Vol 45, Week 31

NASA & NEWSPACE

• The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will impact the Moon, creating a flash of light and plume of ejecta, on August 5 at 06:34:33 UTC near the Einstein and Bell craters (the Earth-facing edge around the 10 o’clock position).
• Rocket Lab was awarded its largest contract to date—$266 million from the USSF, and signed an agreement with Japan’s Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space (iQPS) for three launches on Electron.
• Eighteen new NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) awards, totaling $3.2 million, will fund research to construct lunar infrastructure, explore Venus, and study planetary rings.

GLOBAL REPORTS

• ISRO’s Gaganyaan program has cleared critical hardware testing for the Human Rated Launch Vehicle (HLVM3), capsule, and escape systems while Gaganyatris astronauts completed basic training in Russia.
• Long March 7A launch on July 29 marked the 50th flight from Wenchang Launch Center, which began operations in 2016.
• ispace Japan will launch its 2028 lunar lander aboard the H3 rocket, marking the company’s first mission using a domestically developed vehicle.

BEYOND EARTH

• The LINK rescue spacecraft is caught in a multi-axis spin, jeopardizing its mission to grapple and boost NASA’s Swift probe.
• Curiosity rover imaged “a sea of polygons”, honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, at Mars’ Valle Grande. 
• 2026 Kavli Prize winner Amina Helmi explains how the Gaia spacecraft revolutionized galactic archaeology, letting her team trace ancient galaxy collisions and subsequent star formation.