Launches of Delta IV Heavy and Falcon 9 rockets from Florida’s Space Coast were aborted with only seconds to go before liftoff less than 10 hours apart. The countdown of an United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy was stopped 7 seconds before a planned 11:54 p.m. launch on Wednesday after a sensor detected an unidentified fault. Crews safed the vehicle on its launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air […]

• Intensity of the landing impact on Mars’ moon Phobos is being tested with a rover model.
• The housing of the rover consists of a lightweight construction made of carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP).
• The landing on Phobos is planned for late 2026 or early 2027 as part of the MMX mission

BREMEN, Germany (DLR PR) — The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission will have a German-French rover on board when it is launched in 2024. The rover will land on the Martian moon Phobos and explore its surface for approximately three months.

Initial landing tests are currently underway at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Landing and Mobility Test Facility (Lande- und Mobilitätstest Anlage; LAMA) in Bremen. Using a first preliminary development model, the engineers are determining how robust the design of the approximately 25-kilogram rover must be to withstand an impact on the moon’s surface after a free fall of about 40 to 100 metres.

• Two of the satellites have onboard a supercomputer capable of making hyper-accurate predictions for shipping to support maritime trade

SWINDON, UK (UK Space Agency PR) — Four shoebox-sized and government-backed satellites, including two supercomputers, have launched this afternoon (Monday 28 September).

The ‘nanosatellites’, which are built in Glasgow and are no larger than a microwave, have joined a fleet of nearly 100 objects in low Earth orbit that monitor shipping movements, helping predict global trade and making business more cost effective and efficient.

Like mobile phones, satellites are also getting smaller and smarter and nanosatellites are roughly the size of a shoe box. Despite their size, they can do almost everything a conventional satellite does.

French also to contribute instrument to India’s 2025 mission to Venus

PARIS (CNES PR) — On Wednesday September 30, Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of CNES, met with his Indian counterpart, Dr. K Sivan, President of ISRO. During this virtual session, all the subjects central to cooperation between the two countries were discussed.

In August 2019, CNES and ISRO embarked on the development and manufacture of a constellation of satellites. This, carrying telecommunications (AIS automatic identification) and observation (radar and optical) instruments, will constitute the first space system in the world allowing continuous surveillance of maritime traffic. 

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. (NASA PR) — NASA commercial cargo provider Northrop Grumman is targeting Thursday, Oct. 1, for the launch of its 14th resupply mission to the International Space Station. The five-minute launch window opens at 9:38 p.m. EDT.

Loaded with nearly 8,000 pounds of research, crew supplies, and hardware, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft will launch on the company’s Antares rocket from Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Video Caption: Crew Dragon’s test flight with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board the spacecraft marked the return of U.S. human spaceflight and the first-time in history a commercial company successfully transported NASA astronauts to the International Space Station and back home to Earth.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 29, 2020 (Swarm Technologies PR — Swarm Technologies, developer of the world’s lowest-cost global satellite communications network, today announced details and pricing of its hardware and network services. Device connectivity remains inaccessible for millions of people worldwide and is prohibitively expensive for many industries. Swarm’s commercial satellite network solves this problem. From the shipping lanes of the Bosphorus to the farmlands of California’s Central Valley, Swarm’s affordable network can now connect IoT devices at an unprecedented scale.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Watts on the Moon Challenge — the agency’s newest public prize competition — is now open and accepting submissions. NASA invites innovative minds from across the United States to provide ideas for sustainable energy storage, distribution, and management on the lunar surface.

As part of the Artemis program, NASA will send astronauts to new areas of the Moon including the lunar South Pole, and prepare for human exploration of Mars. As noted in the agency’s recent lunar surface report, sustainable missions will require an unprecedented capacity for power. Astronauts will need a continuous supply of power from multiple sources to live and work on the Moon for long periods. A flexible and robust system for surface power is key to safe and robust lunar exploration.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — Americans exercise their right to vote from all over the world, and for November’s election, few ballots will have traveled as far as those cast by NASA astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station. During earlier days of human spaceflight, astronauts would only visit space for days, or maybe weeks, at a time. Today, astronauts typically stay in space for six-month missions on the space station, increasing the odds of a spacefarer off the planet during an election. So how does one vote from space?

SANTA CLARA, Cailf. (Momentus PR) — Momentus Inc. (“Momentus” or the “Company”), a commercial space company offering in-space satellite transportation and infrastructure services, and ProXopS, LLC, a Texas-based systems engineering and integration company founded in 2010 with a concentration in space related technologies, announced today the execution of a launch agreement for several slots in Vigoride rideshare missions from Q4 2021 to 2023.

The agreement includes the deployment of multiple satellites for the VariSat constellation. ProXopS has partnered with Momentus to deploy up to 24 VariSat satellites in Sun Synchronous Orbit starting in Q4 2021. VariSat will enable new and extremely robust data communications protocols to worldwide users and provide a hybrid network capable of surviving nuclear attacks on current DoD satellite assets. VariSat takes advantage of the diffractive/reflective properties of some part of the radiofrequency (RF) spectrum (1.7 MHz to 30 MHz) in the ionosphere. The Earth’s ionosphere provides an “umbrella-like” ionospheric reflector that gives each satellite unprecedented over the horizon ground coverage.

FARMINGTON, Conn. (LambdaVision PR) — LambdaVision, an innovative biotech developing a treatment to help patients regain sight, will launch their artificial retina technology with engineering partner Space Tango on Northrop Grumman’s 14^th Commercial Resupply Services Mission for NASA (NG-14) to the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory.

Scheduled to launch on September 30^th at 2:26 UTC (10:26 p.m. ET), NG-14 is the first of a series of NASA flights to the ISS in low-Earth orbit (LEO) focused on developing the on-orbit production of LambdaVision’s artificial retina.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA and SpaceX are beginning a regular cadence of missions with astronauts launching on an American rocket from American soil to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 is the first crew rotation mission with four astronauts flying on a commercial spacecraft, and the first including an international partner.