It was not the busiest week in space technology news – like much of the sector, it feels like we are entering a bit of a summer day period where things are pretty slow. That is probably especially true now, with many companies coming off some Herculean efforts and great successes.
This downtime will lead to major developments to come, including the first official mission of the International Space Station crew for SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which is scheduled for the end of September. We might also see the first sub-orbital launch of the year in the same month.
SpaceX had a successful launch of a batch of 57 more Stalrink satellites for its broadband internet satellite constellation, which is coming together nicely for the planned beta launch this summer. SpaceX has teamed up for it, and the details we’ve found show that it needs to be up and running at all times – although we’ll probably not hear much about how the actual service works since participation involves agreeing to in NDA.
SpaceX has for the first time flown a full-scale prototype of its Starship, with a long hull (with a simulated weight instead of its possible dome cap and temp legs) hopped to a height of about 500 feet. The hop included a flight up and then a controlled arrival and landing, all of which turned out to have gone awry. This is the first major advance the Starship development program has made this year, really, after a series of (probably very educational) failures.
Rocket Lab has increased the payroll capacity of its Electron launch vehicle by a third, and the total weight it can carry to turn a track up to 660 lbs. That should open up a lot of new potential market for the company, and enable small satellite makers to build extra functionality in the spacecraft they set up with the rocket. The company made this mid-production generation thanks to optimizations of the battery technology that some of its thrusters add, along with some other tweaks.
AWAY (L to R) RAY PANTHAKI as RAM ARYA and HILARY SWANK as EMMA GREEN, in episode 109 of AWAY. Cr. DIYAH PERA / NETFLIX © 2020
The new Netflix Away show stars Hilary Swank as an astronaut on a mission to Mars, and seems to focus on the challenges of the family she faces between her crucial mission, and the people behind her on Earth. left behind. Looks more like ‘This is Us’ and less like ‘The Martian’, but it could be great.
