¶More orbital manufacturing news. Following our recent coverage of Besxar Space Industries and their use of returning Falcon 9 boosters for in-space manufacturing development, it’s worth mentioning a bunch of other recent in-space manufacturing updates. While the market doesn’t exist today, many companies hope to create it. - Beleaguered Momentus received a $5.1M contract from NASA’s Flight Opportunities program for their Vigoride OTV to host the Commercial Orbital System for Microgravity In-Space Crystallization (COSMIC) experiment. COSMIC, from SpaceWorks and Astral Materials, will explore growing higher-quality and more consistent semiconductor crystals than can be grown terrestrially.
- Varda signed an agreement for 20 more manufacturing spacecraft landings at Australia’s Koonibba Test Range and a joint development agreement with United Semiconductor to produce semiconductors in orbit. Varda will also now operate two spacecraft simultaneously for the first time, with the launch of their fifth capsule on Transporter-15, joining their fourth mission still in orbit.
- UK-based SpaceForge, which raised a $30M Series A in May and launched its ForgeStar-1 in July, has formed its own partnership with United Semiconductors for in-space semiconductor manufacturing.
- In China, ground tests were completed on a 2-meter-diameter cylindrical inflatable module for in-space manufacturing of “biopharmaceuticals, 3D printing, and the production of novel materials.”
- LambdaVision raised a $7M seed round to scale up manufacturing of artificial retina implants by using the LEO microgravity environment to control surface tension, sedimentation, and convection-driven buoyancy. This allows for precise material deposition during the manufacturing of their precision nanomolecular devices. LambdaVision has previously flown nine times to the ISS and produced a 200-layer protein thin film artificial retina precursor.
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¶Shenzhou takes a hit. Just as the new three-person Shenzhou-21 crew arrived at Tiangong station for their six-month stay, the return of the Shenzhou-20 crew, which they were meant to relieve, was delayed to assess the safety of their return craft after a suspected space debris impact. The Shenzhou-20 crew has already spent six months on the station, which is only designed to support more than three taikonauts for short periods. China does have the Shenzhou-22 capsule on standby and could launch it in short order (possible as soon as eight days), allowing the S-20 crew to return on S-21’s craft and a replacement to arrive shortly after for S-21’s eventual return. Once again, Musk has been called on to ‘rescue’ the delayed (not stranded) crew, much like the theatrical retrieval of the Starliner demo crew from the ISS—however, there’s an exceptionally low likelihood that such an operation could even begin to be feasible due to the Chinese station’s orbit, docking differences, and spacesuit incompatibility, let alone the political implications and impact on future Dragon missions (SpaceX does not have an unassigned fleet of Dragons on standby, so would have to reallocate another customer’s spacecraft for retrieval). This is the second debris hit on a crew vehicle in recent years (Soyuz MS-22’s radiator was struck in 2022, necessitating the launch of a replacement vehicle to the ISS), underscoring the growing problem of space debris as discussed last week. It also highlights the need for international standardization of items like docking adapters and suit interoperability. (ESA may require them to all charge via USB-C?) While unlikely to be needed for this mission, as private stations proliferate, the need for a rescue mission, conducted using whatever crew vehicle is available, seems eventually inevitable. |
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 | The crews of Shenzhou-20 and Shenzhou-21 during a handover ceremony prior to the delay of S-20’s return. It’s going to get a bit cozy up there. |
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| ¶News in brief. Jared Isaacman is so back—after much consternation and some leaked memos, Trump re-nominated Isaacman to the Senate for confirmation as NASA Administrator, to a mostly enthusiastic industry response ● Due to the government shutdown, the FAA restricted commercial space launches to evening hours (which delayed Transporter-15 among other missions), citing air-traffic control staffing limitations ● Blue Origin scrubbed their New Glenn launch of ESCAPADE to Mars due to weather—they are scheduled to try again today ● Intuitive Machines made a bid to buy the recently renamed Lanteris Space Systems (fka Maxar Technologies’s satellite manufacturing arm, taken private by PE in 2023) for $800M ● An Ariane 6 launched the Sentinel-1D EO radar imaging satellite, which will replace Sentinel-1A to complete the Sentinel-1 mission (continuing the vehicle’s quick ramp up in launch cadence) ● China launched a Long March 11 and a commercial Kinetica-1 from CAS Space, surpassing its annual record with 70 launches ● In-space power beaming startup Star Catcher demonstrated ground-based delivery of 1.1kW to commercial off-the-shelf solar panels using multi-wavelength lasers, breaking DARPA’s previous record of 800W ● Senegal started construction of an optical astronomical observatory, the first of its kind in West Africa ● EchoStar is selling more spectrum to SpaceX for $2.6B in stock to support the company’s US direct-to-cell services ● A Galactic Energy Ceres-1 failed to reach orbit after its fourth stage shut down prematurely, marking the second failure out of 22 launches for the Chinese commercial launch company ● Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the investment of $100M to accelerate efforts to reduce methane emissions with some funding allocated to expanding existing monitoring satellite constellations such as Carbon Mapper ● Rick Hauck, NASA astronaut who commanded the first post-Challenger Shuttle mission, passed away at 84 |
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 | STS-26 commander Rick Hauck, floating on the middeck of Discovery, beside a portrait and mission patch honoring the fallen Challenger crew. RIP. |
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¶Etc.- NASA may be quietly gutting an iconic campus with what it calls strategic closures, workers fear: ‘Furloughed employees were given just days to temporarily return to work and help empty entire buildings of highly specialized equipment, according to sources and internal emails obtained by CNN. In the communications, NASA managers wrote that equipment not moved in time — including one-of-a-kind hardware — could be thrown away or donated.’
- Blue Sky Space, a UK-based startup, will soon launch Mauve, a 16U cubesat with a 13 cm UV telescope, and plans to sell its astronomical data via a subscription priced roughly equivalent to 1 PhD salary/year.
- NY Times: How Lunar Photography Brought the Heavens Down to Earth.
- Joining ESA’s ExoMars and Mars Express, CNSA’s Tianwen-1, orbiting Mars, imaged interstellar object 3I/ATLAS at a distance of ~29 million km.
- A reader shared their free-to-use API (docs) with 1.18M pre-analyzed landing sites at the lunar south pole, built on NASA LOLA and LROC data. The sites scored on metrics including slope, illumination, elevation, comms line of sight, and proximity to resources.
- As Canada and Europe push for domestic launch markets, the limitation may be experience, not capital. With ~$600M in funding, German company Isar has “attracted more investment than Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Astra collectively raised on the private market before each of them successfully launched a rocket into orbit.”
- Space Elevator. Wee!
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The ISS celebrated 25 years of continuous habitation last week—a quarter century highlighting the immense ability of our species to accomplish great things when we work together instead of picking fights. Here’s what it looked like in September 2000, just before the first of a long line of crew members occupied it beginning November 2nd, 2000. Credit: NASA |  |
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