It was never a question that Spaceflight would be interested in the SpaceX rideshare program. It’s a perfect match—inexpensive slots offered by SpaceX which can be taken advantage of to sell the end-to-end services offered by Spaceflight at a solid margin. They’re also manifesting two BlackSky satellites on the next Starlink flight, just like we saw a few days ago with Planet flying SkySats on the previous flight.
Northrop Grumman was awarded $187 million for the Gateway Habitat design, which caps off NASA’s 2020 budget work for Artemis components. Additionally, Kathy Lueders was named head of human spaceflight at NASA, which is huge and fantastic news. We take a look at the Artemis program’s acquisitions so far and the road ahead under Lueders’ leadership.
After the bizarre departure of Doug Loverro and the epic triumph of SpaceX DM-2, this news makes perfect sense and I, like damn near everyone who follows space, am thrilled to see it.
We’ve put together a fundraiser with the help of our Off-Nominal Discord community to benefit two fantastic organizations that are helping make our space industry a better place: Black Girls Code and the Banneker Institute at Harvard.
It happened! American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. Bob and Doug successfully launched, docked to the ISS, and joined Expedition 63. I talk about what this means for SpaceX, NASA, space policy, and where things go from here.
Though NASA and its projects provide a source of hope through scientific advancement and inspiration, those things can often feel unreachable to many of us. However, the platform it provides for representation and for role models to step forward into the public eye is hugely important.
The head of human spaceflight at NASA resigned last week, just before the most important crewed launch the agency has seen in a decade. However, it appears as though the resignation is related to the Artemis program and its landers. I give some thoughts on the implications of the departure, and also cover a recent development in international space politics—the Artemis Accords.
Jake and Anthony are joined by Jason Davis of The Planetary Society to talk about NASA’s human landing systems, SpaceX’s upcoming DM-2 launch, and to debate whether or not Tom Cruise will make a cool movie on the ISS.
NASA announced three contract awards for the Artemis Progam’s Human Landing System—a Blue Origin-led team, Dynetics, and SpaceX’s Starship. I talk through some thoughts on each landing system and what the future might hold for NASA, regarding both politics and decisions.
Coinciding with a presentation to an astrophysics decadal survey committee meeting, SpaceX posted a bunch of information (and really nice visualizations of Starlink satellites) about what they’re doing to work with astronomers on the visibility issue. It’s wonderful to have this amount of information put in one place, straight from the source.
Main Engine Cut Off