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AI and robotics company, Machina, Labs has welcomed new members into its executive team: manufacturing veterans Alex Huckstepp to serve as the new Vice President of Sales and Alexander Kwan as Vice President of Operations.

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present: The Space Café Podcast #70: Jim Green - former chief scientist NASA about the past and future of space science and the agency’s secret sauce. James Green has served 40 years with NASA and sports some of its most prestigious missions. In the current episode of the Space Café Podcast, he talks about SLS, James Webb, Artemis, DART, space science and the future of the space industry. 

NASA’s Perseverance rover deposited its first titanium sample tube containing a rock sample on Mars’ surface. The sample is the first of 10 forming a depot of tubes that will be considered to be brought back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign, the agency said.

NASA’s Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio installed a Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to augment power generation on the station’s port truss structure, NASA said. The extravehicular activity (EVA) lasted 7 hours and 8 minutes.

NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to provide launch services for the Sentinel-6B mission. Sentinel-6B will continue the long-term global sea level data record begun in 1992 by Topex/Poseidon, followed by Jason 1, 2, 3, and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich. The mission is a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).

NASA has announced the end of life of its InSight mission after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars. NASA reached this conclusion after mission controllers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California could not contact the lander after two consecutive attempts. As a result, they concluded the spacecraft's solar-powered batteries had run out of energy – a state engineers refer to as "dead bus."

On December 19, the Outer Space Institute published an International Open Letter on Reducing Risks from Uncontrolled Reentries of Rocket Bodies. The letter was signed by nearly 200 leading experts, including former astronauts, foreign ministers, heads of space agencies, a Nobel Prize winner, and a recently retired Chief Scientist of NASA.

The Outer Space Institute (OSI) has published the International Open Letter on Reducing Risks from Uncontrolled Reentries of Rocket Bodies, the third international open letter that the OSI has developed and released. The Open Letter calls on governments to negotiate a multilateral agreement requiring controlled reentries and, in the meantime, demonstrate leadership by immediately and unilaterally committing to national controlled reentry regimes.

Saturn Satellite Networks has selected CesiumAstro’s Vireo-GEO active phased array RF payload for Saturn’s Space BroadbandNetworks-1 (SBN-1). The SBN-1 program consists of 6 high-throughput geostationary satellites (HTSs) that will provide satellite-based internet access services to satellite operators, capacity resellers, internet service providers, and end users.

Aerospace and defense technology innovator, L3Harris Technologies, signed a definitive agreement with propulsion systems and energetics provider, Aerojet Rocketdyne, for L3Harris to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne for US $58 per share, in an all-cash transaction valued at US $4.7 billion, inclusive of net debt, L3Harris said. The deal is expected to close in 2023.