In the early hours of 1st July, the SES Satellite Control reestablished contact to AMC-9. SES and the satellite manufacturer Thales are working around the clock to evaluate the status and define the next steps. Tracking information received on 29 June had suggested that at least two separate objects were located in the vicinity of AMC-9. Their source has still to be determined. The new piece of information was included by Thales and SES in their investigations.

All relevant operators and agencies are being kept informed and will receive regular updates from SES. The current assessment is that there is no risk of a collision with other active satellites. AMC-9 and its status continue to being tracked by SES and agencies, including the Joint Space Operations Centre (JSpOC) and ExoAnalytic, a private firm and tracking service provider. Since the incident on 17 June 2017, AMC-9 has been slowly moving westwards with its payload disabled and not causing interference. A majority of traffic has been transferred to other SES satellites and SES is working on a long-term plan to minimize disruption to customers.

“I chastised my staff and said, ‘How could I not know that this was happening?’ They said, ‘Well, they had a meeting about it and you missed it’. A meeting is certainly not enough. Maybe we do need a space corps, but I think this bears more than just discussions in a subcommittee. We have not had Secretary Mattis come before us and tell us what this means. We have not heard from the secretary of the Air Force. There’s a whole lot of work we need to do before we go as far as creating a new service branch.” Turner said.

Martha McSally, a Republican for Arizona, was similarly caught off guard. “This is honestly the first time I’ve heard about a major reorganization to our Air Force,” said the retired Air Force colonel.

“There’s been nothing shortsighted about this. We started working on it vigorously in September, and we’ve had countless meetings with a number of experts who have advised us as to how this should be construed. In fact, this idea for a space corps as one of the solutions to Air Force space came from the Rumsfeld Commission in 2001. GAO has done three studies on this, all of which tell us that you cannot maintain the current organisational construct of the Air Force and solve the acquisition problems and the operational problems that we have. The Air Force is like any other bureaucracy. They don’t want to change.” Rogers said according to a Federal News Radio report.

“We could wake up one morning and be blinded and deafened by adversary powers, because so many of our most precious assets are up in space.”

Moving Forward

“publishing this paper provides not only an opportunity for the spacefaring community to read the SpaceX vision in print with all the charts in context, but also serves as a valuable archival reference for future studies and planning.”

“There is a huge amount of risk. It is going to cost a lot,” Musk wrote. “There is a good chance we will not succeed, but we are going to do our best and try to make as much progress as possible.” By giving everyone access to this information, our chances of success are greatly improved.

Space station stepping stone

Enhanced tracking

"According to calculations and analyses, most of the structural components of Tiangong-1 will burn up and be destroyed during the course of the re-entry. The probability of harm to aviation and on the ground as a result of Tiangong-1’s re-entry is very low," the note reads. 

“We challenged the mission design team to explore if an earlier launch date could provide a more efficient trajectory to the asteroid Psyche, and they came through in a big way. This will enable us to fulfill our science objectives sooner and at a reduced cost.” Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters said in a statement.

“The change in plans is a great boost for the team and the mission. Our mission design team did a fantastic job coming up with this ideal launch opportunity.” said Psyche project manager Henry Stone at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Why is the mission important?

“The mission team seeks to determine whether Psyche is the core of an early planet, how old it is, whether it formed in similar ways to Earth's core, and what its surface is like,” NASA said.

“This mission would be a journey back in time to one of the earliest periods of planetary accretion, when the first bodies were not only differentiating, but were being pulverized, shredded, and accreted by collisions. It is also an exploration, by proxy, of the interiors of terrestrial planets and satellites today: we cannot visit a metallic core any other way.” Lindy Elkins-Tanton, lead scientist on the NASA mission and the director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, and her team said in a Lunar and Planetary conference in 2014.

“We will orbit Mars, land and deploy a rover — all in one mission. We could have started our Mars mission earlier but finally the country has given its approval."

"Our short-term goal is to orbit the moon, land on the moon and take samples back from the moon. Our long-term goal is to explore, land, and settle. We want a manned lunar landing to stay for longer periods and establish a research base. It's quite challenging to land there, but according to research there might be water or ice because of the lack of sunlight, so we'd very much like to check that out."

"We would like to co-operate with the US, especially for space and moon exploration. We have urged the US many times to get rid of restrictions so scientists from both countries can work together on future exploration."

"When I saw the US film The Martian, which envisages China-US cooperation on a Mars rescue mission under emergency circumstances, it shows that our U.S. counterparts very much hope to co-operate with us. However, it's very regrettable that, for reasons everyone is aware of, there are currently some impediments to cooperation. I believe that on this matter, China is more and more open, and I hope our American friends can take note."

This deposit is probably more accessible than most water ice on Mars, because it is at a relatively low latitude and it lies in a flat, smooth area where landing a spacecraft would be easier than at some of the other areas with buried ice,

This deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet's axis was more tilted than it is today,

We know early Mars had enough liquid water on the surface for rivers and lakes. Where did it go? Much of it left the planet from the top of the atmosphere. But there's also a large quantity that is now underground ice, and we want to keep learning more about that.

"The program supports technology risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept development," a spokesperson said at the time.

"What's interesting to me is it's being done in such an opaque manner," space policy analyst Joan Johnson-Freese from the US Naval War College told CBS News in 2015.

"If the Chinese were doing this, oh my god, there would be congressional hearings on a daily basis and programs being ginned up to respond to it. It has capabilities that other countries aren't sure about, and so they're going to be very nervous about them. If it's a highly maneuverable space vehicle that has some pretty significant implications." says Johnson-Freese.