Space News reports, “The Defense Innovation Unit announced March 21 it has signed an agreement with Firefly Aerospace to study the potential use of the company’s Elytra orbital vehicle for missions beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit.” According to the article, once the study contract is complete, as many as two demonstration flights could occur, “in the region between GEO orbit and the moon, known as cislunar space.”
Full Story (Space News)
Tag: Missions
NASA Declares SLS Ready for Crewed Missions
SPACE reports that NASA’s Space Launch System rocket “appears ready to take the next big step – launching astronauts. The debut SLS flight, on Nov. 16, kicked off NASA’s 25-day-long Artemis 1 mission, which sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back. … An initial assessment of SLS’ Artemis 1 performance, which NASA released on Nov. 30, gave the rocket high marks, finding that it performed as expected in all areas. Mission team members have now had more time to crunch the numbers, and the reviews continue to be rave, suggesting that no big changes will be required ahead of the first crewed SLS launch.” In a January 27 update, NASA officials wrote, “Building off the assessment conducted shortly after launch, the preliminary post-flight data indicates that all SLS systems performed exceptionally and that the designs are ready to support a crewed flight on Artemis 2.”
Full Story (SPACE)
NASA Purchases Five More Dragon Missions from SpaceX
Spaceflight Now reported that NASA “says it plans to buy five more crew rotation missions on SpaceX’s fleet of Dragon spaceships, bringing SpaceX’s contract with the space agency to 14 operational astronaut launches, likely enough to keep the International Space Station staffed through 2030.” SpaceX and The Boeing Company are to alternate NASA astronaut missions “every six months once the agency certifies Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the job.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX Launches NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH Missions
The New York Times reports, “Two NASA missions launched from the California coast and soared toward the stars late Tuesday night, overcoming a week of delays to get to orbit. Both aim to unravel mysteries about the universe — one by peering far from Earth, the other by looking closer to home. The rocket’s chief passenger is SPHEREx, a space telescope that will take images of the entire sky in more than a hundred colors that are invisible to the human eye. Accompanying the telescope is a suite of satellites known collectively as PUNCH, which will study the sun’s outer atmosphere and solar wind.”
Full Story (New York Times – Subscription Publication)
Video
SpaceX launches NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions (Launch at 58:01 mark)
(NASA; YouTube)