Posted: Sat, Dec 7 10:23 AM ET (1523 GMT)
NASA has again delayed the next Artemis missions to the moon. At a briefing Thursday, NASA announced that the Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft, was now scheduled for launch in April 2026, a seven-month delay. NASA also delayed Artemis 3, the first crewed landing as part of the Artemis campaign, from September 2026 to mid-2027. The schedule came after the agency completed an investigation into heat shield erosion seen on the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft, concluding that the "skip reentry" technique caused gases to build up inside the heat shield material, leading to cracks and erosion. NASA will modify the reentry approach for Artemis 2 without changing the heat shield, and modify the heat shields for later missions. Agency leaders reaffirmed their support for the current Artemis architecture even as the incoming Trump administration is expected to review and potentially revise it.

Related Links:

•  SpaceNews article
•  SpacePolicyOnline.com article
•  Wall Street Journal article
•  CNN article
•  NASA press release

Posted: Sat, Dec 7 10:12 AM ET (1512 GMT)
Europe's Vega C rocket successfully returned to flight Thursday, nearly two years after a launch failure. The Vega C lifted off from French Guiana at 4:20 p.m. Eastern and deployed the Sentinel-1C Earth observation satellite about an hour and 45 minutes later. The launch was the first for the Vega C since a December 2022 failure blamed on the nozzle of the second-stage solid-fuel motor. That motor was redesigned and tested on the ground twice before this launch. The launch helps bring to an end the "launcher crisis" in Europe that had forced ESA and the European Commission to go overseas to launch science and navigation satellites. Sentinel-1C, a radar mapping satellite that is part of the Copernicus program, replaces the Sentinel-1B satellite that failed nearly three years ago.

Related Links:

•  SpaceNews article
•  Reuters article
•  Space.com article
•  Bloomberg News article
•  ESA article

Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to lead NASA
Posted: Sat, Dec 7 10:07 AM ET (1507 GMT)
President-elect Trump announced Wednesday his intent to nominate Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and private astronaut, as NASA administrator. Isaacman is the CEO of payment...

Orbex halts work on own launch site
Posted: Sat, Dec 7 10:01 AM ET (1501 GMT)
Small launch vehicle developer Orbex is switching launch sites. The company announced Wednesday it would pause development of its own launch site, Sutherland Spaceport in...

India launches ESA's Proba-3 mission
Posted: Sat, Dec 7 9:59 AM ET (1459 GMT)
India launched a European Space Agency mission this morning to create artificial solar eclipses. A PSLV-XL rocket lifted off at 5:34 a.m....