Vol 45, Week 36

NASA & NEWSPACE

• Blue Origin won US$700M contract to build Mars telecommunications orbiter; and broke ground at new Cape Canaveral payload processing facility that aims to support up to 16 missions annually.
• NASA is modifying its lunar spacesuit requirements for a simpler, lighter “Sortie Suit” variant with Axiom Space to support an accelerated schedule of landing people on the Moon around 2028.
• South Africa’s NewSpace Systems, featured in Engineering News, has launched a 5,200 m² production hub to meet growing global demand for satellite constellations.

GLOBAL REPORTS

• ISRO successfully launched the 2,367-kg EOS-05 spacecraft aboard a GSLV rocket, marking the deployment of India’s first dedicated Earth observation imaging satellite in a Geosynchronous orbit.
• Ad Astra and Aloha to the late Toyohiro Akiyama—the first Japanese Astronaut. 
• Chinese firm GalaxySpace has completed the nation’s first turnkey satellite export to Southeast Asia by delivering a complete satellite package, ground system, and training to Thailand’s space agency GISTDA. 

BEYOND EARTH

• BepiColombo has successfully jettisoned its Mercury Transfer Module; Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) will execute a capture burn on November 21 & deploy the Mio orbiter in December.
• Currently in the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons may be forced to suspend its heliospheric data collection this October unless a US$2M funding gap is resolved.
• Delayed by Neutron rocket issues, the MIT-Rocket Lab Venus probe has been waiting at Rocket Lab’s HQ for 18 months since receiving its heat shield in March 2025.