Cosmic Nxws

With the advent of the second Trump Administration, head of SpaceX Elon Musk has been elevated to a senior position in the U.S. government, bringing certainty to SpaceX's greater grip over American space efforts. Meanwhile, President Trump is mulling over changes to NASA's focuses and agreements moving forward. During his inauguration speech two months ago, Trump outlined that he wants boots on Mars, a goal long sought by Musk, possibly jeopardizing the existing Artemis program.

Welcome back to Weekly Dose of Space! This week saw six launches taking place, with many satellites being added to small constellations. News from the week saw Starliner's crew finally return, another spacewalk onboard China's Tiangong Space Station, and imminent cuts at NASA. As always, we'll also look ahead to what the worldwide launch schedule might look like next week.

Recently, the European Space Agency (ESA) released its 'Strategy 2040' document, outlining key goals in five major areas that the agency will pursue over the next fifteen years. The document is a follow-up to 'Agenda 2025', released March 2021. ESA and its Director General, Josef Aschbacher, hope that 'Strategy 2040' will be ‘a living document’ to that continues to adapt to the needs of the space agency.

Late last night, March 18th, a SpaceX Crew Dragon splashed down off the coast of Florida, ending the Crew-9 mission. Crew-9 launched almost six months ago bringing just two astronauts to the International Space Station. The two astronauts launched back in September, NASA's Nick Hague and Roscosmos' Aleksandr Gorbunov, with two additional crew members bumped from the mission to allow Starliner's astronauts to have a safe ride back to Earth.

German launch company Isar Aerospace announced today, March 17th, that it has received regulatory approval from the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority to launch its Spectrum launch vehicle. With regulatory approval, the company is now preparing for the debut launch of Spectrum possibly as Early as Thursday, March 20th. No payloads will be onboard Spectrum for the debut mission as the company is aiming to test as much of the rocket as possible during flight.

Welcome back to Weekly Dose of Space! This week saw nine launches occurring, with five taking place within fourteen hours. Meanwhile, News during the week had China's Mars sample return mission opening up to international partners and a solar eclipse seen from the Moon! As always, we'll also look ahead to what the worldwide launch schedule might look like next week.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission has lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 23:03 pm Universal Coordinated Time with Crew Dragon 'Endurance' atop of a Falcon 9 rocket. Onboard Crew Dragon 'Endurance' are four astronauts, NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA's Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos' Kirill Peskov. At present, the Crew-10 mission is expected to dock to the International Space Station's Harmony module around twenty-eight hours after liftoff.

In August, Tim Ellis co-founder and then CEO of Relativity Space posted this tweet hinting at Terran R hardware. The following day, Relativity Space unveiled the hardware Tim was referring to, two giant fairings. However, some quickly noticed that these fairings were made by Beyond Gravity and weren't even for Terran R but rather for Ariane 6. While Beyond Gravity is going to make Terran R's fairings, the lack of communication and substance left people underwhelmed or upset.

Welcome back to Weekly Dose of Space! This week saw four launches, a small drop from the last two weeks. News during the week had the X-37B returning to Earth and various spacecraft running into trouble in deep space. As always, we'll also look ahead to what the worldwide launch schedule might look like next week. Launches This Week A Soyuz 2.1b lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome carrying a Glonass-K2 satellite to medium Earth orbit.

Happy International Women's Day 2025 to all of our female-identifying readers! According to the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of progress it will take until 2158 to reach full gender parity. As such, IWD2025's theme is: "Focusing on the need to Accelerate Action emphasizes the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality.