NASA: 'We will win second space race'
'I'll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA or beat America back to the moon!' said the agency's acting chief.
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Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of The View from Space.
🌑 China has spent much of the summer quietly passing the tests needed to put its taikonauts on the lunar surface, leading onlookers to say that it will beat the U.S. to the Moon. Now NASA has hit back, claiming it could be on the Moon as early as 2027, reports Sky News:
‘That looks highly ambitious. SpaceX is due to fly astronauts on the last leg, from lunar orbit down to the surface, in its huge Starship. But development has been badly delayed by a series of explosions.
NASA is under pressure to catch up with lost time. China has ramped up its own space programme, landing a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon. It is also testing a rocket that it hopes will launch a human mission to the lunar surface by 2030.
At a news conference to reveal a new class of NASA astronauts, Sean Duffy, the agency's acting chief, said winning the race would need money and grit.
"I'll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA or beat America back to the moon," he said.
"We're going to win: we love challenges, we love competition. And we are going to win the second space race back to the moon.".’
💰 Payload reports that NewSpace Capital, the top European private equity firm for growth-stage space companies, has invested $15 million in satellite manufacturer K2 Space. K2 aim to build multi-orbit-capable satellites for commercial and defence missions:
‘K2 has locked in $195M in funding without even flying an orbital mission. Its first customer mission, Gravitas, is planned for next year.
K2 has used these funds to ramp up its production capacity, and recently opened a 180,000 sq. ft. facility in California. There, it expects to produce 100 of its Mega Class sats per year.
K2’s focus is on building satellites to withstand the extreme radiation of higher orbits, at an accessible price point of $15M per satellite bus. Each of K2’s buses comes equipped with a 20 kW Hall-effect thruster that can raise a satellite with 1 ton of payload capacity from LEO to MEO in under 90 days.
The platform makes it possible for operators to launch their sats on cheaper rideshare missions to LEO, and then raise their orbits to MEO without sacrificing too much fuel (as about 35% of the sat’s total fuel is used in the orbit raise).
With the investment, NewSpace Capital is betting that K2 can hit all of its milestones on its first flight next year, and begin turning investment into revenue.’
🏆 Antoine Halff, co-founder and Chief Analyst of the award-winning energy and environmental intelligence firm Kayrros, argues in Nikkei Asia that satellite technology is radically changing how the oil market reacts to shocks:
‘It’s not just that variations in Chinese storage have become as potent a price driver as the traditional forces of supply and demand: it’s that now, thanks to geospatial, we can see these changes practically as they occur. Satellite data has fundamentally altered the information environment. …
Remote sensing and machine learning can now calculate, in close to real time, how much crude is in a tank, how fast it’s depleting or building, and where cargo is headed. In effect, we now have something like X-ray vision across the global supply chain. That visibility lets participants immediately spot arbitrage opportunities and address imbalance almost before they are felt, making the market more flexible, efficient and resilient.
We don’t have to look far evidence. Consider the current moment. There’s a war in Eastern Europe and conflict in the Middle East. There have been strikes on refineries in Iran. Both Taiwan and Japan are arming. Yet despite this combustible cocktail, prices have remained relatively stable.’
🛰️ Financial Times Reinvention Champions Cailabs, which builds optical ground stations for satellite communications, have raised $67 million to scale up production. Here’s Space News:
‘“This funding round reflects our solid fundamentals and the confidence investors have in our strategic vision. It enables us to scale up industrial capabilities and prepare for the next stage of growth,” said Jean-François Morizur, co-founder and chief executive of Cailabs.
The company currently has more than 10 optical ground stations under contract and plans to use the funding to scale up production and strengthen its supply chain to manufacture up to 50 stations a year by 2027.
The biggest demand for the company’s optical ground stations is coming from defense and other government users, Morizur told SpaceNews, citing their interest in the high data rates enabled by optical communications as well as the low probability such communications will be detected or intercepted.’
🐭 A Russian ‘Noah’s Ark’ probe carrying 75 mice and 1,500 flies has landed safely back on Earth, reports Space.com. The mini-menagerie spent 30 days in orbit:
‘A trio of search helicopters carrying technical specialists touched down near the descent module to extract the living specimens as rapidly as possible to start an initial examination. For example, on-site specialists were slated to assess the flies' motor activity to detect any nervous system problems.
Bion-M No. 2's scientific program of experiments and research consists of 10 "sections." According to the IBMP, the first and second sections are devoted to experimental studies of gravitational physiology on animals. The goal here is to help create new technologies for ensuring human life support during flights under the combined effects of weightlessness and cosmic radiation.
A third, fourth and fifth section are devoted to studies of the influence of space flight and outer space factors on the biology of plants and microorganisms as well as their communities. This can be thought of as understanding the general patterns of life in the universe.’
🚀 CNN reports that the world’s first-ever commercial space station is getting closer to launch.
‘The entries for the competition are due to be submitted next year, but NASA is already working with several companies developing commercial station designs before the actual ISS replacement work begins.
Among these companies is California-based Vast Space, which signed a deal with SpaceX to launch what would be the world’s first commercial space station — called Haven-1 — currently slated for May 2026.
The single-module design is a simple proof-of-concept meant to be in orbit for three years, to support four two-week missions performed by a crew of four astronauts each.
Sporting a “human-centric” design and a science lab capable of supporting microgravity research and manufacturing opportunities for technology including semi-conductors, Haven-1 would be available for both private and government missions, allowing Vast Space to gain experience for the much more complex undertaking of building an ISS successor, should it win the NASA competition.’
🍿 NASA has released a promotional video showing how the Artemis II mission, set to be launched at the start of 2026, will unfold: