#HELSINKI — #China will launch the Tianwen-2 mission to sample a near-Earth asteroid next year, an official with the country’s space agency said Tuesday.

Tianwen-2 is scheduled to launch in 2025, Bian Zhigang, deputy head of the #China #National #Space #Administration (#CNSA), said Sept. 24, according to Chinese media The Paper.

The mission will first focus on sampling near-Earth asteroid #Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3). After delivering samples to Earth, the spacecraft will use our planet for a gravitational slingshot maneuver and set it on a course for main-belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS.

Kamoʻoalewa is a quasi-satellite of Earth and is roughly 40-100 meters in diameter. This small body may be a fragment of the Moon, ejected into space by a past impact event, according to one journal article.

The mission aims to conduct close-range observations, sampling, and surface analyses of the two celestial bodies. The objective is to gain primordial information about the solar system’s formation and evolution and even the origin of life on Earth.

To sample Kamoʻoalewa, the Tianwen-2 spacecraft will use both touch-and-go and anchor-and-attach techniques, providing mission redundancy and sampling technology verification. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and JAXA’s Hayabusa2 missions used the touch-and-go approach, while anchor-and-attach is so far untested.

While a precise launch schedule was not provided, previous indications suggest launch on a Long March 3B rocket in May 2025.

The sample phase is expected to last around 2.5 years. Arrival at 311P/PANSTARRS is expected in the mid-2030s.

#Viasat wins $33 million U.S. Air Force contract for satellite communications #antennas .

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Viasat a $33.6 million contract to develop advanced satellite communications antennas for military aircraft, the company announced Sept. 24.

The contract is part of the Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program, which seeks to integrate commercial space internet constellations, such as Starlink, OneWeb and SES’s O3b, into military communications networks.

Viasat will focus on the development of Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) antennas for tactical aircraft, including rotary-wing platforms.

Based in Carlsbad, California, Viasat is a global communications firm that provides high-speed internet and networking services for commercial, military, and government markets.
Military seeks multi-orbit communications

AESA antennas use electronic beam steering, allowing them to rapidly shift focus and manage multiple connections simultaneously. This capability is crucial for ensuring communications across different frequency bands and orbits, making it well-suited for the multi-band, multi-orbit requirements of modern military operations.

Viasat said the new #AESA antennas, to be delivered by April 2028, will build on its existing commercial technology and adapted for military-specific needs. The antennas are expected to be “high-performance, low size, weight, and power (SWAP), offering resilient, multi-band communication capabilities for tactical aircraft,” the company said.

“Viasat has extensive expertise supporting development of AESA phased array antenna technology across domains, and we’re excited to bring that experience to the DEUCSI program,” said Michael Maughan, vice president of space and mission systems at Viasat Government.

#Military’s weather satellite program in flux as Space Force evaluates options .
#WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is proceeding cautiously with its plans to replace aging weather #satellites, signaling that any plans to acquire next-generation systems are still far off.

Col. Robert Davis, program executive for sensor satellites at the Space Systems Command, said the service will first analyze data from current and future experimental satellites before deciding what satellites might replace a decades-old system known as the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP).

“We are in the middle of doing analysis,” Davis said last week during a meeting with reporters. He explained that the study is looking at potential follow-ons to both electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors for cloud characterization and to the Weather System Follow-on – Microwave (WSF-M), which provides data on wind speeds, tropical cyclone intensity and other weather metrics. The first WSF-M satellite launched earlier this year, and a second is planned for 2026.
‘Architectural decisions’ to be made

The first wave of this analysis will come from the Rapid Revisit Optical Cloud Imager (RROCI), a cubesat made by Arcfield that launched in March. This small satellite is a prototype for the Space Force’s Electro-Optical/Infrared Weather System (EWS) program, designed to gather cloud and weather data in real-time. According to Davis, his team is only now beginning to evaluate the data from RROCI, while more information is expected from two upcoming General Atomics small satellites, slated for launch in 2025 and 2027.

It’s not just government-owned satellites under consideration. Davis noted that the architecture study will also explore integrating commercial weather data services into military operations. However, that might be easier said than done. “There’s not a robust commercial market for weather right now,” Davis explained, attributing this in part to the fact that so much weather data is available for free from U.S. agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and international partners such as Europe’s Eumetsat.
Drawn-out process

While the Department of Defense continues to depend on legacy DMSP satellites — only two of which remain operational — the service is in no rush to finalize procurement plans. “We have to make architectural-level decisions first,” Davis cautioned. These decisions will inform how the Space Force proceeds, with a final determination on what next-generation weather satellites might look like expected sometime in the next year.

A #Soyuz capsule with 2 Russians and 1 American from the International Space Station returns to Earth

Infosys invests in Indian Earth-observation startup #GalaxEye , Indian information technology giant Infosys announced plans Sept. 19 to invest about $2 million in Indian Earth-observation startup GalaxEye Space.

“GalaxEye is proud to have Infosys, a global leader in technology and innovation, as a Strategic Investor in our Series A Round,” the company posted on LinkedIn. “Their decades of experience in digital innovation and engineering are a perfect complement to our mission of reshaping Space Technology & Earth Observation. With this partnership, we aim to bring advances in Satellite Data Fusion, AI-driven Analytics and Next-Gen Space Technologies, paving the way for new insights and Solutions from Space.”

Synthetic aperture radar constellations are expanding in response to growing public and private demand.

In August, Finland-based Iceye launched four radar satellites. Japan’s Synspective sent aloft its fifth SAR satellite. And U.S.-based Capella Space added two satellites to its constellation.

National security and defense organizations remain the dominant customers for SAR imagery and data.

“From a national security perspective, our systems are used seven days a week, 24 hours a day on a continuous basis,” Capella Space CEO Frank Backes said Sept. 20 at World Space Business Week here.

#PARIS — SpaceX fired back at the Federal Aviation Administration over the agency’s proposed fines for launch license violations, blaming the #FAA for dragging its heels on what the company considered minor changes.

SpaceX released Sept. 19 a letter it sent to the leadership of the House Science Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee, the two committees with oversight of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST.

The four-page letter offered the company’s detailed response to the FAA’s proposed $633,000 in fines for license violations announced Sept. 17 from two launches in mid-2023. In one Falcon 9 launch, the FAA said that SpaceX used a new launch control center without approval and skipped a required poll of controllers two hours before launch. In a later Falcon Heavy launch, SpaceX used a new propellant tank farm without approval from the FAA.

“With respect to these matters, it is notable that in each instance, SpaceX provided AST with sufficient notice of these relatively minor license updates, which had no bearing on public safety,” #SpaceX stated in the letter. “The fact that AST was unable to timely process these minor updates underscores systemic challenges at AST.”

For the Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX said it sent a modified communications plan to the FAA for its approval on May 2, 2023, that included the new location of the launch control center, but did not get any feedback until June 13, when the agency told SpaceX there were “too many” changes in the plan for it to review and approve it in time for the June 18 launch.

#HELSINKI — The #Chinese Academy of Sciences is aiming to accelerate its progress in space science with a newly developed medium- and long-term roadmap for future missions.

The plan will see China’s space science efforts—marked in recent years by successful dark matter, quantum and space physics missions—transitioning into an accelerated development phase. The long-term plan aims to solidify the country’s role in global space science.

The development is outlined in a paper recently published in the Chinese Journal of Space Sciences, authored by Wang Chi, director of the National Space Sciences Center (NSSC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It states that CAS instructed the Chinese space science community to create a national medium and long-term plan for space science. The release of the plan is stated to be imminent.

As part of the plan, five main scientific themes have been identified for future breakthroughs. These are the extreme universe, space-time ripples, the panoramic view of the Sun and Earth, habitable planets, and biological and physical space science.

These are summarized as “One Black, Two Dark, Three Origins and Five Characterizations.” These refer respectively to the study of dense celestial bodies such as black holes, the study of dark matter and dark energy, the origin of the universe, the solar system and life, and characterizing the near-Earth system, Earth-moon system, the solar system, and the extra-solar system, and the laws governing matter and life in the space environment.

#TAMPA, Fla. — Executives discussing emerging space-based computing capabilities Sept. 20 called for stronger collaboration between policymakers and technology leaders to accelerate artificial intelligence’s societal benefits.

Rika Nakazawa, chief of commercial innovation at Japanese telecoms giant #NTT, proposed tech providers use private forums to educate policymakers and industry players about AI advancements.

This approach, she said during World Satellite Business Week in Paris, would avoid stirring up the misconceptions that often arise in public discussions about AI.

Industry players engaged in these talks could provide real-time insights on key issues and platforms, according to Nakazawa, helping emerging AI gain better access to funding.

“So thinking about this as a system design is critical,” she added, “and having forums where industry, policy and technology are all sitting at the table is also really key for us.”

She also highlighted the transformative role AI could play in addressing global challenges such as climate change, which demands real-time processing of data that can only be gained from the vantage of space.

AI’s expanding space role

Clint Crosier, director of aerospace and satellite at Amazon Web Services, told the conference how the cloud computing behemoth partnered with French geospatial analytics company Alteia in November to assess global infrastructure from space for the World Bank.

Using AI-based prediction capabilities, he said the companies were able to provide the World Bank with a set of areas that need to be targeted for infrastructure improvements, particularly in underdeveloped nations, to help grow their economies.

“The examples are just numerous about how you can use this technology in ways that we didn’t even really think of two or three years ago,” Crosier said, “and we’ll see we’ll be using it ways two or three years from now that we didn’t envision today.”

AWS set up a space-focused team last year to explore ways to use generative AI, a major evolution using deep-learning models to answer questions and create content based on patterns detected in massive datasets.

“We are at the cusp of understanding the power of generative AI,” according to Crosier.

Adding more capability to orbit

Crosier said the increasing demand for advanced AI and machine learning (ML) tools across sectors such as environmental management, agriculture, healthcare, insurance and energy is driving a need for more computing power in orbit.

“We’re going to be bringing down so much data,” he said, “it will be physically impossible for us as humans to organize the data,” analyze, disseminate and “make real-time insights of the data without the use of AI ML.”

While the space industry once prioritized increasing image resolution from orbit, he said the focus has shifted to minimizing latency and enhancing real-time data processing capabilities.

In a recent experiment using AWS cloud services and computing technology from Sweden’s Unibap, he said a satellite from D-Orbit of Italy almost doubled available bandwidth by using AI to only send relevant hyperspectral data from orbit back to Earth.

Boeing to demonstrate air-space sensor fusion for U.S. military operations .

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — #Boeing plans to demonstrate sensor fusion technology that could enhance military situational awareness by combining data from airborne and space-based sensors, a senior executive said.

This fusion of sensor data could be delivered to operators on the ground or in cockpits, said Kay Sears, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space, Intelligence & Weapon Systems.

The plan is to leverage data from the E-7 command-and-control aircraft that Boeing makes for the U.S. Air Force and data from missile-tracking satellites being developed by Boeing’s subsidiary, Millennium Space, for the U.S. Space Force. This air-space fusion aims to address a longstanding challenge faced by the military: delivering timely and relevant data to operational units, Sears said Sept. 16 at the Air Space & Cyber conference.

“We need to make sure those lightning strikes actually exist,” Sears said, using military briefing slide imagery as a metaphor for the urgency of delivering real-time, actionable data to warfighters.

Satellites in LEO, MEO?

#Boeing’s sensor fusion effort involves two satellite programs awarded to Millennium Space. One of these programs is the “Foo Fighter” network, a $414 million low Earth orbit (LEO) missile-tracking satellite constellation being developed for the U.S. Space Development Agency. These satellites are equipped with electro-optical and infrared sensors to detect and track advanced missile threats, including hypersonic missiles.

The company also aims to integrate medium Earth orbit (MEO) missile-warning satellites that Millennium is building under a $500 million contract with the U.S. Space Force. This, combined with the E-7 Wedgetail’s electronically scanned array radar, will provide a multi-domain operational picture, said Sears.

“We’re going to connect the E-7 to the Foo Fighter network and the MEO missile warning and tracking layer,” she said. “We want to show what kind of operational picture we can deliver when we combine all those sensors.”

The E-7 Wedgetail, in use by multiple militaries, tracks moving airborne and maritime targets simultaneously. The integration of space-based data could significantly extend its capabilities, allowing for real-time tracking of missile threats across greater distances.

This type for sensor fusion aligns with the Department of Defense’s broader initiative to integrate siloed technologies. However, Sears noted that the DoD’s organizational structure has made such integration challenging.