r/Orbinauts

PLD Space's CEO, Raúl Torres, spent two hours with the Spanish channel Control de Misión going through what's left before Miura 5's first launch from Kourou (planned for the first half of 2027), how PLD wants to bring its first stage back, Miura 9's new Teprel-D engines and barge landing, and a new vehicle based on Miura 1 to test landings.

The interview is in Spanish, so we wrote up the main points. Full story: https://orbinauts.com/news/miura-1-returns-to-learn-to-land-pld-space-ceo-maps-the-road-from-miura-5-to-miura-9/

The interview itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dYZSn8ieFA

Otter, a 335 kg spacecraft from Starfish Space, went up on 1 October on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare launch, flying the first debris inspection NASA has funded a company to do. From 2027 it's due to fly within hundreds of metres of up to four defunct US objects, such as dead satellites or spent rocket stages, and measure how fast each one tumbles, around which axis, and what state its surface is in: the kind of thing a future removal mission would need to know before trying to grab one. No docking this time, and NASA hasn't named the targets yet.

Full Story: https://orbinauts.com/news/nasas-first-commercial-debris-inspector-has-launched/