Vol 45, Week 43

NASA & NEWSPACE

• NASA is testing Astrolab’s CLV-1 and Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus crewed rover mockups while finalizing the VIPER rover for the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander 2027 mission.
• Firefly Aerospace passed its preliminary design review for Elytra, clearing it for a late 2028 mission to deploy drones over the Moon’s south pole.
• SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees of independent directors to explore a potential corporate merger.

GLOBAL REPORTS

• China is finalizing construction of its new crewed lunar launch complex (LC-301) and twin commercial pads (3 and 4) at Wenchang.
• Canadian Reaction Dynamics has unveiled its six-tonne Borealis rocket for a 2031 launch while developing its smaller Aurora rocket targeted to fly by late 2028.
• The Republic of Uzbekistan became the 77th signatory of the Artemis Accords.
• ISRO’s main launch facility, the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, is accepting applications for 97 job openings.

BEYOND EARTH

• JAXA’s MMX spacecraft completed its critical initial phase following launch, establishing solar array deployment and attitude control ahead of its cruise to Mars.
• A new study shows Neptune’s deep atmosphere has significantly more oxygen than that of Uranus, indicating the planets originated from different regions of the early Solar System.
• Using JWST data and a “transmission strings” modeling technique, researchers revealed that exoplanet WASP-17b’s atmosphere is slightly egg-shaped.