WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force will evaluate commercial alternatives to its bespoke military surveillance satellites in geostationary orbit, a move that could reshape the way the Pentagon monitors space as rivals like China and Russia ramp up their capabilities, a senior official said March 11.

Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the acting acquisition executive for the Space Force, has directed program offices to assess how commercially developed satellites and sensors could either replace or augment the military’s existing fleet of Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites. 

Speaking at a Washington Space Business Roundtable event , Purdy underscored the urgency of exploring industry-led solutions that could offer faster and more cost-effective capabilities.  

“I’ve asked the team to give me a commercial analysis on what kind of capabilities could we provide, on what timeline and at what cost compared to any existing programs of record,” Purdy said. His directive came this week in the form of an “acquisition decision memorandum,” requiring program offices to consider commercial solutions alongside traditional government-developed systems.  

Balancing cost, speed, capability

The Space Force’s GSSAP satellites, built by Northrop Grumman, operate near geosynchronous orbit (GEO) — approximately 22,000 miles above Earth — where they conduct rendezvous and proximity operations to inspect and monitor satellites. This region is home to some of the military’s most critical assets, including missile warning, communications, and intelligence-gathering satellites.  

Purdy said there is now an opportunity to see if commercial space firms — buoyed by private investment — can deliver viable alternatives, and the Space Force will analyze the potential trade-offs. While commercial systems can be built faster and cheaper, military operators typically would have to agree to trade off some requirements that can’t be fully met with commercial systems, he said.  

The challenge lies in striking the right balance between affordability, rapid deployment, and mission effectiveness, he said. “We have to pull our heads out of the legacy, out of the old way of doing business,” Purdy said, suggesting that the Space Force needs to reconsider whether achieving 100% of its requirements justifies bypassing innovations available in the commercial sector.

He stressed that periodic industry engagement is crucial to staying ahead of technological advancements. “What I tell people is you really have to pay attention and dip your head in the water every six months or so to understand what’s happening,” he added. “Space is happening so fast out in the commercial industry.”  

The Space Systems Command, he said, has already received numerous commercial proposals for a geosynchronous situational awareness capability, following a request for information issued last fall.  

International partners

Beyond commercial options, Purdy pointed to the potential for greater collaboration with international allies that have developed similar technologies.  

“This is a capability that international partners have been clamoring to provide,” he said, noting that U.S. Space Command has expressed interest in unclassified solutions that could expand surveillance capabilities while enhancing cooperation with allies.  

Working with international and commercial partners, Purdy suggested, could help the Space Force achieve its goals without the same level of investment required for entirely bespoke military systems.  

The acquisition directive on space domain awareness satellites is only the beginning. Purdy confirmed that similar acquisition reviews will take place across other Space Force mission areas, ensuring that commercial solutions are considered before committing to traditional development paths.  

“There are now several programs that are slow, traditional, expensive, and there’s a potential that there might be commercial opportunities for each one of those,” he said.  

This shift could have major implications for defense contractors, who may need to adjust their business models to compete with commercial players. The move also places new demands on industry leaders to provide clear, realistic assessments of their technology’s capabilities.  

“We need truth in advertising from industry,” Purdy warned. “We need a good, solid understanding of what the capabilities are, not just marketing pitches. We need real technology understanding.”  

At the same time, he cautioned that the Space Force must be disciplined about its requirements. “We have to watch our appetite control. We have to truly understand the technical environment. We have to be willing to take risks.”

Related

Earth’s largest iceberg has run aground off the coast of South Georgia Island, a common rendezvous spot for large icebergs, new satellite images show.

Measuring 1,240 square miles (3,460 square kilometers), the Antarctic iceberg A-23A has come to a grinding halt after a long and winding journey across the Scotia Sea, also known as “iceberg alley.”

Satellite images taken at the beginning of March show the iceberg parked on a shallow underwater shelf off the coast of South Georgia Island, which is a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean and the largest of nine islands that make up the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.

The new images of A-23A were taken by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Earlier observations suggest the iceberg’s northward drift slowed suddenly in late February, according to a statement from NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Comets develop the spectacular long tails that they are known for by approaching the Sun. When they get too close, their icy volatile materials begin to sublimate away, carrying along clouds of dust. But this activity usually only happens relatively close to the Sun, as comets spend most of their time in the outer solar system on highly elongated orbits.

A new comet, recently discovered by Hannes Gröller of the University of Arizona, an observer with the Catalina Sky Survey, and now known as C/2025 D1 (Gröller), is smashing records. Still way out in the solar system between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, it is nonetheless surrounded by a cloud of dust or gas, known as a coma, and even sports a broad tail. These are clear signs of cometary activity, farther from the Sun than any but a handful of previously known comets.

Highly active

Only four other comets have ever shown such activity while approaching from more than 20 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun — as far out as the orbit of Uranus. (One AU is the average Earth-Sun distance of 93 million miles [150 million kilometers]). Comet Gröller tops them all in terms of its closest approach to the Sun, or perihelion, which is the most distant of any comet yet found. This new comet, never gets closer than 14.1 AU from the Sun. The previous record holder for the most distant perihelion was 11.4 AU. 

“Most comets are active around 3 to 5 AU,” Groeller tells Astronomy. That’s the distance where the Sun’s radiation can begin to trigger water-ice sublimation, which is the main driver of cometary activity, he says. Because this one is showing activity while it is so much farther out, “a different mechanism must be responsible for is activity,” he says. 

The comet is on a weakly hyperbolic orbit, which means that it may escape from the solar system and never return, says Gröller.

How to find a comet

This is the fourth comet Gröller has discovered, but given its extraordinary distance, it was the most exciting find, he says. Although the Catalina Sky Survey’s main job is finding near-Earth asteroids, comets do occasionally show up in the data, and “it’s a nice perk of this job that we get a comet named after us,” he says.

The process the survey follows involves taking a series of four images of the same patch of sky and using software to pick out any objects that appear to have moved between the images. Then Gröller or one of the other observers goes through the results to pick out the ones that appear to be real objects. If it is real, then they check it against catalogs of known objects, and if it is new, they then report it to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which makes the information public so that others, including amateur astronomers, can make follow-up observations to help pin down the orbit.

Sam Deen, an active amateur astronomer who specializes in tracking comets and asteroids and finding archival pre-discovery observations of them, found several such images of this comet going back to 2018, which helped to refine its orbit and determine its record-breaking perihelion distance. At that time, the comet was more than 21 AU from the Sun, beyond the orbit of Uranus. Coincidentally, the earliest of those observations came from the 90-inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak — the same instrument that Gröller used to make the initial discovery.

“As best we can tell, these objects, if they had the same composition as normal comets, definitely should not be active” while so far from the Sun, Deen says. So, the new comet and the other four known so-called ultradistant comets must be quite different from most comets, and are possibly much older remnants of the early building blocks of the solar system.

Related: The science of comets

A strange set of comets

Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology in China and others published a study last year in The Astronomical Journal on the four known ultradistant comets at the time, suggesting that they are all likely to be dynamically new comets — that is, ones whose orbits have never before taken them from the Oort Cloud  into the inner reaches of the solar system.

In that study, they suggest that the unusual level of activity at such a great distance suggests that “these comets are conceived to be the most primitive small bodies in the solar system”and therefore “[bear] significant scientific importance.” The unexpected distant activity suggests their composition includes supervolatiles — materials such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide ices that have extremely low melting points and can be vaporized even by the faint sunlight at such great distances.

 One of these five distant objects, Comet C/2014 UN₂₇₁ (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), is a giant among comets, with a nucleus at least 75 miles (120 km) across, and was the farthest from the Sun when first discovered of any comet to date, at 29 AU. (Comet Gröller was roughly 15 AU from the Sun at discovery.) “We’re not entirely sure if it’s active because it’s an unusual sort of comet, or if it’s just because it’s so damn large that if anything at all was there [in terms of volatiles], it was going to start becoming active like this,” Deen says. “I mean, if you were to send Pluto in to 20 AU, I’m sure it would start looking like a comet, even though it’s Pluto.”

Deen adds that “we think what may potentially be happening with these comets that are active at ultradistant orbits might be that they originally formed very far from the Sun to begin with.” This would be unlike ordinary comets from the Oort Cloud, which are thought to have been ejected from the inner solar system during the early stages of planet formation. In that case, these ultradistant comets, “just formed out there, and this is genuinely their first ever time being this close to the Sun.”

If that’s the case, he says, “these things might be ultra-primordial, even beyond what normal dynamically new comets are. We could be looking at new kinds of ices that don’t really exist in this form anywhere in the rest of the solar system. . . . There’s really not many things that have never been closer [to the Sun] than [20 AU]. If they were, they would have evaporated by now.”

Within reach

Right now, the new comet glows faintly at about magnitude 20.5, Gröller says. By the time of its perihelion, on May 19, 2028, it should reach about magnitude 18.5. Even now, given sufficiently long exposure times, he says, amateurs with larger telescopes can potentially image the comet, citing a friend of his with a 14-inch telescope who has photographed it with a stack of exposures totaling about 35 minutes. As it gets brighter, it will become accessible to smaller amateur telescopes, given long enough exposure times, he says.

For those itching to give it a try, you can find more details about the comet and a link to generate an ephemeris of its position and brightness in JPL’s Small-Body Database Lookup. 

Related: How to photograph comets

Introduction

Since 1987, a highly modified McDonnell Douglas DC-8 aircraft has been a workhorse in NASA’s Airborne Science Program (ASP)—see Photo 1. The aircraft, located at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) in California, flew countless missions as a science laboratory, producing science data that supports projects serving the world’s scientific community, particularly the NASA Earth science community. NASA recently decided to retire the venerable DC-8 aircraft, which made its last science flight in April 2024. The DC-8 is being replaced with a similarly refurbished Boeing 777 aircraft, which will be even more capable than the DC-8.

More information is available about the full history of ASP, its primary objectives, and its many achievements in an archived article: see “Flying in the ‘Gap’ Between Earth and Space: NASA’s Airborne Science Program” [The Earth Observer, September–October 2020, 32:5, 4–14].

Workshop Overview

The NASA History Office and NASA Earth Science Division cohosted a workshop, titled “Contributions of the DC-8 to Earth System Science at NASA,” October 24–25, 2024 at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters (HQ) Building in Washington, DC – see Photo 2.

The agenda included not just the DC-8’s contributions to Earth Science at NASA, but also its role supporting the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and work in space science. Many DC-8 veterans – including several who are now retired – attended the event in person or online. The program consisted of six panels and roundtables, each calling attention to a unique aspect of the DC-8 story.

The event featured 38 individuals (speakers, panelists, and moderators) from NASA HQ, five NASA centers, eight universities, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In addition, Spanish filmmaker Rafael Luis Méndez Peña debuted a trailer for his documentary film, NASA-817, on October 24 and took photographs during the workshop. *** MAY HAVE TO DELETE: The ??? agenda a workshop recording ???, and other related materials are available through the NASA History Office. ****

The Tale of the NASA DC-8

The article follows the outline of the workshop, which placed the DC-8 in the context of the overall history of NASA aircraft observations, science campaigns, community, and international collaboration, education and outreach activities.

A History in Context: the DC-8 and NASA’s Airborne Science Program

NASA’s involvement in airborne science extends to the agency’s inception. The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 states that NASA’s first objective shall be “the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.” Subsequent legislation expanded NASA’s role in atmospheric and Earth system science. To fulfill this objective, NASA maintains a fleet of airborne platforms through ASP – see Figure – to study the environment, develop new technologies, verify satellite data, and monitor space vehicle activity.

NASA operated two large flying laboratories prior to the DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory. Both aircraft were converted Convair (CV) 990s. Regrettably, both aircraft succumbed to catastrophic accidents. The first, known as Galileo, collided with a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion near Moffett Field, CA, in April 1973, killing 11 NASA personnel. Its replacement, Galileo II, crashed on takeoff at March Air Force Base in July 1985. While there were no fatalities in the second accident, the ensuing fire consumed the aircraft and its instruments. The loss of Galileo II left a gaping hole in NASA’s ability to conduct essential scientific and engineering research.

In January 1986, after months of bureaucratic scrambling, NASA finalized the purchase of former commercial airliner (DC-8-72) for $24 million, which included costs to modify the aircraft to carry a science payload and crew. The modified DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory – shown in Photo 2 – arrived at NASA’s Ames Research Center during the Summer of 1987.

Overview Presentations on Airborne Science

Jack Kaye [NASA Headquarters—Associate Director for Research of the Earth Science Division] gave the meeting’s opening remarks, where he placed the DC-8’s activities in a larger perspective. He noted that one of the features that makes airborne science so unique at NASA is the combination of platforms, sensors, systems, people, and opportunities. The DC-8 was able to carry a large number of people as well as instruments to carry out long-range operations under diverse conditions.

“[The DC-8 offered] a really versatile, flexible platform that’s allowed for lots of science,” said Kaye.

Later in the meeting, Karen St. Germain [NASA Headquarters—Director of the Earth Science Division] built upon Kaye’s comments. She noted that while NASA’s satellite missions receive most of the public’s attention, airborne science is an essential part of the NASA mission.

“This is the grassroots of science,” she stressed. “It’s where a lot of the great ideas are born. It’s where a lot of the fledgling sensor technologies are demonstrated.”

First Flight for the DC-8

NASA routinely conducts field campaigns – where ground observations are timed and coordinated with aircraft flights (often at more than one altitude) and with satellite overpasses to gain a comprehensive (multilayered, multiscale) picture of the atmosphere over a certain area. A more detailed account of two NASA field campaigns from the 1980s and 1990s, and their follow-up missions, is available in an archived article: see “Reflections on FIFE and BOREAS: Historical Perspective and Meeting Summary” [The Earth Observer, January–February 2017, 29:1, 6–23]. The article illustrates scaled observations as they were conducted during FIFE and BOREAS.

Researchers first used the DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory on a high-profile interagency field campaign – Antarctic Airborne Ozone Expedition (AAOE), the first airborne experiment to study the chemistry and dynamics of the Antarctic ozone hole. The scientific data collected during AAOE produced unequivocable evidence that human-made chemicals were involved in the destruction of ozone over the Antarctic. This data served as a major impetus toward the enactment of amendments to the Montreal Protocol, which banned the manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons.

Estelle Condon [NASA’s Ames Research Center (ARC), emeritus] was a program manager for AAOE. During the meeting, she shared her memories of the hectic days leading up to the DC-8’s first mission.

“There was an enormous task in front of [the aircraft team] – just a huge task – to get all the relay racks, all the wiring, all the ports for the windows designed and built so that when the scientists finally came, all that instrumentation could actually be put on the aircraft,” said Condon. She added that the ARC staff worked day and night and every weekend to make the plane ready.

“It’s a miracle that they were able to put everything together and get it to the tip of South America in time for the mission,” she said.

Other Noteworthy Field Campaigns Involving the DC-8

The DC-8 would go on to be used in many other field campaigns throughout its 37-year history

and was central to several of NASA’s research disciplines. For example, Michael Kurylo [NASA Headquarters—Atmospheric Composition Program Scientist] was the manager of NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Program, where he developed, promoted, and implemented an extramural research program in stratospheric and upper tropospheric composition and directed its advanced planning at a national and international level. Kurylo summarized the DC-8’s many flights to study stratospheric chemistry beyond the AAOE missions.

Kurylo also discussed the DC-8’s role in tropospheric chemistry investigations, especially through the many field campaigns that were conducted as part of the Global Troposphere Experiment (GTE). He also touched on the culture of NASA airborne science and the dynamic that existed between scientists and those who operated and maintained the aircraft.  “The scientists were always referred to [by NASA pilots and ground crew] as ‘coneheads’…. Too much college, not enough high school,” Kurylo explained. But he and his colleagues have such fond memories of their time spent working together onboard the DC-8. 

James Crawford [NASA’s Langley Research Center], a project scientist for many of the GTE campaigns, explained that from 1983–2001 16 GTE aircraft-based missions, each with its own name and location, took place. Each mission collected a rich set of data records of atmospheric observations and on many occasions the data were used as baselines for subsequent campaigns. The DC-8 was one of several NASA aircraft involved, the others being the Corvair-990, Electra, and P-3B.

Joshua Schwarz [NOAA’s Chemical Science Laboratory] discussed the airplane’s role in global atmospheric monitoring.  He recalled thinking, after his first experience with the DC-8 that this flying airborne laboratory, “…was going to make things possible that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.”

Other workshop participants went on to describe how – for nearly four decades – investigators used data collected by instruments on the DC-8 to conduct research and write papers on important scientific and engineering topics.

The People Behind the Aircraft: The DC-8 Community

The DC-8 was a large and durable aircraft capable of long-range flights, which made it ideal for conducting scientific research. Around these research efforts a strong community emerged. Over three decades, the DC-8 accommodated many investigators from NASA, interagency offices, U.S. universities, and international organizations on extended global missions. Agency officials also moved the DC-8 base of operations several times between 1986 and 2024, thereby demanding tremendous cross-center cooperation.

“Looking around the room, it’s clear that what brought us together [for the workshop] is more than just an aircraft,” said Nickelle Reid [NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center]. “It’s been a shared commitment, decades of passion and dedication from scientists, yes, but also mechanics, technicians, integration engineers, project managers, mission planners, operations engineers, flight engineers, mission directors, mission managers, logistics technicians and, of course, pilots. This village of people has been the beating heart of the DC-8 program.”

This DC-8 community was well represented at this workshop and played a key role in its success.

The DC-8 as a Means of International Engagement

The DC-8 community expanded beyond the U.S., opening unique opportunities for international engagement. The campaigns of the DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory routinely involved foreign students, institutions, and governments. For example, the Korea–U.S. Air Quality (KORUS-AQ) campaign, an international cooperative air quality field study in Korea, took place in 2016. For more information about this campaign, see the archived Earth Observer article, “Flying in the ‘Gap’ Between Earth and Space: NASA’s Airborne Science Program” [The Earth Observer, September–October 2022, 32:5, 4–14].

Yunling Lou [NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory] spoke to the workshop audience about the value of international collaboration.

“I think [international collaboration] really helped – not just doing the collaboration [to accomplish a specific mission] but doing the training, the capacity building in these countries to build the community of global scientists and engineers,” said Lou.

Trina Dryal [LaRC—Deputy Director] continued that the DC-8 and NASA’s other airborne assets are more than just science laboratories.

“[They] are opportunities for science, diplomacy, international collaboration, cross learning, educational inspiration, and goodwill,” said Dryal – see Photo 3.

Student Investigations on the DC-8

Closer to home, the flying scientific laboratory affected the lives of many U.S. students and early career professionals. NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP), is an eight-week summer internship for rising-senior undergraduates that takes place annually on the East and West coasts of the U.S. – see Photo 4. During the program, students gain hands-on experience conducting all aspects of a scientific campaign. They conduct field research, analyze the data, and gain access to one or more of NASA’s ASP flying science laboratories.  *** EITHER FILL (from JACK) OR DELETE this sentence: Since 2009, this program alone has provided hands on experience in conducting NASA Earth science research to XXXX students. ***

Berry Lefer [NASA Headquarters—Tropospheric Composition Program Manager] pointed out that SARP helped to integrate American students into DC-8 scientific missions.

“I want to make sure the NASA historians understand that the DC-8 is the premier flying laboratory on the planet, bar none,” said Lefer. “You’ve seen over the whole three-decade life of the DC-8 that education and outreach, student involvement has been a hallmark of the DC-8 [program].”

Yaitza Luna-Cruz [NASA Headquarters—Program Executive] was one among several SARP alumni who delivered testimony on the impact of the SARP program at the workshop.

“SARP unleashed my potential in ways that I cannot even describe,” said Luna-Cruz. “You never know what a single opportunity could do to shape the career of a student or early career researcher.

Luna-Cruz hopes these efforts continue with the coming of NASA’s new Boeing 777 airborne laboratory.

Final Flight and Retirement of the DC-8

The DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory flew its last science flight during the international Airborne and Satellite Investigation of Asian Air Quality mission (ASIA-AQ) in April 2024. Since its final flight, the aircraft has been retired to Idaho State University (ISU). Today, students in ISU’s aircraft maintenance program work on the airplane to develop real-world technical skills – continuing the DC-8’s long history as an educational platform. According to Gerald Anhorn [ISU—Dean of College of Technology], ISU students have a unique opportunity to gain experience working on a legendary research aircraft.

“Our students have that opportunity because of [NASA’s] donation” to the school, said Auborn.

Conclusion: Flying Toward the Future – From DC-8 to Boeing 777

While the DC-8 is retiring from active service, airborne observations continue to be a vital part of NASA’s mission. The agency recently acquired a Boeing 777and will modify it to support its ongoing airborne scientific research efforts. This new addition expands beyond the capacity of the DC-8 by allowing for even longer flights with larger payloads and more researchers to gather data. Several members of the Boeing 777 team from NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC) attended the workshop.

 “I mentioned I was in charge of the ‘replacement’ for the DC-8,” said Martin Nowicki [LaRC—Boeing 777 Lead]. “Over the last two days, here, it’s become pretty apparent that there’s no ‘replacing’ the DC-8. It’s carved out its own place in history. It’s just done so much.”

Nowicki looks forward to working with workshop participants to identify useful lessons of the past for future operators. He concluded that the Boeing 777 will carry the legacy of the DC-8 and continue with capturing the amazing science of ASP.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Jack Kaye [NASA HQ—Associate Director of Research for the Earth Science Division] for his helpful reviews of the article draft.  The first author also wishes to thank Lisa Frazier [NASA Headquarters—Strategic Events and Engagement Lead] for providing support and assistance throughout for the in-person workshop participants. and to the Earth Science Project Office team from NASA’s Ames Research Center, who performed essential conference tasks, such as website construction, audio-visual support, and food service management. This article is an enhanced version of the first author’s summary, which appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of News & Notes – the NASA History Office’s newsletter.

Bradley L. Coleman
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA History Office
bradley.l.coleman@nasa.gov

Alan B. Ward
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Global Science & Technology Inc.
alan.b.ward@nasa.gov

HELSINKI — A new group of 18 satellites entered orbit Tuesday for the Thousand Sails constellation with the first launch from a new commercial launch pad.

A Long March 8 rocket lifted off at 12:38 p.m. Eastern (1638 UTC) March 11 from launch pad 1 of the Hainan Commercial Launch Site near Wenchang, Hainan island. The kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant rocket illuminated clouds as it climbed into the night sky.

The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), which provided the rocket, announced launch success in a statement just under an hour after liftoff, confirming that 18 satellites for the Thousand Sails constellations had been inserted into their planned orbits.

The Thousand Sails constellation, also known as Qianfan or G60 Starlink, is a broadband satellite constellation spearheaded by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), also known as Spacesail. The project, which aims to deploy 14,000 satellites, seeks to compete in the global satellite internet market.

The launch was the first for Spacesail using the Long March 8. All four previous batch missions, totalling 72 satellites, used the Long March 6A rocket, launching from Taiyuan. These have been sent into near-polar orbits ranging in altitude from around 800 to 1,070 kilometers.

The satellites have caused concern among astronomers due to their brightness. Spacesail previously stated it aims to have 648 satellites in orbit by the end of 2025.

Spacesail has garnered substantial support, securing approximately $943 million in funding in early 2024, with heavy Shanghai municipal government backing. Genesat, a satellite manufacturing subsidiary of Spacesail, raised $137 million in funding in late December. 

Spacesail has received unprecedented financial and regulatory backing from the Shanghai government, Joao Falcao Serra, Research Fellow at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), told SpaceNews, amounting to more than all publicly disclosed Chinese Satcom funding to date. The development is part of a wider competition among Chinese local governments to attract players and promote the commercial space sector.

“The swift action by the provincial government highlights the strategic importance of securing such industries for regional development and their need to compete internally to attract these new industries,” Serra said via email.

New commercial spaceport, Long March 8 plans

Hainan Commercial Launch Site is located near the coastal national Wenchang spaceport on the island province of Hainan in the South China Sea. It is the second launch from the facility, following the launch of the first Long March 12 rocket from launch pad 2 in November. 

Tuesday’s Long March 8 launch was the inaugural use of launch pad 1, a facility designed specifically for the rocket. The success paves the way for frequent launches of the rocket from the new pad, according to CALT.

“This successful mission signifies that the Long March 8 rocket now has a dedicated new launch site, laying the foundation for a high-frequency launch schedule this year. It also means that the Long March 8 has officially entered the market, offering customers fast, efficient, and high-quality launch services,” said Xiao Yun, the Long March 8 series chief commander.

Last month the first Long March 8A launched a second group of satellites for Guowang, a state-backed low Earth orbit megaconstellation, lifting off from the nearby national Wenchang spaceport.

Authorities are expanding the commercial spaceport with the ongoing construction of launch pads 3 and 4, with the aim of facilitating an increase in China’s launch capabilities and cadence. Commercial launch companies are aiming to conduct test flights of new medium-lift, liquid propellant rockets from the spaceport this year.

China launch plans for 2025

Tuesday’s mission was China’s 11th orbital launch of the year and follows the launch of the classified TJS-15 satellite from Xichang spaceport March 9.

China’s launch targets for the year remain unknown. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country’s state-owned main space contractor, typically releases a “blue book” in January or February annually, detailing the previous year’s achievements and the main missions and targets for the year ahead. It has yet to do so publicly so far in 2025. 

Last year CASC stated that China aimed to launch around 100 times, but ended with 68 orbital launch attempts, still a new national record. The country may once again aim for 100 or more launches in 2025, especially with new rockets and new launch facilities coming online.

Related

Ace directors Joe and Anthony Russo have already cemented their filmmaking legacy with four of perhaps the best MCU entries: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Captain America: Civil War,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” and “Avengers: Endgame.”

Now they’ve turned their considerable skills towards Simon Stålenhag’s dreamy retro-futuristic worldbuilding for Netflix’s “The Electric State” — a sci-fi fantasy adventure landing on Netflix on March 14, 2025 — and we’ve got the final launch trailer to share packed with an eccentric parade of roaming robots and surviving humans trying to navigate fractured life. Oh, and a robot version of Mr Peanut… for some reason.

Those who’ve never encountered Stålenhag’s original works have missed out on his remarkable digital art and designs featuring the littered rural landscapes of a discarded alternative past populated by colossal abandoned machines, derelict contraptions, and rusted remnants of decades-old wars. Fans might also recall Prime Video’s superb sci-fi anthology, “Tales From The Loop” in 2020, adapted from Stålenhag’s first art book from 2015 and later made into a tabletop RPG.

Adapted from the visionary Swedish artist’s 2018 graphic novel of the same name, “The Electric State” is the most expensive endeavor ever undertaken in the history of Netflix, made for a whopping $320 million! It’s fortified with the star power of Chris Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Jurassic World”) and Millie Bobby Brown (“Stranger Things”), and as you can see by the final trailer, this costly production is a chaotic, eye-popping project showcasing spectacular visual effects.

Though the space sector has had some challenges of late—with the 8th Starship launch and second Intuitive Machines lunar landing attempt having mixed success at best—it’s easy to forget Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, “Ghost Riders In the Sky”, and its landing on the Moon last week and has been successfully performing its scientific work with its various payloads.

One payload, the Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) payload, has a significant Canadian contribution from Markham Ontario’s Integrity Testing Laboratory Inc. (ITL). SpaceQ reached out to ITL president and CEO Jacob Kleiman about RAC, and he provided details their contribution. 

RAC and regolith

The RAC is focused on one key problem: regolith dust. While the moon and its regolith surface may seem rocky and static, it’s actually covered in a large amount of fine dust that can (and does) get disturbed and swirl up beneath, around, and above objects on the lunar surface. 

Worse yet, Kleiman said, the dust is “very sticky and aggressive”. Regolith dust tends to stick to everything; it’s highly electrically charged due to constant bombardment by solar and cosmic particles, and the lack of water or air to abrade the dust means that the particles are also extremely “spiky” on a microscopic level. Between those sticky, spiky particles and “other environmental factors, like vacuum, temperature extremes, solar radiation, [and] ultraviolet irradiation”, materials on the Moon can become damaged incredibly quickly.

Hence the need for RAC. As NASA’s site on RAC explained, the goal is to use the payload’s Moon-exposed wheels to “expose 15 sample materials – fabrics, paint coatings, optical systems, sensors, solar cells, and more – to the lunar environment to determine how tenaciously the lunar dust sticks to each one.” 

Kleiman elaborated slightly, saying that RAC “consist[s] of two cylindrical wheels, each with 15 sample surfaces”. one will be exposed during the entire mission, while the other is to “remain stowed until science operations begin on the lunar surface, post-landing.” 

The instruments, NASA said, will measure “accumulation rates during landing and subsequent routine lander operations”, in order to best understand which materials can either repel or shed the spiky sticky dust. 

ITL and dust repulsion

Two of those test material surfaces—one per wheel—will be from ITL. Based out of a 8.500 sq.ft. facility, ITL creates and tests a variety of materials related to space and spaceflight. They have a list of project collaborators that includes (among others) the Canadian Space Agency, who provided funding for this technology development, NASA, the European Space Agency, MDA Space, Canadensys, and L3Harris. For the purposes of this experiment, however, the focus is on their materials that reduce or eliminate charges on objects in space. 

This isn’t new ground for ITL. They already have two charge-dissipating processes called Carbosurf and Carbo+ that, Kleiman said, “eliminate charges accumulating on satellite antennas in GEO orbits and other hardware, without compromising their low RF (radio frequency) transmission properties”. Dealing with static-charge problems, much like the ones that help make lunar dust sticky, is a key focus for the company—making their anti-static materials a natural addition to the RAC testing wheels. 

ITL also hosts a series of international conferences on “protection of materials and structures from the Low Earth Orbit Space Environment”, Kleiman said, with the next scheduled for June 2026 in France. Kleiman said that the moon topic has also become “a natural shift in interest” in their conferences, and the lunar topic has become part of their call for papers.

ITL’s research into lunar dust adherence 

ITL has been studying the issue of lunar dust adherence in detail for years, with Kleiman collaborating with others to publish a 2023 scholarly article on the issue and on the RAC experiment. 

Their article is dense, revealing the extensive terrestrial testing that ITL has done in their facilities using simulant (simulated regolith) to determine which surfaces are most affected by regolith dust, and what methods are best used to either repel or remove the dust. 

They found that the adhesion “depend[s] on the surface morphology and roughness”, all of which “significantly influenced the dust accumulation and retention.”  In particular, ITL’s terrestrial research suggested that  retention levels increased as you went from glasses to polymer films to paints, and that “despite silicate inorganic paints being radiation and temperature resistant and highly efficient in space applications”, they may not be well suited for long-term lunar duty. They called the paint issue “a serious unsolved problem.”

That said, the paper also said that current passive approaches may not be enough in general. Their research showed that active approaches (like shaking, tapping, ultrasonic vibration or a blast of inert gas) are still often required to remove the regolith dust from current surfaces. Better passive protection may be necessary.

Testing a “diamond like coating” on Blue Ghost

With that in mind, ITL is using the RAC platform for testing a new solution. Kleiman told SpaceQ that they’re testing “a so-called diamond-like-coating (DLC) that is a hard, scratch- and wear-resistant, variable transparency thin coating with charge dissipative properties”, one deposited using ion beams. Their belief is that it will “provide protection from the very abrasive regolith and will prevent its accumulation on such surfaces.” 

While he couldn’t get into too much detail on the material beyond that, Kleiman told SpaceQ that the coating “represent a wide range of structures, properties of which can be changed by changing the deposition conditions and by doping them with different elements.”  this can include, he said, “adjust[ing] the work function (WF) of the DLC to match the WF of the regolith”, which “will also aid in the mitigation process”. 

In the exchange with SpaceQ, Kleiman said that “our preliminary results of exposure of materials, treated with this process, to regolith simulants had shown that, indeed, the simulant adhesion to the treated surface is reduced.” In the published article, however, Kleiman et al also advocated combining coatings like this with active measures, a combination described in the paper as “Multifunctional Dust Mitigation Technology (MDMT)”.  

Kleiman said that “we hope that our participation in the RAC Payload experiment will allow us to better understand the behavior of materials on the Moon, and to develop better dust mitigation technologies for their protection, leading to better materials and their protection in short- and long-term space missions.” 

According to Firefly’s Mission Updates, the RAC experiment is already complete, and now Blue Ghost is shutting its systems down to endure the hot lunar noon where temperatures can get up 250°F (121°C). ITL will soon, with luck, have their dust-repelling answers.

Related

The Discovery

A possible “super-Earth” orbits a relatively close, Sun-like star, and could be a habitable world – but one of extreme temperature swings, from scorching heat to deep freeze.

Key Facts

The newly confirmed planet is the outermost of three detected so far around a star called HD 20794, just 20 light-years from Earth. Its 647-day orbit is comparable to Mars in our solar system. But this planet’s orbit is highly eccentric, stretched into an oval shape. That brings the planet close enough to the star to experience runaway heating for part of its year, then carries it far enough away to freeze any potential water on its surface. The planet has been bouncing between these extremes roughly every 300 days – perhaps for billions of years.

Details

The planet spends a good chunk of its year in the “habitable zone” around its star, the orbital distance that would allow liquid water to form on the surface under the right atmospheric conditions. But because of its eccentric orbit, it moves to a distance interior to the inner edge of the habitable zone when closest to the star, and outside the outer edge when farthest away. At its closest, the planet’s distance from the star is comparable to Venus’s distance from the Sun; at its farthest point, it is nearly twice the distance from Earth to the Sun. The planet is possibly rocky, like Earth, but could be a heftier version – about six times as massive as our home planet.

Star HD 20794 and its posse of possible planets have been extensively studied, but the international team of astronomers that confirmed the outer planet, led by Nicola Nari of Light Bridges S.L. and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, examined more than 20 years worth of data to pin down all three planets’ orbits and likely masses.

The scientists relied on data from two ground-based, precision instruments: HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher in La Silla, Chile, and ESPRESSO, the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations in Paranal, Chile. Both instruments, connected to powerful telescopes, measure tiny shifts in the light spectrum of stars, caused by the gravity of planets tugging the star back and forth as they orbit.

But such tiny shifts in the star’s spectrum also can be caused by imposters – spots, flares, or other activity on the star’s surface, carried along as the star rotates and masquerading as orbiting planets. The science team spent years painstakingly analyzing the spectrum shifts, or “radial velocity” data, for any sign of background noise or even jitters from the instruments themselves. They confirmed the reputation of HD 20794 as a fairly quiet star, not prone to outbursts that might be confused for signs of orbiting planets.

Fun Facts

The elliptically orbiting super-Earth appears to be an ideal target for future space-based telescopes designed to search for habitable worlds, seeking possible signs of life. High on the list is NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will someday examine the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars. When launched in the decades ahead, the observatory would spread the light from such planets into a spectrum to determine which gases are present – including those that might reveal some form of life. The relative closeness of HD 20974, only 20 light-years away, its brightness, and its low level of surface activity – not to mention the third planet’s wild temperature swings – could make this system a prime candidate for scrutiny by HWO.

The Discoverers

The international science team that confirmed the eccentric super-Earth was led by researcher Nicola Nari of the Light Bridges S.L. and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and included Dr. Michael Cretignier of the University of Oxford, who first picked up the potential planet’s signal in 2022. Their paper, “Revisiting the multi-planet system of the nearby star HD 20794,” was published online by the journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, in January 2025.

WASHINGTON – Difficulty acquiring propulsion systems, radiation-hardened components and laser communications systems continue to vex satellite manufacturers.

“Supply chains are critical to both speed and scale for proliferated architectures,” David Gauthier, chief strategy officer for consulting firm GXO Inc., said March 10 at the Satellite 2025 conference. “Reliable supply is fundamental for a healthy and vibrant industrial base that enables government space missions.”

To cope with ongoing supply-chain bottlenecks, space radar imaging company Capella Space maintains an inventory.

“Propulsion systems, antennas, reaction wheels, every component of the satellite that you can imagine, solar panels and such, we have to do a continuous ordering cycle,” said Capella CEO Frank Backes.

Mitigating supply chain risks by maintaining extensive inventory requires capital. It can also be risky for a company like Capella that revises satellite designs about every 18 months.

“We carry three, four or five satellites worth of inventory on a continuous basis now,” Backes said. “The challenge with that is, as soon as you bring the inventory in house, the clock is ticking on whether or not it is the right inventory for the future satellite that you’re trying to build.”

Competition for Components

For Maxar Intelligence, many technologies needed for its Earth-imaging satellites are in demand.

Space-hardened electronics like focal-plane arrays, artificial-intelligence processors and inertial navigation systems “are big drivers in what we can produce and when we can produce it,” said Matt Jenkins Maxar Intelligence chief space systems officer. “We’re currently faced with a situation where there’s a lot of competition out there for some of these components.”

In terms of solutions, “there are no silver bullets,” Jenkins said.

To tackle the problem will require addressing shortages of component as well as the raw materials.

“The government could establish strategic reserves of key critical materials like helium, xenon and other items for propulsion systems,” Jenkins said.

Or, because government programs often move slowly, “maybe bringing some commercial partnership to bear to address these problems would be a more appropriate way to do things,” Jenkins said. “Bring a little speed and efficiency, get us out of the antiquated 1964 manned mission to the moon phase into something a little bit more AI-facing and technologically advanced.”

Loan Guarantees

Two initiatives aimed at alleviating supply chain woes come from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC). Through a partnership with the Small Business Administration, OSC offers debentures, a form of debt, for funds that invest in companies that manufacture early-stage critical technologies.

“Once these funds are licensed, it unlocks access to debt and gives companies access to the Department of Defense’s leading experts in various technologies,” said Reza Nikfarjam, OSC credit program deputy director.

A 2024 defense spending bill also authorized OSC to provide loan-guarantees. Loans with a total value of approximately $1 billion will support supply chains for 31 critical technologies including spacecraft, space launch, space-enabled services, additive manufacturing, microelectronics and solar panels.

Launch Constraints

Supply chain bottlenecks affect the launch market because companies cannot commit to flying on SpaceX rideshares unless they are confident their satellites will be completed in time.

“The longer we can plan for the launch in advance, the lower the cost for that launch becomes,” Backes said. “If we have a short-term launch turnaround, we would have to go to a much more expensive launch provider.”

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) seeks to alleviate one launch-related constraint: lack of infrastructure.  

Through partnerships with allies including Australia and New Zealand, DIU officials are identifying launch sites for future projects, said U.S. Army Major Major, Robert Perez-Alemany, DIU space portfolio program manager. “DIU is trying to find strong partnerships with these allies to ensure that we have unlimited supply [of sites] to go into space.”

Related

Intuitive Machines’ Athena mission is already over, but silver linings have emerged from the short-lived lunar south pole landing effort.

Athena beamed back images from the surface of the moon despite landing sideways on March 6. This unhelpful orientation meant, however, that the lander could not generate power due to the position of its solar arrays and saw the mission end just a day after touchdown.

Further updates have revealed that another private spacecraft aboard the lander, the tiny Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover, was able to return useful data before the lack of power ended the mission.

“Our Lunar Voyage 1 MAPP rover successfully made it to the moon, collected data from the lunar surface and in transit, and proved MAPP was ready to drive,” U.S. space exploration company Lunar Outpost announced in a statement.