Eric Berger has published his thoughts on the matter.

NASA announced more delays Thursday in sending astronauts back to the moon more than 50 years after Apollo.

Administrator Bill Nelson said the next mission in the Artemis program -- flying four astronauts around the moon and back – is now targeted for April 2026. It had been on the books for September 2025, after slipping from this year.

T-30 minutes until the return-to-flight launch of Vega-C, following the upper stage failure in 2022.

Launch thread is posted over at esa@feddit.nl: https://feddit.nl/post/24926770

Some neat clips of the FLEX rover being driven and the hardware prototypes they have. The video seems to mostly serve as a hiring call though.

No word about their plans, but a video on the steps taken to ruggedise a cube sat for 10k·g acceleration. Seems like they're still doing something.

A Chinese commercial launch firm launched its first upgraded Kuaizhou-1A rocket late Tuesday, adding to the country’s growing light-lift launch options.

The enhanced Kuaizhou-1A rocket lifted off at 11:46 p.m. Eastern, Dec. 3 (0546 UTC, Dec. 4) from Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China. The solid rocket climbed rapidly into blue skies above the spaceport. Commercial space launch firm Expace announced launch success once it inserted its single satellite payload into its preset orbit.

The payload was announced to be Haishao-1, also referred to as CAS Satellite-8. It is described as a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing satellite. Haishao-1 can perform on-board imaging and extract marine dynamic information, offering broad application prospects.

The upgraded Kuaizhou-1A appears to have extended first and second stages, and a payload fairing extended from 1.4 to 1.8 meters. Its payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) is increased from 300 kilograms to 450 kg. Its sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) capacity to 700 km altitude is increased from 200 kg to over 300 kg.

SpaceNews article

NextSpaceflight

A Long March 3B rocket lifted off at 12:56 a.m. Eastern (0556 UTC) Dec. 3 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success, revealing the previously undisclosed payload to be communication technology experiment Satellite-13, or Tongxin Jishu Shiyan-13 (TJS-13). The satellite is expected to be in geosynchronous transfer orbit.

The TJS-13 satellite will be used for satellite communication, radio and television, data transmission and other services, and will also carry out related technology tests, according to Chinese state media. However, the lack of specific details surrounding the TJS-13 satellite, consistent with earlier TJS missions, suggests potential dual-use or military-related capabilities

The launch was, notably, the 100th of the workhorse Long March 3B. The rocket has performed 96 successful launches with two failures and two partial failures. The first launch, in February 1996 carrying Intelsat 708, infamously saw the rocket veer off course shortly after clearing the tower and impacting a nearby village.

SpaceNews article

NextSpaceflight page

Mission info

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-12-05, 10:34 | |

|

| | Scheduled for (local) | 2024-12-05, 16:04 (IST) | | Launch site | First Launch Pad, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India | | Launch Vehicle | PSLV-XL | | Payloads | PROBA-3 | | Payload mass | 550.0 kg | | Mission success criteria | Successful delivery of payloads to desired orbit |

Webcasts

| Stream | Link | |

|

| | ISRO | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJXXLLw0PBI | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvXH4LkC5Xo | Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceflightNowVideo/streams | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/@TheLaunchPad/streams | The Space Devs |

Stats

Sourced from NextSpaceflight:

☑️ 2nd SLV mission this year, 61st overall

☑️ 4th ISRO mission this year, 95th overall

Mission details

• ISRO mission page
• SpaceflightNow article
• ESA page
• NextSpaceflight mission page

PROBA-3 will be composed of two independent, three-axis stabilized spacecraft flying 150 meters from one another with the ability to accurately control the attitude and separation of the two craft. It will be maintained for 6 hours, creating ″artificial solar eclipse″ for the satellite below. The spacecraft pair will fly a highly elliptical orbit divided between periods of accurate formation flying around apogee, when payload operations will be possible, and periods of free flight. The length of the formation control period will be a trade-off involving the increasing amount of fuel needed to maintain the orbits in formation when away from apogee.

China launched its first Long March 12 rocket Saturday, marking an advance in its crewed moon plans and the debut of a new spaceport that will boost the country’s access to space.

The two-stage, 62-meter-tall Long March 12 lifted off at 9:25 a.m. Eastern (1425 UTC) Nov. 30 from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site. The rocket climbed into the night sky above the coastal spaceport, with amateur live streams from the area capturing the event.

The kerosene-fueled Long March 12 is China’s first 3.8-meter-diameter launch vehicle. It can carry a payload of 12,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit (LEO), and 6,000 kg to sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), according to SAST. The new rocket could play a role in the construction of China’s planned LEO megaconstellations.

The launch was the first flight use of the YF-100K engine, with the Long March 12 using four YF-100K engines on its first stage. The YF-100K is an uprated version of the YF-100 kerosene-liquid oxygen engines that power China’s new-generation liquid propellant rockets. These newer rockets include the Long March 5, 6, 7 and 8.

The YF-100K notably will power the first stages of the Long March 10 rocket. That launcher is intended to send China’s astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade. A reusable version of the engine, the YF-100N, is also being developed.

NextSpaceflight page: https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/7576

Demo flight of the Long March 12 launch vehicle.

2 satellites are on board:

• Satellite Internet Technology Demonstration Satellite
• JSW-03

Webcast from International Rocket Launches, courtesy of CSFTV联盟offical/SpaceLens/空天逐梦: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_WM0g-24JA

A Soyuz-2 rocket lifted off from Vostochny Cosmodrome on Nov. 30, 2023, carrying the Kondor FKA No. 2 radar satellite. It was the fifth mission to orbit an all-weather, day-and-night imaging spacecraft from the Kondor family, counting one previous FKA variant, one classified military version, known as Neitron, and two original Kondors.

NextSpaceflight page: https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/5138

The Kondor-FKA is a small civilian radar Earth observation satellite designed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya as a civilian counterpart to the Kondor-E satellite.

The Kondor satellite features a S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can conduct both continous swath surweys or detailed spot surveys. The swath width is 10 km. Ground resolution is 1-2 m in spotlight mode, 1-3 m in stripmap mode and 5-30 m in ScanSAR mode.

Roscosmos webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zttqkhUYVNs