My two appearances on The Space Show this week

12:41 pm

David Livingston has now archived for download or listening or watching the two Space Shows this week in which I participated.

On Sunday, May 24, 2026 the show was an open discussion focused on reviewing SpaceX’s 12th Starship/Superheavy test flight on May 22, 2026. The show can be viewed here, here, and here. You can also download the audio here to listen at your pleasure.

On Tuesday, May 26, 2026 I was the Space Show’s main guest, with the discussion avoiding SpaceX almost completely. First I outlined NASA’s just announced new lunar missions and its overall plans for the Moon, adding some commentary amid the discussion with other participants. Then I outlined the state of development of the five American space stations being developed to replace ISS. As always, the discussion was made more interesting by the participation of others. The show can be viewed here, here, and here. You can also download the audio here to listen at your pleasure.

Both shows are definitely worth your time, if you are at all interested in the on-going commercial renaissance now taking place in the aerospace industry.

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An icy Martian crater filled with brain terrain

11:42 am

An icy Martian crater filled with brain terrain
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 26, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label an “ice-rich crater fill.”

And yup, that’s what we got. The floor of this 2.8-mile-wide unnamed crater is filled with what planetary scientists have labeled brain terrain, a feature found only on Mars that they associate with the sublimation of near surface ice, but as yet do not fully understand its entire formation process. In the upper right is a full resolution inset of that brain terrain, to give a good sense of its strange nature.

On that floor there are also several small fresh impact craters, as well as older small impacts that have faded almost to obscurity due to that mysterious process forming the brain terrain.

Its iciness of the terrain is also indicated by the rim of the crater, which is distorted as well as blobby. At impact or subsequently the ground here was soft like mud, and thus easy to shape into these cushioned features. Thus, though the rim was almost certainly circular after impact, time and the muddy nature of this ground allows it to get bent and warped.

Nor is it surprising there is near surface ice at this location. We are at 41 degrees south latitude, well away from the dry Martian tropics. This picture simply provides more evidedence that once you get above 30 degrees latitude, it will not be hard to find water on Mars.
» Read more

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

New long term analysis of solar activity suggests the Sun is undergoing some form of internal structural change

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Sunspot activity for the past two cycles
NOAA’s chart of sunspot activity.
Click for the most recent update.

The uncertainty of science: Scientists doing a new analysis of more than forty years of solar data have concluded that some form of “subsurface structural changes associated with successive 11-year [sunspot] cycles” are taking place, with those changes “ever more progressively confined just beneath the solar surface.”

Using almost 40 years of helioseismic data from six telescopes around the world in the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON), the researchers uncovered a gradual change in structure just beneath the surface that has spanned multiple cycles, with the current solar cycle 25 showing particularly strong signatures of these changes.

Lead author Professor Bill Chaplin, from the University of Birmingham, said: “The Sun has its own ‘active biorhythm’ creating rising and falling magnetic activity that shapes space weather. However, traditional surface measures don’t capture the full story – that the Sun may be entering a different mode of behaviour unfolding over decades.

“We have uncovered evidence of systematic changes in the solar activity cycle. Crucially, magnetic activity is becoming more tightly confined near the surface with each cycle.”

The confinement appears to be within the first 600 miles below the surface, which for the Sun is barely skin deep.

In reading the paper [pdf], it is very clear they have detected these changes, but are as yet unable to apply them to any larger fundamental processes. They are observing the Sun change, but don’t know why. It could be simply random fluctuations of behavior, or it could be part of the Sun’s normal behavior related to its magnetic field and the nuclear fusion that makes it burn.

In either case, this lack of deeper understanding means it is impossible as yet to predict what will happen next, or how those future changes will impact us here on Earth.

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New study using Chandrayaan-2 data again suggests ice in crater near Moon’s south pole

9:06 am

The Moon's south pole region

The uncertainty of science: A new study by scientists in India using data from the Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2 has once again found evidence strongly suggesting the existence of water ice in several permanently shadowed craters near Moon’s south pole.

The findings are based on observations made by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter’s Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR), a sophisticated microwave imaging instrument capable of probing beneath the lunar surface.

Among the craters examined, scientists found particularly strong evidence of subsurface ice in a 1.1-kilometre-wide crater located within the larger Faustini crater near the Moon’s south pole. Researchers said the crater displayed a distinctive “lobate-rim morphology”- a flow-like structural pattern that may indicate the impact event penetrated an ice-rich subsurface layer.

On the map above the green dot to the right of the south pole marks the location of the small crater inside Faustini Crater. Their conclusions were based first on microwave data suggesting subsurface ice, and second on the lobate shape of this crater’s rim, which has a kind blobby look implying the material is muddy and impregnated with ice.

Increasingly the data from all sources seems to suggest that if there is ice in these permanently shadowed craters, it is likely impregnated in the soil, and will require processing to extract.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

More opposition to the EU’s new space law, this time from European companies

8:39 am

The European Union
This label would be more accurate if it read
“NOT made in the European Union”

At a conference this week officials from a number of European aerospace companies expressed strong opposition to the European Union’s (EU) space law, adding their voice to the opposition that already exists from a number of European nations, at least one left-leaning think tank, and the U.S.

Speaking at SmallSat Europe, panelists said they did not oppose regulation itself or the idea behind a common European framework. However, the words most frequently used to describe the first and second drafts of the EU Space Act were “monopoly,” “slow,” “rigid” and “micromanaging.”

Chiara Manfletti, CEO of Neuraspace, argued the current draft misunderstands how fast-moving commercial space operates. “The idea of having an EU Space Act is absolutely good. The problem is the proposal currently on the table,” Manfletti said during a panel. “If it takes 12 months to get a license, that is ancient history for the commercial space sector.”

A recurring concern among panelists was that Europe already moves more slowly than the United States and that the proposed legislation could institutionalize additional delays.

My sense of the situation is that there is enough opposition that in a rational world the EU would scrape the present draft of this law and start over. Sadly, European governments — especially the EU — no longer function rationally. There is no way to predict what its bureaucrats and power-seeking political leaders will do.

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FAA grounds Starship/Superheavy pending completion of SpaceX’s investigation

8:01 am

According to an announcement yesterday by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Starship and Superheavy are presently grounded pending the completion of SpaceX’s investigation of the engine failures in the Superheavy booster.

After a thorough assessment of the operation, the FAA has determined the May 22 SpaceX Starship Flight 12 launch resulted in a mishap. The mishap involved the Super Heavy booster as it flew back to the Gulf of America after stage separation. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property. 

The FAA is requiring SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation. The FAA will oversee the SpaceX-led investigation, be involved in every step of the process, and approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions.

The propaganda press will make of more this than it should. Based on the FAA’s procedures since Trump took over from Biden, the agency is not going to slow things down. It mostly just observes closely the investigation after any mishap, and as soon as the company is itself satisfied with the solution and has instigated its planned fixes, the FAA issues its stamp of approval and allows flights to proceed immediately.

For example, it acted in this manner for the Starship/Superheavy tests in 2025. It also did the same for Blue Origin in its investigation of its recent New Glenn failure. In both cases there were no delays waiting for the agency to retype the company’s conclusions. The approval was immediate. Expect the same now.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

May 27, 2026 Quick space links

3:09 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Space Force awards SpaceX $2.29 billion contract for military data constellation

9:13 am

In what is intended as an upgrade to the Starshield military variation of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, the Space Force yesterday awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract to launch a “data transport constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) for the Space Data Network (SDN), which the service is developing as its central communications network to link sensors to shooters.”

Under the Other Transaction Authority agreement, the company is to deliver “a fully operational prototype capability by the end of 2027,” Space Systems Command (SSC) said in a press release.

The SDN Backbone, formerly known as MILNET and based on SpaceX’s Starshield militarized variant of its commercial Starlink constellation, will serve as the backhaul data transport layer for the broader SDN. While the award to SpaceX is thus not a surprise, the size of the contract is.

It appears that the Pentagon has been so satisfied with its use of both Starlink and Starshield that it was quite willing to give SpaceX this new larger contract.

The good part of this story is that SpaceX is providing good service to the American people, through the Pentagon. The bad part of this story is that it is getting so little competition from the rest of the aerospace industry. This was work that Amazon could have won, had its Leo constellation been operational and competitive. It is not, as yet, and so it loses business. As the saying goes, “He who hesitates is lost.” And sadly a lot of old and even new aerospace companies have been hesitating.

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A call to my readers: Find the location of NASA’s lunar base!

8:46 am

Moon base map from NASA's May 26, 2026 presentation

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated
Click for interactive LRO map.

During yesterday’s NASA press conference outlining the first unmanned missions to the agency’s planned moon base near the Moon’s south pole, Carlos García-Galán, Moon Base program executive, included the graphic above of that base in his presentation.

Though García-Galán said this lunar base map is in the south pole region, the map provided no crater names nor any longitude or latitude information. Nor did it provide a scale to determine the size of these craters. Because of this lack of information, I was unable to identify the map’s precise location near the Moon’s south pole, even after searching extensively at the QuickMap site for Lunar Reconnaissance Rover (LRO) images, now managed by Intuitive Machines images and found here. The map to the right was created from that QuickMap site, annotated by me later with the planned landing locations for Chang’e-7 and Griffin, plus the sites where Nova-C and Vikram landed previously.

I am now asking you, my readers, to do some detective work. See if you can pinpoint the location of the map above with the LRO south pole imagery at the link. The crater patterns should provide the first clue. Remember also that the orientation of the map might require significant rotation to match the LRO data. Remember too that the scale of the map above could require you to zoom in a great deal.

If you think you have a match, post it in the comments below.

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A review of what happened and what’s next for Starship/Superheavy

8:06 am

Link here. This article is a very nice and thorough review of what happened during SpaceX’s 12th test flight of Starship/Superheavy last week. What I like about it most is that it outlines what happened with very little speculation. No one outside of SpaceX is in a position to do this properly, and some speculation has been I think over the top. The article at the link avoids this.

It also provides a quick and reasonable summary about what is likely to happen next:

Next up will be Booster 20 and Ship 40 for Flight 13. This mission may launch in the July-August timeframe, pending testing and any mitigation efforts relating to the issues found during Flight 12. The launch pad appears to be in good shape, removing it from being a potential bottleneck to Booster 20’s Static Fire test, although that is not expected for weeks.

The article also provided this added news item that SpaceX revealed during last week’s test flight that has mostly fallen under the radar among news outlets (including here):

SpaceX also revealed plans for a lunar Starlink constellation using laser-linked relay satellites and confirmed that Fram2 commander Chun Wang has signed up for Starship’s first crewed interplanetary mission — a two-year Mars flyby. Wang will first fly with Dennis and Akiko Tito on the previously contracted crewed lunar flyby, potentially as early as 2034.

That’s two Starship missions apparently paid for by Wang, one around the Moon followed by a Mars fly-by. With the lunar fly-by targeting 2034, the Mars fly-by is likely a decade away, at the earliest.

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German rocket startup signs deal with Nova Scotia spaceport

7:50 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace, which has not yet had a successful launch, has now signed a launch agreement with Maritime Launch Services, the company that has been trying to create a spaceport in Nova Scotia for more than a decade without success.

Space company Isar Aerospace and Spaceport operator Maritime Launch Services (MLS), have signed a Letter of Intent to advance sovereign orbital launch readiness from Nova Scotia, Canada. The agreement brings together Isar Aerospace’s orbital launch system and MLS’s launch site, Spaceport Nova Scotia, which is strategically located for launches to support reliable access to mid- to high-inclination and polar orbits for Earth observation and communication satellites and constellations, supporting commercial and government missions

Isar’s Spectrum rocket failed seconds after launch in its first attempt in 2025, launching from Norway’s Andoya spaceport. Since January the company has tried again several times but was forced to scrub each time. At present the launch is tentatively scheduled for June.

MLS’s history is even more convoluted. Initially a decade ago it partnered with a Ukrainian rocket company to offer launch services at Spaceport Nova Scotia. After years of delays that deal ended for good when Russia invaded the Ukraine. Since then MLS has tried to interest both satellite and rocket companies, all to no avail. This new deal was probably made possible due to financial help from the Canadian government, which in March 2026 signed a 10 year deal with MLS worth $200 million, with the intent to encourage a “sovereign orbital capability” for Canada. Since there are no rocket companies in Canada capable of doing this, it appears that capability will now come from Germany.

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Kansas – Dust in the Wind

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live c2011. While I consider the music of this song truly beautiful, I personally despise the nihilist sentiments of the lyrics. There is more to life and existence than dust and nothingness, even if we as humans can’t quite figure it out. For this reason I have for years refused to post this song as an evening pause when others have suggested it.

I decided this time to finally let it play, mostly because the violin solo here is so well done.

Hat tip Chris Petty.

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May 26, 2026, Quick space links

2:46 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • Video of the May 26, 2010 first test flight of Boeing’s X-51 hypersonic missile
    It achieved the longest duration flight at a speed over Mach 5 and an altitude of 70,000 feet for over 200 seconds. It also led no where for more than a decade. Only in the past year or so has the military made real progress in the hypersonic field, because it now has a fleet of private companies able to do testing cheap, fast, and in a variety of ways, something Boeing could not do.
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NASA outlines new program of unmanned missions to Moon

2:15 pm

NASA's Moon base plans as of May 2026
NASA’s Moon base plans as of May 2026.

NASA officials today outlined its new reshaped program of unmanned missions to Moon, designed it says to lay the first groundwork for the manned lunar base to follow.

You can watch the press conference here. The map to the right comes from one viewgraph during that conference, and apparently shows the planned lunar base area, which officials said could cover about 100 square miles. Though officials said this is in the south pole region, I have not been able to identify the precise location, using the global map produced by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The large crater northeast of the base does not appear to be Shackleton Crater.

The schedule includes four already planned missions, two new missions awarded to Blue Origin in a $188 million contract to deliver two new rovers, and a new hopper mission mission to be delivered by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. The schedule is as follows:
» Read more

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Colorful Martian dunes

12:00 pm

Colorful Martian dunes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 15, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels the image a “dune field.” What struck me immediately however was the vast range of colors, something that is usually not seen on Mars. Within a very short distance we go from bright orange to dark blue, with the change sometimes exceedingly sharp.

The orange is likely coarser rocks or bedrock, while the dark blue patches are likely piles of sand that has piled up due to prevailing winds. Why the dunes on the upper plateau change from bright orange to dark blue however is an unknown.

And why the patches of dust remain undefined is also a mystery. Dust on Mars is generally organized into dunes by the wind. It isn’t here.
» Read more

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NASA approves lunar habitation module design from Italy’s space agency

10:06 am

While the American company Redwire appears in the lead to win a European contract to build its lunar lander’s robot arm, it appears the Italian Space Agency (ASI) has gotten NASA’s preliminary approval to begin work on its Multi-purpose Habitation module (MPH) for the lunar base.

The Italian Space Agency [ASI] announced on 22 May that its Multi-Purpose Habitation (MPH) module had been cleared by a NASA review board to progress toward a Preliminary Design Review in 2027. The first MPH module is expected to launch in 2033.

…With the successful completion of the SDR [System Definition Review] and SRR [System Requirements Review], ASI and Thales Alenia Space can now prepare for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), which will assess whether the module’s preliminary design is mature enough to meet NASA’s requirements before the programme advances into detailed design and hardware development.

It should be noted that the MPH appears to be a revision of the habitable module that ESA and Thales Alenia were building for the now dead Lunar Gateway station. This new deal is likely NASA’s effort to give ESA comparable work to make up for the loss of its Gateway contribution.

At the same time, ASI will face heavy competition from American companies for this work, as it isn’t the only one proposing habitable modules for the American lunar base. In March 2026 Voyager Technologies and Max Space announced a partnership to build their own inflatable habitable lunar modules. Just as ESA can only make rare exceptions when it gives work to American companies, NASA is obliged to do the same with its European contracts.

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Redwire completes testing on robot arm prototype for ESA

9:45 am

The European division of the American space manufacturing company Redwire last week delivered to the European Space Agency (ESA) a full developed and tested robot arm prototype, as per a 2024 contract.

The project is being led by Redwire’s Luxembourg team, which recently completed several project milestones including preliminary design and performance assessment.

Before successful delivery, the MANUS Breadboard Model underwent a comprehensive test campaign to verify the functionality and performance of the manipulator and tool-changer subsystems, and to demonstrate operational scenarios aligned with system requirements. All planned operations, including payload handling, end-effector actuation with wireless data and power transfer, range extender manipulation, and automatic deployment, were executed successfully, confirming overall system readiness. Functional testing validated safe and reliable mechanical performance, demonstrating strong joint-space accuracy and stable interaction among subsystems.

The arm is intended for ESA’s Argonaut lunar lander, allowing it to unload cargo from the lander to the lunar surface. ESA’s 2024 development contract was issued to both Redwire and the Polish company PIAP. PIAP however has not even built the actual prototype. It appears ESA is now moving forward on the full contract phase for the entire rover, and it appears Redwire’s Luxembourg division is in the best position to win the robot arm contract portion.

Not surprisingly, Redwire’s stock surged by 24% following this announcement.

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Voyager wins $16.5 million DARPA contract to give solid-fueled rockets variable thrust

9:29 am

The space station startup Voyager Technologies announced today that DARPA has awarded it a $16.5 million contract to develop a technology for use by all solid-fueled rocket manufacturers that will allow those rockets to have variable thrust while firing.

Until now, once you light a solid-fueled rocket motor (SRM) it works like a firecracker, burning at the same high thrust until it runs out of fuel. The goal is to introduce ways to change that thrust along the way, if need be.

During the 20-month contract, Voyager will combine its expertise with complex system modeling and controls with the propellant and manufacturing specialized to develop and validate proof-of-concept systems, culminating in tailorable SRM hot-fire demonstrations.

The program also focuses on manufacturing scalability and post-manufacturing control architectures, including the integration of structural health monitoring systems to support real-time health monitoring and performance. These activities are intended to prepare the technology for rapid industrial transition across multiple weapon systems, enabling flexible weapons procurement and large-scale production and stockpiling.

The vagueness in this description likely comes from two reasons. First, the technology is likely difficult and still uncertain. Two, when developed this technology is certainly going to be classified, since solid-fueled rockets are used extensively by the War Department in missiles. It will be made available to multiple American manufacturers, but only to them.

Whether this technology can become operational in less than two years remains a large question. We shall see. Nonetheless, as a company Voyager continues to expand its reach, diversifying its effort beyond its Starlab space station.

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SpaceX launches another 24 Starlink satellites

9:11 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched 24 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its sixth flight (32 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

62 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 62 to 52.

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West Point Band and Glee Club – Mansions of the Lord

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For Memorial Day, a repost from 2020. The words:

To fallen soldiers let us sing
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the Mansions of the Lord
No more bleeding, no more fight
No prayers pleading through the night

Just divine embrace, eternal light
To the Mansions of the Lord.
Where no mothers cry and no children weep
We will stand and guard though the angels sleep
Through the ages safely keep
The Mansions of the Lord.

One comment

May 25, 2026 Quick space links

2:40 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

4 comments

An outcrop of many parallel layers on Mars

1:52 pm

An outcrop of many parallel layers on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 11, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture has been rotated so that north is to the top.

The science team describes this feature as “dark linear ridges.” Apparently the ground at this location at some point in the past tilted upward, exposing these layers and creating this 250 to 400 foot high escarpment facing south. What makes this even more intriguing is the ground was only uplifted in this one area. If you look at the full image you will see that the surrounding terrain is flat and relatively featureless.

The location is in the high southern latitudes in the Martian cratered highlands. Thus, it is likely that there is some near surface ice in these layers, and in fact the many Martian climate cycles produced by the wide swings in the planet’s rotational tilt likely contributed to making the layers themselves.
» Read more

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The geology of the Moon’s far side, revealed in pictures taken during Artemis-2

9:04 am

A sample of Andrew McCarthy's work
A sample of Andrew McCarthy’s work. Click for original.

When Artemis-2 commander Reid Wiseman took pictures as his Orion capsule swung around the far side of the Moon, he did so as per the instructions of astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, thus producing enhanced-color photographs capable of distinguishing the lunar geology with more detail.

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy is known for turning the moon into something it decidedly isn’t to the naked eye; a colorful, mineral-rich landscape that looks more like a geological survey than the grey orb hanging in the night sky. His technique relies on stacking hundreds or thousands of images together to suppress noise and amplify the subtle spectroscopic differences between different surface materials. The result is both scientifically accurate and visually arresting.
Linking up with Artemis

As Space.com details, just weeks before the Artemis II launch window, McCarthy DM’d mission commander and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman with a proposal: could Wiseman shoot the moon the same way McCarthy shoots the moon? It turns out he could. “He was immediately onboard,” McCarthy said. “It was a dream come true, obviously, for me, but I saw it as this very unique opportunity.”

McCarthy worked up a plan alongside Wiseman and NASA’s lunar photography team, the same group that had trained the Orion crew on their camera kit. As regular readers will already know, the primary workhorse was a Nikon D5 DSLR paired with an 80–400 mm Nikkor lens, a decade-old body chosen specifically for its exceptional high-ISO performance. Wiseman shot burst sequences at varying exposures throughout the flyby, generating a dataset McCarthy could stack back on Earth.

The picture to the right is a small sample of McCarthy’s work.

Hat tip to reader Ferris Akel.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:38 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 29 Starlink Satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage (B1078) completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, 64 days after its previous flight. With this flight, the booster moves into a tie for seventh place with the Columbia shuttle and another Falcon 9 booster in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

39 Discovery space shuttle
34 Falcon 9 booster B1067
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1071
32 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

61 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 61 to 52.

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NASA practically eliminates any Starliner flights before ISS retires

10:11 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS in 2024.

In a procurement announcement on May 18, 2026, NASA added another three to six crewed flights to ISS to its contract with SpaceX, covering all missions possible through 2030, which in turn practically eliminates the possibility it will buy any manned flights on Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

In a May 18 procurement filing, NASA announced its intent to add six post-certification missions, or PCMs, to SpaceX’s commercial crew contract on a sole-source basis. The agency would order up to three of those missions at the time it added them, formally starting preparations for them.

…Adding six missions to the contract would cover three years of ISS operations, at a rate of one mission every six months. With the currently contracted missions, running through Crew-14, flying through the fall of 2027, the extension would provide coverage through late 2030, when the ISS is slated for retirement. NASA has previously stated the last crewed mission would likely spend a year at the station.

Though it is not stated yet exactly how much SpaceX will earn with these additional missions, based on previous contracts the revenue will likely range from $1 to $2 billion. Overall, SpaceX has probably received somewhere between $4 to $6 billion additional earnings that was supposed to go to Boeing.

Instead, Boeing is now out of the picture entirely, though NASA is being very coy about saying so. It will earn nothing from Starliner, at least in connection with hauling crews or cargo to ISS. And because its contract with NASA was fixed price and the company could not meet its final milestones to get the bulk of its payments, it will have cost the company about $2 billion beyond what NASA had paid it.

It remains unknown whether Boeing wishes to continue the project. NASA officials had suggested earlier this year that it would buy an unmanned cargo mission to ISS to give the company a chance to prove the capsule and get it certified for manned missions. They have since backed off from that plan, scheduling no Boeing missions through the rest of this year.

Though things could still change, it appears Starliner is dead. In history books this Boeing project I think will become the poster boy for the failures of the older big space companies that used to dominate America’s aerospace industry. By the 21st century they didn’t know how to budget, had poor quality control resulting in unreliable products, and designed things that were badly conceived. The result was a bankrupt space industry that was only saved when new companies appeared willing to fill a need these older companies could not.

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China launches three astronauts to its Tiangong-3 space station

9:21 am

China today successfully launched three astronauts to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

The Shenzhou capsule docked with the station 3.5 hours after launch. The overall mission is planned as a standard six-month mission, though depending on how the crew fare one will continue and attempt to complete a yearlong mission.

China’s state-run press provided no information on where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters (using extremely toxic hypergolic fuels) crashed inside China. That press however made a big deal about how one of the astronauts comes from Hong Kong, no longer free and now under the full thumb of the communist government.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

60 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 60 to 52.

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On the Space Show twice this week!

12:59 pm

After yesterday’s Starship/Superheavy test launch, David Livingston, who runs The Space Show, decided schedule an quick open-lines show for tomorrow, Sunday May 24, 2026 at noon (Pacific), asking all of the show’s board of advisors to come on and discuss their impressions of the launch and the future of SpaceX.

I agreed, mostly because I am curious to hear what the other board members think. They focus more on the engineering than I do, so I want their perspective. I will of course chime in when I think I have something to add.

In addition, I have a full two-hour appearance already scheduled on The Space Show for Tuesday, May 26, 2026 at 6 pm (Pacific). On that show I will expand on my own perspective SpaceX as well as all things related to space exploration, focusing less on engineering and more on the larger political and cultural issues.

In both cases, the shows will be aired live on Zoom. To join that Zoom meeting as a video participant you need to be a supporter of the Space Show by donating at least $100.

However, anyone can listen and participate by phone without donating. To do so you need to email David Livingston at drspace@thespaceshow.com prior to airtime for both the Zoom phone numbers and access permission. The name and the phone number you provide should agree with the same on your telephone number log in when you enter the Zoom waiting room. The Space Show is following Zoom security requirements in inviting public participation in this program.

Without the access codes, you will not be able to join.

You can also place a comment below saying you want to participate, and I will then put you in touch with David.

I hope some of my readers join the discussion. You have a lot to contribute, and you also would ask really pertinent questions.

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