Blue Origin’s NS-23 uncrewed flight ended abruptly on Saturday morning after the spaceflight company aborted the mission due to an issue with the New Shepard rocket’s booster. The failure happened just as the rocket reached max Q, or the moment when it reaches maximum dynamic pressure.

Blue Origin has yet to confirm what went wrong but said on Twitter that it’s “responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas” and added that “the capsule escape system functioned as designed.”

The rocket took off at around 10:26AM ET from Blue Origin’s West Texas site, with the capsule carrying 36 payloads containing scientific research equipment. Shortly into the flight (at around 1:21:49 in the livestream), you can see the moment Blue Origin triggers the escape system.

“It appears we have experienced an anomaly with today’s flight,” the commentator says during the livestream. “This was unplanned and we don’t have any details yet. But our crew capsule was able to escape successfully, we’ll follow its progress through landing. As you can see, the drogues have deployed, and the mains are going to be pulled out next.”

During the process, the capsule remains intact and deploys chutes before it begins its journey back down to Earth. As noted by Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger, if there were people on board, “they would have felt a serious jolt” but likely would “have been safe.”

Blue Origin is the spaceflight company founded by Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos and that recently took a group of people to the edge of space in June, which marked its fifth crewed mission.

NASA has once again scrubbed the launch of its Space Launch System (or SLS) rocket after engineers failed to fix a persistent hydrogen leak.

The hydrogen leak was first noticed this morning, soon after the rocket began being fueled with liquid hydrogen. The team made three troubleshooting attempts, but a leak was detected after each effort to fix the problem. After the third time, engineers recommended that the launch be a ‘no go’.

The SLS is meant to be one of the workhorses of NASA’s Artemis program, and is tasked with launching the Orion crew capsule that will hopefully ferry astronauts to the moon.

The agency also scrubbed the previous launch attempt of the SLS, which was supposed to happen on August 29th, citing issues with the engine bleed system meant to help the engines get to a proper temperature before takeoff. A hydrogen leak was also detected during that launch attempt.

NASA has another launch window left — from 5:12 PM to 6:42 PM on September 5th — before it faces a major delay. The flight termination system that’s meant to keep the rocket from becoming a dangerous missile if something goes very wrong during launch needs to be re-tested relatively frequently (it’s supposed to be every 20 days, but NASA got that extended to 25 days), and that testing can’t be done on the launch pad.

Given that the rocket rolled out to the launchpad on August 16th, NASA’s time will pretty much be up after September 5th. If the SLS doesn’t launch then, it’ll have to be rolled back to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building where the termination system can be re-tested. That’ll take time, potentially pushing this launch back to late October at the earliest.

If that launch is successful though, it should pave the way for a mission next year where NASA sends a crew up in the Orion capsule for the first time. They’ll just be flying around the moon, not landing on it — that milestone is planned for 2025, when we’ll hopefully see the first woman walk on the moon.

Developing…

Additional reporting by Mary Beth Griggs

NASA’s massive Space Launch System (SLS) is almost ready for liftoff. This highly anticipated rocket launch has been over a decade in the making and marks NASA’s return to crewed missions to the moon. This mission is called Artemis I, and while there won’t be any astronauts on board during this launch, it will serve as a test for the future goal of putting the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon.

During its first launch, the SLS will catapult NASA’s Orion capsule into space, where it will embark on a voyage around the Moon that could take anywhere from 39 to 42 days. Last week, NASA rolled the 322-foot rocket to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — a four-mile journey that took nearly 10 hours.

Now that the rocket has reached its launch pad, here’s how and when you can watch it lift off into space.

When is NASA’s Artemis I launch?

NASA plans on launching the SLS rocket on Monday, August 29th, 2022. It will have a two-hour launch window starting at 8:33AM ET. This means the rocket could take off anytime between 8:33AM ET and 10:33AM ET, if there are no delays.

How do I watch the Artemis I launch live?

If you can’t make it to the launch in person, NASA is livestreaming it from its website, YouTube channel, and the NASA app. The countdown to the launch starts on Saturday, August 27th, at 10:23AM ET.

There will also be a few other ways to follow along on the mission as well. On August 28th, NASA will have a specialized website called the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW) that will let people track the mission as it happens. You can also get some updates and watch a livestream of the launch from Alexa-enabled devices. Amazon will be flying a version of Alexa on board the mission.

What can I expect during the launch?

Besides the launch itself, NASA is planning to have some special guests during the broadcast. This includes appearances from Jack Black, Chris Evans, and Keke Palmer as well as a performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Josh Groban and Herbie Hancock.

A rocket belonging to the up-and-coming Astra space company failed to deliver two of NASA’s weather-tracking satellites to space after its second stage engine shut down prematurely. Both satellites were lost as a result of the failure.

Astra’s Launch Vehicle 0010 (LV0010) successfully took off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:43PM ET, but suffered an upper stage failure about 10 minutes into its flight. The launch was part of NASA’s mission to send six TROPICS satellites into space — these small, foot-long CubeSats are supposed to help NASA keep better track of developing tropical storms. CubeSats are low-cost satellites frequently built by researchers at colleges and universities.

“The upper stage shut down early and we did not deliver the payloads to orbit,” Astra said in a statement on Twitter. “We have shared our regrets with @NASA and the payload team.” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s science division, acknowledged the unsuccessful launch in a thread on Twitter, but remained optimistic, noting it still “offered a great opportunity for new science and launch capabilities.”

It’s unclear if or when NASA plans on launching the remaining TROPICS satellites with Astra, or if the two that have been lost will be replaced. When reached for comment, NASA referred The Verge to an update on its website, noting Astra and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident. While NASA says it “will lend any expertise needed,” it “would expect to pause the launch with Astra while an investigation is being conducted.”

Astra first partnered with NASA in February to bring a set of CubeSats to space, marking its first launch out of Cape Canaveral. However, Astra lost the payload after the rocket appeared to spin out of control after launch.

So far, Astra has only had two successful orbital launches out of seven total attempts — the company reached orbit for the first time last November and successfully deployed a customer’s satellites into orbit in March. A range of issues has impacted Astra’s other launches, ranging from problems with its guidance system to engine failure.

Update June 13th, 9:29AM ET: Updated to add an additional statement from NASA.

On Tuesday evening, France officially signed onto NASA’s Artemis Accords — the space agency’s set of guidelines and principles for how the US and other countries should explore the Moon in the future. France’s addition, long considered a big get for the Artemis Accords, brings the total number of signatory countries to 20, strengthening the international agreement ahead of NASA’s planned return to the lunar surface this decade.

When the finalized Artemis Accords were presented during the Trump administration in October 2020, NASA announced that eight countries had signed onto the document — including the United States. But there were some notable absences from that list. Two of the world’s largest space superpowers — China and Russia — have not signed, and Russia’s space chief has made it clear that the country is uninterested in partnering with NASA on its lunar exploration efforts. Two of Europe’s biggest space nations, France and Germany, weren’t on board either.

Now, after two years, France has finally come to the table, and the country is considered the most significant signatory yet for the Accords. “It was critical to get France on the same page as us for our lunar exploration and other plans, because they’re the dominant player in Europe along with Germany,” Gabriel Swiney, a senior policy advisor at NASA and one of the original authors of the Accords, tells The Verge. France is the largest contributor to the budget of the European Space Agency. The US also has a long-standing partnership with France’s space agency, CNES, and the country plays a pivotal role in operating the launch site and rockets for Europe’s primary launch provider, Arianespace.

France wasn’t completely sold on the Accords at first. “They have been open about the need for clarity on some of the issues with the Artemis Accords,” Swiney says. Now, it seems the country’s issues with the agreement have been resolved, giving the Accords a major stamp of approval from a once-skeptical nation.

Though the Artemis Accords are an international document, they’re intrinsically linked to NASA’s lunar ambitions. The name Artemis comes from NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface as early as 2025. While the timing of that landing is subject to change, NASA saw the need to have a preemptive international agreement with other nations before humans walked on the Moon again, detailing what rules and standards should be applied to lunar exploration. “What we’re trying to do is establish norms of behavior that every nation can agree to,” former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in 2020. NASA collaborated with the US State Department to come up with the final rules.

The Artemis Accords build upon the backbone of international space law, known as the Outer Space Treaty. Entered into force in 1967, the treaty creates a loose framework for how nations should explore space. Signatories agree to explore space peacefully, not to claim sovereignty over celestial objects like the Moon and Mars, and not to put weapons of mass destruction in space. But the Outer Space Treaty is vague by design, which has left many of its tenets open to interpretation and debate over the last half-century.

The Artemis Accords take things further, focusing on slightly more rigid standards for exploring the Moon. For instance, the agreement establishes areas on the Moon called “safety zones.” If one nation is conducting work on a region of the lunar surface, it’ll let the other signatories know and other countries will not interfere in that area. The Accords also call for the preservation of heritage sights, such as the landing locations for the Apollo missions, and also protect the “extraction and utilization” of space resources. That way, countries can mine the Moon for materials and then use those materials in their lunar exploration efforts.

When the Artemis Accords were first presented, they had their fair share of criticism. One major critique revolved around the use of lunar resources, with some arguing the Accords were an American land grab in space. The concept of utilizing space resources is seen by some as conflicting with the Outer Space Treaty’s instruction not to claim sovereignty of a celestial object. In fact, this was partly one of France’s concerns at first, according to Swiney.

“France has been one of the countries making clear that they think that space resources is something that the international community needs to really spend some time and think about,” he says. “So that it doesn’t become either a Wild West gold rush situation, or that it doesn’t just replicate some of the same inequalities that we see on Earth.”

NASA and government officials worked with the French space agency, attempting to combat what they considered to be a misperception that space resources were prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty. Ultimately, France came around, with NASA presenting the Artemis Accords as simply a starting point — not an end to the space resources discussion. Under the Accords, nations can extract resources, but “you have to do it lawfully and you need to keep talking about it and resolve some of these bigger questions.” Swiney says. “So I think they realized that that was a good starting point, to then address the issues that they continue to feel very strongly about.”

The next big European get would be Germany, the second-largest contributor to ESA, and Swiney is optimistic about the prospect. “I think it’s just taking time for countries to gain familiarity with the Accords,” he says. “They hear not just one US administration, but two US administrations talk about them… And as we move forward with [Artemis] missions, which are really centered around science and exploration, I think people realize the Artemis Accords really are exactly what they claim to be, which is about trying to create rules for exploration and science.”

Another standing criticism of the Accords revolved around the fact that NASA didn’t go through the traditional treaty-making process through the United Nations. “I think that concern has really been laid to rest just by the signatories we’ve gotten,” says Swiney. The Artemis Accords include a diverse group of some nontraditional spacefaring nations, like Columbia and Bahrain. As more countries sign on, it’s possible that the Artemis Accords may serve as a new framework for international space agreements in the future — one that might be slightly faster and more nimble than the often slow treaty route.

“It’s the idea that all these things are complementary, and that the Accords will then feed back into the United Nations’ process,” says Swiney. “But at the same time, we’re not going to sit and wait for the entire international community to provide guidance when we’re about to go back to the Moon and we need rules.

Swiney says to be on the lookout for even more signatories in the months ahead. Apart from Germany, he notes that India would be a particularly welcome signatory given the country’s robust space program. And soon, the Artemis Accords will transition from theoretical policy guidelines to implementation once flights to the Moon begin, which is ultimately going to be the more difficult part of the process. But the fact that the document has gained so many supporters so far has been a big win.

“We knew that these were topics that needed to be addressed before we started showing up to the Moon and going beyond, particularly in a persistent way,” Swiney says. “But we just weren’t sure whether it was something we could pull off. And I think since 2020, that narrative has really changed.”

Three Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, arrived at the Tianhe core module of the unfinished Tiangong space station on Sunday morning, where they’ll stay for six months to help finish its construction (via Space.com). The Shenzhou 14 spacecraft took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Saturday at 10:44PM ET (10:44AM local time) and docked with Tianhe at 5:42AM ET (5:42PM local time).

The three-person crew includes Chen Dong, Cai Xuzhe, and Liu Yang, who originally made history as the first Chinese woman in space during the country’s Shenzhou 9 mission in 2012. While they’re in orbit, the crew is expected to conduct several spacewalks and prepare the station for the arrival of two additional lab modules, with the Wentian module set to launch next month and the Mengtian in October. As noted by Space.com, the two modules will attach to opposite sides of the Tianhe core module to create a T-shaped station that will be smaller than the International Space Station (ISS).

China aims to complete the construction of Tiangong by the end of this year, with the launch of the Xuntian telescope module slated for 2023. Shenzhou 14 is China’s third crewed mission to the space station since the launch of the Tianhe module in April 2021. This latest trio is set to welcome the Shenzhou 15 crew aboard the station towards the end of this year, marking the first time the station will hold six people.

Today, NASA announced that two private companies — Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace — will develop the next-generation spacesuits that future astronauts will wear to conduct spacewalks and eventually traverse the surface of the Moon. It’s a bold new direction for spacesuit development at NASA, with the agency handing the job over to the private sector after years of struggling to develop a new suit of its own.

These new spacesuits will play a critical role in NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s flagship initiative to send humans back to the lunar surface. Currently, NASA is aiming to land the first Artemis astronauts on the Moon by 2025 — a one-year delay from the 2024 deadline originally set by the Trump administration. When the astronauts do land, NASA wants them to be equipped with proper spacesuits they can use to explore the Moon’s terrain.

There’s plenty of doubt that NASA can meet the 2025 deadline, though, as there’s still a significant amount of work left to do on the hardware and vehicles needed to achieve the first landing. But one of the primary holdups has turned out to be spacesuit development. Multiple audits have revealed that NASA’s quest to create next-generation suits has been inefficient, faced numerous technical challenges, and is many years behind schedule. Now, after 15 years of struggle to make these new suits, the agency is handing the reins over to the commercial industry. Collins Aerospace has history with spacesuit building, as it helped to create the current suits used by NASA, while Axiom Space is a relatively new company aimed at creating private space stations.

NASA announced that the total value of the contracts is $3.5 billion, though the space agency would not say the individual values of each company’s contract. The $3.5 billion is a ceiling that covers the life of the contracts, encompassing both partial development costs and future purchases of the suits for use by NASA. Once the suits are complete, though, the companies will own them and have the option to use them for other purposes unrelated to NASA.

The suits are meant to fit a wide range of body types, from the 5th percentile female to the 95th percentile male. The goal is for the spacesuits to be ready to be worn by astronauts on Artemis III, the third launch of NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System, and the current target for the first landing. Artemis also strives to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon. “So that she has got a suit that’s appropriately sized and tailored for her — that doesn’t feel like a spacecraft that feels like a ruggedized set of extreme sports outerwear — that should be the goal,” Dan Burbank, a former astronaut and senior tech fellow at Collins Aerospace, said during a press conference.

The new suits that these companies develop aren’t meant just for lunar exploration, though. NASA wants a new line of suits that are much more versatile than their predecessors to be used by both Artemis astronauts when exploring the Moon and to replace the aging suits on the International Space Station.

For the last four decades, NASA astronauts have relied on the same basic spacesuit design to conduct spacewalks on the ISS. Called the EMU, for Extravehicular Mobility Unit, the suit made its debut during the Space Shuttle era, and an “enhanced” version is used by astronauts on the ISS to leave the lab and conduct improvements and repairs on the outside of the station. The EMUs haven’t been upgraded in decades, though, and they aren’t intended to be used for lunar spacewalks. Plus, they are limited in sizing.

Photo by Joel Kowsky/NASA via Getty Images

But transitioning to a new spacesuit has proven difficult for NASA. The agency started work on new spacesuits back in 2007 and has spent a total of $420 million on spacesuit development since then. Those efforts eventually culminated in a new suit called the xEMU, a prototype of which was unveiled back in 2019. At the time of the unveiling, NASA hoped to have two suits ready to test on the space station before sending them to the lunar surface for the 2024 landing.

But, in August, an audit by NASA’s Office of Inspector General found that development of NASA’s new suits was significantly delayed due to a lack of money, technical problems, and issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, the report claimed the xEMU would not be ready by the Trump administration’s 2024 deadline. (A few months later, NASA moved the deadline to 2025.) The audit also noted that NASA would likely spend $1 billion total on spacesuit development by the time the first flight suits would be ready, which would be “April 2025 at the earliest.”

Meanwhile, in April 2021, NASA put out a request for information from private companies for designs of new spacesuits that could be used for Artemis missions. At the time, NASA said it would still continue to develop the xEMU in-house, but the move signaled that the agency might rely on commercial suits instead. “NASA has a responsibility to taxpayers and future explorers to re-examine its infrastructure as needed to reduce costs and enhance performance,” the agency wrote when announcing the news.

Now, NASA is putting all its expectations on Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space. The space agency said that its engineers would continue testing on the xEMU through the end of the year, but eventually, it will shift focus and provide insight to the commercial companies as they move forward. Additionally, the data and research that NASA gathered throughout xEMU development will be made available to the two companies.

As for the companies’ abilities to meet the 2025 deadline, that will play out over the next few years. Collins Aerospace unveiled a prototype lunar suit back in 2019 and, today, Burbank said the company has already spent years of development on a suit. As for Axiom Space, the company’s CEO Mike Suffredini also said suit development began a few years back, as the company has long considered making suits for its future space stations. “We have a number of customers that already would like to do a spacewalk,” Suffredini said. “And we had planned to build a suit as part of our program.”

Still, 2025 is just a few years away. NASA says it’s confident about transitioning spacesuit duties at this juncture, claiming the existing xEMU research will help “reduce risk” and speed things up. “We were at a great place to transition, just because of how mature the xEMU was at the time,” Lara Kearney, the manager of the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program at NASA, said during the conference. “And I think getting it to these guys sooner allows them to run.”

Plus, there are a whole host of milestones that NASA and its commercial partners need to meet in order to make 2025 work, including launching the agency’s new deep-space rocket for the first time and finishing up human lunar landers to take people to the Moon’s surface. Spacesuits are just one piece of the highly complex puzzle NASA must solve to get back to the Moon.

Correction June 1, 7:53PM ET: An earlier version of this story stated that the individual contract values would be revealed at the end of the month, based on information received during a NASA press conference. NASA later clarified that that information was inaccurate and the information has been removed.

This evening, Vice President Kamala Harris is announcing that the United States will no longer conduct anti-satellite, or ASAT, missile tests — the practice of using ground-based missiles to destroy satellites in orbit around Earth. Harris is challenging other countries to make the same commitment and establish this policy as a new “norm of responsible behavior in space.”

Harris will speak more extensively on the new commitment during a speech at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California this evening. Harris currently serves as the chair of the White House’s National Space Council, an executive advisory group that helps to set the nation’s space agenda.

This declaration comes five months after Russia conducted an ASAT test in November. The country launched one of its Nudol missiles from Earth, which destroyed Russia’s Cosmos-1408 satellite, a Soviet-era spacecraft that’s been in orbit since the 1980s. The event created a massive cloud of more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris as well as thousands of smaller pieces that couldn’t be detected. The satellite’s destruction occurred in a fairly close orbit to that of the International Space Station, prompting the astronauts on board to temporarily shelter inside their spacecraft in case the debris damaged the facility.

The United States swiftly condemned the test, as did NATO and the European Union. Tests like these — known as direct ascent ASAT tests — are widely reviled because of their propensity to create dangerous debris. The leftover pieces from ASAT tests can spread for miles and often stay in orbit for months and even years, menacing the space environment. ASAT debris can’t be controlled and moves at many thousands of miles per hour, so even a small fragment can damage or take out a functioning satellite during a collision.

Though the space community generally despises ASAT tests, no country has called for a moratorium on the practice in the more than 60 years that countries have tested the technology. Now, the United States is taking that step in light of Russia’s actions. “I think it’s a really powerful move,” Victoria Samson, an expert on military space at the Secure World Foundation think tank, tells The Verge. “The US is the first country to make this sort of declaration, and I’m very much hoping other countries will follow suit — particularly those who have also tested anti-satellite weapons in space, but even those who haven’t.”

Since the same missile technology used to destroy a fast-moving satellite can also be used to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles, ASAT tests can act as technology demonstrations. But these tests are predominately very loud shows of strength. When a country demonstrates that it can destroy one of its own satellites, it’s broadcasting to the world that it has the capability to destroy an adversary’s satellites, too.

So far, no country has actually used ASAT technology to take out another country’s spacecraft. Instead, only four countries have demonstrated this technology on their own satellites. Russia’s been testing its Nudol technology for years now but only successfully destroyed a satellite from the ground in November. In 2019, India destroyed one of its own satellites, creating a few hundred pieces of debris — half of which have already burned up in our planet’s atmosphere. And in 2007, China destroyed its defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite, creating thousands of fragments. Some of that debris is still in orbit today and causing problems; in November, just before Russia conducted its ASAT test, the International Space Station had to boost its orbit to get out of the way of one of the leftover pieces of China’s ASAT test.

Image: NASA

The US has perhaps been testing ASAT technology the longest and conducted its last debris-generating test back in 2008. As part of a mission called “Burnt Frost,” US Strategic Command launched a missile at a decaying spy satellite from the National Reconnaissance Office. The US made the excuse that the satellite contained nearly 1,000 pounds of a toxic propellant called hydrazine and shooting down the satellite was simply a safety measure to prevent the propellant from doing harm if the satellite survived the plunge through Earth’s atmosphere.

Though it’s been more than a decade since the US has conducted an ASAT test, the US has been reluctant to call for an end to the practice. “Up until a couple of years ago, that was not the US position,” Samson says. “The US wanted complete freedom of action in space no matter what.”

The orbit around Earth has grown increasingly more crowded over the last few years, though. It has become easier and cheaper for companies to launch privately built satellites into space. Meanwhile, companies like SpaceX and OneWeb have begun building out mega-constellations of satellites in orbit, consisting of hundreds and even thousands of satellites. Earth’s orbit is only going to become more congested, as other companies and countries consider launching similar mega-constellations to stay competitive.

Adding even more debris to this environment will just increase the risk of collisions. Russia’s ASAT test in November demonstrated just how threatening that debris cloud can be when it put the astronauts on board the International Space Station in danger. In December, Kathleen Hicks, the US Department of Defense deputy secretary, expressed a desire for the international community to halt ASAT tests during a meeting of the National Space Council. “We would like to see all nations agree to refrain from anti-satellite weapons testing that creates debris,” she said.

Now, the Biden administration is making that wish official with the US leading the way on the effort and calling for other countries to do the same. However, it’s unclear which countries will actually follow suit, and there is currently no way to hold countries accountable for their pledges.

However, the international community does seem poised to take a stand on ASAT testing in some capacity. In May, the United Nations is convening an open-ended working group tasked with establishing “norms, rules, and principles of responsible behaviors” in space. One of the topics the group is concerned with is debris-generating events caused by the intentional destruction of spacecraft in orbit. “From what we’ve heard, a lot of countries are interested in something like an ASAT test moratorium,” says Samson “So I actually think this does have the possibility to get a groundswell movement towards international support.”

Of course, there’s a lengthy process between today’s announcement and some kind of declaration of international law. “This is absolutely a first step,” says Samson. “We’re hoping that there will be plenty more.”

Russian space agency Roscosmos has denied claims that its three cosmonauts wore what appeared to be the colors of the Ukrainian flag as a potential statement against the ongoing war, according to a report from the BBC. The three cosmonauts, Denis Mateev, Oleg Artemyev, and Sergey Korsakov donned bright yellow and blue suits as they boarded the International Space Station on Friday.

Roscosmos was quick to dismiss any reports that suggest the cosmonauts wore the colors in solidarity with Ukraine. “Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” the agency wrote in a translated post on Telegram (via Space.com). “The design of the uniform was agreed upon long before current events.” The post says yellow and blue are the same colors in the emblem of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the alma mater of all three cosmonauts. In a separate post on Telegram, Roscosmos shared an image of Artemyev wearing a yellow suit during his first flight in 2014.

Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin similarly added that the three were representing their university, not Ukraine. “Under no circumstances will we force cosmonaut graduates of Bauman University not to wear the colors of the coat of arms of their alma mater,” he wrote on Twitter.

The cosmonauts didn’t indicate any meaning behind the colors during a livestreamed press conference after their arrival. Artemyev brushed off a question about the colors of their suits, jokingly saying: “It became our turn to pick a color. The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up.”

All three cosmonauts arrived at the ISS aboard the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They were warmly received by their fellow German, Russian, and American crewmembers aboard the ISS despite the tensions between Russia and other nations.

One of those crewmembers is American astronaut Mark Vande Hei. A Russian spacecraft is set to bring him, along with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov back to Earth on March 30th. Russia says it will bring Vande Hei back as planned, despite reports indicating otherwise.

Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson is no longer scheduled to fly on Blue Origin’s space flight later this month, the space tourism venture has announced. No reason was given for Davidson’s departure, only that the date of the launch has shifted from its original March 23rd date.

“Blue Origin’s 20th flight of New Shepard has shifted to Tuesday, March 29. Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” Blue Origin spokesperson Sara Blask said in a statement.

Davidson was scheduled to be an “honorary guest” (an inclusion designed to build hype) alongside five paying customers on Blue Origin’s fourth crewed flight. Previous guests have included Star Trek actor William Shatner, GMA anchor and former football star Michael Strahan, female aviator Wally Funk, and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos himself. Blue Origin said it will announce the new sixth crew member “in the coming days.”

Blue Origin flights send crews over 60 miles above the surface of the earth on the company’s New Shepard rocket. Participants experience a few minutes of weightlessness before parachuting back down to earth, in a ride that lasts roughly 10 minutes. The rocket is designed to land upright on a landing pad using its engine, while the capsule containing its crew returns to the surface under parachutes.

Davidson has previously played an astronaut on SNL, when his Chad character went to Mars on a SpaceX mission during a show hosted by Elon Musk. For now, it looks like Davidson’s space antics will continue to be tethered to comedy skits.