Japan has formally agreed to continue participation in the International Space Station through 2030, the first of the ISS partners to officially join the United States in that commitment. The two countries also reaffirmed their partnership in the Artemis program. Japan will provide critical equipment for the Gateway space station that will orbit the Moon and the United States will launch a Japanese astronaut there, extending the long history of Japanese astronauts participating in NASA missions. Koichi Wakata is aboard the ISS right now.

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NASA successfully launched the Artemis I uncrewed test flight early this morning. After two scrubs and two hurricanes, the Space Launch System rocket finally got to show what it could do. Now it’s up to the Orion spacecraft that is starting an almost month-long trip around the Moon. Though years late and billions over budget, today’s launch is the beginning of America’s return to the Moon almost exactly 50 years after astronauts last walked on the surface.

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NASA confirmed this evening they will make a third attempt to launch the Artemis I mission on Wednesday at 1:04 am ET. After two scrubs and two hurricanes, everyone is hoping this third try will be the charm. NASA officials were circumspect, however, reiterating they while they are confident Wednesday will be the day, if not, they will overcome whatever hurdles emerge and launch when the time is right. The weather, at least, looks great.

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CAPSTONE became the first cubesat to enter lunar orbit last night. Developed through a Public-Private Partnership with NASA, the tiny Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment is testing out a unique lunar orbit called a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit or NRHO. The agency plans to put a small space station there as part of the Artemis program of sustained exploration and use of the Moon.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 13-19, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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The U.S. Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane landed in Florida this morning with the telltale double sonic boom heralding its arrival. On this sixth flight, OTV-6, it spent 908 days circling Earth on a classified mission, surpassing the previous record of 780 days. What little DOD will reveal about the flight is that for the first time it carried a service module that enabled more types of experiments and it also deployed an Air Force satellite, FalconSat-8, that is still in orbit.

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NASA and the United Launch Alliance teamed together to test a new type of heatshield that can be used here on Earth or on Mars. Launched today in conjunction with a new weather satellite for NOAA, the test went even better than planned, with the Low Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, successfully recovered from the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

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Divers searching for wreckage of a 1945 aircraft that disappeared instead found a 20-foot piece of NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger. The HISTORY Channel will show what its divers found on a November 22 episode of a series about the Bermuda Triangle, although this was not found in that area, but off the coast of Cape Canaveral.

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NASA sounded upbeat this afternoon about how well the Artemis I Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft weathered Hurricane Nicole over the past 24 hours. Asserting that wind speeds at the rocket’s 60-foot level were within tolerances, Jim Free, head of the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, tweeted that only minor damage has been noticed so far although more inspections are to come.

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Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft is safely berthed to the International Space Station today even though one of its two solar arrays was damaged during launch. NASA astronaut Nicole Mann used Canadarm2 to capture the spacecraft early this morning and ground controllers later installed it onto a docking port allowing its more than 8,200 pounds of equipment and supplies to be offloaded.

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