#WASHINGTON — The White House used a Dec. 20 meeting of the National Space Council to discuss the importance of international cooperation but offered few new initiatives along those lines.

The purpose of the meeting, the third by the council during the Biden administration and the first since September 2022, was to highlight what the White House described in a fact sheet as “extraordinary progress in broadening and deepening international #space partnerships across a range of areas.”

Those partnerships, Vice President #KamalaHarris said in opening remarks, were vital to U.S. leadership in space. “In the coming years, one of the primary ways we will continue to extend that leadership is by strengthening our international partnerships.”

#HELSINKI — Leading Chinese launch startup Galactic Energy has secured $154 million in funding for the development of its reusable Pallas-1 #rocket.

Galactic Energy announced the 1.1 billion yuan C and C+ funding rounds Dec. 18. The funding will go towards research and development of reusable launch vehicle technology for the Pallas-1 medium-lift rocket and related infrastructure.

The rounds were led by Ziyang Heavy Industry Fund and joined by Bengbu Investment Group, Langfang Linkong, Founder Hesheng Investment, Jintuo Capital, and further undisclosed Investors, according to a company statement.

#WASHINGTON — Blue Origin successfully launched its New Shepard suborbital vehicle Dec. 19 on its first mission since a mishap more than 15 months ago.

New #Shepard lifted off at 11:42 a.m. Eastern from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. The capsule landed under parachutes 10 minutes and 13 seconds later, after reaching a peak altitude of 107 kilometers, while the propulsion module landed vertically using its engine nearly three minutes earlier. #spacenews

#WASHINGTON — A new study released Dec. 18 sheds light on potential challenges in the Pentagon’s ambitious effort to deploy a network of space sensors for detecting and tracking hypersonic missiles.

Based on internal modeling and simulation efforts, the study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies identifies areas for improvement in the planned network and raises questions intended to inform the conversation on what it takes to defeat these highly maneuverable missile threats.

“There is no such thing as a perfect sensor architecture design,” said the report titled “Getting on Track: Space and Airborne Sensors for #Hypersonic #Missile Defense.”

#Hypersonic weapons fly at more than five times the speed of sound. Their speed and unpredictable flight paths make them difficult to detect and track.

#WASHINGTON — #Amazon is seeking to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit filed in August that alleged that the company’s board of directors acted in bad faith when it awarded Project Kuiper launch contracts to #Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance.

In a filing with Delaware’s Court of Chancery Dec. 11, Amazon said a suit filed in August by a Cleveland-based pension fund that is a company shareholder failed to provide the “extreme set of facts” required by law to show Amazon’s board improperly approved the launch contracts while overlooking #SpaceX.

The lawsuit claimed that the board performed little diligence on the proposed contracts to launch the 3,236-satellite constellation with the Ariane 6, New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur rockets. The combined contracts were, it stated, the second largest capital expenditure in Amazon’s history at the time, trailing only its $13.7 billion acquisition of grocer Whole Foods.

#SANFRANCISCO – The first #NASA #satellite to measure air pollution hourly shows so much promise that space agency officials are already thinking about ways to extend its life.

“We want #TEMPO to last for 10 years, if possible,” Barry Lefer, #NASA tropospheric composition program manager, said Dec. 12 at the American #Geophysical Union annual meeting here. “So, we are going to baby it.”

TEMPO, short for Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, was sent aloft in April as a hosted payload on Intelsat 40e, a geostationary communications satellite. The instrument, built by Ball #Aerospace to measure atmospheric pollution from Canada’s oil sands to the Yucatán Peninsula and from the Atlantic #Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, made its first North American scans in early August.