For 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has looked out into the Universe. Now, Lego is inviting builders to look inward with its latest model of the orbiting observatory.

The new Lego Icons Hubble Space Telescope (set no. 11382) was released on August 1 for $140 at the toy company's stores and its online shop. The 1,252-piece kit builds a 15-inch-long (38-cm) desktop model that is about twice as large as the previously released Lego Hubble models.

The Icons Hubble is the first to be sized in comparison to a Lego minifigure, such that the included astronaut provides a sense of scale for the telescope.

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SpaceX and the state of Louisiana are close to finalizing a deal for the launch company to acquire about 130,000 acres along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

There have been persistent rumors about such an agreement for months, but now The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate reports that Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to announce the agreement later this month.

The deal would give SpaceX control of an 18-mile stretch of marshland southwest of Lafayette. The site, known as Pecan Island, became available as part of a legal settlement that resolves dozens of lawsuits that blame ExxonMobil for pollution and coastal land loss, the newspaper reports.

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One week ago, more than 200 miles above the Earth, a refrigerator-size satellite making its way toward an attempted rescue of NASA's $500 million Swift gamma-ray observatory suddenly spun out of control.

It didn't look good. The spacecraft, named Link, was rotating on multiple axes, rendering it unable to maintain a reliable communications link with the ground and complicating efforts to arrest the spin. Two of the satellite's three reaction wheels, used for pointing, also stopped working. Through sporadic radio contact, engineers discovered a problem with some of the spacecraft's cold gas thrusters used for finer attitude control.

The Link satellite is built, owned, and operated by Katalyst Space Technologies, a satellite servicing startup that won a $30 million contract from NASA to fly up to the Swift observatory, grab onto it, and boost its orbit before succumbing to aerodynamic drag and burning up in the atmosphere.

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Welcome to Edition 9.05 of the Rocket Report! It was a big week for launch contracts, with both Rocket Lab and SpaceX scoring sizable deals from the US military for their respective Electron and Falcon 9 rockets. The vehicles have been the workhorses for small and medium lift for the United States over the past decade and may remain so for some time. Also, there will be no Rocket Report next week, as I am traveling on assignment, and Stephen is taking a week off.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Rocket Lab wins large Electron deal. Rocket Lab Corporation announced this week that it has been awarded its largest launch contract to date, a $266 million multi-launch contract with the US Space Force. Under the contract awarded by the US Space Force Space Systems Command, Rocket Lab will execute 12 suborbital launches, with up to six additional launches. The first launch of this contract is expected no earlier than the end of 2026.

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