At first, though, the researchers thought they were observing something exotic.

“We got all excited, thinking we had discovered an unknown object in the vicinity of the Earth,” said Clancy James, an associate professor at Curtin University’s Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Western Australia.

The data James and his colleagues were looking at came from the ASKAP radio telescope, an array of 36 dish antennas in Wajarri Yamaji Country, each about three stories tall. Normally, the team would be searching the data for a type of signal called a “fast radio burst” — a flash of energy blasting forth from distant galaxies.

“These are incredibly powerful explosions in radio (waves) that last about a millisecond,” James said. “We don’t know what’s producing them, and we’re trying to find out, because they really challenge known physics — they’re so bright. We’re also trying to use them to study the distribution of matter in the universe.”

Astronomers believe these bursts may come from magnetars, according to James. These objects are very dense remnants of dead stars with powerful magnetic fields. “Magnetars are utterly, utterly insane,” James said. “They’re the most extreme things you can get in the universe before something turns into a black hole.”

But the signal seemed to be coming from very close to Earth — so close that it couldn’t be an astronomical object. “We were able to work out it came from about 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) away. And we got a pretty exact match for this old satellite called Relay 2 — there are databases that you can look up to work out where any given satellite should be, and there were no other satellites anywhere near,” James said.

“We were all kind of disappointed at that, but we thought, ‘Hang on a second. What actually produced this anyway?’”
A massive short-circuit

NASA launched Relay 2, an experimental communications satellite, into orbit in 1964. It was an updated version of Relay 1, which lifted off two years earlier and was used to relay signals between the US and Europe and broadcast the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Just three years later, with its mission concluded and both of its main instruments out of order, Relay 2 had already turned into space junk. It has since been aimlessly orbiting our planet, until James and his colleagues linked it to the weird signal they detected last year.

But could a dead satellite suddenly come back to life after decades of silence?

To try to answer that question, the astronomers wrote a paper on their analysis, set to publish Monday in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

They realized the source of the signal wasn’t a distant galactic anomaly, but something close by, when they saw that the image rendered by the telescope — a graphical representation of the data — was blurry.

“(T)he reason we were getting this blurred image was because (the source) was in the near field of the antenna — within a few tens of thousands of kilometers,” James said. “When you have a source that’s close to the antenna, it arrives a bit later on the outer antennas, and it generates a curved wave front, as opposed to a flat one when it’s really far away.”

This mismatch in the data between the different antennas caused the blur, so to remove it, the researchers eliminated the signal coming from the outer antennas to favor only the inner part of the telescope, which is spread out over about 2.3 square miles in the Australian outback.

“When we first detected it, it looked fairly weak. But when we zoomed in, it got brighter and brighter. The whole signal is about 30 nanoseconds, or 30 billionths of a second, but the main part is just about three nanoseconds, and that’s actually at the limit of what our instrument can see,” James said. “The signal was about 2,000 or 3,000 times brighter than all the other radio data our (instrument) detects — it was by far the brightest thing in the sky, by a factor of thousands.”

The researchers have two ideas on what could have caused such a powerful spark. The main culprit was likely a buildup of static electricity on the satellite’s metal skin, which was suddenly released, James said.

“You start with a buildup of electrons on the surface of the spacecraft. The spacecraft starts charging up because of the buildup of electrons. And it keeps charging up until there’s enough of a charge that it short-circuits some component of the spacecraft, and you get a sudden spark,” he explained. “It’s exactly the same as when you rub your feet on the carpet and you then spark your friend with your finger.”

A less likely cause is the impact of a micrometeorite, a space rock no bigger than 1 millimetre (0.039 inches) in size: “A micrometeorite impacting a spacecraft (while) traveling at 20 kilometres per second or higher will basically turn the (resulting) debris from the impact into a plasma — an incredibly hot, dense gas,” James said. “And this plasma can emit a short burst of radio waves.”

However, strict circumstances would need to come into play for this micrometeorite interaction to occur, suggesting there’s a smaller chance it was the cause, according to the research. “We do know that (electrostatic) discharges can actually be quite common,” James said. “As far as humans are concerned, they’re not dangerous at all. However, they absolutely can damage a spacecraft.”

A risk of confusion

Because these discharges are difficult to monitor, James believes the radio signal event shows that ground-based radio observations could reveal “weird things happening to satellites” — and that researchers could employ a much cheaper, easier-to-build device to search for similar events, rather than the sprawling telescope they used. He also speculated that because Relay 2 was an early satellite, it might be that the materials it’s made of are more prone to a buildup of static charge than modern satellites, which have been designed with this problem in mind.

But the realization that satellites can interfere with galactic observations also presents a challenge and adds to the list of threats posed by space junk. Since the dawn of the Space Age, almost 22,000 satellites have reached orbit, and a little more than half are still functioning. Over the decades, dead satellites have collided hundreds of times, creating a thick field of debris and spawning millions of tiny fragments that orbit at speeds of up to 18,000 miles per hour.

“We are trying to see basically nanosecond bursts of stuff coming at us from the universe, and if satellites can produce this as well, then we’re going to have to be really careful,” James said, referring to the possibility of confusing satellite bursts with astronomical objects. “As more and more satellites go up, that’s going to make this kind of experiment more difficult.”

James and his team’s analysis of this event is “comprehensive and sensible,” according to James Cordes, Cornell University’s George Feldstein Professor of Astronomy, who was not involved with the study. “Given that the electrostatic discharge phenomenon has been known for a long time,” he wrote in an email to CNN, “I think their interpretation is probably right. I’m not sure that the micrometeoroid idea, pitched in the paper as an alternative, is mutually exclusive. The latter could trigger the former.”

Ralph Spencer, Professor Emeritus of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester in the U.K., who was also not involved with the work, agrees that the proposed mechanism is feasible, noting that spark discharges from GPS satellites have been detected before.

The study illustrates how astronomers must take care to not confuse radio bursts from astrophysical sources with electrostatic discharges or micrometeoroid bursts, both Cordes and Spencer pointed out.

“The results show that such narrow pulses from space may be more common than previously thought, and that careful analysis is needed to show that the radiation comes from stars and other astronomical objects rather than man-made objects close to the Earth,” Spencer added in an email.

“New experiments now in development, such as the Square Kilometre array Low frequency array (SKA-Low) being built in Australia, will be able to shed light on this new effect.”

#WASHINGTON — Blue Origin launched its third crewed suborbital flight in two and a half months June 29, sending to space a group that included a married couple and a lawyer in legal trouble.

The company’s New Shepard vehicle lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas at 10:40 a.m. Eastern on a mission designated NS-33. A previous launch attempt June 21 was scrubbed because of high winds, and the company also called off a launch attempt June 22 because of weather. Blue Origin postponed this launch by more than an hour, citing cloud cover.

The booster performed a powered landing on a pad nearly seven and a half minutes after liftoff. The capsule landed nearly three minutes later after reaching a peak altitude of 105 kilometers above ground level.

The capsule touched down under parachutes within a few hundred meters of the booster, far closer than on previous New Shepard flights. The landing did not appear to significantly disrupt recovery operations, although Blue Origin appeared to rely more on drone footage than usual on its webcast as it covered the six people on board exiting the capsule.

“FYI, our crew capsule landing location today was due to low winds at Launch Site One and within the safety margins of our predicted models,” the company said on social media after the flight.

Among the six people on NS-33 was Owolabi Salis, who Blue Origin described as an attorney and financial consultant. Salis, though, was disbarred in the state of New York in 2022 after finding he had “filed fraudulent and frivolous immigrations petitions,” according to an August 2023 statement by the district attorney in Brooklyn, New York, which subsequently charged him with unlawful practice of the law and stealing from clients.

Also on the flight were a married couple, Allie and Carl Kuehner. Allie Kuehner is a conservationist while Carl Kuehner is chairman of a real estate company. They are the second couple to fly together on a New Shepard flight, after Marc and Sharon Hagle, who flew on both NS-20 in March 2022 and NS-28 in November 2024.

The other three people on the flight were Leland Larson, a former chief executive of bus companies; Freddie Rescigno, Jr., owner of electrical cable manufacturer Commodity Cables; and Jim Sitkin, a retired labor attorney.

The flight was the third New Shepard mission two and a half months, after the NS-31 flight April 14 and NS-32 on May 31. It is the fifth flight of New Shepard this year, including a crewed flight in late February and a payload-only mission that simulated lunar gravity in early February.

Blue Origin has not given a public estimate of the number of launches it plans of its suborbital vehicle this year. The company’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said at a conference in May that flying New Shepard was a “good business” even as the company devotes more attention to its New Glenn orbital launch vehicle, Blue Moon lunar lander and other projects.

“There is an insatiable demand out there for human beings who grew up thinking about space and want to get to space, but it’s still very hard to do right now,” he said at the Humans to the Moon and Mars Summit.

We live in a brand new era for lunar activities. With over 100 payloads from around the globe planned to visit the Moon by 2030, our closest natural satellite will soon see a flurry of activity like never before. And that presents a problem: If operators don’t know enough information about each other’s missions, many of them can literally run into each other, damaging spacecraft and interfering with critical operations. Uncomfortably close passes between lunar orbiters are common already.

While the Outer Space Treaty (#OST) provides vital foundations for tackling this global issue, the principles it first laid out in 1967 need to be further refined to produce rules that we can apply in the specific context of lunar activities to guarantee safety and sustainability for the benefit of everyone.

Without actors sharing reliable information on lunar activities, and such information being made accessible to all relevant stakeholders, Moon missions will face more and more critical threats to safety — which may even end up escalating to conflicts.

Different States share different information at different times, in different formats and through different channels. In turn, the information shared is dispersed and not especially useful or efficient for safety and sustainability.

Due to these needs, risks and challenges, finding a way to effectively share information on lunar activities became a priority topic in multilateral fora like the United Nations’ Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) as well as in international frameworks like the Artemis Accords and the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).

It’s in this context that we at the Lunar Policy Platform Foundation, with funding from the Open Lunar Foundation and in synergy with ongoing efforts at COPUOS, spent five months conducting bilateral consultations with over 70 representatives from 35 governments, space agencies and companies, as well as independent experts, to understand converging and diverging views on how, when and where to share lunar mission information.

The initial results of these consultations have been transposed in a Lunar Information Sharing 101 document, which is currently being circulated with stakeholders for feedback before its public release. Below are the core recommendations and their driving principles.

Purposes of lunar information sharing

Safety: Knowing the location and duration of lunar missions as well as how they will be conducted and by whom is essential to avoid harmful interference, especially in the unknown, hostile and hazardous lunar environment. Paying due regard to the corresponding interests of others is a core principle of Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty, which reads “In the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, States Parties to the Treaty shall be guided by the principle of cooperation and mutual assistance and shall conduct all their activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.”

But implementing it on the moon will be easier said than done, primarily because of three reasons:

We lack comprehensive knowledge of the lunar environment to accurately predict the potentially harmful impact of our operations.
The technical complexities and high costs of lunar missions make it difficult to incorporate potential adjustments that may be needed for due regard.
We simply do not know what the interests of others are, due to the above mentioned issues currently affecting information sharing.

Peace: Sharing information on the nature and purposes of lunar activities helps build trust and reduces the potential for misinterpretations and misunderstandings, particularly in the current geopolitical climate — and given the limited tracking capabilities that exist for lunar activities. It also extends the spirit of the Registration Convention, which requires countries to provide basic information about objects launched to space and has helped build trust since the Cold War. While the Registration Convention and its Registry maintained by UNOOSA continue to remain a cornerstone, we face increasing challenges with getting sufficient levels of information from the registry, especially as global space activity compounds. These challenges are even more acute in the context of lunar activities, considering that the Registration Convention has been designed primarily for activities in Earth’s orbit.

Sustainability: Accessing information on lunar activities will foster cooperation between stakeholders, enable interoperability between missions and overall increase our ability to use the Moon in an efficient and sustainable way. For instance, India’s space agency ISRO shared its Chandrayaan 2 orbiter datasets which, among other things, helped Japan’s JAXA accomplish its goal of a precision Moon landing with the SLIM spacecraft. As noted in LPP’s 2024 Lunar Policy Snapshot, last year alone saw half a dozen international developments specifically related to lunar policy, highlighting the global need for more structured communications between lunar missions, planned and ongoing.

Capacity building: Sharing data and knowledge derived from lunar activities can help to ensure that all actors can benefit from them in multiple ways. Sharing scientific data about the Moon and its varying geology and environment plays a key role in answering fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of the Moon and Earth, which in itself is tied to the history of the Solar System. The recent case of international researchers getting access to far side lunar samples from China’s Chang’e 6 mission is a great demonstration of these benefits of data sharing. Being aware of both current and planned missions can also be beneficial to companies, allowing them to identify potential customers and partners and thus furthering the development of a sustainable lunar economy.
Overview of information sharing practices

Traditionally, information about space activities is shared by States. This is consistent with the current legal framework, according to which States agree to share information on the nature, conduct, locations and results of their space activities. In this regard, Article XI of the OST, states that “In order to promote international co-operation in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, States Parties to the Treaty conducting activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, agree to inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations as well as the public and the international scientific community, to the greatest extent feasible and practicable, of the nature, conduct, locations and results of such activities.” This is usually done through press releases, online posting, conferences and scientific articles, as well as statements, papers and technical presentations at the annual sessions of COPUOS.

Only a limited number of States have been sharing information on their space activities directly with the U.N. Secretary General under Article XI. The most frequent contributors to the Index are the United States, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands, followed by Russia, China and, most recently, Luxembourg and Japan. Information shared in this way is normally included in a note verbale, a diplomatic document sent by a State’s mission to the UN. Such note verbales are then displayed in an “Index of submissions” listing the relevant PDFs, which is maintained by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).

In conclusion, there is minimum information shared about lunar activities, and this information is inherently dispersed across a variety of uncoordinated channels. This fragmented approach has also prevented the space community from gathering information in a single reliable, globally accessible platform.
The need for new practices

What to share

At minimum, information on lunar activities should include a list of planned activities, who is going to conduct them, their purposes, where will they happen, how long will they last and what is going to be left behind at their conclusion. Additional information useful for cooperation and capacity building may include technical data on relevant systems and equipment, scientific results and lessons learned.

Where to share

In the absence of a centralized repository able to accommodate all actors and purposes, at minimum actors should identify preferred channels for where to share information. Based upon the available options and preferences of stakeholders, these three channels could be notification of activities under Article XI OST, registration of space objects under the Registration Convention and online publication in dedicated sections of lunar operators’ websites.

How to share (and display)

Adopting a common template would simplify both sharing and reading information about lunar activities, benefiting providers and users alike. Between 2020 and 2022, The Article XI Project led by Dr. Antonino Salmeri and Prof. Mark Sundahl, initiated global informal discussions on the need for such a template, raising awareness and proposing initial suggestions on how to design and structure it. In 2022, the Working Group on the Five United Nations Treaties within the Legal Subcommittee of COPUOS decided to address the implementation of Article XI OST under a five year plan. This year, the Working Group made excellent progress on the topic and even began to consider first ideas for a template.

Having lunar information displayed in dedicated databases would allow actors to easily develop a comprehensive understanding of lunar activities past, present and future. Considering different actors and requirements, information about lunar activities could be displayed in two complementary resources: a Lunar Registry and a Lunar Database.

A Lunar Registry maintained by UNOOSA could feature public information for the purposes of transparency and capacity building. Such a registry could be established by redesigning the existing online index for Article XI submissions.
A Lunar Database maintained by a neutral technical entity could host private operational information for the purposes of safety and sustainability. Such a database is currently being developed by the Open Lunar Foundation via its Lunar Ledger project.

When to share

Given the sensitivities and complexities involved in lunar activities, it would be useful to follow an incremental approach with milestones preceding and following the activity. Below is an initial outline based on common understanding identified by LPP that actors can further tailor based on the needs and challenges faced in their lunar operations.

One year prior to launch, actors could share a list of the activities with related points of contact, coupled with their purpose(s), location and duration. Six months prior, actors could add relevant information on end of life (including any debris and disposal plans), as well as main hazards and cautions. A month prior, actors could add information on humans, objects and equipment involved in the activity. On the announcement of a launch date, they could share trajectory information to avoid interference.

During the mission, actors could share live updates on its status and progress. One month after the activity has concluded, actors could publish a first report with an initial overview of results. Six months to a year later, actors would publish a final report including the dissemination of relevant scientific findings and lessons learned.

What next?

Once information is shared and displayed following these practices, what next? This is precisely the question being addressed by the UN’s Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultations (ATLAC). This Action Team was established by COPUOS in 2024 to have focused, expert-level exchanges to develop recommendations aimed at improving consultations related to lunar activities. During its discussions, ATLAC is mandated to consider different options, including, for instance, whether to recommend the establishment of an international mechanism, aiming to produce a final report by 2027.

Based on the progress of its work, ATLAC may present diverse proposals for consideration by the committee and further complement them with priority topics relevant to its mandate that could subsequently be addressed by any proposed international mechanism. In 2025, ATLAC appointed its co-chairs and prepared its multi-year workplan for endorsement by COPUOS in June. Upon this high level endorsement, the Action Team will begin its substantive work leveraging the intersessional period.

Information sharing is a precondition for focused, informed and effective consultations. As such, we hope that the discussion brought forth by the Lunar Information Sharing 101 initiative can benefit the crucial work of ATLAC. Today we have a unique window of opportunity to provide solid foundations that can steer the future of lunar activities towards a prosperous direction for the benefit of all humanity. But we have to act now.

Antonino Salmeri is a space lawyer specialized in the governance of lunar and space resource activities, currently working as Director of the Lunar Policy Platform (LPP). Salmeri holds four advanced degrees in law and is the author of leading international publications in the field of space law and policy. Through his work at LPP, Salmeri leads the development of impactful policy documents promoting the peaceful, safe, and sustainable conduct of lunar activities, and advises governments, companies and scientists on the strategic, legal and policy aspects of their lunar endeavors.

Samuel Jardine is a geopolitical consultant, with expertise in strategic competition, governance and geopolitical risk in space, the polar regions and the seabed. Currently, Sam is the Policy Specialist at the Lunar Policy Platform and is Head of Research at London Politica, Senior Advisor at Luminint, and a Research Associate for Oxford University and CHACR’s Climate Change & (In)Security Project. He is also a Research Fellow with the Open Lunar Foundation and a Research Affiliate with the Centre for Space Governance. Sam holds an MA in Modern History from King’s College London and a BA in History from the Open University and was a RUSI Military Sciences “Rising Stars” mentee.

SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community’s diverse perspectives. Whether you’re an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these op-eds are solely those of the authors.

#WASHINGTON — A #Rocket Lab Electron placed an undisclosed satellite into orbit June 28 on the company’s second launch within 48 hours and fourth this month.

The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 3:08 a.m. Eastern. The rocket’s kick stage deployed its payload into a 650-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit less than an hour later.

Rocket Lab did not disclose any details about the payload beyond its orbit, stating that it was for a confidential customer. That customer signed a contract less than four months ago for this launch as well as a second mission scheduled before the end of the year.

Speculation about the identity of the customer has focused on EchoStar. That company is deploying a constellation of smallsats called Lyra for Internet of Things services, having launched two on SpaceX Transporter missions earlier this year. An illustration of a satellite in the mission patch for this Electron launch is similar to previously released illustrations of Lyra satellites.

The launch was the second Electron mission in less than 48 hours, after an Electron launch from the other pad at Launch Complex 1 June 26 placing four HawkEye 360 satellites into orbit. That is the shortest turnaround time to date between launches at that site.

“The future of space is built on proven performance, and Electron continues to deliver against a stacked launch manifest this year,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in a statement after the launch.

This was also the fourth launch in June for Electron, a tally that includes a June 2 launch of a BlackSky imaging satellite and a June 11 launch of a radar imaging satellite for Japanese company iQPS. Rocket Lab has performed 10 Electron launches this year, and company executives previously stated they expect to conduct more than 20 launches in 2025.

United Launch Alliance is piloting an early version of OpenAI’s government-compliant artificial intelligence chatbot, marking one of the first deployments of the technology designed specifically for defense contractors handling sensitive data.

The rocket manufacturer, jointly owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has deployed what it calls “RocketGPT” to about 150 employees as part of a trial program. The system operates on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure secure cloud platform, which is approved for government data that must comply with International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR — strict security standards governing sensitive aerospace and defense information.

“We’re super excited,” ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno told SpaceNews, describing the chatbot as a tool to help with “drudgery” and “tedious, time-consuming things” required for writing reports, drafting government proposals and analyzing flight telemetry, for example.

The deployment marks a step forward for AI adoption in the defense sector, where standard consumer versions of ChatGPT are prohibited due to security requirements.

France would more than double its stake in Eutelsat to nearly 30% as part of a $1.56 billion capital raise backed by multiple shareholders, bolstering the French operator’s plans to refresh its OneWeb constellation amid Starlink’s growing dominance.

The funds would be raised in two parts before the end of the year, Eutelsat announced June 19, a day after the French military agreed to buy OneWeb services over 10 years in a deal potentially worth up to one billion euros ($1.15 billion).

An initial 716 million euros would come from a capital raise priced at 4 euros per share, a 32% premium to the average price over the past 30 days. This tranche would be open only to a core group of shareholders: the French government, shipping giant CMA CGM, Indian telco Bharti Airtel and the FSP investment fund owned by seven France-based insurance firms.

These anchor shareholders would then take part in a subsequent 634 million euro rights issue open to all existing investors.

Eutelsat said the extra capital would help reduce its debt, positioning the company to take out loans on more favorable terms, such as financing backed by export credit agencies.

Preparing for the next chapter

Eutelsat operates over 30 geostationary spacecraft and more than 650 OneWeb broadband satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).

However, the operator said delays in ground infrastructure and regulatory approvals could push the start of fully global LEO services to the end of 2026.

Most OneWeb satellites were launched between 2020 and 2023, giving the constellation an expected design life running through 2027–2028.

Meanwhile, Eutelsat said secure and resilient multi-orbit connectivity is becoming an increasingly strategic priority, as Starlink — the only other fully operational LEO broadband network — has already deployed more than 7,800 satellites and continues to rapidly expand.

Eutelsat plans to invest up to 2.2 billion euros for the 440 satellites needed to sustain the OneWeb constellation over the coming years.

The company has already ordered 100 of these from Europe’s Airbus, slated to begin launching toward the end of 2026.

In addition, Eutelsat has committed about 2 billion euros for its share of IRIS², Europe’s public-private sovereign broadband constellation slated to come online around the end of the decade.

“The French State is proud to contribute to strengthening Eutelsat’s capital structure and support the company at pivotal stage of its development,” said Eric Lombard, French Minister for the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty.

“This transaction reflects our strong commitment towards a major player in satellite connectivity — a strategic sector at the heart of Europe’s digital sovereignty — while fostering remarkable potential for technological innovation and sustainable economic growth.”

The U.S. military wants to turn its satellite communications into something that works like the internet — fluid, fast, and built on seamless interoperability between networks. But at an industry conference this week, Pentagon officials said the long envisioned military space internet is still a long way off.

In an era where commercial satellites outnumber military ones, the Defense Department is trying to tap into this diverse ecosystem, defense officials said June 17 at the SAE Media Group’s MilSatcom USA conference.

The goal is creating what DoD calls “enterprise satcom” — a virtualized, software-defined network that could automatically reroute communications between military, commercial and allied nations’ satellites if an adversary jams one satellite system.

But the reality today is an ecosystem full of manual processes, hardware silos and incompatible standards.

When you travel internationally, your iPhone doesn’t need different hardware to connect to local cell networks. That’s thanks to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global collaboration that created unified technical standards for mobile networks decades ago.

After Resilience’s moon landing attempt, why openness is key to the lunar economy .

After the hard work of several hundred people from ispace-Japan and ispace-Europe over five years, and substantial financial investment by private institutional investors, mega-banks and Japanese retail investors — this mission was not funded by the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative — our colleagues overseas did not achieve the primary goal of safely landing on the moon.

But failures are only truly failures if we don’t learn from them.

In the spirit of openness and transparency, here’s what we know about the Resilience mission. Resilience’s onboard laser altitude range finder did not lock on to the lunar surface with enough time for the spacecraft to decelerate to the planned descent velocity. As a result, Resilience presumably experienced a hard landing at the moment we lost telemetry.

Now, we are forming an External Review Task Force composed of world-renowned independent experts to provide a third-party review of the technical cause analysis of the Resilience landing failure, and to suggest necessary improvements to mission reliability. In this, ispace will proceed with the maximum possible transparency and openness, ensuring that the entire space community can benefit from our temporary setback.

In addition, we plan to initiate an ispace-U.S. advisory group that includes internal and external experts who will meet regularly to ensure any systemic issues, including programmatic and managerial practices, are resolved so that our upcoming United States mission is kept on track and is successful.​

Even before Resilience’s landing attempt, ispace-U.S. incorporated lessons learned from ispace-Japan’s first mission in 2023. ispace-U.S.’s next generation lander, called APEX-1.0 builds upon the lessons learned from Resilience but contains significant improvements and enhancements and is a substantially different spacecraft than Resilience. For example, APEX 1.0 provides improved landing capability and accuracy compared to Resilience, using dissimilar redundancy and independent measurement techniques, along with the addition of Terrain Relative Navigation and Hazard Detection and Avoidance. For comparison, the Japanese Resilience spacecraft was designed to conduct a “blind landing.” Terrain Relative Navigation provides the ability to update position by comparing observed terrain to an onboard map. Hazard Detection and Avoidance supports the detection and avoidance of hazards such as boulders and craters. Based on lessons learned from Resilience, ispace-U.S. plans to further enhance and improve this system to increase the probability of a successful landing.

ispace has two mottos. The first, “Expand our planet — expand our future” acknowledges the importance of a significant lunar presence to the future of humanity. For our commercial lunar industry to be successful, all the organizations working toward creating a cis-lunar economy need to operate as a community, with extreme openness and transparency, so we can all learn from each other’s challenges and mistakes. Although this industry has for the most part acted in a uniquely transparent fashion and we have all learned from each other’s challenges, we can and must do more.

With the NASA CLPS initiative serving as a catalyst, the commercial space companies striving to routinely land on the moon can collectively jumpstart the cislunar economy and create the proverbial rising tide that lifts all (space)ships by banding together and sharing data, observations and lessons-learned. We as an industry should create a working group that serves as a forum for companies to not only share lessons learned, but also collectively contribute to the design of an architecture of a cis-lunar economy. We would then be able to collectively propose items such as interoperability standards, work together to establish shared infrastructure like relay satellites and power generation and, whenever possible, we could collaborate on individual mission objectives under the mindset that the success of one mission or company would benefit us all. Together, we can unlock amazing scientific discoveries, extract lunar resources that could dramatically improve life on Earth and leverage the technologies we develop in the process to transform the moon into a launching point that will open the door to Mars and the rest of the solar system.

ispace’s second motto is “Never quit the lunar quest.” Future success and reliability are built upon early failures. For example, not too long ago, a then-small space transportation startup called SpaceX failed to successfully launch its initial Falcon-1 rockets, three consecutive times. SpaceX learned from those early setbacks and went on to build the most reliable and cost-effective rockets in history. Efforts like that serve as “shots on goal” and, the more shots you take, the more you score. In the case of ispace-Japan’s Resilience, this mission was a shot on goal that didn’t cost the American taxpayers any money but will nonetheless bolster the chances of future lunar missions succeeding.

“Never quit the lunar quest” acknowledges that expanding a human presence to the moon is an audacious challenge. It reminds us that although we have experienced setbacks in the past, and will undoubtedly face setbacks in the future, we will stay the course. Like SpaceX, ispace will leverage invaluable lessons learned from these early missions to deliver not just payloads, but a future of awe and wonder, reliable missions and high value to every customer that flies with us.

Portal Space Systems will create a second factory to scale up production of high-performance in-space vehicles as it gears up for initial test flights in 2026.

The company announced at the Paris Air Show June 17 that it will establish a second factory, five kilometers from its current facilities in Bothell, Washington, for its Supernova vehicle. The new factory, spanning more than 4,600 square meters, is scheduled to open in late 2026.

The second facility will allow Portal to produce one Supernova spacecraft a month starting in 2027. Supernova is the spacecraft the company is developing that uses solar thermal propulsion to provide both high thrust and high delta V, or change in velocity.

“By expanding our footprint in Bothell, we’re doubling down on local talent, proximity to core operations, and a growing aerospace ecosystem supported by state leadership,” Jeff Thornburg, chief executive of Portal Space Systems, said in a statement.

SpaceX rocket being tested in Texas explodes, but no injuries reported. The company said the Starship “experienced a major anomaly” at about 11 p.m. while on the test stand preparing for the tenth flight test at Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site at the southern tip of Texas.

“A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for,” SpaceX said in a statement on the social platform X.

It marked the latest in a series of incidents involving Starship rockets. On Jan. 16, one of the massive rockets broke apart in what the company called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” sending trails of flaming debris near the Caribbean. Two months later, Space X lost contact with another Starship during a March 6 test flight as the spacecraft broke apart, with wreckage seen streaming over Florida.

Following the back-to-back explosions, one of the 403-foot (123-metre) Starship rockets, launched from the southern tip of Texas, tumbled out of control and broke apart on March 27. SpaceX had hoped to release a series of mock satellites following liftoff, but that got nixed because the door failed to open all the way. Then the spacecraft began spinning and made an uncontrolled landing in the Indian Ocean.

At the time, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called the launch “a big improvement” from the two previous demos and promised a much faster launch pace moving forward, with a Starship soaring every three to four weeks for the next three flights.

SpaceX said Wednesday night’s explosion posed no hazards to nearby communities. It asked people not to try to approach the site.

The company said it is working with local officials to respond to the explosion.