accion Systems to provide spacecraft hosting services for the next generation of Accion’s flagship ion thruster, TILE. The partnership will validate the resiliency of TILE’s fault tolerant design, and prove its performance as the most efficient electric propulsion system in space. A successful mission will demonstrate Accion’s growing family of TILE thrusters can extend the value of any size spacecraft, while ensuring they can deorbit sustainably.

WALLOPS, Va. (NASA PR) — A Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with more than 8,200 pounds of science investigations and cargo after launching at 6:01 p.m. EDT Tuesday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. At 8:46 p.m., the spacecraft’s solar arrays successfully deployed to collect sunlight to power Cygnus on its journey to the station.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

NASA’s 14-year effort to build lunar suits is going to consume more than $1 billion and will deliver working products after the space agency’s goal of landing two astronauts at the moon south pole in 2024, according to a new audit from NASA’s Inspector General.

“NASA’s current schedule is to produce the first two flight-ready xEMUs by November 2024, but the Agency faces significant challenges in meeting this goal,” the report said. “This schedule includes approximately a 20-month delay in delivery for the planned design, verification, and testing suit, two qualification suits, an ISS Demo suit, and two lunar flight suits.

Video Caption: Analyst day presentation hosted by Redwire and Genesis Park Corporation on July 9th, 2021. Screen recorded using AMD Radeon software. I’m long Redwire for life. Copyright and the contents of this video are owned by Redwire and Genesis Park Corporation.

The next Electron rocket on the pad is the first of three dedicated missions for BlackSky scheduled for lift-off from late August through September.

LONG BEACH, Calif., August 10, 2021 (Rocket Lab PR) – Rocket Lab, a leading launch provider and space systems company, has today announced its next mission is part of a rapid launch schedule of three dedicated Electron missions for global monitoring provider BlackSky.

WASHINGTON (House Science Committee PR) — Today, Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), along with Ranking Member Frank Lucas (R-OK), sent letters to the Commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expressing concerns about out-of-band emission (OOBE) limits to protect the integrity of global weather forecasting, satellite-based climate measurements, and ground-based radio astronomy observations in the 23.6-24 GHz band. “We urge the FCC to modify section 30.203 of its rules to […]

After having served five years as director of JPL, Michael Watkins will move to the Caltech campus as professor of aerospace and geophysics. Larry D. James becomes interim director of JPL.

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — JPL Director Michael Watkins announced Monday he will step down from his position as the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to resume his academic and research career at Caltech as professor of aerospace and geophysics. His last day as JPL director will be Aug. 20. JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed by Caltech for NASA.

“There is no place in the world like JPL. It has truly been the great joy of my life to dedicate almost three decades to JPL, and to spend the last five years leading the Lab is the highest honor,” Watkins said in his announcement Monday to JPL’s 6,000 employees. “I treasure above all my interactions with the incredible people who make JPL what it is and who dedicate lifetimes to mission success after mission success.”

LOS ANGELES AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (SMC PR) — The U.S. Space Force’s Rocket Systems Launch Program Office, part of the Space and Missile Systems Center’s (SMC) Launch Enterprise at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, announced the award of the first on ramp of the Orbital Services Program (OSP)-4 Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract Aug. 9, 2021, to ABL Space Systems Corp, Astra Space, Inc., and Relativity Space, Inc.

OSP-4 allows for the rapid acquisition of launch services to meet mission requirements for payloads greater than 400 pounds, enabling launch to any orbit within 12-24 months from task order award.  The RSLP will compete each mission among the IDIQ awardees. The addition of these emerging providers’ preserves, stimulates, and enhances the small launch industrial base and yields the Space Force a diverse vendor pool in support of the nation’s defense.