ESCAPADE commits to Mars; Starship Flight 15 set for Friday 22:45 UTC; Planet books Stoke's Nova

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🚀Flew

• Long March 12 | GuoWang group 29 — Nine GuoWang internet satellites from Wenchang's Commercial Pad 2 at 20:24 UTC Sunday 8 November; success, taking the constellation to 240 satellites.

• Falcon 9 | USSF-627 — The classified Space Force payload from Vandenberg's SLC-4E did not go in Monday's window; it is now NET 02:49 UTC Wednesday 11 November.

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📰News

• Cislunar Communications Deployment Demonstration — NASA has booked Starship for a 2028 flight to place communications satellites in the space between Earth and the Moon, announced on 7 November at the MAX POWER expo at Kennedy. It puts a firm job on Starship's manifest that is neither Starlink nor an Artemis crew landing. NASA also made SpaceX one of eight companies eligible for CLPS 2, the next round of Commercial Lunar Payload Services, a ten-year framework with a shared ceiling of $10 billion. Tesla North

• AxEMU — NASA has reduced what Axiom Space's lunar suit must achieve on the first surface mission, asking for a simplified sortie suit good for roughly two and a half hours outside rather than the six-hour exploration suit, according to a Washington Post report. The suit is the quiet long pole in any 2028 landing, and capability is what has been traded for schedule. An April 2026 NASA Inspector General report projected the full-capability suit could slip to 2031; NASA has obligated at least $594 million to Axiom. SatNews

• NASA asks who could sell it eight launches at once. A request for information issued on 9 November asks launch companies whether they could supply a block of at least eight flights, to orbits ranging from low Earth orbit out to hyperbolic escape trajectories into interplanetary space. With Falcon 9 heading towards retirement, this is NASA checking whether a next generation of rockets will exist for it to buy from. The missions in question would fly in 2030-31; the RFI was reported by Irene Klotz of Aviation Week. Aviation Week

• Nova — Planet has signed a multi-launch agreement for Stoke Space's reusable rocket, announced on 9 November, with primary payload rights on those flights for its Earth-imaging satellites. Another operator lining up an alternative to SpaceX rideshares before the vehicle has flown at all, which says how tight the launch market feels. The three-tonne Nova Pathfinder is due to make its first orbital flight next year from Cape Canaveral, with Planet payloads from 2027; the 15-tonne Nova Block 2 follows in 2029. Aviation Week

• Neutron — Rocket Lab said on 9 November that it signed $515 million of launch contracts last quarter, eight missions across five satellite operators. Neutron has yet to fly, so the backlog is the only hard measure of how seriously customers are taking it. The order book now stands at 16 missions, per Aviation Week's report. Aviation Week

• RFA ONE — Rocket Factory Augsburg has confirmed that the maiden flight of its launcher from SaxaVord in Scotland will not happen before 2027, acknowledged in a LinkedIn post on 3 November after a visit from the German Space Agency at DLR. Another European debut comes off this year's list, and it removes the nearest prospect of an orbital launch from UK soil. The rocket was destacked after a testing problem announced on 28 July, which killed a five-week window due to open on 10 August; OHB holds 65.1% of the company. European Spaceflight

• SaxaVord Spaceport — a Companies House filing dated 6 November shows the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology holding more than 25% but not more than 50% of the company that owns the Shetland site, after a £60 million public-private deal completed on 27 October. Public money now owns a slice of the UK's licensed vertical launch site, on the morning its most advanced customer confirmed a slip to 2027. Roughly 264.7 million new shares were issued, and Wild Ventures matched the government's £30 million. European Spaceflight

• Commercial Launch Vehicle Group — the state-owned firm that commercialises Long March launches filed papers with the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange on 3 November to take in external capital, with the review due by 1 December. It shows how hard the state sector is being pushed to compete with China's privately backed launch companies on its own market. Three internal capital increases this year already raised about 5.89 billion yuan; the firm, founded in late 2024, has 810 staff and recorded a net loss on 350 million yuan of 2025 revenue. China in Space

• W-8 — Varda's eighth reentry capsule landed at the Koonibba Test Range in Australia after 35 days in orbit, carrying two defence customers testing hypersonic sensors and heat-shield materials. Reentry is turning into a fleet business rather than an event, which is the shift to watch in this corner of the industry. Touchdown was at 5:58 a.m. Pacific time; W-8 launched on 1 October alongside W-9, and W-7 and W-9 remain on orbit. Behind The Black

• SpaceX still trails the rest of the world, 127 to 123. Behind The Black's running tally, after the weekend's Ceres-2, Falcon 9 and Soyuz-2 flights, puts SpaceX on 123 successful orbital launches this year against 127 for everyone else, with China on 73, Rocket Lab 18 and Russia 13. One company is still flying close to half of everything that reaches orbit, which is worth holding in mind on a morning of Starship talk. The Falcon 9 in that trio flew booster B1103 on its eighth mission, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific 31 days after its previous flight. Behind The Black

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