The Biggest Space Conference of The Year: IAC // October 1, 2025

Hello everyone, welcome to tomorrow. The International Astronautical Congress is upon us once again in 2025. This time being held in Sydney, Australia. Many would say that this is easily the largest space conference of the year because all of the different space agencies of the world for the most part gather for this and showcase their achievements and work together on coming up with new deals. Lots and lots of companies also attend this conference and show off their projects and quite oftent times announce new contracts at this conference. And while still ongoing, there have been quite a few interesting announcements already this year. The first one you may have already heard about is the European Space Agency giving Italian company AIO $40 million to study the idea of a reusable upper stage. This thing is so goofy. basically a Starship clone on top of a solid rocket that is used as the first stage of the Vega rocket and also the solid rocket boosters of the Arion rocket. Now, importantly, this contract won't actually build anything except for maybe some structural test articles and wind tunnel test modules, but otherwise they're not actually going to build this. This is just to get to the point of a preliminary design review of what it would take to actually build one of these and what it would take for the ground support systems to launch this on top of one of these solid rockets. And while it may seem pretty silly at first glance, there actually is a couple of things that are working in AIO's favor. They're already working on Methylox engines. They have their M10 which they developed in coordination with Ukraine to come up with a better replacement for the upper stage of the Vega rocket. They already plan on developing a methylox stage for the Vega E rocket, the evolved rocket, and are even looking at developing a more powerful Methalox engine, the M60, to someday potentially replace the first stage of the rocket as well. So, we might actually see Vega transform from a mostly solid rocket into a potentially partially reusable or fully reusable Methalox rocket in the future. This announcement comes under the second phase of a program that the European Space Agency has been pursuing. While the European Space Agency didn't name any of the companies or organizations that responded to their first phase of the program, Avio is the only company so far that has been announced in the second phase of their program. By the way, in case you missed this, here is a great visual representation of how large this uh uh potential thing would be if they were to ever build it. Anyway, moving on to some of the more exciting things that have been announced at IA 2025. Honda and Astrobotic are teaming up to potentially have a solution for power generation on the moon. This would be using a hydrogen power cell to have a closed loop system that would be able to produce electricity even in the lunar night and when it's not in lunar night be able to store as much energy as possible for continuous use. And while just an initial partnership, I love to see things like this and am really glad to see Honda getting into even more space business stuff. I love it. Now, although another European announcement, I'm really excited by this one. This is a team up with the European Space Agency and JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, both of whom are working on spacecraft that are going to be studying near-Earth asteroids in the near future. One of them, Destiny Plus, is heading towards an asteroid called Fatan, which is the source of the Geminid meteor showers. And Europe is trying to build a spacecraft called Ramsy's, which is going to study Apoffus. Well, they're kind of on the way to each other. So, I love to see this announcement where not only will they help each other, they're going to launch their spacecraft together. And on the Ramsay spacecraft, JAXA is actually providing several instruments for it. And all that's left to do is a last little bit of funding and approval from the ministerial meeting at the European Space Agency sometime this November. The two spacecraft would launch together on an H3 rocket and would share communication and navigation with each other in order to help with their particular goals. The Destiny Plus spacecraft would help with the navigation of Ramsy's on the way to Apous. And after it arrives at Apous, Destiny Plus would continue on to Fatan while Ramsay studies Apoffus. So great collaboration and really happy to see this. It seems like both space agencies are aiming for sometime in 2028, especially in the case of the Ramsay spacecraft to rendevous with Apous at its next near Earth Rendezvous in April of 2029. So there is a little bit of a deadline on this. Aside from that, I'm seeing lots of other smaller commercial partnerships and announcements. Lots of presentations being given about past missions and going over the scientific data that they've collected. Even China, the Chonga 6 team that not only landed on the far side of the moon, but has returned samples from the far side of the moon received an award and is being recognized for sharing all of their scientific data they've collected with the world. We've only got a couple of days left of this conference. since it's ending on October 3rd. I'm willing to bet that there's going to be at least one or two more big announcements before the end of this conference. So yeah, be sure to stay tuned for more announcements and let me know what you think about the announcements that have been made so far. As always, there is a lot going on in the space industry and as we enter into the fourth quarter of the year, things are going to be ramping up for people to accomplish the goals that they have set for themselves before the end of this year. So buckle up. It's going to be an exciting next couple of months. Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Space Mike and until the next time I see you guys, keep moving onwards and upwards. And don't forget, Pasper at Astra through difficulty to the stars.