SpaceWatch Global
• Joshua Faleti
The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-2 is encapsulated inside an Ariane 6 fairing at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana for a planned Aug. 27 launch. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has reached SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A ahead of its targeted Aug. 30 launch from Florida.
NASA
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Katalyst Space has dropped plans to reboost a NASA satellite but is continuing to operate its Swift spacecraft, using the mission to build experience for future on-orbit satellite servicing missions. The effort provides operational experience even without completing the originally planned reboost objective.
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NASA astronaut Anil Menon and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot completed a follow-up spacewalk on Aug. 25, successfully installing a replacement Space-to-Ground Antenna that had failed aboard the International Space Station. The operation followed their earlier removal of the faulty unit and was intended to restore communications capability.
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The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-2 is encapsulated inside an Ariane 6 fairing at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana for a planned Aug. 27 launch. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has reached SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A ahead of its targeted Aug. 30 launch from Florida.
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Expedition 75 officially began after Soyuz MS-28 departed the International Space Station, with the crew focused on upgrading the station’s solar arrays and communications antennas. NASA has also scheduled additional spacewalks for maintenance, including live coverage of the work outside the orbiting laboratory.
The U.S. Justice Department seized domains tied to QScan and QTRouter, platforms authorities allege were used in a Chinese state-sponsored hacking campaign. Court documents and FBI disclosures say the operation reached NASA, the DOJ, Federal Reserve and networks operated by defense contractors and other critical-infrastructure providers.
Spire Global will develop and flight-qualify a satellite carrying a hyperspectral microwave sounder under a two-year, $28 million NOAA contract, targeting operational capability by 2030. Separately, LeoLabs won a $20.7 million Space Force contract to modify and demonstrate its transportable Scout radar for a defense mission.
NASA will omit cubesat secondary payloads from Artemis 3 after carrying small satellites on the first two Space Launch System missions. The change reduces the mission’s rideshare activity and underscores the evolving payload priorities for the next Artemis flight to the Moon.
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NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at SpaceX’s hangar at Launch Complex 39A ahead of its scheduled Aug. 30 launch. The observatory is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets and produce a statistical census of planetary systems, complementing capabilities unavailable from Hubble and JWST.
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