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Space Race News 16 June 2025 - 17 September 2025

Rocket Launch Frenzy, Solar Surprises & Space Race Showdowns: 48 Hours of Space News (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Rocket Launch Frenzy, Solar Surprises & Space Race Showdowns: 48 Hours of Space News (Sept 16–17, 2025)

Rapid-Fire Rocket Launches and Satellite Deployments SpaceX’s Starlink blitz: SpaceX continued its high-frequency launch campaign, highlighting how routine orbital deployment has become. On Wednesday, Sept. 17, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into a polar low-Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California spaceflightnow.com. Liftoff occurred at 8:43 am PDT (15:43 UTC), and about eight minutes later the veteran booster (B1088 on its 10th flight) landed on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com. This “Starlink Group 17-12” mission was SpaceX’s 83rd Starlink launch of 2025, pushing the year’s Starlink satellite tally above 2,000 deployed so
17 September 2025
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Race to Drive on the Moon: Inside the Battle for NASA’s Artemis Lunar Rover Contract

Race to Drive on the Moon: Inside the Battle for NASA’s Artemis Lunar Rover Contract

The New Moon Buggy Race for Artemis Three competing lunar rover prototypes on display at NASA’s Johnson Space Center: (L–R) Venturi Astrolab’s FLEX rover, Intuitive Machines’ Moon RACER, and Lunar Outpost’s Eagle LTV. NASA is once again in the market for a Moon rover – and this time it’s turning to private industry. Under the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon and eventually send crewed missions to Mars, NASA issued a call for next-generation lunar vehicles that astronauts can drive on the Moon’s surface. The agency’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) will be an unpressurized, “open-top” rover akin
5 September 2025
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Starlink Blitz, Spy Satellite Surprise & Moon Race Showdown – Space News Roundup (Sept. 3–4, 2025)

Starlink Blitz, Spy Satellite Surprise & Moon Race Showdown – Space News Roundup (Sept. 3–4, 2025)

Key Facts Space Agency & Policy Developments NASA Leadership and Artemis Momentum On Sept. 3, NASA’s acting Administrator Sean Duffy announced a significant leadership move, naming longtime engineer Amit Kshatriya as the agency’s new Associate Administrator nasa.gov. This top civil-service post puts Kshatriya – previously head of NASA’s Moon-to-Mars architecture team – in charge of driving Artemis and deep-space exploration goals. The timing coincided with a strong show of support from the U.S. Senate for Project Artemis, amid worries about competition with China. In a Sept. 3 hearing pointedly titled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must
4 September 2025
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Battle for the Final Frontier: Space Tourism Face-Off — Blue Origin vs SpaceX vs Virgin Galactic

Battle for the Final Frontier: Space Tourism Face-Off — Blue Origin vs SpaceX vs Virgin Galactic

Blue Origin’s NS-21 crewed flight took place on May 19, 2024, carrying 90-year-old Ed Dwight to about 106 km, making him the oldest space traveler at 90 years 8 months. SpaceX launched Inspiration4 in September 2021 as the first all-civilian orbital mission, spending about three days in orbit. Virgin Galactic reached space for the first time in December 2018 with the VSS Unity spaceplane. As of August 2025, SpaceX has flown five purely commercial crewed spaceflights to orbit, in addition to NASA missions. As of August 2025, Starship had not yet flown people, leaving Crew Dragon as SpaceX’s only passenger-carrying
15 August 2025
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Space Race Heats Up: Epic Launches, Lunar Showdowns & Breakthrough Tech (Aug 12–13, 2025 Roundup)

Space Race Heats Up: Epic Launches, Lunar Showdowns & Breakthrough Tech (Aug 12–13, 2025 Roundup)

Rocket Launch Triumphs: New Heavy-Lifters and Constellation Boosts Lunar Missions & Spaceflight Milestones: Moon Race Intensifies Next-Gen Satellite Tech & Services: Innovation in Orbit Space Policy & International Developments: Safety, Funding, and Collaboration Sources: Spaceflight Now spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com; Space.com space.com space.com; Space & Defense spaceanddefense.io; Reuters reuters.com reuters.com; Space.com (B. Tingley) space.com space.com; Space.com (M. Wall) advanced-television.com advanced-television.com; Spaceflight Now spaceflightnow.com; Reuters (Kyivstar/Starlink) reuters.com reuters.com; Aerospace Corp. aerospace.org aerospace.org; Via Satellite satellitetoday.com; Keeptrack Brief keeptrack.space keeptrack.space; Slashdot/Reuters (Crew-10) science.slashdot.org science.slashdot.org.
13 August 2025
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Space Race Heats Up: Satellite Launch Blitz, Bold Missions, and a Shuttle’s Surprise Move (Aug 6–7, 2025)

Space Race Heats Up: Satellite Launch Blitz, Bold Missions, and a Shuttle’s Surprise Move (Aug 6–7, 2025)

On Aug 7, SpaceX launched 24 Amazon Kuiper satellites on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral at 10:01 a.m. EDT, increasing the operational Kuiper fleet from 78 to 102 and with the first-stage booster landing on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas. Rocket Lab’s Aug 5 Electron launch deployed the QPS-SAR-12 “Kushinada-I” SAR satellite into a 575 km orbit from Launch Complex 1, marking Rocket Lab’s 69th Electron flight and the fifth dedicated iQPS mission. China’s Long March 12 from Wenchang on Aug 4 launched 18 low-orbit internet satellites for GalaxySpace, the seventh batch in eight days, bringing GalaxySpace
7 August 2025
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Beyond Starlink: Inside the New Space Race for Satellite Internet Dominance in 2025

Beyond Starlink: Inside the New Space Race for Satellite Internet Dominance in 2025

By 2025 Starlink had surpassed 8,000 satellites launched and served over 5 million users in 125+ countries, operating at about 550 km altitude with speeds of 50–200 Mbps and latencies of 20–40 ms. Ama zon’s Project Kuiper began launching its 3,236-satellite Ka-band LEO network, with its first 27 satellites launched in April 2025 on an Atlas V, and over 78 deployed by mid-2025; the FCC target requires 1,618 satellites (half the constellation) by July 2026. OneWeb, after merging with Europe’s Eutelsat in 2023 to form Eutelsat OneWeb, had roughly 634–650 satellites in orbit in 2024 and focuses on enterprise, aviation,
1 August 2025
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Starlink Doubleheader, NASA Upheaval & Space Race Showdowns – Global Space News Roundup (July 26–27, 2025)

Starlink Doubleheader, NASA Upheaval & Space Race Showdowns – Global Space News Roundup (July 26–27, 2025)

SpaceX launched back-to-back Falcon 9 missions for Starlink within 24 hours: on July 26 at 5:01 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral with 28 Starlink satellites and on July 27 at 12:31 a.m. EDT from Vandenberg with 24 Starlinks, with first-stage boosters landing on droneships on their 22nd and 19th flights respectively and the company pushing its 2025 launch total to 95 flights and the Starlink fleet above 8,000 satellites. Europe’s Vega-C VV27 launched July 25 at 10:03 p.m. ET from Kourou carrying five Earth-observation satellites including MicroCarb (180 kg, 1 ppm CO2 accuracy) and four CO3D satellites built by Airbus
27 July 2025
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Space in July 2025: Budget Battles, Scientific Breakthroughs, and the New Space Race / Updated: 2025, July 9th, 00:00 CET

Space in July 2025: Budget Battles, Scientific Breakthroughs, and the New Space Race / Updated: 2025, July 9th, 00:00 CET

The FY2026 NASA budget proposal would cut overall funding by 24.3%, with science funding slashed by nearly 47%. Congress moved to restore nearly $10 billion for NASA’s human spaceflight programs including Artemis, SLS, Orion, and the Gateway lunar station, while transferring Space Shuttle Discovery to Houston and upgrading the Stennis Space Center. SpaceX accounted for 83% of U.S. launches in 2024 and marked its 500th Falcon 9 launch, while Starlink now operates more than 7,900 active satellites. The TraCSS space traffic coordination system faces an 84% budget cut, with hundreds of companies urging Congress to restore funding. <li NASA’s Perseverance
9 July 2025
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Space Race 2.0: A Shoebox‑Sized Quantum Satellite Blasts Off—Can It Make Hackers Obsolete?

Space Race 2.0: A Shoebox‑Sized Quantum Satellite Blasts Off—Can It Make Hackers Obsolete?

QUICK³ is a 3U CubeSat weighing 4 kg, led by Germany’s Technical University of Munich, and it launched on 23 June 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter‑14 from Vandenberg SFB. It carries the first true single-photon source flown, a laser-pumped hexagonal boron nitride chip on a 10 × 10 × 15 cm photonic chip. True single photons are expected to raise secret-key rates 10–100× over weak-laser systems. The pump laser is a 698 nm diode module, 45 × 80 × 20 mm, weighing 200 g. QUICK³ uses a 3U CubeSat bus with a 4 kg mass budget and rideshare compatibility, with launch
24 June 2025
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Rocketing into the New Space Race: Inside the Global Boom of Private Spaceflight and Payload Companies

Rocketing into the New Space Race: Inside the Global Boom of Private Spaceflight and Payload Companies

In 2023, the global space economy reached $570 billion, with private/commercial ventures accounting for about 78%. In 2023 there were 221 orbital launches (the most on record), more than 2,500 satellites launched, and experts project up to 100,000 satellites in orbit within the next decade. Since 2009, investors have poured about $347.9 billion into roughly 2,197 space startups worldwide. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can carry about 22,800 kg to LEO, and the company launched 61 missions in 2022 and nearly 100 in 2023, capturing an estimated 95% of all U.S. orbital launches. Virgin Galactic began commercial suborbital flights in 2023, charging
16 June 2025
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