May 21, 2026 Quick space links

2:45 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.

Leave a comment

An amoeba in space more than a light year in size

12:59 pm

An amoeba in space more than a light year in size
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today by the science team of the 8.1 meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It provides a close-up view of the central blob that forms NGC 1514, a planetary nebula located about 1,500 light years away and nicknamed the Crystal Ball Nebula by Gemini’s PR team.

They might think it resembles a crystal ball, but to my eye this is an amoeba undulating in weightlessness.

Planetary nebulae form when a low- or intermediate-mass star ejects its outer layers near the end of its life, forming a somewhat spherical cloud of gas. They typically have smoother, spherical shapes, making the Crystal Ball Nebula unique for its bumpy shells of gas. As the central star casts away this gas, its inner core is exposed. Radiation from the core energizes the gas, giving it a scorching temperature and chromatic glow. The Crystal Ball Nebula, for example, has an estimated temperature of 15,000 K.

…While it may appear in this image as if there is a single shining light source at the heart of the Crystal Ball Nebula, as Herschel saw, it actually contains two stars. These two stars orbit each other with a period of around nine years — the longest known for any binary pair within a planetary nebula. Scientists believe that one of these stars, which was once several times more massive than our Sun, released its outer layers while in the throes of death. As the progenitor star and its binary companion orbit each other, they mold the expanding shell of gas with their strong, asymmetrical winds, forming the lumpy layers we see today.

The analogy I like to use for this process is that of a blender. The two stars act like the blender’s blades, mixing the outflowing gas from the stars into these spectacular shapes.

The Webb Space Telescope took its own infrared image of this nebula, and showed that its is surrounded by two larger rings of material, also expanding outward.

Leave a comment

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

A Martian wormlike dune field on the floor of a triple crater

12:35 pm

Overview map

A Martian wormlike dune field on the floor of a triple crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on March 18, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this simply as a “dune field.” The overview map above marks the location, in a large dune field that fills most of the floor of an unnamed 16-mile wide crater that is actually part of the triple impact. If you look at the inset, you can see that there are three craters here, the first the largest with a width of about 27 miles, the second about 18 miles wide that lies on top to the southwest, and the third 16-mile-wide crater arriving last slightly more to the southwest.

What likely happened to cause this triple impact is that the bolide likely broke up as it cut through Mars’ thin atmosphere, producing three pieces that hit bam-bam-bam right after each other.

The wormlike dune field illustrates the dusty nature of Mars. Over the eons the red planet’s copious amounts of volcanic ash was blown into these three craters and got trapped there, with the prevailing winds forcing the dust to pile up to the southwest. The physics of wind, sand, and dune fields resulted in these parallel dune ridges.

Leave a comment

Watching SpaceX’s 12th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight today

9:52 am

Assuming all goes as planned, SpaceX intends to launch its new upgraded Starship/Superheavy rocket later today, with a launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The upcoming flight will debut the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine and launching from a newly designed pad at Starbase.

The flight test’s primary goal will be to demonstrate each of these new pieces in the flight environment for the first time, with each element of the Starship architecture featuring significant redesigns to enable full and rapid reuse that incorporate learnings from years of development and test.

I have embedded below several different live streams of the flight, including SpaceX’s live feed from X. That SpaceX live feed however will only go live at 4:43 pm (Central). The other feeds are using Youtube, and either will go live sooner or are able to be on stand-by awaiting the beginning of the feeds.
» Read more

4 comments

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.

Starfish finally gets a docking target for its Otter Pup 2 orbital tug demo

9:33 am

Remora rendezvous
Images taken by Starfish’s camera on Impulse mission
in December 2025.

The orbital tug company Starfish Space has finally found a docking target for its Otter Pup 2 orbital tug demo satellite that has been in orbit since 2025. Otter Pup 2 was originally supposed to dock with D-Orbit’s ION satellite, but for unknown reasons that docking was cancelled. Since then Otter Pup 2 has remained in orbit as the company searched for an alternative target.

It has now made a deal with the Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space to use its own first demo satellite, ElaraSat.

Over the past couple of months, the Starfish team has been maneuvering Otter Pup 2 into the proper orbit to catch up with ElaraSat. The next phase will be to close the gap between the two satellites to about 6 miles (10 kilometers). Then Otter Pup 2 will transition into an acquisition phase. “Acquisition is the stage for us where Otter Pup’s onboard cameras start taking pictures of a large satellite regularly — lock onto it, if you will — and start maneuvering much, much closer,” Bennett said. “This is what will bring us down to the kilometer-type range.”

Otter Pup 2 will fly itself around ElaraSat for a thorough inspection and calibration of Otter Pup’s sensors and control system. Then the satellite will close in to attach itself to ElaraSat using an electrostatic docking mechanism.

The company’s goal is to demonstrate the practicality of that “electrostatic docking mechanism” so as to encourage as many satellite makers as possible to use it. Apparently Gilmour had agreed to do so on ElaraSat before launch, allowing for this switch when D-Orbit backed out.

On another mission in 2025 Starfish demonstrated that its software and camera design for rendezvous and proximity maneuvers works, as shown by the image above. On that mission this equipment was installed on a Mira orbital tug, built by Impulse Space, and was used to maneuver within 4,100 feet of another Mira tug.

As competitive as free enterprise normally is, note the amount of cooperation between multiple orbital tug and satellite companies, including Starfish, Impulse, and Gilmour. It proves that if a company can demonstrate it has a product of value, others — even its competitors — will be willing to buy it.

Leave a comment

Space Force study says it needs a third spaceport besides Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg

9:06 am

According to the head of Air Force at a House hearing yesterday, the Space Force is about to complete a study that concluded the military will need a third spaceport besides Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg to accomplish its future space goals.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink highlighted the finding during a May 20 House Armed Services Committee hearing, noting that the study is still moving through the approval process. The Space Force operates the nation’s busiest spaceports at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., and Vandenberg Space Force Station, Calif.—both of which are running out of room. “At a high level, what it says is we probably need another site that’s capable of heavy and super heavy launch capability, both from a resiliency perspective and just, even at the Cape, limitations on how much space we’ve got,” Meink said.

He didn’t expand any further on the findings of the study, which was mandated by Congress in the Fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and it’s not clear what locations the service is considering.

It is expected that both the Florida and California spaceports will be able to handle as many as 700 launches per year by the mid-2030s — based on all projections by all the private launch providers — but Meink indicated this will not meet the expected needs of the military, which expects to launch far more than that as part of its Golden Dome implementation. Though it hopes to meet some of this additional demand from other state- and privately-run spaceports, he implied even that will be insufficient.

Pecan Island SpaceX facility?

I think Meink is looking at this issue backwards. Rather than proposing the Pentagon establish its own third spaceport, it should be partnering with the private and state launch providers to meet its needs. For one, if the rumors turn out to be true and SpaceX is buying that 200+ square mile plot of land at Pecan Island in Louisiana, it would make great sense for the Pentagon to demand SpaceX allow other launch providers to lease launchpads there. Not only will there be ample land for such additional launchpads, it will be the fastest and cheapest way to get what the military needs. Finding and buying its own facility will take more time and cost more.

I am of course assuming it is SpaceX that plans to buy that Louisiana land. Right now nothing is confirmed. It is even possible that it is the military itself that has been in discussions there, or if not, is about to insert itself into the mix.

2 comments

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

SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:37 am

SpaceX early today 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 (B1077) 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 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
27 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

59 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 59 to 50.

One comment

SpaceX files first IPO documents with SEC

5:00 am

Starship/Superheavy (version 3) on launchpad
Starship/Superheavy (version 3) on launchpad for launch
later today.

After months of speculation and behind the scenes planning, SpaceX yesterday finally filed the initial public offering (IPO) documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outlining the company’s financial standing, in order to give potential stock purchasers an idea of what they are buying.

The filing shows SpaceX’s Connectivity segment, driven primarily by Starlink, has become the company’s financial engine. The segment generated $11.4 billion in revenue during 2025, along with $4.4 billion in operating income and $7.2 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The company said the business benefited from subscriber growth [now 10.3 million], wider enterprise adoption and improved network efficiency, with operating income rising more than 120% year over year.

By contrast, the company’s newly acquired AI segment is consuming cash at a remarkable pace. The AI business generated $3.2 billion in revenue during 2025 but posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion as SpaceX ramped investment in AI applications and compute infrastructure. Capital expenditures tied to the AI segment reached $12.7 billion during the year, far exceeding spending in the Space and Connectivity businesses.

…SpaceX’s Space segment generated $4.1 billion in revenue in 2025 and posted a $657 million operating loss. The company spent more than $3 billion on research and development tied to Starship during the year alone. The filing described Starship as the “key enabler” of SpaceX’s long-term growth strategy, saying the vehicle is designed to dramatically improve payload capacity, reusability and launch frequency while opening entirely new categories of missions.

Capital expenditures in the Space segment totaled $3.8 billion in 2025, reflecting the enormous infrastructure demands tied to developing and scaling the Starship program. On a consolidated basis, SpaceX reported $18.7 billion in revenue during 2025, alongside an operating loss of $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $6.6 billion. For the first quarter of 2026, the company reported revenue of $4.7 billion and an operating loss of nearly $1.9 billion.

In other words, Starlink and rocket sales are paying for the development of Starship and AI.

It appears the company is targeting an early to mid June date for the actual IPO, which some on Wall Street predict could bring in $75 billion in cash. This will be in addition to the $12 billion SpaceX has already raised in private investment capital as well as the more than $12 billion in revenue it earns each year from its Starlink subscribers. Note also that this Starlink annual revenue is presently about half that of NASA’s annual budget, with no upper limit in sight.

In other words, if all goes as planned, the company will have about $100 billion on hand to develop all its business models, with Starship/Superheavy likely leading the way.

I repeat: SpaceX is America’s space program. NASA is merely a sideshow that will become increasingly irrelevant as SpaceX gears up to full speed. And if things go as I believe they will, SpaceX’s success will act to fuel the rest of the American space industry, making the government even less important.

15 comments

May 20, 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.

2 comments

Frost on Mars

11:33 am

Frost on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 23, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows the eastern interior rim of a 4.5-mile-wide crater, and was taken to find out if there has been any change to the gullies flowing down that 800 foot slope since the last high resolution image was taken in 2020.

Both pictures were taken in the spring, and both pictures not only don’t appear to show much change, both show the same white frost in exactly the same places. As no pictures have been taken at other times in the year, we do not know yet if this frost disappears as expected in summer.

In fact, until such images are taken and prove this white material disappears in the summer, we don’t even know for sure if it is indeed frost. We could instead be looking a some unusual form of white bedrock, though in my review of many MRO pictures such things are quite rare.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Vast unveils new high powered satellite bus to support the expected boom in satellite construction

9:21 am

Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule
Artist rendering of Vast’s Haven-1 station, with a docked
Dragon capsule. Like Have Demo, it is being built using
company funds with no government support.

The space station startup Vast yesterday unveiled a new product line of high powered satellite buses, dubbed Vast Satellite, designed to support the expected boom in satellite construction.

With the launch of Vast Satellite, Vast is expanding beyond commercial space stations into high-volume spacecraft platforms designed for high-performance orbital missions. The first offering is a 15 kW-class satellite bus designed to support a wide array of power-intensive missions through flexible configurations.

Built around common in-house subsystems—including avionics, power, communications, propulsion, and flight software—Vast Satellite leverages technologies already developed for its Haven-1 space station, and validated through the successful Haven Demo mission in 2025. This shared architecture combined with Vast’s vertically integrated manufacturing model and advanced production capabilities is designed to support faster development timelines, lower costs, and increased mission reliability.

The company says it has already sold four buses to a confidential customer, with an option for 200 more. This sale occurred because Vast has proved itself with its policy of committing its own investment capital in designing, building, and flying demo missions. The Haven Demo was initially launched to test the subsystems to be used on the Haven-1 single module station the company hopes to fly next year on a three-year mission, during which four two-week manned crews will occupy it. That success allowed Vast to now diversify, using what it learned and proved on that demo to sell new products to other customers.

Similarly, its Haven-1 station, built on its own dime with no NASA funds, is intended to prove its capability as a space station provider. If successful, it is certain at that point to attract customers, including NASA.

9 comments

Sri Lanka’s government to formulate a space policy

8:45 am

The Sri Lanka government has now established a committee whose task will be to formulate the country’s first space policy.

The Cabinet of Ministers has approved a resolution presented by the Minister of Science and Technology to appoint an expert committee tasked with formulating Sri Lanka’s first National Space Policy. According to the government, space technology has become a critical driver of national development, delivering benefits across disaster management, communication, security, environmental monitoring, and economic innovation.

Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, so any policy it establishes has to fall under its rules and limitations. This op-ed today in one of the nation’s major media outlets provides a very detailed overview of the issues. It seems the country has a lot of options, most of which revolve around attracting already established aerospace companies to build there.

3 comments

SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites

8:30 am

SpaceX in the early morning hours today successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

58 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 58 to 50.

Leave a comment

Psyche completes its Mars fly-by

8:01 am

Mars' south pole as seen by Psyche@
Click for original image.

The asteroid probe Psyche on May 15, 2026 successfully completed its last fly-by of Mars, sending the spacecraft on its way to the asteroid Psyche, with a planned arrival in 2029.

The image to the right, cropped, rotated, and, reduced to post here, was the highest resolution image released by the science team of the Martian south polar icecap.

The image scale is around 0.7 miles per pixel (1.14 kilometers per pixel). The cap itself extends across more than 430 miles (700 kilometers). The image was acquired with Imager A on May 15, 2026, at about 1:53 p.m. PDT.

The white material is the perennial dry ice cap overlaying a water ice cap of larger size.

NASA also released several other images taken during the fly-by, including a close-up of the 290-mile-wide Huygens Crater, located in the Martian southern cratered highlands.

The pictures reveal no significant science, but they prove once again that Psyche’s cameras are working and the spacecraft is pointing accurately.

One comment

Contractor dies at Boca Chica falling eight feet from scaffold

3:16 pm

A worker at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility died on May 15, 2026 after falling eight feet from a scaffold.

A 25-year-old man died after falling 8 feet from a scaffold at a SpaceX facility, according to Justice of the Peace Mary Esther Sorola.

The Cameron County Sheriff’s Office first confirmed the death and said it happened on Friday, May 15. The man has been identified as Jose Bautista from Donna. Sorola said Bautista was taken to Valley Regional Medical Center by a SpaceX ambulance. A preliminary autopsy report says he suffered blunt force trauma from the fall; he died at the hospital.

The Wall Street Journal calls the victim a “contractor”, not a SpaceX employee.

As is routine for such incidents, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has begun an investigation.

This incident is likely unrelated to the more recent short delays in the 12th Starship/Superheavy test flight, as it occurred prior to those delays. It is also puzzling for someone to die from so short a fall. Either the height is incorrect, or some other factors must have been at play.

12 comments

May 19, 2026 Quick space links

2:39 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

BUMPED: 12th Starship/Superheavy test delayed another day to May 21, 2026

10:08 am

UPDATE: One day after its announcement below, SpaceX announced another one day delay. The 12th Starship/Superheavy launch is now targeting May 21, 2026, with a launch window beginning at 5:30 pm (Central).

Original post:
———————
SpaceX earlier today announced a revised launch date for the 12th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight, delayed one day from May 19, 2026 to May 20, 2026, with a launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

No reason was given. I suspect weather might have played a factor, but it is also possible that some technical issues required a short delay.

Either way, the link to the X live feed will be posted here once it goes live. I will also embed it on Behind the Black once it goes live.

33 comments

Several major American satellite companies release a joint guide on “orbital safety”

9:19 am

Working with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American satellite companies building large orbital constellations — SpaceX, Amazon, Iridium, and Eutelsat — have now released a joint reference guide for building and operating their satellites, dubbed “Satellite Orbital Safety Best Practices 3.0.”

  • Emphasizes the design phase for improved orbital safety
  • Stresses pre-launch coordination and collision avoidance analysis, especially near crewed vehicles, mitigating hazards during post-launch identification and cataloging of new orbital objects
  • Provides guidance on data sharing across design and operations emphasizing the critical importance of sharing and screening high quality ephemeris with covariance from deployment through disposal
  • Includes an Appendix with data exchange recommendations to mitigate conjunctions

The companies have apparently decided they needed to get together to make sure they were not stepping on each other’s toes. I would expect other companies to soon join this cooperative effort, as it is in no one’s interest to have satellites colliding in orbit.

12 comments

New fuel startup unveils rocket and jet fuels that it says are as much as 32% more efficient

9:07 am

A new startup, CycloKinetics, has announced a product line of chemically engineered rocket and jet fuels that it says are as much as 32% more efficient that standard fuels.

CycloKinetics’ approach is to create “plug-in” fuels that can replace conventional fuels in various vehicles without requiring modifications to the craft or its engines. There’s nothing particularly wild or exotic about this, and no unobtanium-type elements are involved. It’s more a matter of changing the geometry of the hydrocarbon molecules that make up the fuel itself.

Conventional aviation fuels consist of linear and branched hydrocarbon molecules, which limits how much energy can be packed into a given volume. CycloKinetics instead engineers cycloparaffinic hydrocarbons – that is, ring-shaped molecular structures that pack more carbon and hydrogen atoms into the same space as would be occupied by conventional fuels.

The upshot is 32% more energy in the same volume as standard Jet A fuel. That means, for example, an aircraft capable of flying 1,500 nautical miles (1,726 miles, 2,778 km) on standard fuel could potentially exceed 1,950 nautical miles (2,244 miles, 3,611 km) using the new superfuel, while reconnaissance aircraft could remain on station up to 30% longer.

The company is also selling its version of RP-1, the kerosene fuel used for example by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

It remains unclear whether it will be cost effective for rocket or airline companies to consider buying this fuel. For one, the extra cost to make it might outweigh the fuel savings. For another, it is unclear the company will be able to produce enough to meet the market. Nonetheless, the concept is intriguing, and could pay-off for this startup in the long run.

8 comments

Scientists: Europa’s theorized plumes of water vapor might simply be statistical noise

8:56 am

Europa in true color
Europa in true color, taken by Juno September 2022.
Click for full image.

The uncertainty of science: Based on a re-analysis of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists now say that the plumes of water vapor that Hubble had supposedly detected erupting from the surface of the Jupiter moon Europa might not exist, and could instead simply be statistical noise in the data.

The new paper looks at the last 14 years of data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (HST/STIS) focused on Europa’s Lyman-alpha emissions. Lyman-alpha is a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted and scattered by hydrogen atoms. From 2012-2014, the team was pushing the limits of the Hubble telescope’s capabilities.

“One of the difficulties in interpreting the data back then was determining where to place Europa within its context,” Retherford said. “The way Hubble works left some uncertainty in terms of placement relative to the center of the image. If Europa’s placement was off even just by a pixel or two, it could affect how the data gets interpreted.”

As a result, what they thought could be evidence of a water vapor plume could also just be statistical noise. “Our reanalysis took our original 99.9% confidence in the plumes’ existence and reduced it to less than 90% confidence,” said Dr. Lorenz Roth (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden), the paper’s lead author. “That’s simply not enough evidence to support the certainty of claims we made at the time.”

The plumes might still exist, but the data used here is simply more uncertain that previously thought. It is hoped that when Europa Clipper and Juice both enter Jupiter orbit in a few years they will be able to settle this issue more definitively.

3 comments

Astrolab’s Flip lunar rover will carry 4 NASA payloads

8:37 am

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated

When NASA cancelled in 2024 its Viper rover, removing it as the main payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander, the company quickly made a deal in 2025 with the rover startup Astrolab to put its s FLIP prototype lunar rover on board instead.

Astrolab yesterday announced that NASA has agreed to purchase payload space on FLIP, placing four different science instruments on the rover, each from a different NASA center.

The map to the right indicates the location where Griffin is supposed to land, about 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole. Nova-C, Intuitive Machines first attempt to soft land on the Moon, landed at the green dot, but failed when it fell over at landing. Its second lunar lander, Athena, also fell over when it landed in the same region that is now Griffin’s target landing zone.

Griffin’s launch itself has been delayed repeatedly. Astrobotic was originally issued its NASA contract for Griffin in 2020, with a launch planned for November 2023, carrying NASA’s Viper rover. In July 2022 however it was delayed one year to November 2024 because Astrobotic said it needed more time. This date was then delayed to 2025 when Viper was canceled, and then in October 2025 the launch was pushed back again to July 2026.

According to the press release at the link above, that July 2026 launch date is now invalid, with the new launch date set for before the end of 2026. I strongly suspect that date will slip again.

Leave a comment

France’s space agency CNES gives ESA 5-year extension at French Guiana spaceport

8:14 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad, and the Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup
MaiaSpace.)

France’s space agency CNES and the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced a new five year agreement extending ESA’s operations at France’s French Guiana spaceport.

The contract covers all activities required to operate Europe’s Spaceport that is on French territory and so falls under the responsibility of the French government represented by CNES. The contract includes both daily operations and running of the facilities and continuous upgrades to adapt the Spaceport to changes taking place in the space sector, including the arrival of new rockets and launch services.

The signature covers three years of operations, renewable for a further two years, including a total investment of over €1 billion with €635 million funded by the European Space Agency – showing the agency’s central role in supporting the operation of Europe’s Spaceport. In support of the transformation of the space sector, the contract takes new launch operators into account as well as sharpening safety requirements even more – ensuring launches from Europe’s Spaceport are reliable, safe and competitive.

While the deal is not surprising — neither ESA nor CNES have any reason to end this arrangement — there is one aspect of the deal that is significant: Nowhere in the press release or agreement is there any mention of Arianespace, ESA’s commercial division. For decades Arianespace ran French Guiana for ESA and France. It is now gone, eliminated as an unnecessary middle-man as Europe shifts to the capitalism model.

At the moment, ESA has reduced Arianespace’s role to just one task, marketing and launching the Ariane-6 rocket. At the same time numerous European nations are doing whatever they can to encourage the development of competing independent rocket companies, all aimed at replacing Ariane-6 eventually, and as soon as possible. While that effort will take at least a decade, it is definitely happening.

One comment

Louisiana passes legislation favorable to aerospace rocket companies

7:40 am

Pecan Island SpaceX facility?

In what appears to be a direct response to the rumors that SpaceX might be considering buying a gigantic swath of land near Pecan Island on the Louisiana coast for future launch operations, the Louisiana state legislature this week passed several laws providing tax breaks and protection from frivolous lawsuits to “aerospace flight entities”.

The tax breaks relate to the sales and property taxes. As for the lawsuit protection:

The bill would protect aerospace companies from temporary restraining orders for claims of noise pollution and similar public nuisance lawsuits by creating what’s called a “special motion to strike,” which would require a plaintiff to show the court early on that they’re likely to win their lawsuit.

Apparently the legislature has been negotiating with at least one or two big aerospace companies on these matters, and has taken these actions in response to these negotiations. Non-disclosure agreements prevent the legislators from revealing the companies involved, but it does appear based on all the local rumors that SpaceX is a likely candidate to buy that 200+ square mile plot near Pecan Island. It also appears it wants some legal protections before it commits, based on its experience at Boca Chica.

With the passage of this legislation, we should find out relatively soon what companies are involved.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

Leave a comment

Avio completes its first Vega-C launch for ESA

10:25 pm

The Italian rocket company Avio today successfully completed its first Vega-C launch for the European Space Agency (ESA), placing into orbit ESA’s SMILE telescope, designed to study the Sun’s solar wind and its interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field.

The significance of this launch is that it is the first time the Vega-C was launched under the management of Avio, which manufactures it, rather than ESA’s commercial division Arianespace. Arianespace is being cut out of the picture. At the moment I think it only has one more Vega-C launch on its manifest. All other future Vega-C launches will be sold and managed by Avio directly.

As this was Avio’s first official launch in 2026 (or ever), the leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged.

57 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 57 to 50.

Leave a comment

May 18, 2026 Quick space links

2:44 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.

3 comments

The weird tilted layers on the floor of Danielson Crater on Mars

1:00 pm

Tilted layers inside Danielson Crater
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image to the right returns us to a previous cool image from 2022. Then I called this strange terrain visible on the floor of the 41-mile-wide Danielson Crater “freaky badlands,” because of the innumerable layers that are all tilted and appear eroded in the same way by prevailing winds coming from the northeast.

Today’s image shows more of the same. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 26, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It not only shows these layers, in the full image (which I strongly suggest you look at), it also shows several terraced mesas with the same tilt, each looking almost like wedding cakes that have slumped sideways. The aquamarine colors in the hollows suggest finer-grained dust, while the orange colors on higher terrain suggest coarser materials and bedrock.

As I noted in 2022:
» Read more

Leave a comment
1 2 3 … 1,169