#SANFRANCISCO – The first #NASA-funded small satellite for exoplanet science is continuing to gather data well beyond its expected lifetime.

The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, known as CUTE, a six-unit cubesat equipped with a telescope to funnel data to a spectrograph, traveled to sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit in September 2021 as a secondary payload on the NASA- U.S. Geological Survey Landsat 9 Earth-observation mission.

CUTE was designed to operate in space for at least eight months. Twenty-seven months later, the satellite’s onboard instruments still are observing the dramatic atmospheric loss of “hot jupiters,” gas giants orbiting very close to bright stars

#HELSINKI — Launch startup iSpace has successfully launched and landed a test article, a month after a first hop test, as Chinese reusable rocket efforts intensify.

ISpace’s Hyperbola-2Y methane-liquid oxygen reusable verification stage lifted off from a pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 4:07 a.m. Eastern (1107 UTC) Dec. 10.

The Hyperbola-2Y reached an altitude of 343.12 meters, translating 50 meters to a landing zone and touching down with a velocity of 1.1 meters per second and an accuracy of 0.295 meters. The entire flight lasted 63.15 seconds, according to an iSpace press statement.

The flight came just over a month after a first hop test Nov. 2. That test reached 178 meters and returned to its landing spot. iSpace says it will attempt a test at sea next year after completing ground tests. #spacenews

#WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force on Dec. 8 officially activated its first component dedicated to both Europe and Africa. The new unit, known as U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa, will support U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Headquartered at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the Space Force component will be led by U.S. Space Force Col. Max Lantz and staffed by approximately 30 service members.

The new component will support EUCOM’s growing need for space-based capabilities such as satellite navigation and communications.

With an increasing number of military assets reliant on space-based technologies, the need for specialized expertise and dedicated resources is more crucial than ever, said Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force

#WASHINGTON — NorthStar Earth and Space has raised another $15 million to support its first four satellites for tracking objects in orbit, the Canadian company said Dec. 6 as it waits on Rocket Lab to get back to flight so they can launch on a future mission.

The Series D funding round comes after NorthStar said in January it had amassed nearly $100 million in total for building out a space situational awareness (SSA) business.

An initial batch of satellites provided by Spire Global was due to launch this summer with Virgin Orbit before the air-launch company fell into bankruptcy in April.

#WASHINGTON — Capella Space will launch two radar imaging satellites on SpaceX rideshare missions after an Electron launch failure disrupted its deployment plans.

Capella announced Dec. 5 that it had arranged to fly two of its Acadia satellites on SpaceX rideshare missions in the first half of 2024. Acadia-4 will fly on the Bandwagon-1 mission as soon as April 2024 while Acadia-5 will launch on Transporter-11 no earlier than June 2024. The Transporter-11 mission was arranged through launch services company Exolaunch.

Capella said in a statement that the arrangements allow for a diversity of orbits for its spacecraft. Bandwagon-1 is the first of a new line of dedicated rideshare missions that SpaceX announced earlier this year that will go to mid-inclination orbits, rather than sun-synchronous orbits accessed by Transporter missions.

#WASHINGTON — A new report predicts that around 20,000 new satellites will launch by the end of the decade — a more conservative forecast compared to other sky-high projections.

Quilty Space, a research and consulting firm, says there are “positive indicators for sustained growth within the space industrial base, particularly given continuing momentum in the low Earth orbit broadband mega-constellation markets that make up about 85% of all satellite demand in Western markets.