Frontiers

Bellatrix Aerospace has achieved a significant milestone with the successful launch of its Rudra and Arka propulsion systems onboard ISRO’s PSLV C-58 launch vehicle on 1st January 2024. The company had earlier tested India's first privately developed Hall Effect Thruster (Arka) in 2021 and subsequently unveiled the nation's first High-Performance Green Propulsion system (Rudra) in 2022, representing significant milestones in Indian space technology.

Redwire Corporation has announced that two 5-kW Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSA) have successfully deployed and are operating nominally in geosynchronous orbit on the Maxar Space Systems-built Ovzon 3 communications satellite. The satellite successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. Ovzon 3 represents the first-ever integration of Redwire’s ROSA technology with a commercial satellite following years of successful operations on the International Space Station (ISS) and on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

Voyager Space and Airbus have completed the transaction to create Starlab Space LLC, a transatlantic joint venture that will design, build, and operate the Starlab commercial space station. Alongside the joint venture execution, the Starlab team completed the station-level System Definition Review (SDR), a critical milestone assessing the technical and programmatic accountability of the program.

AFWERX has selected Muon Space for an SBIR Phase I contract with a focus on weather intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and operational mission planning. Muon Space will consequently perform a feasibility study to determine the benefit of modifying its multispectral Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) instrument to support the Department of Defense's (DoD) cloud characterization observation capability

The schedules for Artemis II and Artemis III have been postponed to September 2025 for Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, and September 2026 for Artemis III, which is planned to land the first astronauts near the lunar South Pole, NASA announced. 

The possible cause of Peregrine spacecrafts's propulsion anomaly might be a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer, which might have failed to reseal after actuation during inizialization, Astrobotic announced on their X channel. 

By nighttime stateside, early European/Middle East/Africa morning today, and mid-day in Asia, the successfully launched Astrobotic Peregrine lander was confirmed having run into problems terminally dooming Mission 1. Astrobotic’s confirmed the issue reporting on their social media and press releases. And like with any failure, let’s take a healing look at facts and lessons learned. The first lesson is the obvious one: yes, space is hard. 

NASA and the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have announced plans for MBRSC to provide an airlock for Gateway, humanity’s first space station that will orbit the Moon. Under a new implementing arrangement expanding their human spaceflight collaboration with NASA through Gateway, MBRSC will provide Gateway’s Crew and Science Airlock module, as well as a UAE astronaut to fly to the lunar space station on a future Artemis mission.

NorthStar Earth & Space Inc. has announced the launch window of the first four of its SSA satellites with Rocket Lab from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand for the “Four Of A Kind” mission no earlier than 18th January between 06:15-07:00 UTC. The launch results from intense collaboration between NorthStar and its partners Spire Global, launch service provider Rocket Lab and mission integration and deployment specialists Exolaunch.

Astrobotic has launched its Peregrine Lunar Lander aboard United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s inaugural Vulcan-1 rocket from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex-41. The Peregrine Lander mission represents the US's first soft landing on the lunar surface since the Apollo missions. Likewise, for ULA, the launch serves as the launcher's first certification mission first of two certification launches that the Vulcan rocket has to complete before it can be put under consideration for national security space missions. Other than Astrobotic's lander, Vulcan also launched Celestis Memorial Spaceflight's deep space Voyager mission, the Enterprise Flight.