European Spaceflight
• Andrew Parsonson
ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot has completed a third evaluation of the EuroSuit intravehicular activity spacesuit prototype aboard the International Space Station. The repeated on-orbit testing advances Europe’s assessment of a domestically developed suit for crew operations and helps validate its design in the space-station environment.
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SpaceX says its Crew Dragon fleet has a “significant” amount of life remaining, but the company has not committed to how long the spacecraft will stay in service. The uncertainty puts the future of a central platform in commercial human spaceflight under renewed scrutiny.
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ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot has completed a third evaluation of the EuroSuit intravehicular activity spacesuit prototype aboard the International Space Station. The repeated on-orbit testing advances Europe’s assessment of a domestically developed suit for crew operations and helps validate its design in the space-station environment.
Hisdesat selected Airbus and Thales Alenia Space to build SpainSat NG-III, while Eutelsat and Poland advanced cooperation on Europe’s IRIS² secure communications program. Separately, SES agreed to support Starlab’s commercial space station and provide multi-orbit connectivity across LATAM Airlines’ Airbus and Embraer fleet.
Outlier Space has completed a $7.35 million pre-seed financing round to develop a commercial capsule for microgravity research and payload return. The funding supports the company’s effort to build infrastructure for conducting experiments in space and bringing them back to Earth.
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SpaceX is positioning its Starfall capsule to address microgravity access and point-to-point cargo delivery while the company considers life after Falcon 9. Separately, Boeing says redesign work on CST-100 Starliner is progressing ahead of a potential 2026 cargo mission to the International Space Station.
NASA continues to assess flight opportunities for Starliner-1 as work with Boeing on the CST-100 vehicle advances. A NASA official characterized progress as “good” but declined to provide a target launch date, leaving the timing of the program’s next uncrewed mission unresolved.
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An examination of the Columbia space shuttle disaster argues that the failures behind the tragedy were not unique to a single mission. The same weaknesses can persist across aerospace operations, from maintenance hangars to flight decks, making organizational discipline and safety oversight as critical as technical performance.
NASA says the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The observatory will travel nearly 1 million miles from Earth to reach the same orbital “sweet spot” as the James Webb Space Telescope, enabling wide-field science aimed at discoveries currently impossible from existing assets.
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