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Hey everyone. A quiet day in the world of spaceflight today - for everyone but Rocket Factory Augsburg, whose first stage flight article was destroyed during a static fire test in Scotland on Monday. In other news, we prepare for the excitement of the Polaris Dawn mission, which launches next Monday! Godspeed and good wishes to Jared, Scott, Sarah, and Anna for their historic journey.

Headlines:

• ESA Juice’s flyby of Earth and Moon in pictures

• NASA announces 2025 Human Lander Student Challenge

• How NASA uses archaeology to understand how astronauts organise the ISS

Launch Tracker:

Noteworthy: GEST Co. Ltd., also known as Galactic Energy Space Technology Company, was the second private company in China to successfully launch a rocket to orbit. Its Ceres 1 vehicle, flying since 2020, can deliver 400kg to LEO. Ceres 1S is the sea-launched variant, flying for the 15th time overall on Aug. 26.

Eurofocus

Fiery exit

Rocket Factory Augsburg’s first flight article is no more.

OHB Space, an aerospace manufacturing company and major shareholder in RFA, announced just last week that RFA One’s first launch attempt could happen in a “matter of weeks”. The first stage of the German microlauncher had been shipped to the SaxaVord spaceport in Scotland in May and that same month successfully completed a first hot fire with five out of nine Helix engines installed.

As reported in our Tuesday newsletter, the vehicle experienced an anomaly in a test on Monday. The loss of the flight article has now been confirmed.

In a video released by the BBC, flames can be seen shooting from parts of the vehicle close to test stand infrastructure - a sign for a likely powerhead failure, the turbines where liquid propellants are accelerated and pumped from tank to combustion chamber before ignition. Flames engulf the stage immediately after.

According to the most recent regulatory filings, the company spent ~€90 million (~$100 million) on the development of the first flight-ready article. An increase in development funding, and perhaps even a new funding round, is likely, with the company predicting in 2022 that 80% of their funds would be used to bring their flight-ready article to completion. link

Obscure

• Russian pensioners call on Putin to ‘rescue’ Starliner astronauts

A group of Russian pensioners, together with a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, asked the Russian president to rescue astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, currently residing on the ISS while Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft continues to be evaluated for its safety.

Zooming out

Dawn of a new age

What you need to know about Polaris Dawn.

Funded by internet payments billionaire Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn is the first of at least three Polaris Program missions under contract to SpaceX. The private initiative follows Isaacman’s first fully private spaceflight, Inspiration4, which, like the Polaris Program, collects funds for the St. Jude’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.

The four crew members Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon (the latter two being SpaceX engineers) will embark on a five-day mission, conducting experiments, while raising their orbit to the highest altitude humans have reached since the Apollo program - about 1,400 kilometres above the surface of our planet.

What makes the Dawn mission so noteworthy? An attempt at the first private spacewalk, something that has traditionally been reserved for only a handful of national agencies. The spacewalk will happen on day three of the mission, in custom SpaceX suits, with two out of four crew members exiting the SpaceX Dragon capsule. In essence, the Polaris Program sets the groundwork for SpaceX’s human spaceflight mission: to independently execute all activities needed for sustained human presence in space and on other worlds. With this mission, SpaceX will test its privately manufactures EVA spacesuits - spacewalks serve an essential purpose for the assembly and repair of structures in space. Read more here.

Headlines

• Space mining startup Astroforge secures $40 million, launching next year

The company plans to send Odin, a scouting spacecraft, to a metal-rich asteroid in 2025, paving the way for Vestri, a lander that aims to be the first commercial landing on an asteroid and the first commercial landing outside of the Earth-Moon system.

• Astroscale to begin debris-removing program with JAXA

The company has confirmed a contract to remove a Japanese upper stage from orbit as a test of its Active Debris Removal by Astroscale (ADRAS) program. ADRAS-J2, the satellite built to carry out the mission in 2028, follows ADRAS-J, which maneuvered around and inspected the stage in space this year.

Research Report

Blue pill red pill

With elections in the US coming up quickly, the space industry is considering the impact Kamala Harris’ nomination has on space policy and politics. How does Trump’s record stack up against Biden’s in vying to secure the future of in-space dominance for western nations?

Find out on Saturday, when we publish a weekend-round up together with our Research Report.

Oh, one more thing: we’d love to hear from you. Give us feedback, let us know if we’ve missed updates that you find exciting, or shoot us a message just because. DM us on social media, or just reply to this email.