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.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com over the past two weeks, May 5-19, 2024, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.
Ed Dwight, who went through training in the early days of the space program that he thought would make him NASA’s first black astronaut, fulfilled his dream of seeing Earth from space today. At 90, he was one of the six passengers on Blue Origin’s New Shepard-25 mission, the first flight with people on board since a failure in 2022. Today’s flight was successful and landed safely even though one of the three parachutes did not fully inflate.