Space, in brief

The German satellite maker OHB said on 31 August it will build 18 satellites for IRIS2, the European Union's own satellite internet system. It values the deal at nearly 1 billion euros, or about $1.16 billion. [1][2]

The order came from SES, the operator responsible for the middle layer of IRIS2. SES will also design and build the radio equipment, the user terminals and the control rooms that governments will use. [1]

Nobody has said what those 18 satellites will actually carry. What OHB did publish is their weight, 2.6 tonnes each, and their power, up to 15 kilowatts. [1]

IRIS2 exists because European officials have pressed for a satellite communications system of their own, to rely less on foreign ones such as SpaceX's Starlink. [1]

The whole system got bigger on 7 August. A review added 66 more satellites in low orbit and pushed the total cost up by almost half, to 15.6 billion euros. [1]

This is the first contract of any kind for the system since that review. The satellites are due to enter service in 2030. [1]

SES leads the middle layer because it already runs one of its own. That commercial medium-orbit broadband system is called O3b. [1]

The current O3b mPower satellites are built by Boeing, an American company. In March, SES ordered its next medium-orbit system of 28 satellites from K2 Space, another American company. [1]

Three satellite operators are building IRIS2 together, in a group called SpaceRISE: SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat. [1]

SpaceRISE is putting in 4 billion euros of the 15.6 billion. The rest comes from the European Commission, the European Space Agency and national governments. [1]

Europe is buying its own way into space in more than one place at once. On 27 August the European Space Agency signed its first three rocket contracts, worth 543.6 million euros, with Isar Aerospace, PLD Space and Rocket Factory Augsburg. [3]

None of those three rockets has ever reached orbit, and none of the IRIS2 satellites has been built. Both bills are being paid years before anything works. [1][3]

Why it matters. Watch who is given the low-orbit satellite contracts. That is the part of IRIS2 that grew by 66 satellites in August, and where the question of who may build Europe's own system gets answered in public. [1]

Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest US weapons makers, gave the Seattle-area company Gravitics a subcontract on 26 May to build three Orbital Carriers. These are large spacecraft meant to hold five or six smaller ones in orbit and release them when needed. A securities filing puts the value at $249,900. [4]

Why it matters. Gravitics is going public by merging into a listed shell company and wants to raise $125 million, and this order is the first named work behind that pitch. [4]

SpaceX held its Super Heavy booster down on the pad in south Texas on 28 August and ran all 33 of its engines for their full length. The upper stage had already fired its six engines the week before. [5]

Why it matters. It clears the way for Flight 14, expected in mid-September, which would be Starship's first try at reaching orbit after thirteen flights that did not. [5]

The new US telescope let go of its rocket at 7:57am US eastern time on 30 August and began a three-month coast out to L2, a quiet point beyond Earth's night side. Its solar panels and sunshade opened an hour and 23 minutes after launch. [6][7]

Why it matters. The antenna and the cover over its main mirror come next, and its systems are being switched on, adjusted and calibrated all the way out. [7]

Turkiye's industry and technology minister, Mehmet Fatih Kacir, signed the Artemis Accords at the US space agency's headquarters on 31 August. The Accords are a short set of principles for how countries behave while exploring the Moon. [8]

Why it matters. The US space agency has invited every signatory to contribute hardware, instruments or small satellites to its planned Moon base. [8]

Rocket Lab was set to launch an Electron rocket from New Zealand on 31 August carrying one Strix satellite for Synspective, a Tokyo company. Strix satellites use radar, so they work through cloud, day or night. Ten are already in orbit. [9]

Why it matters. Synspective says the fleet can confirm changes on the ground during earthquakes and floods at night, when an ordinary camera in orbit sees nothing. [9]

Astronomers led from the University of Warwick in England used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to watch a black hole about ten times the Sun's mass pull gas off a companion star. Much of that gas was thrown back out as winds and jets, and the eruption carried on after the feeding stopped. [10]

Why it matters. It suggests a large share of what falls toward a black hole never reaches it, which changes how pairs of stars are thought to end up. [10]

AeroVironment said on 27 August it has a contract from the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will help design and build three helicopters for SkyFall, a Mars mission due to launch in late 2028. They carry radar that looks 12 to 60 centimetres below the surface for ice. [12]

Why it matters. They ride on a mission testing nuclear-electric propulsion, so the helicopters travel as passengers on an engine experiment. [12]

Diffraqtion, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, raised $10 million from investors including Lockheed Martin's venture arm and Sumitomo's. It is trying to get past the diffraction limit - the rule that how much detail a camera can see is set by the width of its lens and the colour of the light. [13]

Why it matters. Its simulations suggest features 20 times smaller than a normal camera sees. So far the method has been tested in a laboratory, with a small US defence contract to try it on ground telescopes. [13]

CesiumAstro of Austin, Texas bought 1Aardvark of Manassas, Virginia on 25 August, its third purchase in under a year, and said a new funding round was already oversubscribed. 1Aardvark writes mission software for US missile defence and tracking programmes. [14][15]

Why it matters. CesiumAstro is turning from a parts supplier into a fleet operator, with its first satellite due in October and 737 planned. [14]

Spire Global won a $28 million US government contract to build and flight-qualify a satellite carrying a hyperspectral microwave sounder. It follows a small test version the company launched in January. [16]

Why it matters. Microwave sounders read temperature and moisture straight through cloud; the bet here is doing it from a commercial satellite instead of a large government one, in service no later than 2030. [16]

Northrop Grumman satellites are close to launch for the first working layer of the US military's data network in low orbit, the US Space Development Agency's director said on 24 August. He said York Space Systems' second batch performed much better than its first, and its team worked two to three times faster. [17]

Why it matters. The agency is now being asked to operate fleets rather than demonstrate them, and says building at that scale is the hard part. [17]

Jonny Kim left the US space agency on 27 August after nine years and one long stay on the International Space Station. He is a doctor with a Harvard medical degree, a naval aviator and a former Navy SEAL who served in more than 100 combat operations. [11]

Why it matters. He is going back to full-time military service rather than to another job in spaceflight. [11]

The European Space Agency called media briefings for 4 September on FLEX and Copernicus Sentinel-3C. FLEX carries an instrument that detects the faint glow plants give off while they use sunlight, a signal that changes with plant health. [18]

Why it matters. Sentinel-3C measures ocean height, surface temperature and sea-ice thickness for the European Union's Copernicus programme, which supports weather forecasting. [18]