CHINA BREAKS ITS RIDESHARE RECORD WITH 26-SATELLITE LAUNCH - A Chinese Lijian-1 solid-fuel rocket launched on Wednesday (June 7), carrying 26 satellites to orbit — a rideshare record for the country. It was the second flight of the Lijian-1 rocket, which is China's largest operational solid propellant launch vehicle. Its inaugural mission launched in July 2022. Wednesday's liftoff occurred at 12:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 p.m. Beijing time), from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, according to a Chinese state media release. The 26 satellites housed in the Lijian-1 fairing were launched into low Earth orbit, where they will primarily serve "technology verification and commercial remote sensing information services." More (Source: Space.com - Jun 11)
SHOULD THE FAA REGULATE ALL SPACE ACTIVITIES? - The Outer Space Treaty (OST) requires nation-states to provide “authorization and continuing supervision” of the activities of their nationals in space. In recent months the National Space Council (NSpC), chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, has asked federal agencies for their opinions on which agencies or departments should have this role for in-space activity. Here, “in-space activity” is basically everything other than launch and reentry operations, already regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); communications, regulated by the Federal Communications Commission; and Earth observation, regulated by the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jun 11)
NASA ASTRONAUTS DEPLOY 5TH ROLL-OUT SOLAR ARRAY ON SPACEWALK OUTSIDE SPACE STATION - Two NASA astronauts successfully installed and deployed a new solar array outside the International Space Station (ISS) during the latest in a series of spacewalks focused on upgrading the orbiting laboratory's power supply. Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg, crewmates on the station's current Expedition 69 mission, spent 6 hours and 3 minutes performing the extravehicular activity (EVA) on Friday (June 9). The two switched their spacesuits to battery power and began their exit from the U.S. Quest airlock at 9:25 a.m. EDT (1325 GMT). More (Source: Space.com - Jun 10)
CHINA’S FIRST STACKABLE SATELLITE REACHES ORBIT ON SOLID ROCKET LAUNCH - A light-lift solid rocket sent an experimental “plate-like” stackable satellite into orbit late Thursday as the country looks to build its answer to Starlink. A Kuaizhou-1A solid rocket lifted off from a TEL into blue skies above the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 10:35 p.m. June 8. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) confirmed launch success a short time later. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jun 10)
ASTRONAUTS MAKE FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR FRIDAY’S SPACEWALK - Four Expedition 69 astronauts are making final preparations ahead of Friday’s spacewalk to continue upgrading the International Space Station’s power generation system. Meanwhile, the orbital outpost’s three cosmonauts focused on heart research and plasma physics while ensuring station systems remain in tip-top shape. NASA Flight Engineers Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg are scheduled to set their Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs), or spacesuits, to battery power at 9:15 a.m. EDT on Friday officially beginning a spacewalk to install a roll-out solar array on the station’s starboard truss structure. More (Source: NASA - Jun 9)
THIS NEW TOOL 'CLEANS' ANNOYING SATELLITE TRAILS FROM HUBBLE TELESCOPE PHOTOS - Despite the alarming regularity with which artificial satellites intrude on photos snapped by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the science done with data from the telescope has not suffered, a new study reports. "To date, not one Hubble science program has been affected by satellite trails," representatives of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Maryland, which carries out science operations for Hubble and conducted the latest study, wrote in a statement published Monday (June 5). More (Source: Space.com - Jun 9)
SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW US EAST COAST ENGULFED BY SMOKE FROM CANADIAN WILDFIRES - The U.S. Northeast woke up to a "horribly smoky day" on Wednesday (June 7), as a low-pressure system funnels toxic smoke from wildfires in Canada across the Atlantic Coast. The beige-tinged haze can be seen in imagery captured by the weather forecasting satellite GOES East, but plentiful eyewitness reports of the smoke have also cropped up on social media since Tuesday afternoon (June 6). More (Source: Space.com - Jun 8)
SATELLITE BEAMS SOLAR POWER DOWN TO EARTH, IN FIRST-OF-A-KIND DEMONSTRATION - Researchers have taken a small but necessary step toward realizing a long-standing dream: harvesting solar energy in space and beaming it down to Earth. A satellite launched in January has steered power in a microwave beam onto targets in space, and even sent some of that power to a detector on Earth, the experiment’s builder, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), announced on 1 June. “No one has done this before,” says space scientist Sanjay Vijendran at the European Space Agency (ESA). “They’re bringing credibility to the topic by demonstrating this capability.” More (Source: Science - Jun 7)
CARGO DRAGON DOCKS AT SPACE STATION - Closing out an automated 18-hour rendezvous, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with 7,000 pounds of supplies and equipment, including two add-on roll-out solar blankets, caught up with the International Space Station early Tuesday and moved in for a problem-free docking. Flying through orbital darkness 270 miles above the southern tip of South America, the unpiloted Dragon, launched Monday from the Kennedy Space Center, approached the lab from behind and below, looping up in front of the station and then on to a point about 600 feet directly above the forward Harmony module’s space-facing port. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 7)
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