Space News for Friday, March 31, 2023

In this episode, we aggregate and summarize today's top space news stories. Enjoy!(00:10) Podcast Introduction(00:25) (00:35) Virgin Orbit lays off most employees(00:59) Maxar eyes military customers for satellite images of objects in space(01:28) Telesat still bullish on Lightspeed despite funding uncertainty(01:56) Chinese defense contractor to begin launching VLEO satellites(02:22) NASA releases draft strategy for long-term robotic Mars exploration(02:49) Space ISAC stands up Operational Watch Center to keep pace with proliferating threats to space systems – SatNews(03:25) NASA moves forward with new Moon to Mars Program Office and the agency’s head of office – SatNews(03:55) UPDATE: “Abort, abort, abort” as SpaceX’s launch of SDA’s Tranche 0 mission was scrubbed at T-3 – SatNews(05:05) The second Plan-S smallsat captures a selfie while on-orbit – SatNews(05:35) Mouser Electronics and Astrocast’s distribution agreement will deliver satellite IoT components – SatNews(06:04) Speedcast and International Cruise Line’s milestone supplies highest continuous capacity in cruise history – SatNews(06:38) Russia launches classified payload from Plesetsk on Soyuz-2.1v