China increasingly likely to beat the U.S. back to the Moon
‘If the Chinese land people on the moon before NASA does, the event will be a monumental embarrassment for the United States,' says one space writer.
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Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of The View from Space.
🌕 The race to the Moon is hotting up – and China is in the lead. ‘Sometime in the future, we might be gathered round our televisions, watching the first people on the moon since 1972 speaking Mandarin', writes Mark R. Whittington for The Hill:
‘If the Chinese land people on the moon before NASA does, the event will be a monumental embarrassment for the United States. Fingers will be pointed. Blame will be placed. The argument over “who lost the moon race” will ensure.
The answer to the last question would be everybody. Mistakes by politicians of both parties and people in the commercial sector will have contributed to a defeat in the second moon race.
Those mistakes go back decades with two stillborn attempts to start a deep space exploration program, too much focus on “space pork” over sensible technology development and the overregulation of commercial space launches.’
🇬🇧 In Space.com, UK space insiders tells Tereza Pultarova that the decision to gut the UK Space Agency was inevitable – but may weaken the UK’s position within ESA:
‘ … insiders who discussed the situation with Space.com said questions around UKSA's merit had been heard in government circles since around 2020.
"It was around COVID when the [Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, or BEIS] responsible for UKSA at that time started making an argument that the space agency had become isolated and no longer understood the needs for space across all other government departments," a source who had worked at UKSA during the first decade of its existence told Space.com under the condition of anonymity. "It was perceived that the agency had become a bit of a show pony, a cheerleader for the concept of space rather than thinking about what do we actually need from space for environment, transport, defense etc."
The U.K. has had a different approach to space than its European counterparts, such as Germany, France and Italy, the source explained. Historically, the U.K. has dedicated most of its resources to the European Space Agency (ESA) rather than pursuing a multipronged approach involving a strong domestic space program and bilateral partnerships independent of ESA. Therefore, over 80% of UKSA's budget has been placed into ESA.
… Some question the decision, however, especially as it's been announced three months before an upcoming meeting of the ESA Council of Ministers, which will decide the agency's funding for the next three years. The danger of weakening the U.K.'s position within ESA has been cited by multiple sources as the main argument against the merger with DSIT.
"It's hard to see how it will work in practice and how will our international partners know how to interact with the U.K.," the source said. "The jury is out whether this could be the right solution. I think that for the next 12 months, things might slow down, and priorities might become less clear as there will be lots of changes on the inside of the government."‘
🇬🇧 Jeff Huggins, President of Cailabs US, writes for SPIE that GPS is vulnerable – and a backup plan is needed:
‘If there’s a blackout in timing data, even for a few minutes, cascading failures can follow. Trades, for example, can be mis-ordered. Power stations can get out of sync. Control systems can behave erratically. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has warned that disruption to positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services poses a serious and growing risk …
One of the most promising alternatives is optical satellite communication, better known as lasercom. It has three major advantages that make it a powerful complementary technology. First, it is hard to jam or spoof. Laser beams are narrow, whereas radio waves spread outwards. Laser beams also transmit far more data than radio signals. Current lasercom systems can send up to one terabit-per-second. For global positioning, that means not just basic navigation fixes, but the ability to simultaneously transmit live video, sensor data, and encrypted command-and-control signals. And because lasercom sits outside the traditional radio spectrum, it is unaffected by the chaos of urban radio clutter or any deliberate jamming in radio frequency bands.
Until recently, lasercom systems were considered exotic, impractical, or too costly. That’s no longer true. Technological advances and miniaturization have brought laser terminals into real-world use. NASA, DoD, the European Space Agency, and several private firms now fly laser payloads on operational satellites. Many are small, agile, and easy to deploy.’
🇬🇧 A California startup has developed a cannon capable of launching hundreds of pancake-like microsatellites into low-Earth orbit, reports Sustainability Times:
‘SpinLaunch is pioneering a novel method of satellite deployment that involves using a giant centrifugal cannon to launch spacecraft into orbit. This innovative approach is designed to drastically reduce costs and minimize environmental harm, offering a fresh perspective on how satellites can be deployed. The company’s ambitious Meridian Space constellation is poised to be a game-changer in the industry. The first batch of pancake-like satellites, each measuring approximately 7.5 feet in width and weighing 154 pounds, is slated for launch as early as next year. These microsatellites are stacked in a “launch bus,” making them significantly lighter and more efficient than traditional designs.
Supported by substantial investment, SpinLaunch has recently secured an additional $12 million from Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, bringing its total funding to nearly $150 million. This financial backing underscores investor confidence in the company’s groundbreaking technology. The involvement of Kongsberg’s NanoAvionics in constructing the first batch of 250 satellites further cements the project’s credibility, setting the stage for a promising launch in 2026. With these advancements, SpinLaunch is poised to potentially set a new record for the most spacecraft launched simultaneously, a title currently held by SpaceX.’
🇪🇺 SAR powerhouse ICEYE is releasing back-to-back contracts as Europe wakes up to its geopolitical vulnerabilities – but can new space firms plug the continent’s defence gap? asks Via Satellite:
‘Europe’s EO sovereignty was cast into stark light in March when the U.S. administration temporarily stopped sharing intelligence data with Ukraine following the public bust-up between Presidents Trump and Zelensky. That pause affected Ukraine’s access to satellite imagery from U.S. governmental as well as commercial satellites including those from Maxar, Planet, and BlackSky.
Although the U.S. turned the data tap back on after only a week, Europe could no longer remain in denial — it didn’t have the technology to make up for the unavailability of American satellite imagery. While Iceye could supply SAR data with the near real-time frequency required to monitor a fast-evolving battlefield, there was no one in Europe to cover the shortage in the high-resolution optical spectrum. Airbus, which operates the two high-resolution optical Pleiades Neo satellites, didn’t want to comment on the matter.
The lack of fully fledged commercial constellations is only one part of Europe’s problem. Pierre Lionnet, a space industry analyst and managing director at the European space industry’s trade association Eurospace, estimates that European armed forces combined possess 10 times fewer spy satellites than the U.S. government.’
🤖 In Payload, Dr. Robert Brüll of FibreCoat and Saibre Capital CEO Air Marshal Andrew Turner CB CBE – also on the Industry Advisory Board at NewSpace Capital – ask why, as threats to satellites grow, operators are not using the available advanced materials to protect them:
‘The resilience of spacecraft is usually set aside to make way for other considerations. Most commercial satellites are designed to be cheap, light, and quick to deploy. But space is not forgiving. It bathes electronics in radiation and extreme temperature fluctuations. And, increasingly, it’s contested. A hostile state power need not destroy an entire constellation to do serious damage. A well-placed strike on just a few satellites would be sufficient.
Historically, space operators sought to avoid the punishing cost and weight of resilient shielding materials, but now, space operators don’t have to concern themselves with justifying the cost. Materials innovation—much of it taking place in European research institutions—has brought down the price and the mass of shielding materials by orders of magnitude, while preserving the materials’ ability to withstand heat, cold, and electromagnetic interference. In other words: low-weight, low-cost, high-strength, EMI-resistant materials are now available.
If the issue isn’t technical, then what is the issue? It’s mainly cultural. We are in the habit of putting functionality at the centre of spacecraft design. But the surest way to guarantee robust space infrastructure is to also make resilience a non-negotiable feature of its development. This has been the case for critical terrestrial infrastructure for decades.’
😍 Usually, the Northern Lights have more of a greenish hue, but U.S. astronaut Don Pettit was able captured an astonishing crimson-lined aurora while orbiting Earth:
China’s pace is deliberate but slower, and its timelines extend well beyond current U.S. targets. Unless Artemis suffers major, prolonged setbacks, the U.S. remains positioned to put astronauts on the lunar surface first.
Plus, NASA’s Artemis program already has international partners, a functioning deep space rocket (SLS), and the Orion spacecraft tested in lunar orbit. Contracts for lunar landers (SpaceX, Blue Origin) are also funded.