Weekly Space Report

By Natalia Godlewska (Chief Space News Editor)

Poland’s boost into space

Satellite with the Polish-developed propulsion system was successfully launched by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 on March 15. This BOOSTER created by Liftero (Polish company based in Cracow) is design for maneuvers up to ten times faster than traditional electric propulsion systems. That can significantly reduce time and cost for satellite operators. Post-launch, Lifteros’s engineers will conduct a series of in-orbit tests over the course of a year, including hundreds of engine ignitions. This is a big step for Polish company, because successful mission, could position BOOSTER as a standard in the satellite propulsion industry.

€1.5 million from ESA to Polish company

Creotech Instruments, polish space-tech company has received €1.5 million in founding from European Space Agency (ESA) to develop DTM Tools. Total budget will exceeds up to €1.8 million. This project is an advanced system for planning and managing drone missions. This tool is going to integrate AI-driven panning software, enhancing drone operations across many industries. The project includes real-world testing to ensure reliability and efficiency. The 36 months project aligns with the company’s strategy to expand in the fast-growing drone and aerospace sectors.

Crew-swap on ISS

On March 16, SpaceX’s Crew-10 successfully docked at the International Space Station (ISS). This mission had two purposes, one was to deliver new crew to the ISS (Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov) and second to bring back to Earth NASA astronauts Sunita „Suni” Williams and Barry „Butch” Wilmore, who had been on the station for an extended period due to technical issues with their original return vehicle. In the following days Williams and Wilmore will assist the new crew in acclimating to the station’s environment and operations. On March 18, they are scheduled to return home abroad the SpaceX Dragon capsule.

How exactly early universe looked like?

Recent discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) challenged our existing knowledge and about the early universe and planetary formation. Telescope detected a peculiar region in the galactic system GS-NDG-9422, approximately 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The stars in this galaxy exhibit unusual light signatures due to gases outshining them, suggesting the presence of Population III stars—hotter and more massive than those in the current universe. This shows insights into the transformation from primordial stars to known types of galaxies.

Moreover, JWST has observed three ultra-massive „red monster” galaxies dating back more than 12.8 billion years, within a billion years after the Big Bang. Each of discovered galaxies has mass roughly 100 billion times than mass of our Sun. This discovery is challenging our current understanding of star formation in the early universe. It appear that these galaxies have transformed up to 80% of their gas into stars, that suggest a more efficient star formation process than we thought previously.