NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are ready for launch tomorrow on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test. This is their second try after a faulty valve on the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas rocket scrubbed the mission on May 6 and technical glitches later discovered in Starliner delayed it until now. NASA, Boeing, ULA and the crew are convinced the problems are sufficiently understood, if not entirely remedied, to ensure a safe test flight. The weather forecast is 90 percent favorable, but there’s a chance onshore winds could be “feisty.”

…

Read More Read More

Peru and Slovakia signed the Artemis Accords today at NASA Headquarters, bringing the number of signatories up to 42. Countries from all six continents that have governments — Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America — have agreed to the U.S.-led non-binding principles for responsible behavior on the Moon, nine of them this year alone.

…

Read More Read More

Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon did not wake up when JAXA sent a signal yesterday (EDT). The sturdy lander has surprised everyone by continuing to operate after repeated long, cold lunar nights that doom other landers that have only solar cells for power.  JAXA has not given up on SLIM and will try again next month when the Sun returns to the landing site.

…

Read More Read More

North Korea’s attempt to launch a second military reconnaissance satellite into orbit today failed. Video of the rocket exploding during ascent was captured by Japan’s NHK television and North Korea acknowledged the failure. [Updated May 30 with State Department reaction.]

…

Read More Read More

Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com over the  last week, May 20-26, 2024, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.

…

Read More Read More

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of May 26-June 2, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions.

…

Read More Read More

NASA, Boeing and the United Launch Alliance will make a second try to launch the Starliner Crew Flight Test on June 1. While fixing a bad valve on the rocket that caused the launch to be scrubbed on May 6, two unrelated problems with the spacecraft were found. They’ve concluded Starliner is good to go for this test flight, but changes may be made for future missions to deal with a recently discovered “design vulnerability” in the propulsion system.

…

Read More Read More

The Senate appropriators who fund NASA left no doubt today that the Artemis program is their top priority for the agency. In a friendly hearing, Democrats and Republicans stressed the importance of staying ahead of China in space exploration and keeping Artemis on schedule.

…

Read More Read More

NASA has officially acknowledged that the Starliner Crew Flight Test will not take place on May 25. The launch has been on hold since May 6 first because of a bad valve on the launch vehicle and then with a helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. A new launch date is pending.

…

Read More Read More

Jeff Bingham, whose enduring influence on U.S. space policy over many decades is largely unknown outside the Beltway, died on Friday at the age of 77 after battling throat cancer. Both in the halls of Congress and at NASA, his passion for human spaceflight, sparked by the first launch of the Space Shuttle, never wavered. Working in the background for and with like-minded leaders of the Washington political establishment, his legacy is evident in the International Space Station and the SLS/Orion programs.

…

Read More Read More