Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic conducted its first spaceflight in almost two years today, taking six company employees across the imaginary line between air and space for a few minutes of weightlessness and a great view of Earth. The company provided no live coverage of the “Unity 25” mission, issuing only a few tweets during the flight and a press release afterwards asserting success. Unity 25 flew just two days after Branson’s other space company, Virgin Orbit, ended operations following bankruptcy proceedings.

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Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane is getting closer to its first launch. Looking like a small space shuttle, Dream Chaser lost out to SpaceX and Boeing for NASA’s commercial crew program, but won a spot in the second round of commercial cargo missions to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Two members of the next ISS crew are in training to learn how the spacecraft operates so they’re ready when it arrives.

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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the crash site of ispace’s Hakuto-R M1 lander on the surface of the Moon. Hakuto-R M1 is the first commercial spacecraft to land on the Moon, but not successfully. Radio transmissions monitored by amateur radio enthuasiasts suggest it ran out of fuel and made a hard landing. LRO’s images show four areas of disturbance where pieces apparently rest. NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, a completely separate cubesat that launched on the same rocket, also failed.

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Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com during the week of May 15-22, 2023, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.

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The Axiom-2 private astronaut mission is in orbit and on its way to the International Space Station, beating the weather odds. Liftoff came just as an anvil cloud was closing in on the launch pad. Much closer and they would have had to scrub for the day. Instead they lifted off on time and the two Americans and two Saudi Arabians will dock with the ISS tomorrow morning. [Update: the crew docked on May 22 at 9:12 am ET.]

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 21-27, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The House is in session this week. The Senate is in recess, but could return if a debt limit deal is reached.

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A team led by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin won NASA’s second fixed-price contract to build a Human Landing System for the Artemis program. Like the deal signed with SpaceX in 2021, it is a Public-Private Partnership where companies share development costs with the government and retain ownership of the systems while the government guarantees purchase of a certain amount of services. NASA will pay $3.4 billion and Blue Origin says it is putting in more than that itself.

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NASA is about to reveal the winner of the second Public-Private Partnership agreement to provide lunar lander services for astronauts heading to the lunar surface. SpaceX won the first contract in 2021, but NASA wants two providers to ensure redundancy and competition as it embarks on “sustainable” exploration of the Moon. NASA will not own the landers, but instead will purchase services as it does for delivering cargo and ferrying crews to and from the International Space Station.

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Two top Senate Republicans on NASA’s authorizing committee slammed NASA today for following Biden Administration directives on diversity and requiring contractors to report greenhouse gas emissions. Senators Ted Cruz and Eric Schmitt charged that NASA is becoming politicized. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a member of the committee for many years when he was in the Senate, pushed back, insisting NASA is managed on a non-partisan basis.

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Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com during the week of May 8-14, 2023, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.

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