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The first cubesats designed to study the moon are scheduled to launch late this year, with more in development in the next few years. Thomas Gardner, director of engineering at Advanced Space and program manager for CAPSTONE, said during a session of the 35th annual Small Satellite Conference Aug. 9 that the launch is currently scheduled for late October or early November. Gardner said that CAPSTONE, if it sticks to its current launch schedule, will be the first cubesat in cislunar space.

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Lunar cubesats head to the launch pad - SpaceNews The first cubesats designed to study the moon are scheduled to launch late this year, with more in development in the next few years.

Ground station providers anticipate a new era of collaboration after coming together to support Astroscale, the startup months away from conducting the world’s first privately funded debris-removal demonstration. A typical LEO mission typically only needs one or two ground stations. Astroscale’s two spacecraft were launched March 22 aboard a Soyuz-2 rocket, and are continuing to perform tests in preparation for a series of maneuvers this year that will demonstrate the startup’s capabilities.

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Ground station collaboration paving way for pioneering space missions - SpaceNews Ground station providers anticipate a new era of collaboration after coming together to support Astroscale, the startup months away from conducting the world’s first privately funded debris-removal demonstration.

Intuitive Machines announced Aug. 10 that its IM-3 lander mission will launch on a Falcon 9 in 2024. The Nova-C lander will carry up to 130 kilograms of payloads to the lunar surface. Company spokesman Josh Marshall said the company has not selected a landing site for the mission. The company previously selected SpaceX to launch its IM-1 and IM-2 lander missions, which are currently scheduled to launch in the first and fourth quarters of 2022, respectively.

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Intuitive Machines selects SpaceX for launch of third lunar lander mission - SpaceNews Lunar lander developer Intuitive Machines will launch its third lunar lander mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9, just as it will its first and second missions.

Japanese company IHI Aerospace plans to market a version of the little-used Epsilon small launch vehicle to commercial customers, although at prices significantly higher than similar vehicles in development. IHI Aerospace, the launch vehicle integrator, plans to start offering launch services using the Epsilon rocket in 2023. The commercial launches will use a new version of the rocket, called Epsilon S. That version will include several upgrades to the existing Epsilon, including replacing the rocket’s first stage, based on the strap-on booster used on the H-2 series of rockets, with one based on a new strap-on booster for the H3 vehicle.

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IHI Aerospace to offer Epsilon rocket commercially - SpaceNews Japanese company IHI Aerospace plans to market a version of the little-used Epsilon small launch vehicle to commercial customers.

Accion Systems plans to supply miniature ion thrusters for Xplore Inc.’s 150-kilogram LEO Xcraft (XLEO) satellite scheduled to launch in 2023, under an agreement announced Aug. 10. If successful, the flight would demonstrate the utility of Accion’s Tiled Ionic Liquid Electrospray (TILE) thrusters to move ESPA-class satellites into their desired orbits after launch and provide stationkeeping, collision avoidance and deorbit capabilities. (ESPA stands for Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter.) To date, Accion TILE thrusters have flown on cubesats, including the NanoAvionics D2/Atlacom-1 and OQ Technology’s Tiger-2 cubesat launched June 30 on the SpaceX Transporter-2 rideshare flight.

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Rocket Lab said Aug. 10 it will perform the three launches between late August and the end of September from New Zealand as part of a multi-launch agreement Rocket Lab reached with BlackSky and arranged by launch services provider Spaceflight earlier this year. Each launch will carry two Gen-2 BlackSky imaging satellites. The three launches, if they take place on the schedule Rocket Lab announced, will be the fastest cadence the company has demonstrated to date. Rocket Lab performed three Electron launches between late October and mid-December 2020.

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The U.S. Space Force plans to demonstrate later this year two approaches to provide rides to space for small satellites and hosted payloads, including a version of a common adapter equipped with a propulsion system. The Space Test Program 3 mission, scheduled to launch later this year on an Atlas 5, will carry the first Long Duration Propulsive ESPA (LDPE) payload. LDPE uses the EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA), a ring-shaped adapter for secondary smallsat payloads, as a bus equipped with power and propulsion systems to maneuver after launch and carry payloads to their final orbits.

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Space Force developing “freight train to space” for smallsats - SpaceNews The U.S. Space Force plans to demonstrate later this year two approaches to provide rides to space for small satellites and hosted payloads.

The space industry needs to significantly simplify services for customers outside the sector to unlock its next phase of growth, space executives told the Small Satellite Conference Aug. 9. New space-as-a-service (SaaS) business models have vastly expanded the market, offering more customers the benefits of space infrastructure without the burdens of satellite manufacturing, launch, regulations or other technical intricacies. SaaS offerings from companies including Spire Global, SSTL, Momentus and Loft Orbital Solutions — which participated in a Northern Sky Research panel for the virtual conference, aim to lower barriers to entry for companies lacking in-house expertise to develop space services. They also promise to significantly speed up the time it takes these customers to launch their services.

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Simplification is key to space industry growth - SpaceNews The space industry needs to significantly simplify services for customers outside the sector to unlock its next phase of growth, space executives told the Small Satellite Conference Aug. 9.

China’s main spacecraft maker is developing a human landing system for lunar missions, according to an account of an official academic visit. China is already known to be developing and testing new launch vehicles and a new-generation spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the moon. A lunar landing and ascent system has one of the missing key components of a human lunar landing architecture.

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China is working on a lander for human moon missions - SpaceNews China’s main spacecraft maker is developing a human landing system for lunar missions as part of a national strategy, according to a report.

In an Aug. 6 statement, Boeing said it was continuing to study why several valves in the propulsion system of the spacecraft were unexpectedly in the closed position during the countdown to the Aug. 3 launch attempt of the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission, an uncrewed test flight. Boeing scrubbed the launch about three hours before the scheduled liftoff because of the problem. Neither NASA nor Boeing have set a new launch date for the OFT-2 mission. Boeing said in its statement that it is “assessing multiple launch opportunities for Starliner in August” and will work with NASA and United Launch Alliance to determine an appropriate launch date.

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Starliner investigation continues - SpaceNews Boeing is continuing its investigation into the thruster issue that delayed the launch of its CST-100 Starliner but could soon run into schedule conflicts.

In a statement late Aug. 6, NASA said that while Perseverance had drilled a sample from a rock on the floor of Jezero Crater, that sample did not make it into a titanium sampling tube that would store the material for eventual return to Earth. It’s unclear why the sample didn’t make it into the tube, but for now project officials believe it is more likely unforeseen properties of the rock kept it from entering the tube rather than a malfunction of the sampling system itself. In a worst-case scenario, a problem with the sampling system would upend NASA’s long-term Mars exploration strategy. Perseverance is the first of three missions by NASA and the European Space Agency to collect and return Mars samples to Earth. The samples cached by Perseverance will be collected by a NASA-led lander mission, which will place them into a container and launch it into Martian orbit. An ESA-led orbiter will grab that container and return it to Earth. Those two later missions, still in their early phases of development, will launch no earlier than 2026, returning the samples to Earth as soon as 2031.

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The Long March 3B ignited at 12:30 p.m. Eastern August 5, rising above the hills of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province after midnight local time. CASC’s China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) provided the launch vehicle, while another major CASC subsidiary, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), developed the satellite. China plans to launch seven further Long March 3B rockets in the remaining five months of 2021, CALT stated post-launch.

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China launches Zhongxing-2E communications satellite - SpaceNews China sent the Zhongxing-2E into geosynchronous transfer orbit Thursday with the launch of a Long March 3B rocket from Xichang.