AIRBUS TO BUILD ESA SPACE SCIENCE SATELLITE - The European Space Agency has awarded Airbus Defence and Space a contract to build a spacecraft that will provide a unique view of the sun. ESA held a signing ceremony May 22 in Brussels for a contract valued at 340 million euros ($369 million) for the Vigil spacecraft. Airbus will build Vigil at its facilities at Stevenage in the United Kingdom. Slated to launch in 2031, Vigil will operate at the Earth-sun L-5 Lagrange point, trailing the Earth by 60 degrees in its orbit. It will complement spacecraft at the L-1 point, between the Earth and the sun, by viewing regions of the sun before they rotate into view of the Earth, thus providing advance warning of solar activity.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 24)

SPACEX LAUNCHES 23 STARLINK SATELLITES ON 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF ITS FIRST DEDICATED STARLINK FLIGHT - SpaceX completed its third Falcon 9 launch in less than 48 hours with a mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. As with its launch Wednesday night, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. Either serendipitously or intentionally, the Starlink 6-63 mission fell on the fifth anniversary of the first dedicated Starlink launch, Starlink v0.9 on May 23, 2019. The launch times of the two missions are also coincidentally very similar. Thursday night’s flight lifted off at 10:45 p.m. EDT (0245 UTC) and its five-year counterpart launched at 10:30 p.m. EDT (0230 UTC).   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 24)

NASA, BOEING AND ULA ANNOUNCE JUNE 1 AS NEW TARGET DATE FOR STARLINER’S CREW FLIGHT TEST - NASA is looking at the start of June for its next attempt to launch its astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, on board Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The announcement came last Wednesday night in a blog post, stating that June 1 will be the earliest that the Crew Flight Test of Starliner can begin. The new launch date has a T-0 liftoff of 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 UTC). There are also backup opportunities available on Sunday, June 2; Wednesday, June 5; and Thursday, June 6.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 23)

U.S. CLAIMS RECENTLY LAUNCHED RUSSIAN SATELLITE IS AN ASAT - The U.S. government claims that a recently launched Russian satellite is a counterspace weapon placed in nearly the same orbit as an American reconnaissance satellite. Amb. Robert Wood, U.S. alternate representative for special political affairs in the United Nations, made the allegation during a May 20 debate by the U.N. Security Council on a Russian resolution proposing a ban on the placement of weapons of any kind in space.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 22)

MAINE’S FIRST RESEARCH SATELLITE TO LAUNCH THIS YEAR - Maine’s first small research satellite, designed to engage middle and high school students in STEM, is expected to launch into orbit within the next couple of months. Firefly Aerospace, a company based in Cedar Rapids, Texas, integrated the nearly one-foot-tall satellite, known as MESAT1, into a rocket to be launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California. The integration was conducted inside Firefly’s clean room in Vandenberg by Joseph Patton, a Ph.D. student at the University of Maine Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Ali Abedi, principal investigator for the project and professor of electrical and computer engineering.   More
(Source: Sun Journal - May 21)

SATELLITE MISSION TO UNRAVEL HOW CLOUDS IMPACT FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE - A brand new satellite that will revolutionize our understanding of the role clouds and aerosol particles play in climate change is set to launch after more than 30 years of planning. The EarthCARE satellite is the brainchild of the University of Reading's Professor Anthony Illingworth. Conceived in 1993, the project was adopted by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2004.   More
(Source: Phys.org - May 21)

HOW THE SPACE SHUTTLE COMPLETED A FINAL, DARING HUBBLE REPAIR 15 YEARS AGO - The Hubble Space Telescope continues to operate to this day in part due to the work performed 15 years ago by the crew of STS-125. Dubbed Hubble Servicing Mission 4 (HSM 4), scientists knew this would be their final chance to use the space shuttle to visit and upgrade the orbiting laboratory. As we look back on the mission, the question remains whether or not Hubble will be visited or repaired again.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - May 21)

BOEING'S TROUBLED STARLINER SPACECRAFT LAUNCH IS DELAYED AGAIN - The first crewed launch of Boeing's troubled Starliner spacecraft has been delayed again, to May 25, this time because of a helium leak in the service module. NASA had set the liftoff for May 21 after scrubbing a May 6 launch but the helium leak was discovered on Wednesday. While the agency said the leak in the craft's thruster system was stable and wouldn't pose a risk during the flight, "Boeing teams are working to develop operational procedures to ensure the system retains sufficient performance capability and appropriate redundancy during the flight."   More
(Source: NPR - May 21)

BLUE ORIGIN LAUNCHES 1ST CREWED SPACEFLIGHT SINCE AUGUST 2022 - Blue Origin's nearly two-year human spaceflight drought is over. Jeff Bezos' aerospace company launched its NS-25 mission today (May 19), sending six people — including the United States' first-ever Black astronaut candidate — on a brief trip to suborbital space aboard its New Shepard rocket-capsule combo. It was Blue Origin's first space tourism launch since August 2022. That previous mission went well, but the company's next flight, an uncrewed research jaunt that launched a month later, did not: New Shepard suffered a serious anomaly, causing the destruction of the first-stage booster.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 20)

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