French #VLEO 5G startup strikes telecoms infrastructure partnership ,

TAMPA, Fla. — French satellite broadband startup CTO has teamed up with TDF, which operates France’s largest network of carrier-neutral hosting sites, to help integrate its proposed very low Earth orbit (VLEO) 5G services with terrestrial telcos.

The companies announced an agreement March 20 to test the feasibility of using cellular frequencies from telecom partners to deliver VLEO services to user terminals, which CTO (Constellation Technologies & Operations) is developing in-house.

CTO founder and CEO Charles Delfieux said the agreement also paves the way for the venture to deploy gateways at TDF sites, supporting backhaul services and emergency communications between satellite and terrestrial networks.

“Beyond infrastructure, CTO and TDF share a common vision: to serve as neutral hosts for telecom operators — TDF on the ground, CTO from space,” Delfieux said via email.

Scaling VLEO services

CTO secured about $10 million from a French state-backed seed fund and Expansion Ventures last year toward plans to deploy 1500 small satellites 375 kilometers above Earth.

Satellites at this altitude could enable faster communications and smaller user terminals compared with higher orbits such as LEO, where SpaceX’s Starlink network operates, but they also contend with greater atmospheric drag and other operational challenges.

The lowest authorized orbit for Starlink broadband is 525 kilometers, though SpaceX has sought permission to operate at lower altitudes.

Delfieux said CTO remains on track to launch a test payload in June via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, hosted on a spacecraft from Italy’s D-Orbit.

The payload would support initial end-to-end 5G tests from 550 to 600 kilometers above Earth before CTO moves ahead with its VLEO deployment.

CTO plans to deploy its first two 350-kilogram VLEO satellites next year, with the full constellation set to be deployed by 2029 for global service coverage.

Just 36 satellites on the equatorial plane would be enough to provide an initial emergency connectivity service, according to Delfieux, ensuring connectivity even when natural disasters disable ground-based relay antennas.

“In disaster scenarios, our inter-satellite links will allow connectivity to “hop” between islands, or to mainland areas where terrestrial infrastructure remains intact, ensuring continued access via anchor gateways,” he said.

In addition to network integration, he said TDF would provide local expertise and workforce to support rapid connectivity deployments in critical situations.

#Europe funds inflatable #satellite drag sail demonstration .

TAMPA, Fla. — A group of #European companies has secured government funds to test an inflatable drag sail in space by 2028, designed to swiftly deorbit its host satellite after mission completion.

Two-year-old Portuguese startup Spaceo is leading the consortium, which announced a 3 million euro ($3.3 million) contract from the European Space Agency March 18 for the demonstration in low Earth orbit.

French hosted payload provider SpaceLocker will manage the integration of the drag sail onto the host satellite, which will be provided by Denmark-headquartered smallsat specialist GomSpace. SolidFlow of the Netherlands is responsible for developing the gas generator needed to inflate the sail for the SWIFT (Spacecraft With Inflatable Termination) project.

The system is designed to be initially 20 square centimeters in size but would inflate about 7,500 times larger to around 1.5 square meters, increasing atmospheric drag to accelerate deorbiting.

According to Spaceo CEO João Loureiro, the increased drag should reduce the satellite’s altitude from 500 to 400 kilometers in under a year, with full deorbit expected within 14-16 months. Without SWIFT, he said, the satellite would take around 10 years to naturally burn up in the atmosphere.

While the system is being fitted to a 12U cubesat measuring 20 x 20 x 30 centimeters with a 20-kilogram mass, Loureiro said it could be scaled for larger satellites up to 200 kilograms.

Deorbit alternatives

A growing number of satellites rely on onboard propulsion to maneuver and lower their altitude for deorbiting. However, this method requires the satellite to be functional at the end of its mission and consumes fuel that could otherwise be used for operational tasks.

“SWIFT will be triggered even if the satellite fails or is malfunctioning,” Loureiro said.

On March 15, California-based Vestigo Aerospace launched its Sphinx drag sail demonstrator as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-13 rideshare mission. Unlike SWIFT, which inflates, Vestigo’s Spinnaker drag sail deploys using lightweight booms.

Vestigo Aerospace spokesperson Ben Spencer said telemetry has confirmed the spacecraft — based on Astro Digital’s Corvus Micro platform — is functioning post-launch.

The company plans to deploy the drag sail in the second half of April, with deorbit expected just 16 days later.

Spencer said Sphinx was deployed at around 500 kilometers, with the combined spacecraft — Spinnaker and the Corvus Micro bus — weighing just over 33 kilograms and measuring 39 x 47 x 71 centimeters. When fully deployed, Spinnaker’s frontal surface area expands to 18.8 square meters.

Chinese company targets crewed orbital #spaceflight .

HELSINKI — A Chinese space company is setting its sights on crewed orbital #spaceflight, marking a new step in the expansion of China’s commercial space sector.

Zhang Xiaomin, chairman of Beijing Ziwei Yutong Technology Co., Ltd., also known as #AZSpace, told the #Chinese outlet Securities Daily last week that, “we plan to officially conduct orbital manned flight tests in 2027 or 2028.”

So far, China’s human spaceflight missions have been carried out solely by China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, using Long March 2F rockets and Shenzhou spacecraft, but this may now change in the coming years.

Founded in 2019, AZSpace focuses on spacecraft manufacturing and space tourism, with backing from venture capital firms. Its newly announced crewed orbital plans mark a significant expansion of its ambitions. However, key details—such as funding sources and potential state support—remain unclear.

This follows China’s central government designating commercial space a key emerging industry to be supported and promoted. Local and provincial governments are also seeking to attract commercial space companies and foster space ecosystems.

It was not made clear where funding for AZSpace’s plans comes from, or if the statement will lead to investor interest. It is also unknown if, or to what extent, the company will have access to state-owned technology for its reusable and crewed spacecraft plans.

More concretely, Zhang laid out company plans for 2025. It will conduct a launch of the self-developed B300 spacecraft, and later launch the more advanced DEAR-5 spacecraft.

The company plans to carry out these two flights in July and September this year respectively, with Zhang adding that the spacecraft will conduct on-orbit docking verification and reentry tests.

This follows the launch of DEAR-1 in December 2023 aboard an iSpace Hyperbola-1 solid propellant rocket. That spacecraft remains in orbit, and it is unclear if it is, or was, intended to deliberately reenter as part of its mission. The DEAR-3 microgravity research platform, which is based on the B300 and has a payload capacity of up to 300 kilograms, was lost on the failed Kinetica-1 rocket launch in December last year.

DEAR-5 will have improved payload capacity and service capabilities over DEAR-3. It is equipped with a self-developed intelligent payload management system, to meet more complex user needs.

AZSpace is also developing the C2000 spacecraft which will have a payload capacity of 2,000 kg as a stepping stone to crewed spacecraft. The timeline for the latter appears highly ambitious and no launch partner was mentioned.

It is not the only Chinese commercial company targeting space tourism. Launch companies CAS Space and Deep Blue Aerospace are developing suborbital spacecraft to provide services similar to those of Blue Origin and its New Shepard system. Another, younger spacecraft manufacturer, Interstellor, is also working on a spacecraft for suborbital tourism.

China is currently considering expanding the Tiangong space station and opening it to tourist visits, though no details of how the latter would work have been provided.

China began opening its space sector to commercial activities and private capital in late 2014. Initial efforts were largely restricted to small launch vehicles and small satellites, before expanding to ever-larger, liquid propellant launchers with potential reusability, a range of space systems and applications, remote sensing and communications constellations and, recently low-cost, reusable cargo spacecraft to serve the Tiangong space station. Two low Earth orbit megaconstellations are seen as a source of contracts with which commercial launch companies may establish themselves.

With AZSpace now pushing for crewed orbital spaceflight, China’s commercial sector may be entering a new era in which private firms undertake human spaceflight alongside China’s state-run human spaceflight agency.

#SkyServe tests AI models with JPL and D-Orbit ,SAN FRANCISCO – Indian edge computing startup SkyServe is working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test artificial intelligence models on a D-Orbit satellite.

The models, developed as part of NASA’s New Observations Strategies Sensorweb, are designed for near-real-time monitoring of wildfires, floods, urban heat islands and other phenomena for scientific research and disaster monitoring.

In March, SkyServe completed testing of JPL’s AI models on its STORM edge-computing suite installed on a D-Orbit ION Satellite Carrier in low-Earth orbit.

“We deployed this software onboard the existing satellite and completed the mission,” Vinay Simha, SkyServe founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “We uplinked it from the ground station and ran these AI models onboard. It’s a new way of Earth observation.”

The models focused on preprocessing and optimizing water and vegetation observations to make them easier to download. “Achieving these objectives requires sophisticated edge computing technology to integrate and optimize AI models across diverse sensor configurations,” according to the news release.

“SkyServe’s technology plays a pivotal role in streamlining AI model deployment across diverse satellite platforms, ensuring consistency and efficiency,” Vishesh Vatsal, SkyServe chief technology officer, said in a statement. “Our platform bridges the gap between groundbreaking AI models and the hardware diversity of satellite systems, enabling a unified approach to Earth observation.

D-Orbit announced plans in 2024 to equip ION satellite carriers with SkyServe STORM. Similarly, Loft Orbital installed the SkyServe edge computer on its spacecraft. Another SkyServe STORM is a hosted payload on a SatRevolution cubesat launched in December on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

In addition to STORM, SkyServe offers Surge, a platform for developing and testing AI models on the ground.

A Crew #Dragon spacecraft returned four people from the International Space Station March 18, including two #NASA astronauts whose extended stay became entangled in sensationalism and political controversy.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom undocked from the station at 1:05 a.m. Eastern on the final leg of the Crew-9 mission. The spacecraft splashed down off the Florida coast near Tallahassee at 5:57 p.m. Eastern.

The spacecraft returned with NASA astronaut Nick Hague, commander of Crew-9, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, the mission’s pilot. The two launched to the station on the spacecraft in September.

Also on board were NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. The two arrived on the station in June on the Crew Flight Test mission of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, originally for a stay intended to be as short as eight days. However, problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters led NASA in August to decide to bring Starliner back uncrewed. The agency removed two astronauts originally assigned to Crew-9, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, to free up seats for Wilmore and Williams to use for the trip back to Earth.

The spacecraft’s return appeared to be technically flawless. The spacecraft splashed down near the SpaceX recovery ship, which had the capsule on board within about a half-hour. The four people on board were taken off the capsule a short time later, appearing to be in good spirits.

Crew-9 departed the ISS barely 48 hours after their replacements arrived on another Crew Dragon spacecraft, Crew-10. NASA shortened an already condensed handover between the crews to take advantage of excellent weather conditions at the splashdown location given the possibility of less favorable weather later in the week.

However, NASA officials said at a post-splashdown briefing that shortened handovers won’t be the norm in the future. Bill Spetch, operations integration manager for the ISS program at NASA, said they immediately took care of critical briefings during the handover covering emergency procedures, but there was less time for the departing Crew-9 astronauts to discuss routine station operations and procedures, institutional knowledge that isn’t necessarily written down.

“A lot of the handover we do with the crews is more set up to be an efficiency gain, and that really helps them be more effective,” he said, particularly in the new crew’s first days and weeks on the station. “In general, we don’t look to reduce that because we want to be as efficient as possible.”

Crew-9 returns from space station

Ceres-1 rocket launches 8 Chinese commercial #satellites.
HELSINKI — Chinese commercial launch company Galactic Energy successfully sent eight satellites into orbit early Monday with its light-lift Ceres-1 rocket.

The Ceres-1 solid rocket lifted off at 4:07 a.m. Eastern (0807) March 17 from a transport erector launcher at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, northwest China. Galactic Energy confirmed launch success within an hour of liftoff, stating that eight satellites had been sent into 535-kilometer-altitude sun-synchronous orbits (SSO).

The payloads consisted of six Yunyao-1 (55-60) satellites, each equipped with GNSS occultation payloads. The satellites are for commercial firm Tianjin Yunyao Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd, and dedicated to obtaining information including atmospheric temperature, humidity, pressure, and ionospheric electron density to provide data for global weather forecasting.

The final two payloads were the AIRSAT (Zhongke) 06 and 07 satellites, equipped with multispectral imager payloads, for Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), a mixed ownership enterprise. Previous AIRSAT satellites include synthetic aperture radar and optical payloads, supporting a variety of Earth observation applications.

The mission was codenamed Auld Lang Syne and was Galactic Energy’s 18th Ceres-1 launch and 17th successful flight. The company suffered its only failure in September 2023 on its 10th launch attempt. The launcher can carry 400 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO) or 300 kg to a 500-km SSO. Monday’s Ceres-1 rocket was the second produced at Galactic Energy’s research and development and production base for new-generation solid-propellant rockets in Ziyang, Sichuan Province. Competitor iSpace has also committed to new facilities in Sichuan following a funding round.

Galactic Energy plans to debut the new Ceres-2 rocket in the first half of the year. It is an upgraded variant of the Ceres-1 with an increased payload capacity of 1,600 kg to 500-km LEO, and 1,300 kg to 500-km SSO, according to Galactic Energy.
Liquid propellant rocket debut

The company is also working towards the first launch of its Pallas-1 rocket, a kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket which will later be adapted for first stage reusability. Pallas-1 has a payload capacity of 8,000 kg to a 200-kilometer-altitude LEO, while the company says a three-core-stage variant will be capable of carrying up to 30,000 kg to LEO.

Galactic Energy stated Dec. 31 that the final assembly of the first Pallas-1 rocket is underway. It is expected to launch from new facilities at Hainan commercial spaceport, while a dedicated site is being constructed at the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Area at Jiuquan spaceport.

Pallas-1 is just one of a number of state-owned and commercial liquid propellant launch vehicles that could have debut launches in 2025, with a number of these to also attempt recovery of the first stages.
China space activities in 2025

Monday’s launch was Galactic Energy’s second launch of the year and China’s 13th orbital launch attempt overall. It follows the Saturday launch of the SuperView Neo-3 (02) high-resolution remote sensing satellite and the piggybacking Tianyan-23 satellite for MinoSpace. The launch used a Long March 2D rocket, lifting off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 12:11 a.m. (0411 UTC) March 15.

China has not yet published an overview of its plans for 2025. However, the country, with expanded spaceport capabilities, megaconstellation projects underway, and new launchers expected to debut, could be targeting around 100 or more launches across the year. This would eclipse the national record 68 launches last year, and involve increasing commercial launch activity.

Major missions will include the Shenzhou-20 and 21 human spaceflight missions to the Tiangong space station and the Tianwen-2 near-Earth asteroid sample return mission, expected to launch around May.

TAMPA, Fla. — SES has outlined plans for a more streamlined board of directors, but one of the satellite operator’s biggest shareholders says the changes don’t go far enough amid mounting competition in the space industry.

The Luxembourg-based company said it has decided to reduce its board from 11 to nine members while proposing two new directors with extensive U.S. national security and defense leadership experience:

Ellen Lord, former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment of the United States Department of Defense.

John Shaw, former Deputy Commander of the U.S. Space Force and first Commander of the USSF Space Operations Command and Combined Forces Space Component Command.

These appointments will help SES “effectively navigate this rapidly changing landscape,” the company said, and will be put to a vote at its next annual shareholder meeting April 3.

SES also kicked off a search for a director with capital markets experience after hedge fund Appaloosa called for an overhaul of its share capital and board structure.

Appaloosa holds more than 7% of SES’ economic interests and has a similar stake in Intelsat, which SES is acquiring in a $3.1 billion deal.

While SES said it would put Appaloosa’s proposal for a structured program to distribute capital to shareholders to a vote — despite recommending its rejection — the operator dismissed other proposals from the hedge fund, such as reducing state control.

“The initial steps the SES Board is taking to modernize its structure are long-overdue and only came following shareholder pressure,” Appaloosa said in a statement.

“However, much more can, and must, be done — with a greater sense of urgency than is evident from the Board’s incrementalism.”

Appaloosa urged other shareholders to vote in favor of its plan to return excess cash flow to shareholders annually.

SES said it already strikes a healthy balance between returning capital to shareholders and maintaining flexibility for growth investments, warning that Appaloosa’s proposal could jeopardize its investment-grade credit rating.

Luxembourg has been an anchor shareholder since the company’s inception, SES noted, and the government’s special Class B shares cannot be taken away by a vote of other shareholders.

“In any event, SES considers the Luxembourg Government to be a valuable shareholder and stakeholder in the Company and the Luxembourg Government has on numerous occasions confirmed its strong support for the Company,” SES said.

SES added that the government is unable to appoint more than a third of its total number of board directors, preventing it from dictating or inhibiting the company’s growth strategy.

Appaloosa had also called on SES to remove its entire board and replace it with a smaller number of directors, which SES said would be chaotic and unnecessary.

#Rocket Lab launches Japanese SAR #satellite ,Rocket Lab launched a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellite for a Japanese company March 14, the first of eight such missions Rocket Lab has under contract with that customer.

The Electron rocket lifted off from Pad B of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 at Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand, at 8 p.m. Eastern. The payload, the QPS-SAR-9 satellite, separated from the kick stage nearly an hour later after being placed into a planned orbit of 575 kilometers at an inclination of 42 degrees.

The satellite is the latest for the Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc. (iQPS), a Japanese company with long-term ambitions to operate a constellation of 36 SAR satellites to provide high-resolution radar imagery.

Rocket Lab announced in February two separate contracts with iOPS, each for four launches. Each launch would carry a single satellite. Six of the launches are scheduled for this year and the other two in 2026.This launch was the first under those contracts and the second overall for iQPS, after a launch of the QPS-SAR-5 satellite in December 2023.

Where no rover has gone before: how Mars helicopters enable a new era of exploration .

One of NASA’s greatest successes of the 21st century thus far came in a very unexpected form: a four-pound helicopter called Ingenuity. Ingenuity created a new Wright Brothers moment when it flew the Martian skies in 2021, pioneering an entirely new way of exploring Mars and captivating the global public’s attention. Built and delivered to the launch pad in less than 18 months for a cost of less than 3% of the rover that it accompanied to Mars, Ingenuity punched above its weight class in every respect — and made a strong case that NASA should follow up with even more helicopter missions.

The Ingenuity mission was considered a technology demonstrator, intended only to prove something could fly in the barely-there atmosphere of Mars. After accomplishing that with its first flight, it also showed that even a helicopter with no dedicated science instrumentation could conduct meaningful science. Through 72 flights, Ingenuity was Perseverance’s trusty sidekick, leading directly to collections of intriguing rock samples and helping researchers understand the winds, the movement of sand, and the shaping of the landscape on Mars.

Ingenuity has earned awards and citations in scientific journals, but its greatest legacy lies in its role as a trailblazer for future aerial vehicles. It has definitively proven that controlled flight on Mars is not just possible — it’s a game-changer. Thanks to the invaluable data gathered from Ingenuity’s flights, the next generation of Mars helicopters will be even more capable. Future vehicles will carry scientific payloads, cover greater distances, reach previously inaccessible locations and fly with unmatched precision, enabling groundbreaking science missions.

Low-cost vehicles that make heavy use of Ingenuity legacy hardware could carry more than two pounds of dedicated scientific instrumentation on daily flights of nearly a mile each. They can operate alone, collaboratively in pairs or swarms, or partnership with rovers or landers. And since they can access terrain that no rover or lander could navigate, helicopters may well give us our first close-up views into some of the most interesting and challenging places on Mars — like glacial crevasses, vertical cliff faces or skylight openings into hollow lava tubes.

The scientific potential of Ingenuity’s successors seems limitless. Last summer, researchers held two workshops dedicated to the discussion of aerial science on Mars. The “Rise of the Drones” workshop, led by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researcher Serina Diniega, spurred an open discussion between scientists, engineers, mission planners, and instrument developers about what new planetary science is enabled with already-existing drone technologies and applications, yielding plentiful ideas for how to carry those terrestrial technologies to Mars. A second workshop focused on a JPL concept in early development to use a more complex flying vehicle to survey the length of Valles Marineris, the grandest canyon in our solar system. With each passing scientific conference, ideas and concepts for flying vehicles on Mars keep adding up.