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Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of The View from Space.
🚀 In SpaceNews, Jeff Foust reports that Starship, which will play a key role in NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration campaign, has successfully completed its 11th flight test. After a history of failures, Starship achieved its mission goals: booster separation, upper stage flight, deployment of dummy payloads, and splashdowns:
‘The launch concludes a brief but turbulent history of version 2 of Starship. The vehicle’s first three launches, in January, March and May, all suffered mission-ending failures in flight. In the first two cases, those failures occurred during ascent, resulting in debris falling over the Caribbean. In June, a Starship upper stage exploded on a test stand at Starbase during preparations for a static-fire test.
SpaceX recovered with the Flight 10 mission Aug. 26, which completed all its planned major objectives, from deployment of Starlink mass simulators in space to a pinpoint reentry and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Next for SpaceX is version 3 of the vehicle, featuring upgrades to increase payload performance. This version will likely be the first to reach orbit after one or more suborbital test flights. SpaceX plans to use the vehicle to deploy larger next-generation Starlink satellites tested on recent flights.’
💸 In Aviation Week, Orbion CEO Brad King asks aloud why satellites are so expensive:
‘Why does a vehicle the size of a dorm-room refrigerator still cost 10 times more than a Ferrari? If you disassembled both and spread their components on a table, you would be hard-pressed to argue that the satellite is 10 times more complex.
Why are satellites so expensive—and what parts of that cost can be reduced?
Universities and early-stage startups already have demonstrated that a small satellite can be fabricated for less than $1 million. You can cut corners with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics and roll the dice with reliability. If not much is at stake, balance the risk–reward ratio, aim for the sky and hope for the best.
But most of the industry is not building for itself. The supply chain has multiple tiers and is growing in sophistication. Paying customers cannot or will not gamble on reliability and force reliability requirements on their suppliers.’
🌙 Anna Desmarais for EuroNews says the world’s space agencies are getting ready for commercial activity on the Moon:
‘Potential economic activity on the Moon could be driven by the communications, navigation, transit, and logistics sectors to help further space exploration missions and robotics, according to one recent roadmap from the US Air Force’s education centre.
These industries would support mining efforts on the Moon, the “anchor” of the future Moon economy from which other industries are designed, the report noted.
It cited oxygen that is stored in lunar regolith, the loose layer of rock that covers the satellite’s surface and is in the atmosphere, as a useful resource.
Previous research has shown that regolith has some of the minerals needed to generate plants on the Moon, which the European Space Agency (ESA) says will be crucial for any long-term settlement on the Moon.
The Moon is also a major source of Helium-3, an element that could create safer nuclear energy in a fusion reactor because it is not radioactive, according to the ESA.’
🛰️ For NODE, Pierre du Rostu, CEO of AXA Digital Commercial Platform, says the key to addressing the present ‘polycrisis’ is embracing technology like geospatial:
‘Technology now gives us tools that, even a decade ago, were inconceivable. Artificial intelligence can scan and interpret torrents of raw data in real time. Geospatial systems can track the spread of wildfires, the possibility of floods, or the build-up of troops along a border. Cyber platforms can detect vulnerabilities and train teams to repel intrusions before they become costly breaches. These systems exist and are already in use.
Change, as the saying goes, is hard. But insurers should see it as more as a project of expansion or evolution, not upheaval.
But if we can’t consider risks in isolation any longer, how should we approach the use of these tools? The truth is that too often they’re used independently of one another, often by independent teams. One monitors fire risk, another looks at geopolitical developments. One tracks cyber-threats. This is inadequate. And that’s why integration is the order of the day.
This is where insurers really have to lead. We see the whole landscape of risk as it appears across industries and across borders. By weaving together AI, geospatial, cyber tools, and human expertise, we can develop systems that mirror the complexity of that risk landscape, thereby avoiding an increasingly costly game of whack-a-mole, whereby we deal with one problem only to see another rise in its place. We provide instead a networked defence against networked threats.
That’s a technical change. But there’s a cultural side to this evolution too. Because the insurance industry is seen to deal in caution, and though the characterisation is somewhat unfair, there is enough truth to it to merit a rethink in how we look at risk. In the polycrisis era, there’s no time to wait and see what happens. We need to be early adopters of the tools available to us.’
🔭 In Space News, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck argues that we have reached ‘the Mars moment’:
‘For decades, our presence in space has been limited to short-term missions: land, explore and return. But now that’s changing. Artemis is preparing the moon as a steppingstone to Mars, shifting the United States’ national space strategy toward sustained presence and long-term infrastructure. If the U.S. wants to lead this next phase scientifically, commercially, and strategically it must invest in the systems that make a sustained presence possible.
Mars is where that leadership will be proven. And if NASA is serious about sending humans there, and keeping them safe while they’re there, that investment in long-term infrastructure needs to start now. That begins with fully funding and executing the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) as the first critical capability for sustained operations. Without it, future missions risk operating in isolation, with limited data return, degraded situational awareness and higher safety risks for astronauts. The time to act is before those missions launch, not after they arrive.’
🇷🇺 Putin has given the green light to plans to turn Russian spacecraft into ‘flying billboards’, reports Ars Technica’:
‘While the United States and China are launching more space missions than ever before, Russia’s once-dominant launch cadence is on a downhill slide.
Russia’s access to global markets dried up after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The fallout from the invasion killed several key space partnerships between Russia and Europe. Russia’s capacity to do new things in space seems to be focused on military programs like anti-satellite weapons.
The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia’s official space agency, may have a plan to offset the decline. Late last month, Putin approved changes to federal laws governing advertising and space activities to “allow for the placement of advertising on spacecraft,” Roscosmos posted on its official Telegram account.’
🤯 Insmed CEO Will Lewis was the ‘mystery passenger’ on board Blue Origin’s latest flight. Why he wished to remain anonymous remains a mystery, but here he is: