Four people of four different nationalities are on their way to the International Space Station following an early morning liftoff from Kennedy Space Center. For the first time, a NASA-led crew includes just one U.S. astronaut. The other three are from ISS partner countries Denmark, Japan and Russia.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) is taking more steps to challenge President Biden’s decision to keep U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado instead of moving it to Alabama as promised by former President Trump. He wants the key military and civilian DOD leaders involved in the decision to testify to his committee when Congress returns and is requesting an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.
For the second time in three months, North Korea’s attempt to launch a reconnaissance satellite into orbit failed. The country’s state news agency attributed it to a third stage malfunction and downplayed the accident, saying they will try again in October.
India became just the fourth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon today. Chandrayaan-3’s soft-landing marked the first success since 2019 in six tries by three space agencies, a commercial company, and a non-profit. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared “India is on the Moon” and cheered the success as belonging to “all of humanity.”
The head of the Russian space agency said today that Luna-25 crashed into the Moon because the spacecraft’s engine fired longer than planned. The trouble began on Saturday when Luna-25 was commanded to lower its orbit in preparation for landing, which was scheduled for today. Instead it crashed into the surface.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com in the last week, August 14-20, 2023, 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 of August 20-26, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September except for pro forma sessions.
Russia joined the growing list of lunar lander failures today. Luna-25 crashed into the Moon following an anomaly yesterday after a command was sent to change the spacecraft’s orbit. Communications were lost and the spacecraft crashed into the surface. Luna-25 is the fifth lunar probe in a row launched by several countries and companies to fail since 2019. India was one of those failures in 2019, but it will try again with Chandrayaan-3, which is orbiting the Moon right now with landing scheduled for Wednesday.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos is reporting today that Luna-25 experienced an anomaly after being commanded to adjust its orbit around the Moon in preparation for landing on Monday. Luna-25 is Russia’s first lunar probe in almost 50 years and Russian hopes are riding high that it will demonstrate that the country that racked up a number of robotic lunar “firsts” in the early years of the Space Age is still a player. Experts are analyzing the situation at the moment.
The fourth and final session of the United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats will take place at the end of this month. Previous discussions at OEWG and elsewhere highlighted the challenges of talking about a topic where terminology varies considerably within and among nations and other stakeholders. Now there is at least a starting point with the new “Lexicon for Outer Space Security” released by the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research and the Secure World Foundation.