¶India greenlights multiple space efforts. The Indian government approved multiple space projects last week, including a lunar sample return mission, the first Indian space station module, and a partially reusable launch vehicle. The Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample return mission builds on India’s successful 2023 Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing. Much like China’s in-development Tianwen-3 Mars sample return, Chandrayaan-4 will launch on two rockets (the domestically developed LVM3), one with a lander and ascender module and the other with transfer and sample return modules. This ambitious mission, now with a $252 million budget, will attempt lunar ascent, lunar orbit rendezvous and docking, and Earth return, likely in 2027 or later. All these capabilities are also needed for an eventual human lunar mission. (To practice orbital docking ahead of Chandrayaan-4 and human spaceflight missions, ISRO is planning SPADEX this year, an orbital docking experiment.) On the human spaceflight side, the first Bharatiya Antariksh Station module was approved, targeting a 2028 launch and building on multiple planned Gaganyaan human spaceflight missions. Also approved were the Venus Orbiter Mission (VOM… really?), which is targeting a 2028 launch, and the Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), a larger launch vehicle with a reusable first stage to enable many of these ambitious missions. Still pending is LUPEX, a joint lunar mission with Japan, which is now designated Chandrayaan-5. Our friend Jatan Mehta points out that doing LUPEX in parallel is likely infeasible, as “despite the many highs of 2023 for Indian space, the FY2024 budget of $1.56 billion for the country’s Department of Space [...] has essentially stayed flat. India’s approach to even attempt its planned increasingly complex lunar and crewed exploration missions is gradual and different than the US or China by necessity. ISRO simply lacks the scale of resources and threaded execution of planetary missions that NASA and CNSA enjoy, with governmental Indian space funding being only a tenth to twentieth of China and the US, and private funding for deep space exploration being nearly zero.” |
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| ¶Elodin is taking pre-orders for their new flight computer, Aleph. Aleph combines an Orin NX module with a customizable, open-source expansion board and unlocks the next generation of autonomous satellites, drones, and anything else you can think of. |
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¶Intuitive Machine’s momentum builds. NASA awarded the company a contract for cislunar relay services worth as much as $4.82B. The contract intends to establish spacecraft in cislunar space to link with the Near Space Network so that future lunar missions don’t add additional demand to the already saturated Deep Space Network. IM will develop its data relay Khon satellites in partnership with York Space Systems, to be delivered as rideshares (at least in part) on future lunar missions. The initial timeline for the program is five years, commencing at the beginning of next month, with an optional 5-year extension. The relay satellites appear likely to be owned and operated by IM, with services contracted to NASA. This award adds momentum for IM, following the relative success of their IM-1 lunar landing and with IM-2 now on the horizon. The company sees cislunar comms as a core piece of its strategy for long-term lunar operations. IM is also in the running to take over the VIPER mission—and this large-scale contract could help de-risk such an award, guaranteeing IM minimum revenue over the timeline of the mission (cf. Issue No. 282). |
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| ¶News in brief. A Soyuz capsule returned to Earth from the ISS carrying two Russians (who stayed for a record-breaking 374 days) and one American ● The spacecraft bus that will take NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to Earth-Sun L2 is complete and ready for instrument integration ● Eutelsat plans to use H3 rockets from Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch satellites starting in 2027 ● The FAA plans to fine SpaceX $633,000 (the largest civil penalty ever imposed by their commercial spaceflight division and a rare occurrence) for launch license violations such as using an unauthorized launch control center and fuel farm during two summer 2023 launches, prompting Elon to then threaten to sue the FAA for ‘regulatory overreach’ ● In what is clearly a stunt, SpaceX is also being sued by Cards Against Humanity for alleged trespassing and storing hardware on their land near the Texas border ● Russia launched an Angara-1.2 carrier rocket with an unspecified payload for their Ministry of Defense ● Samara Aerospace, an SF-based startup, won a $1.25M SpaceWERX contract to develop a spacecraft bus that uses their novel Multifunctional Structures for Attitude Control (MSAC) system which performs pointing via rapid actuation of hinges on solar panels instead of reaction wheels ● Indian EO startup GalaxEye received a $2M investment from IT giant Infosys ● China launched its final pair of BeiDou navigation satellites ● ESA awarded Pangea Aerospace a contract to develop a very high-thrust rocket engine that could be used to power future European heavy and super-heavy rocket ● Belgian-based VEOWARE secured a €2.5M investment to expand into the US with enhanced spacecraft actuators ● In a shake up, Boeing announced the sudden departure of Ted Colbert, the president and CEO of Boeing’s space and defense division ● After an initial abort, Rocket Lab launched a second set of satellites for French startup Kinéis ● Japan awarded $32.5M to Interstellar Technologies to continue developing their two-stage launch vehicle ZERO which seeks to be a high-frequency, low-cost Japanese domestic launch option ● Chinese launch startup Deep Blue Aerospace conducted a first-stage hop test that failed to land successfully, resulting in an explosion (definitely check out this incredible whole video, not just the fiery ending!) ● A 10m-wide asteroid will orbit the Earth as a ‘mini-moon’ for 57 days ● A 350 meter long, peanut-shaped asteroid passed by the Earth-Moon system on September 16th and was imaged by NASA’s Goldson planetary radar. |
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 | 2024 ON, likely a contact binary, passed about 2.6x further away than the Moon from the Earth. It was followed by a hungry, squirrel-shaped object. |
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¶Etc.- A reference manual of orbital mechanics and astrodynamics.
- A dive into rumored financial challenges at Axiom, arranger of commercial trips to the ISS and developer of both an upcoming space station module and NASA’s new spacesuits. Axiom was founded by Kam Ghaffarian, the same prolific entrepreneur of companies catering to the US government who started Intuitive Machines, X-energy, and Quantum Space.
- A collaboration between Earth Fire Alliance, Muon Space, Google.org, and others is working on FireSat, a 50 satellite constellation to detect forest fires anywhere on earth within 20 minutes.
- Airbus’s metal 3D printing worked on the ISS, the first metal printing in space.
- BepiColombo’s recent Mercury flyby was the closest ever planetary flyby distance, passing within 165 km of the planet’s surface. And there’s a timelapse video.
- Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Christine Darden (popularly known as NASA's ‘Hidden Figures’) were honored with Congressional Gold Medals for their scientific and mathematical contributions during the space race.
- Caught on camera: amateur ground-based images of the NRO’s Topaz SAR spy satellites.
- Basic Mechanisms in Fire Control Computers (1953) shows remarkable analog computers. Many old US Military training videos and manuals are pretty amazing, including Basic Hand Tools and Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series.
- NOAA shared the first imagery from GOES-19, and NASA found that summer 2024 was the hottest to date, again.
- ESA’s Juice confirms that Earth is (currently) habitable. 👍
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