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Shaun Gisler
@lifeatstagezero
found the tank they brought in last night next to a big pile of geotextile
SpaceX Leadership Map Out the Future of the Starship Program [Nov 20, 2024]And all the residents at StarBase still have to evacuate each time there is a launch?QuoteThe company plans to accelerate its flight cadence next year.
• Kathy Lueders said that the team is targeting 25 Starship launches in 2025.
• Gwynne Shotwell followed those comments last week at the Baron Investment Conference, saying SpaceX could hit 400 Starship launches over the next four years.
Quite an acceleration.
So Starbase is being set up to build 1,000 Starships per year, where are the other 9,000 going to be built? KSC Florida (Roberts Road) could probably do another 1,000, but beyond that I'm not sure there is anywhere else in the U.S. that they can both build Starships and launch them in the same place - for equatorial launches (Vandenberg Space Force Base (SFB) is for polar launches).
Will the other 8,000 Starships be built in other countries, and if so, where? ITAR is an issue, so that immediately puts limits on where, and there must be some limit as to the latitude Starship can launch from and still carry a full load of propellant (the majority of payloads from Earth).
Or is there a way to do this 100% in the U.S.?
On September 24, Roscosmos Head Dmitry Bakanov and Chairman of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus Uladzimir Karanik met in Minsk. They discussed sending the second Belarusian tourist, Anastasia Lenkava, into space, making history.
“To date, the industry has received 4.7 billion rubles for the construction of the satellite. In 2025, another 6 billion should be allocated. At the moment, the main elements of the platform and payload (PL) have been manufactured and delivered, and in April the PL will be installed on the platform. We expect the release of the spacecraft at the end of 2026, it means that Express-AMU4 should begin operating in 2027,” Alexey Volin concluded.
Using the example of the Express-AMU4, the industry successfully completed the full-scale production of a completely domestic satellite. This is a significant undertaking, as a satellite today consists of 1,040 devices and equipment units manufactured at 300 enterprises. Now it is important to understand how the solutions tested during the satellite's development will be scaled up, said General Director of RSCC and Chairman of the Industrial Competence Center (ICC) “Satellite Communications” at the Demo Day of the ICC. The event took place on October 2 in Moscow as part of the 30th anniversary international conference of space communications operators and users, SATCOMRUS 2025.
“This experience will be scaled up quite broadly, since, firstly, the Yamal-501, currently being manufactured by JSC RESHETNEV, is a near-twin of the Express-AMU4. Secondly, many of the solutions used in the AMU4 are also implemented in the four Express-RV satellites, which, as was announced today, will be launched in 2027. Finally, there are seven more satellites that we plan to order within the next two years. In other words, this is essentially full-fledged and small-scale production,” noted Alexey Volin. Currently, JSC RESHETNEV is assembling the satellite: the designed components and devices are being installed on the platform.
Pavel Tatarenko, Deputy Chairman of ICC, Deputy General Director and Head of the IT Service of RSCC, announced that the hardware and software system of spacecraft control would be operational in March 2026. “Accordingly, at that point, we will be ready to say that we will have 100% import substitution at a critical information infrastructure facility,” Tatarenko explained.
“Almost every country today strives to acquire its own orbital system or at least one spacecraft to ensure its sovereignty and independence in space. We also operate a constellation of 12 geostationary satellites and plan to launch eight more by 2030 to replace those reaching the end of their operational lifetime. The fully domestic Express-AMU4 is already in production, and we must use it to refine all technologies for the next seven satellites,” shared RSCC General Director. He added that the company intends to maintain all orbital positions and frequencies of the Russian Federation during the replacement process.
The Meridian-M satellites are ultimately supposed to be replaced by the Sfera-V satellites, which were originally expected to have been fielded last decade. The approval of Meridian-M in 2016 was a stopgap measure to bridge the longer-than-expected gap with Sfera-V. Based on the latest available information, the first Sfera-V is still not expected to fly until 2027.
This holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.
The rover engineers then successfully orchestrated Curiosity’s drive back up onto the nearby ridge to ensure a safe parking spot over conjunction. We documented the drive with a MARDI sidewalk video, tracking how the terrain beneath the rover changes as we drive. Although we could not use APXS and MAHLI on the robotic arm from Friday on, owing to constraints that need to be in place prior to conjunction, we were able to use the rover’s Mastcam to image areas of interest in the near field, which will help us with our planned activities when we return from conjunction. These will hopefully include getting chemistry (with APXS and ChemCam) and imaging (with MAHLI) of some freshly broken rock surfaces that we drove over.
This is super exciting! I'm hopeful that we might see MK1 launch late this spring or during the summer months on the fourth or fifth launch of the New Glenn rocket.
Sawyer R.
@thenasaman
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Congrats Suni on your retirement from NASA. Sunita "Suni" Williams is one of the coolest women in spaceflight. She's flown on the space shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner, AND Crew Dragon!
Plus she's been a great advocate for space going all the way back to the days of The Colbert Report. Best of luck in your next "endeavours"
@Astro_Suni
!
