---
title: 'Russia Tried to Cut into the Space Station? | This Week in Spaceflight'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=4L8Kz_vKhfQ'
video_id: '4L8Kz_vKhfQ'
date: 2026-08-05
duration_sec: 1541
---

# Russia Tried to Cut into the Space Station? | This Week in Spaceflight

> Source: [Russia Tried to Cut into the Space Station? | This Week in Spaceflight](https://youtube.com/watch?v=4L8Kz_vKhfQ)

## Summary

This week's spaceflight news covers the Artemis 3 crew announcement, ISS leak repair efforts, Amazon's LEO constellation waiver, SpaceX's record IPO, and several other developments including asteroid missions and rocket tests.

### Key Points

- **Artemis 3 Crew Announced** [00:47] — NASA named Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio, and a fourth mission specialist for Artemis 3, which will test lunar hardware in low Earth orbit instead of landing on the Moon.
- **Lack of Women in Crew Sparks Debate** [01:45] — Social media noted the all-male crew despite Artemis program's goal to land the first woman on the Moon. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman defended the selection based on mission requirements and availability.
- **Artemis 3 Mission Plan** [03:04] — The crew will dock with a Blue Moon Mark 2 demonstrator and a Starship to test docking and interfaces, but no lunar landing. This prepares for Artemis 4, the first crewed landing.
- **Artemis 3 Launch Target** [05:00] — NASA is targeting a summer 2027 launch, with SLS assembly underway at Kennedy Space Center.
- **Terran R Stage 2 Transport** [05:38] — Relativity Space shipped the completed second stage of Terran R to Stennis for testing, with stage one preparing for qualification.
- **The Exploration Company Unveils Storm Engine** [07:28] — Storm is a reusable full-flow staged combustion engine producing 180 metric tons of thrust, burning liquid biomethane and oxygen. It will power the Irene heavy-lift rocket.
- **Stoke Space Nova Proto-Qualification** [09:35] — Stoke Space completed proto-qualification testing on Nova's first stage, verifying 46 structural objectives despite harsh weather.
- **ISS Leak in Zvezda Module** [11:18] — The ISS continues to leak from the Zvezda module's transfer tunnel. Roscosmos attempted to cut a bracket for access, but NASA put crew in safe haven in a Dragon capsule as a precaution.
- **Amazon LEO Constellation Waiver** [13:15] — The FCC granted a conditional waiver allowing Amazon to miss the 50% deployment deadline, but satellites launched after July 30 lose spectrum priority. All 3,200 must be operational by 2029.
- **SpaceX Record IPO** [14:50] — SpaceX went public with the largest IPO ever, selling over 555 million shares at $135 each, raising nearly $75 billion to fund AI and chip factory plans.
- **AstroForge Deep Space 2** [15:58] — AstroForge completed assembly of Deep Space 2, a low-cost autonomous spacecraft to rendezvous with a metallic near-Earth asteroid, with redundant power systems.
- **China's Tianwen-2 Arrives at Asteroid** [17:08] — Tianwen-2 reached asteroid Kamoʻoalewa, but China has not officially confirmed the arrival, with only external observations.
- **Czech Astronaut Assigned to ISS Mission** [19:05] — Aleš Svoboda, a Czech Air Force major, was assigned to a private ISS mission, pending approval, which would make him the first Czech astronaut to visit the ISS.
- **NASA X-59 Goes Supersonic** [20:27] — The X-59 broke the sound barrier at Mach 1.1, aiming to reduce sonic booms to a quiet thump, with plans to test over communities.
- **Weekly Launch Roundup** [21:30] — SpaceX launched four Starlink missions, Rocket Lab flew a suborbital mission, China had two launches, and Japan's H3 returned to flight.

### Conclusion

This week highlighted significant progress in lunar exploration preparations, commercial space developments, and ongoing challenges like the ISS leak, with a busy launch schedule ahead.

## Transcript

IPO. The ISS is leaking again and cosmonauts [music] are going to cut into failed to meet launch requirements for its internet constellation, but the FCC is okay with it and NASA announced the crew and detailed plans for the next
we've got all that and more coming up this week in Spaceflight.
flying on the next mission of NASA's Artemis Lunar Exploration Program, going nowhere near the moon this time around. What's more, we also got a big look like. But first, let's meet the
people who will actually fly on board the SLS rocket for this mission. First, there's mission commander NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik. He's flown to space twice before, first in 2009 on Space Shuttle Atlantis for the STS-129 mission to the
International Space Station. Then returning to space on a Soyuz for a long duration stay at the ISS in 2017. The European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano Bresnik, he'll also be flying to space for a third time. His previous two
missions in 2013 and 2019 were both on board a Soyuz to visit the ISS. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will join Artemis 3 as mission specialist. He flew to space once before in 2022, also on a Soyuz to the ISS for a record breaking
371 days, the longest single duration spaceflight for a US astronaut. Finally, mission specialist. While this will be his first spaceflight, he trained and supported as a backup crew member for the Artemis 2 mission. Now, since this
crew announcement, something that many have pointed out across social media is the lack of women. This is after all the Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, as the program that would land the first woman on the moon. It's also hard to
ignore the incredible impact that Artemis 2 astronaut Christina Koch has had in inspiring the next generation of women and girls in STEM. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman directly addressed this reaction in a lengthy
post and in direct replies to commenters, emphasizing that crew assignments are based on mission requirements, experience, training timelines, and astronaut availability. He noted that several of NASA's
qualified female astronauts had either recently re- turned from space flight, were already assigned to upcoming ISS missions, or were supporting development work for future lunar operations. NASA's position is that the astronauts selected
mission and its objectives. Given that nearly half of NASA's active astronaut corps is now female, all-male crews have become increasingly uncommon, making this a somewhat unexpected selection. Still, as Isaacman's inspiration for
crewmate Dr. Sian Proctor put it on social media, "Congratulations. Your success will pave the way for the all-women Artemis 4 crew to the moon." Uh, a girl can dream. So, what are these four astronauts going to be doing in
space? Well, originally, Artemis 3 was supposed to land on the moon, but that plan changed earlier this year to increase SLS's flight cadence. Instead, the mission will now hang around in low Earth orbit to test important next steps
and hardware ahead of an actual lunar landing mission. First, Orion will dock with a demonstrator version of Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. It's pressurized cabin that the astronauts will board to test the cabin systems and
interfaces. After that, the astronauts will retreat back to the Orion capsule and undock. Then, it's SpaceX's time to shine. The company will launch a Starship to participate in the Artemis 3 mission, but it won't be the human
lander system version that's supposed to support Artemis 4. Instead, it'll be a regular Starship version 3, like the one that we saw fly last month, but outfitted with some docking hardware similar to Dragon's docking systems.
Orion will dock to Starship and test proximity operations, but there's no pressurized cabin for the crew to board. These are important tests, but it's also very clear that SpaceX needs more time to get the Starship base lunar lander
ready. In addition to testing the landers, the Artemis 3 crew will also test the space suit used for lunar exploration, the AXE EMU suit developed by Axiom Space. If you want the full rundown of the mission plans, Ryan did
channel. Check it out. It's a great watch. With all these systems tested, prepare them for Artemis 4, which will now be the first Artemis mission to land humans on our celestial companion. In the original plans, that mission was
also supposed to include the lunar Gateway space station, but those plans involved with the Gateway plans as part of its contributions to Artemis, but now it has to renegotiate its position with NASA. This week, ESA Director General
Josef Aschbacher confirmed during a press conference that Parmitano's participation in Artemis 3 are the first steps in these negotiations. So, with ESA moving on, it seems that Gateway is now well and truly off the table.
Whatever's going to take Gateway's place, the first step is Artemis 3. So, when will it launch? NASA's currently working towards a summer 2027 launch. It's already assembling the SLS for that mission in the Kennedy Space Center's
Vehicle Assembly Building. All the parts for this rocket are coming together now, booster segments left Northrop Grumman's facilities in Utah by train earlier this month. NSF's own Jerry Pike spotted the train pulling into the Cape this week,
where they'll next be moved into the VAB for final assembly. We'll keep following along as NASA gets this rocket ready for launch. Even more hardware was on the move this month as a completed stage two for the
Terran R rocket made its journey by sea to NASA's Stennis Space Center. Relativity Space completed integration on the second stage in May and rolled it out of the company's factory to the port of Long Beach. The stage was then loaded
onto Voyager, a sea vessel originally used by space tourism company Space Perspective. It was named as a tribute to the Voyager 1 space probe and used to following splashdown. After the company's acquisition, Voyager was
returned to marine service provider Juice Offshore, where it's now available the recovery of Vulcan solid rocket booster hardware from the seafloor off the Cape. The stage is now making its journey to Mississippi via the Panama
Canal to begin its test campaign on the A2 test stand at NASA Stennis. There's flame diverter and the hold-down assembly. Teams have performed a liquid oxygen flush on the top deck and installed a drawbridge as they make
preparations for its arrival. On a nearby stand, the Eon V has now completed its qualification campaign. This is the vacuum-optimized engine Back at Long Beach, stage one is preparing for its own qualification
testing. As engines return from Stennis, they're being prepared for integration downcomer has also been installed following acceptance testing. Finally, at Launch Complex 16, the water tower has completed its fourth and final lift,
the lightning towers are the final structures going vertical. Relativity is hitting some key milestones as the Terran R program enters an exciting new phase. We'll keep tracking its progress and if you want to stay up-to-date, you
subscribe to our channel so you won't miss a thing. successful parachute testing for the exploration company's reusable Nix cargo capsule last week. The company had also promised more information about a new
engine and we'd spotted a heavy lift launcher called Irene on its website, which later disappeared. Well, this week the company officially unveiled its Storm engine, a reusable full-flow staged combustion engine producing up to
180 metric tons of thrust. That's almost 3/4 of the power of the Raptor 3, which uses the same engine cycle. These specifications are very similar to another engine that the company was working on called Typhoon, but that was
supposed to be even more powerful at 250 metric tons of thrust. Now, we don't know if that's still in the works or if they've slightly tamed the engine and just given it a new name. Their website is rather vague. Regardless, Storm was
revealed at this week's International Aerospace Exhibition in Berlin, and it burns liquid biomethane and oxygen as propellants. The company showed a physical mock-up at the show and is targeting a development version on the
test stand by the end of 2028. The exploration company has been developing Storm in partnership with the French and European space agencies with hardware testing at the DLR facilities in Germany. The work tackled the toughest
elements of full-flow staged combustion individually. The turbomachinery, combustion chamber hardware, preburners, and regeneratively cooled nozzle extensions. Integrated testing of those components is yet to come. We did not
get any more details about the Irene heavy-lift rocket, however. The website designed to power a globally competitive launcher, and Irene is understood to be a long-term project for the company. Nine Storm engines are expected to power
its first stage, putting it in the Falcon 9 payload class, but we won't see this rocket until the next decade. Storm wasn't the only news from the show, Commission formally selected the exploration company to lead a key
component of its in-space operations and services program. The program will build an orbital servicing infrastructure covering inspection, refueling, and life extension of satellites through to debris removal. The exploration company
will lead the hypothetical orbital servicing transport, or HOST, element, an orbital platform which will act as a depot and base for servicing vehicles under a new project called the E-PRIME consortium.
Continuing with the theme of development in Washington state, Stoke Space has completed proto-qualification testing on the first stage of Nova, its fully reusable two-stage rocket. Nova is designed to carry around 3,000 kg to low
Earth orbit with both stages recovered and reflown. So, what's proto-qualification? Unlike some other methods, this doesn't use dedicated test articles, but rather the actual first flight hardware, which then undergoes a
strict series of tests. If it passes, then you know that the hardware process that made it are ready for action. Thus, the flight articles that follow require less stringent testing. Testing is one of the most revealing phases of rocket
development and where new vehicles often encounter their hardest problems. We're glad to say that Nova passed this process with flying colors. The team verified 46 structural test objectives over 3 weeks at Stoke's Moses Lake test
site. Fluid systems, avionics, software, and operations procedures were all put through their paces while both tanks were filled above their maximum expected pressures. And they did all of this through hurricane force winds and a
lightning storm. Stoke points out that the margin between a rocket being light enough to fly, but robust enough to survive, is narrow. Passing this stage is a significant milestone for the company and a testament to the
engineering and attention to detail that have taken Stoke this far. The second stage is expected to continue hot firing of the Andromeda engine and acceptance testing before joining the first stage at historic LC-14 in Florida for
integration. We're stepping ever closer to a maiden launch, currently targeting Now, we'll take a look at some other stories across space, starting with the International Space Station, which is leaking again. Or should I say it's
still leaking? And it caused NASA to put some safety procedures into motion last it really isn't, but it's also nothing new. So, what's going on here? And should we be worried? The problem has to do with the station's Zvezda module,
modules, and it's located in the Russian segment. It started leaking back in 2019 appearing in the so-called transfer tunnel, also known as PRK. This is a
tunnel between the main module and the station's aft docking port. The port is used by visiting progress vehicles, which occasionally also give the station Roscosmos has been trying to find the leaks and seal the cracks since they
first noticed the atmosphere slowly leaking out of the PRK, but so far it's been largely unsuccessful. Instead, they've mainly changed procedures to the station unless they needed access to the docked vehicle. They didn't stop
trying though, and earlier this year they thought they had it all sealed up, but it didn't last long and the station was once again leaking by May. Last week Roscosmos decided to take a new approach towards fixing the leak, which involved
having cosmonauts cut a bracket for better access. Apparently, NASA decided with this procedure and instructed the crew 12 quartet and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who flew up on Soyuz MS-28, to take refuge in the crew 12 Dragon so
they could depart the ISS in a hurry if something went wrong. Shortly thereafter, Roscosmos decided to halt their plan to cut the bracket and instead decided to take a few more measurements and assess the situation.
So, NASA instructed the crew to end the safe haven procedures. Now, we don't know what caused Roscosmos to abort their plans. Maybe NASA's response made them reconsider or someone on the team just wanted more data before cutting
into the station. All we can really do is hope that they'll find a permanent fix soon or if not, we hope it won't get any worse so the station can make it all the way to its retirement no earlier than 2030.
Amazon satellite internet constellation, now called Amazon Leo, formerly Project Kuiper, was supposed to have half of its 3,200 satellites in orbit by July 30th of this year, and that's not going to happen. The Federal Communications
Commission set that 50% interim milestone back in 2020 when it first licensed the constellation. The rule is a safeguard against companies hoarding orbital positions and frequencies without actually building or launching
anything. Amazon is nowhere near its halfway target with 331 satellites in orbit against the requirement of over 1,600. So, what's been the hold up? themselves. Amazon says that it can build up to 30 a week. The bottleneck
has been the availability of launches. To deploy the constellation, Amazon has spread its manifest across five different rockets. To date, 12 missions have carried satellites to low Earth orbit aboard Atlas V, Falcon 9, and
Ariane 6 with another Ariane mission set to launch next week from French Guiana. More than 40 missions are also planned on both Vulcan Centaur and New Glenn in the future, but both of those vehicles are having some issues.
This week, the FCC granted a conditional waiver on June 5th, which allows Amazon to miss the interim deadline, but there's a catch. Any satellites launched after July 30th temporarily lose their spectrum priority. This means that
it won't interfere with rival constellations like Starlink. It may be a hall pass, but it's not a free pass. The hard deadline remains and all 3,200 satellites must be operational by July 30th, 2029.
Okay, so we usually only cover space news, but it's not every day that a space company sets a financial record. So, here we are. SpaceX just went public with the largest ever IPO by a wide margin. In this IPO, or initial public
offering, SpaceX is selling over 555 million shares at a fixed price of $135 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each, raising nearly $75 billion. So, what's SpaceX planning to do with all this money? Maybe [music] expand
Starlink or turn out Starships at an unprecedented rate? Nope. Or at least those aren't the main goal. As you may recall, they acquired AI company XAI earlier this year and announced plans for a massive chip factory called Terra
Fab and on orbit data centers with solar arrays that dwarf Starship. With that, focus for the future and have established a new identity as an AI company. But those plans need a lot of money and that's where the IPO comes in.
SpaceX now hopes that it can get enough investors to bank on this AI future so that it can start building it. Which seems to involve a lot of launches, so hear about this. Asteroid mining startup AstroForge has
assembled the first commercial spacecraft designed to rendezvous with California-based company announced that it's completed assembly of Deep Space 2, near-Earth asteroid. Built to be low-cost and autonomous, the craft is
now heading into environmental testing ahead of a launch before the end of the year. Deep Space 2 will ride as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 carrying Intuitive Machines' IM-3 lunar lander. AstroForge's first mission launched in
February last year. The craft, dubbed Odin, lost power just 300,000 km from Earth when its solar arrays failed to deploy. Deep Space 2 is twice the size of Odin and carries redundant power systems designed to function even if the
arrays don't fully open. It swaps Odin's chemical propulsion for Hall effect high-resolution camera will image and characterize a metallic near-Earth asteroid up close. CEO Matt Gallaher is putting the odds of success at 70 to 80%
an increase from the 30% that he gave Odin. The target asteroid has yet to be confirmed and will depend on the launch date. But with the spacecraft now built, we are getting closer to the asteroid mining era becoming very, very real.
Continuing on the topic of asteroids, China's Tianwen-2 mission just met a major milestone catching up with its destination. But all we're getting about this mission is radio silence. What's up with that? On June 7th, the Tianwen-2
spacecraft arrived at its target, a near-Earth asteroid known as 469219 near-Earth asteroid known as 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, also known as 2016 HO3. It's also a quasi-satellite of our planet, meaning it orbits the Sun in a
the planet's gravitational sphere of influence. Still, its orbit makes it appear to circle our planet approximately every 45 years. Tianwen-2 launched atop a Chang Zheng 3B from Xichang on May 28th, 2025, on a mission
to study this asteroid and bring back a sample. Reportedly, the spacecraft has now entered orbit around its target, from where it will study the object. At some point during its stay, perhaps as soon as next month, Tianwen-2 will
approach the asteroid and collect a sample. Then, in April of next year, the asteroid and find its way back to Earth to deliver the sample to the hands of scientists. This won't be the end for the probe, however, as it'll use its
assist maneuver, so it can visit main-belt comet 311P P/PANSTARRS in the mid-2030s. Now, what's strange is that we haven't received any official confirmation of the spacecraft arriving at its target, but we did get a report
of a successful rendezvous from a Hong Kong news outlet. Other than that, the only confirmation was from a couple of radio telescopes in Germany and the Netherlands, which observed the spacecraft approaching the asteroid. The
secrecy is interesting. China isn't always open about its spaceflight programs, but it usually likes to boast about its successes. So, what this means for Tianwen-2 is unclear. They might be waiting for some data analysis to
complete, or maybe a more significant milestone, like successful sample collection. Either way, we hope that they won't stay too silent for too long, because we love to follow along with cool missions like these.
Artemis 3 wasn't the only astronaut assignment news of the week. The seats private mission to the International Space Station. Last week we reported about France's Thomas Pesquet being named as the ISS mission's commander,
while Vast also assigned Arnaud Prost on a mission to its Haven 1 commercial space station. This week there's another name on the manifest. On June 8th, Vast Space Agency on behalf of the Czech Republic announcing that Aleš Svoboda
assignment is still pending approval from the multilateral crew operations panel, the body that signs off on astronauts flying to the station, but it would make Svoboda the first Czech astronaut to visit the ISS. So, who is
he? Svoboda is a Czech Air Force major and Gripen fighter pilot with over 1,300 hours in the cockpit. He was selected as part of the agency's astronaut reserve class back in November 2022 and is the first astronaut from Czechia following
the fall of the Soviet Union. Svoboda has just completed basic reserve training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne and if approved, will next begin mission-specific training for the ISS. The 14-day mission is targeting
summer 2027 with a Dragon capsule launching atop a Falcon 9. With two more seats left to fill, we'll listen out for more updates as this crew continues to take shape. NASA's X-59 aircraft went supersonic.
been flying the airplane for a few months, slowly building up to this high-speed milestone. The program's goal is to make supersonic flight less disruptive for people on the ground by reducing sonic booms. X-59 does that
through its shape, which is fine-tuned to reduce booms to a much quieter thump. At least, that's what it's designed to do. NASA is now putting the aircraft through its paces to ensure that the theory also works in practice. A few
months into the test program, they've finally broken the sound barrier going finally broken the sound barrier going Mach 1.1 at an altitude of 43,400 ft or about 13.2 km. But, this is only just the beginning. They've pushed the plane
to Mach 1.4 at 55,000 ft, which they will soon also test flying over communities in the United States to ensure that the quieter design has the intended effect. It's great to see that NASA is still working on the first A in
its name, and maybe one day we'll all get to experience the results ourselves when we board the next supersonic airliner. This is your weekly space traffic report provided by Next Spaceflight. It was a
busy week with launches from all around the world. As usual, SpaceX sent more Starlink satellites into orbit with four Falcon 9 missions dedicated to the missions broke the company's reuse record as B1067 lifted off from Florida
trip to space, it touched down successfully on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic. Now, some of these launches were subject to new FAA fees that went into effect this week on June 10th.
Under the new regulations, the Federal Aviation Administration will charge 25 cents per pound of payload with a cap of $30,000, but the prices will increase in the coming years. Now, all of this is just a drop in the bucket for a single
help the agency to pay for the cost associated with licensing commercial spaceflight. Also from the US, Rocket Lab launched another suborbital mission on Electron's Haste variant. The mission, titled Curveball, lifted off
from Virginia's Wallops Flight Facility. Two rockets took flight from China this week. First, a Zhuque-2E lifted off from Jiuquan on the second flight of the rocket's Block 2 version, which debuted last month. The mission carried two
direct-to-cell demonstration satellites, one for China's Chang'e 5 constellation, also known as Space Sale or G60, and the other for China Mobile. The other mission was on a Chang Zheng 5 lifting off from Wenchang. This flight carried a
classified satellite into geostationary transfer orbit, which according to official reports will test communication technology. Beyond launches, China's space adventures for the week also included Tianwen-2 arriving at its
destination, which we discussed earlier. Also in space, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made another close pass of the Sun, equaling its record-setting high speed and low distance to our star. The mission itself is in a bit of an odd
situation as it's technically been over since last summer, but NASA has been considering a mission extension ever since. So, the spacecraft is still in full science mode during these close passes. Closing out the week, we also
had the return to flight for Japan's H3 rocket. Now, if you remember, the rocket failed to deliver the Michibiki 5 satellite to orbit last December after attached broke off during flight. This week, the rocket once again lifted off
from Tanegashima to launch several payloads into sun-synchronous orbit, which were on board the mission, which was also a test flight for the H330 variant. This version has three engines on the core stage and zero solid rocket
boosters, hence the 30 in its name. We're gearing up for another busy week in spaceflight next week. SpaceX plans to launch three missions. One Starlink, one carrying BlueBird communication satellites for AST SpaceMobile, and
another for the National Reconnaissance Office. That last launch, scheduled no return to launch site landing at Vandenberg. So, prepare for sonic booms if you're in the area. Up in space, the Cargo Dragon for SpaceX's CRS-34 mission
is set to undock from the ISS on June 16th before returning to Earth a month after its launch. Europe's spaceport in South America will see another Ariane 6 deliver another batch of internet satellites for Amazon, making full use
will be the first mission with the upgraded P160C solid rocket boosters. The performance boost allows Ariane 6's four booster configuration to carry four more satellites for a total of 36. We might see another European launch this
week as the launch window will be opening for the second flight of Ezar's like this rocket has been waiting on the pad in Norway since forever, so we can't promise a lift off this week, but we can hope, right? And ESA will be providing
live stream production services to Isar Aerospace for this launch. Rocket Lab it's getting ready to launch another Strela satellite for C-Spec tip from its own launch complex in New Zealand. The mission, dubbed 10 Owl of 10, is set to
expecting a couple of launches out of China next week, but as is usual in spaceflight, the schedule can change from day to day. So, keep an eye on our >> [music] >> And that's your weekly update of
spaceflight news. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and we'll see you all again next NSF, and we'll see you all again next week to recap this week in spaceflight.