Category: Behind The Black

Isar’s second launch attempt scrubbed due to abort at T-0 seconds

1:35 pm

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace was today forced to scrub its second attempt to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport when the rocket aborted the launch at T-0 seconds.

The launch was then scrubbed for the day because the launch window was only 15 minutes long. An earlier hold due to a boat violating the range had used up most of the window, leaving no time to recycle the rocket to try again.

No word yet on when the company will try again. At the moment Isar is in the lead to be the first new European startup to get off the ground, though Rocket Factory Augsburg from Germany and PLD from Spain are not far behind. Isar’s first launch attempt in March 2025 had failed seconds after lift-off due to a loss of attitude control.

Andoya is also in the lead to be the first European spaceport to complete an orbital launch, though SaxaVord on the Shetland Islands hopes to see that Rocket Factory launch in the coming months.

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Triton: Neptune’s largest moon

11:19 am

The southern mid-latitudes of Neptune's moon Trident
Click for original image.

Triton

Today’s cool image begins a new tour I plan on doing over the next week or so of the few close-up photographs we have of Neptune and its moons, sent back by Voyager-2 when it did its close fly-by of this distant planet on August 25, 1989. That fly-by was almost 37 years ago, and it remains our only close look. While at the time it shined a quick flashlight of new knowledge on Neptune, its moons, and its ring system, we remain generally in the dark about what’s there, despite some good imagery produced in subsequent years by Hubble and some ground-based telescopes.

The image above, cropped and enhanced to post here, shows a portion of the southern mid-latitudes of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, as Voyager-2 made its closest pass at a distance of about 25,000 miles. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced, shows a more global view to provide some context, with the box indicating the approximate area covered by the upper image. It was taken when Voyager-2 was on approach, at a distance of about 330,000 miles. The top picture captures several dozen black plumes that appear to vent material from below. From the caption:

The plumes originate at very dark spots generally a few miles in diameter and some are more than 100 miles long. The spots which clearly mark the source of the dark material may be vents where gas has erupted from beneath the surface and carried dark particles into Triton’s nitrogen atmosphere. Southwesterly winds then transported the erupted particles, which formed gradually thinning deposits to the northeast of most vents.

It is possible that the eruptions have been driven by seasonal heating of very shallow subsurface deposits of volatiles, and the winds transporting particles similarly may be seasonal winds. The polar terrain, upon which the dark streaks have been deposited, is a region of bright materials mottled with irregular, somewhat dark patches. The pattern of irregular patches suggests that they may correspond to lag deposits of moderately dark material that cap the bright ice over the polar terrain.

As we only have a few images of this planet, and those provided views of only about 40% of its surface, any theory that tries to explain the weird geology here is certain to be wrong to some degree.

More to come in the next few days. As much as we think we know, these pictures are going instead highlight how sparse that knowledge really is.

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Swiss orbital tug startup Pave Space raises $40 million

9:03 am

A new orbital tug startup from Switzerland, Pave Space, has now successfully raised $40 million in private investment capital that it will use to develop a new kickstage engine and fly it on a demo mission.

The funding round was led by Visionaries Club and Creandum, with participation from Lombard Odier Investment Managers, Atlantic Labs, Sistafund, b2venture, ACE Investment Partners, Ilavaska Vuillermoz Capital, Pareto & Motier Ventures.

Pave had its start as a student project that built a reusable small hopper to test vertical take-off and landing. The company now joins about a dozen other orbital tug companies, offering a range of serves from moving satellites to removing space junk to doing satellite repair. Based on the amount of money that all of these companies are raising, both in the U.S. and Europe, it appears the investment community sees a strong demand for these services down the road, especially with the many gigantic constellations being proposed.

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Intuitive Machines wins $180.4 million new NASA lunar lander contract

8:46 am

Intuitive Machines' Nova-D lunar lander
Click for original.

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that it has won its fifth contract from NASA, a $180.4 million deal to place its larger upgraded Nova-D lander near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-5 mission will target Mons Malapert, a ridge near the Lunar South Pole that offers continuous Earth visibility, stable illumination conditions, and access to permanently shadowed regions. These characteristics make the site a compelling location for future communications, navigation, and surface infrastructure.

The artist’s rendering to the right shows this Nova-D lander. What stands out immediately is its low-slung appearance. Intuitive Machines’ smaller Nova-C lander was tall (see this image), with a high center of gravity. In its only two landing attempts on the Moon it tipped over both times after touchdown. It appears the company has finally recognized the issue and reworked this new lander to make it more stable after touchdown.

This contract award appears to be part of the accelerated program by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to land 30 unmanned rovers on the moon in three years, beginning in 2027. Mons Malapert is a plateau that Intuitive Machines second lander tipped over on. It is also the landing site for Astrobotics’ Griffin lander, as well as a candidate landing site for the first Artemis manned missions.

Note the small rover on the right in the graphic. While the mission will carry seven NASA science instrument payloads, it will also carry this commercial rover, built by Honeybee Robotics, a subsidiary of Blue Origin. As the company states above, the lander on this mission also has additional available payload capacity for more commercial customers.

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March 24, 2026 Quick space links

2:55 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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Lunar Gateway dead as NASA announces major changes to its future space station, lunar, and Mars plans

1:07 pm

Capitalism in space As part of the reshaping of NASA being pushed by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the agency today announced major changes to its future programs in low Earth orbit, on the Moon, and in exploring Mars. Video of these changes can be viewed here and here.

The Moon

NASA will now focus all work in its lunar program on getting to the surface of the Moon. Lunar Gateway is “paused,” though the language of NASA’s press release suggests more strongly that it is dead, with the agency already trying to figure out ways to “repurpose” its already built components. NASA will instead ask for proposals from private industry and its international Artemis partners to ramp up as soon as possible a phased program to establish the infrastructure on the Moon needed for the lunar base. This new focus begins with “up to 30 robotic landings in three years, starting in 2027,” and at least two manned landings per year beginning in 2028.

The graph below, presented during today’s announcement, shows the basic plan for the next few Artemis missions, which will act as the manned foundation for this entire surface-focused program. The overall program will build out the lunar base in three phases, first to test some basic infrastructure using these smaller lunar landers, second to begin establishing the base’s foundational components with intermittent manned missions, and third to begin long-term human occupancy.
» Read more

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On the Space Show tonight

9:11 am

I will be doing a long two hour appearance on the Space Show tonight with David Livingston, starting at 6 pm (Pacific).

The live show will be 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.

If you want to listen and participate without donating, 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.

I hope my readers join in. The conversation is always stimulating, and the more people that participate, the better.

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Satellite repair startup Katalyst awards Arianespace and its Ariane-6 rocket a launch contract

9:02 am

The satellite repair startup Katalyst has chosen Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket to launch its first Nexus servicing satellite to geosynchronous orbit in late 2027, where it will demonstrate its capabilities by servicing a Space Force satellite.

The choice of Ariane-6 is intriguing, as it is much more expensive that a Falcon-9. Either the satellite is too heavy for the Falcon-9 (unlikely), or the Space Force for political reasons pressured Katalyst to use Europe’s rocket. It is also possible Katalyst choose Arianespace to stimulate interest in its robotic repair satellites within Europe, thus increasing its chances of winning contracts from there.

Either way, this is one of the few contracts outside of Amazon’s Leo constellation and European government launches that Ariane-6 has gotten. As I already mentioned, it costs more to use than other rockets, as it is entirely expendable. I think it is only surviving at this point because there are not a lot of options available. This is going to change, however, in the next decade as new rocket companies gear up to meet the demand.

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Russia launches the first 16 satellites in its own internet satellite constellation

8:46 am

In a rare unannounced launch, Russia yesterday placed the first 16 satellites in its proposed 700+ satellite Rassvet internet constellation into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia in a polar orbit that dumped the rocket’s lower stages in the Arctic ocean.

The satellites are built by the Russian pseudo-company Bureau-1440, which hopes to have the entire constellation in orbit by 2035. Considering that this constellation is designed to compete with Starlink, its pace of launch is ridiculously low. SpaceX can generally launch 700 Starlink satellites in about a month, not ten years. By the time Russia gets this constellation in orbit it will be woefully obsolete.

The launch was originally supposed to occur several days earlier, but for reasons that were never explained never took place. This was not a classified military launch, but one that Russia wants to publicize as it struggles to compete with SpaceX and China in launching new satellite constellations. That Russia provided no details beforehand suggests that the increasingly successful use of drones by the Ukraine on Russian assets forced that secrecy.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

36 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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Progress docks with ISS

8:25 am

A Russian astronaut successfully docked a Progress cargo capsule with ISS early today, using the manual TORU joystick system inside the station.

Sergey Kud-Sverchkov manually piloted the spacecraft during docking using the TORU (Telerobotically Operated Rendezvous System) control panel inside the space station’s Zvezda Service Module after one of the spacecraft’s two KURS automated rendezvous antennas failed to deploy after launch.

Normally each Progress docks autonomously, using the Kurs radar antennas to determine distance and location. With one antenna out Kud-Sverchkoy controlled the capsule remotely. This back-up system has been used successfully a number of times previously, but when it was first being tested on Mir in the 1990s one of those earlier tests resulted in a collision that almost destroyed Mir. It did damage one module badly enough that it leaked from then on, requiring that module to be sealed off for the rest of Mir’s life.

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March 23, 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.

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The battle of Gettysburg as seen by those who lived it

12:34 pm

Witness to Gettysburg by Richard Wheeler

I just finished one of the best histories I have ever read, and want to recommend enthusiastically to my readers. It is called Witness to Gettysburg, and was written by Richard Wheeler. My version was the 1987 edition, but a new edition was published in 2021.

Why was it so good? To understand this we need to look at the nature of the material historians use to construct their work. Some of this source material is more important than others. In the case of Wheeler’s book, he used the best material in the most vivid way possible, and put aside other materials that could have distracted from the story.

In writing my own histories of space exploration in the 20th century, I quickly learned there were two types of sources I needed to depend on. First there are what historians call original or primary sources. These are the testimonies of the actual participants, the individuals who actually did the deed and thus knew better than anyone what really happened. In the case of space, astronauts, their families, and the engineers and managers of NASA at the time made up this group.

Primary sources can also include others who were not actually participants but lived at the time and witnessed the events as they occurred. For example, news articles written by reporters as events unfolded fall into this group. So can the historian himself, if he or she was alive during those events. In the case of my own books, that made me this kind of primary source. I was alive when the space age began, and saw it unfold in real time, with my own eyes.

Any history that does not rely on these original sources, or gives them short shrift, should not be taken seriously.

Next come secondary sources, books and academic articles written after the fact by historians, economists, sociologists, or researchers from any number of academic fields. Such works are of great value for any historian, as they can give you a wider context and alternative interpretations of the long term consequences of what happened. They can also be invaluable for tracking down more original sources.

There is however a danger if you rely too much on these secondary sources. Often academics begin treating their analysis of events as more important than that of the primary sources, even though they weren’t there and only know of the events secondhand. When I got my masters degree in early colonial history in the 1990s I discovered this tendency to be a very big problem in academia. My history teachers wanted me to learn early colonial history from what past historians thought about it. I wanted to learn that history from the people who lived it. My teachers didn’t like that, and constantly challenged my conclusions because I was contradicting those other historians. I countered that I had read the original sources, and discovered those other historians were simply wrong.

In the end, I found I actually knew more about that history than my teachers, as they were seeped in arguing the analysis of their compatriots rather than studying the real data.

Now, back to Wheeler’s book, which focuses entirely on the battle of Gettysburg, from the moment Robert E. Lee began his invasion north to the end of the battle when he was retreating in defeat.

What made this book so good is Wheeler’s approach. To quote him in his introduction:
» Read more

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Juno data suggests lightning on Jupiter is a hundred to a million times more powerful than lightning on Earth

11:08 am

The uncertainty of science: Using data from the orbiter Juno as it passed multiple times above a storm on Jupiter, scientists now believe lightning bolts on Jupiter could be a hundred to a million times more powerful than lightning bolts on Earth.

Juno made 12 passes over isolated storms during that period, and was close enough on four of them to measure microwave static from lightning. The flashes averaged three per second during these passes; on one flyover, Juno detected 206 separate pulses of microwave radiation. Of a total of 613 pulses measured, Wong calculated that the power ranged from about that of a lightning bolt on Earth to 100 or more times the power of an Earth bolt. Because he compared Earth lightning emissions at one radio wavelength to Jupiter lightning emissions at a different wavelength, there’s some uncertainty in the comparison, Wong cautioned. Based on one study of lightning radio emissions on Earth, Jupiter’s bolts could have been a million times more powerful than those on Earth.

Lots of uncertainty and assumptions in these conclusions, but they are not only not surprising, they fit earlier data collected before Juno.

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Changes to the Crab Nebula after a quarter century

9:44 am

The Crab Nebula, changes after a quarter century
For original images go here and here.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have obtained a new high resolution image of the Crab Nebula, and by comparing it with earlier Hubble images taken in 1999/2000 have been able to track the continuing expansion and evolution of this supernova remnant over a period now covering almost a quarter century.

The supernova itself became visible on Earth in 1054, though it actually erupted about 6,500 years earlier, as the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light years away. In the 25 years Hubble has been tracking the remnant’s expansion astronomers estimate it is expanding at about 3.4 million miles per hour.

[William Blair of Johns Hopkins University] noted that filaments around the periphery of the nebula appear to have moved more compared to those in the center, and that rather than stretching out over time, they appear to have simply moved outward. This is due to the nature of the Crab as a pulsar wind nebula powered by synchrotron radiation, which is created by the interaction between the pulsar’s magnetic field and the nebula’s material. In other well-known supernova remnants, the expansion is instead driven by shockwaves from the initial explosion, eroding surrounding shells of gas that the dying star previously cast off.

The new, higher-resolution Hubble observations are also providing additional insights into the 3D structure of the Crab Nebula, which can be difficult to determine from a 2D image, Blair said. Shadows of some of the filaments can be seen cast onto the haze of synchrotron radiation in the nebula’s interior. Counterintuitively, some of the brighter filaments in the latest Hubble images show no shadows, indicating they must be located on the far side of the nebula.

A movie showing the changes between these two images can be seen here. It is worth your while to take a look. These optical images will be further enhanced as the Webb Space Telescope gathers infrared data.

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Growing damage to the wheels of the Curiosity Mars rover

9:19 am

Close-up of the wheel in the worst condition
Images cropped and reduced to post here. For the original images go here and here.

Survey of wheels

Every few months or so the Curiosity science team uses one of the rover’s cameras to do a survey of the rover’s wheels to track their condition. Since early in the mission they had found the wheels were not holding up as well as expected as they rolled over the rough terrain in Gale Crater and on Mount Sharp, and so they take great care in how they move the rover as well as review the wheels regularly.

A year ago it had appeared that the damage to one particular wheel had increased, to a point where its outer section might even break off.

Yesterday the science team did another survey, as shown in the picture to the right.

The two photos above (found here and here) focus on one particular wheel of that survey, which I suspect is the same wheel that was the focus of last year’s post. After taking the first image on the left the team moved Curiosity so that the other side of the wheel could be photographed. As you can see, the damage is extensive, so much so that it is possible the wheel could collapse entirely in the not-to-distant future.

It also looks like another wheel is beginning to see similar damage (see here and here), though not yet as extreme.

The good news is that Curiosity has six wheels, and that it can continue to travel even with the loss of one or maybe two wheels. It also appears that future terrain might not be so rocky.

The bad news is that this wheel damage is likely the one problem that will likely end the mission, possibly sooner than anyone would like. And from these photographs, that end might be sooner rather than later.

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SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to build large-scale computer chip factory in Texas

8:42 am

At an event this weekend in Austin Elon Musk announced that SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla will a build large-scale computer chip factory in Texas, dubbed Terafab, designed to produce the chips needed by all three companies.

The “TERAFAB” project is a joint effort involving Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. Musk said the chips will be used in vehicles, Tesla’s humanoid AI robots and for projects in space, including solar-powered AI satellites.

…In a Sunday post on X, Musk clarified that the Austin-area facility is one part of the larger project and will focus on chip design. The main TERAFAB facility, he said, would require thousands of acres, and multiple locations are being considered. Musk said the chip production was necessary to fuel his companies’ growth. On Saturday, he shared an ambitious vision for the future powered by TERAFAB, including billions of robots and interplanetary travel. “We want to be a civilization that expands to the galaxy with spaceships, that anyone can go anywhere they want at any time,” he said. “And have a city on the moon, cities on Mars, populate the solar system and send spaceships to other star systems.”

Essentially, Musk has realized that to build his data centers in orbit and on the Moon, he will a lot of computer chips. Early in the history of SpaceX Musk learned that being dependent on outside contractors was crippling. Too often those contractors saw SpaceX has a competitor and acted to sabotage it. He soon decided his companies must be vertically integrated, doing as much work as possible in-house.

He is now applying that policy in chip production as well.

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Three launches today from three continents and three nations

2:59 pm

The global launch pace continues, with three launches today. First, Russia launched a new Progress cargo capsule to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its repaired launchpad at Baikonur. That launchpad had experienced serious damage to an access platform during the previous launch in November 2025, and since it was the only pad that Roscosmos could launch payloads and crews to ISS, Russia committed heavy resources to get it fixed quickly.

Once Progress reached orbit, however, one of the antennas used by its Kurs automatic docking system failed to deploy. If engineers can’t get it opened by the time of docking, scheduled for March 24, 2026, the Russian astronauts on ISS will use the back-up TORU system, whereby they control the spacecraft manually from inside ISS.

Next, SpaceX 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 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 20 days after its previous flight. This flight also moved the booster up to just behind the space shuttle Columbia in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles, tying it with SpaceX booster B1077:

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

Sources here and here.

At the pace SpaceX is reusing its fleet of Falcon 9 boosters, expect Columbia to drop off this list in about two months.

Finally, China launched 10 smallsats, according to China’s state-run press, for a planned 160-satellite GPS-type constellation, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket (also called Jielong-3) lifting off from an ocean platform off the northeast coast of China. Video here of launch.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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Canada cancels small lunar rover that was to fly on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander in ’29

2:13 pm

Even as Canada has increased its government space spending in Europe and in Canada — mostly it appears to prop up bureaucracies or failing businesses — its space agency has at the same time cancelled its first lunar rover project, scheduled to brought to the south pole of the Moon by a Firefly Blue Ghost lander in 2029.

As part of its 2026-2027 departmental plan, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has cancelled its ambitious lunar rover mission. The lunar rover was announced in 2022. It would have been Canada’s first rover, built by Canadensys, and hitching a ride to the moon on a commercial launch vehicle built by a private U.S. company, Firefly Aerospace.

…The principal investigator of the mission, Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist from Western University, said that he found out about a month ago, and that he was “devastated” by the news.

Note that this rover was hardly “ambitious.” It was a small unmanned rover comparable to similar rovers deployed by India, Japan, and others, mostly aimed at testing the engineering for later larger rovers.

The real issue however is how this decision illustrates Canada’s leftist government misplaced priorities. Increasingly it appears it is canceling actual space research or planetary missions and shifting the money to other uses, either European projects or bureaucracies in Canada or failing Canadian businesses.

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Private mission to Apophis gets another customer, two student-built landers

1:43 pm

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

The orbital tug startup Exlabs has signed up a second payload customer to fly on its private ApophisExL mission to rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it makes its April 13, 2029 close fly-by of the Earth.

ExLabs has announced its partnership with Japan’s Chiba Institute of Technology (ChibaTech) and its Planetary Exploration Research Center (PERC) to send university-led payloads to the surface of asteroid Apophis during its rare near-Earth flyby in 2029. ApophisExL is the world’s first commercial deep-space rideshare and is supported by mission design and operations collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) operated by Caltech.

Under the leadership of planetary scientist and PERC Director, Dr. Tomoko Arai, ChibaTech students and researchers are developing two landing payloads to be deployed on the asteroid’s surface.

An Australian satellite startup, Fleet Space Technologies, had already signed on to fly a mapping instrument on ApophisExL.

Though the press release at the link calls this private mission “a new model,” using private enterprise rather than relying on the government for doing planetary missions, it actually harks back to the way things were done in the U.S. before World War II, when the private sector did most of this pure research. In fact, as late as the 1960s there was at least one company, American Science and Engineering, doing the first X-ray astronomical observations flying suborbital rockets. It later won contracts from NASA and other agencies to help build several later orbiting X-ray telescopes.

Over time the government space agencies became dominant, so that most of this design work was either done by them or by universities, with private companies relegated to the roles of minor subcontractors.

This new model is simply an extension of the capitalism model that is taking over the entire space industry, shifting power and ownership from big, expensive, and inefficient government programs to small, cheap, and economical private missions. Those space agencies can still do missions, but they do it by buying payload space on these private missions.

Below is a list of the missions going to Apophis in 2029:
» Read more

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Sweden’s Esrange spaceport signs launch deal with Swedish military

12:55 pm

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

Sweden’s Esrange spaceport, used for decades for suborbital test launches but now trying to become an orbital spaceport, this past week signed a launch agreement worth about $22 million with Sweden’s military.

The contract covers systems and infrastructure that ensure protection, availability, and execution of satellite launches for the Swedish Armed Forces, as well as for partners and allies. The capability is scheduled to be operational by 2028.

…The initiative is part of a government decision from 2023 to allocate approximately [$100 million] to the Swedish Armed Forces through 2032 to develop Sweden’s space capabilities. The decision includes, among other things, improved space situational awareness, expansion of infrastructure at Esrange in cooperation with SSC Space, and the ability for the Swedish Armed Forces to carry out multiple satellite launches.

It seems unlikely Sweden’s military will be able to produce its own rockets for this amount of money. More likely they will buy the services from others. The American rocket company Firefly in 2024 signed a deal to launch its Alpha rocket from Esrange, but it appears there might be regulatory issues blocking any launches, some of which might stem from opposition by Norway. Esrange has an interior location, so any orbital launch has to fly over territory belonging to other countries. It appears Sweden is having problems getting permission to do so.

My guess is that this deal is mostly aimed at keeping Esrange open. Or to put it more bluntly, use the earnings of Swedish taxpayers to support a government-controlled spaceport with little financial promise.

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Two launches today by Rocket Lab and SpaceX

1:12 am

The launch pace continued today with two American commercial launches.

First Rocket Lab placed a Synspective radar satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This was the company’s eighth launch for Synspective, out of a 27-launch contract.

Next, SpaceX placed 25 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

36 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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Space Force shifts another ULA Vulcan launch to SpaceX

3:19 pm

Unexpected debris falling from rocket at about T-1:00
Nozzle failure during February 12, 2026 Vulcan launch

As expected, the Space Force has taken its next GPS satellite launch from ULA’s Vulcan rocket and given it to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The reason for the change is the repeated problems with the solid-fueled side boosters used on Vulcan and built by Northrop Grumman. The nozzles on two different launches failed. Though the rocket’s core stage in both cases was able compensate and get the payload into the proper orbit, the Space Force decided in late February to suspend further launches on Vulcan until ULA gets the problem fixed and proves it by launching other commercial payloads.

The Space Force however is not yet reducing the number of launches it has purchased from ULA, merely delaying them.

If all goes to plan, the satellite — the 10th and final one in the GPS III line — will lift off no earlier than late April from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida [on a Falcon 9].

Vulcan Centaur, in return, will launch USSF-70, a national security mission that had been manifested on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. USSF-70 will fly no earlier than summer 2028, according to Space Force officials.

Nonetheless, the situation is not good for ULA. This is the third such ULA launch the Space Force has shifted to SpaceX. At some point, if ULA doesn’t get the problem fixed the military it will be forced to reduce its reliance on Vulcan.

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March 20, 2026 Quick space links

2:57 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. The last link also comes from reader Gary. 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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The FCC’s agenda at its next meeting includes an item for “Weird Space Stuff”

2:49 pm

FCC logo

In releasing its agenda for its upcoming March 26, 2026 open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) included one very intriguing item entitled “Spectrum Abundance for Weird Space Stuff.”

In reviewing the fact sheet [pdf] for this particular agenda item, it appears the commission is focused on finding ways to maximize the use of some communications spectrum for more than one purpose. The commission wants to do this because it is anticipating a lot of new demand coming from what it calls “emergent space activities or emergent space operations.” As the fact sheet then notes:

In the geopolitical race to commercialize and dominate the Final Frontier, historic levels of private investment have paved the way for the engineering marvels and daring endeavors that now take place in outer space. Once the province of science fiction, American companies are now upgrading, relocating, and servicing satellites; 1. manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space; 2. building private inhabitable spacecraft; 3. and conducting private robotic missions to the surface of the Moon. 4. Emergent space operations like these depend on the use of radiocommunications for their spacecraft, but they are not the type of communications satellites that have traditionally commanded much of the Commission’s regulatory attention.

Spectrum is a critical component of all space operations. Even for spacecraft that do not provide radiocommunications services to the public, reliable spectrum access is mandatory for safety functions like telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) to control spacecraft in orbit. American innovators, however, currently face an acute shortage of usable and readily accessible spectrum for TT&C, and that spectrum crunch threatens to delay — or even prevent — the growth of domestic space technologies and jeopardize U.S. leadership in the booming global space economy. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the FCC is trying to find other spectrum, allocated for other purposes but available at other times, that can be provided to these new in-space operations for this telemetry, tracking, and command functions. To do this it appears it will need to rewrite some of its regulations, and this agenda item raises the issues involved in doing so.

And most interestingly, it is even considering allowing the marketplace solve the problem, by allowing licensees to lease their allocated spectrum to others. The FCC would limit such actions to the spectrum the FCC determines best for these multiple uses, but it is considering setting up rules to allow such freedom.

What an idea! Let free enterprise find a way to use the electromagnetic spectrum in the most efficient way possible.

No decision has been made, and we should expect the Democrats on the commission to oppose this, simply because. Nonetheless, it is a refreshing policy proposal.

Hat tip to reader Steve Golson, who notes quite correctly, “It’s good to see FCC trying to help rather than hinder.” Amen to that.

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Uranus: one glimpse and that was forty years ago

12:27 pm

Uranus as seen by Voyager-2, natural colors on left, false color on right
Uranus as seen by Voyager-2, natural colors on left, false color on right. Click for original.

I close today our week-long tour of Voyager-2’s fly-by of Uranus in January 1986 with three cool images, the two images of the planet itself above and a close-up of its rings. All three illustrate that though Voyager-2 gave us our first very good first close-up view of this distant world, it also gave us only a tiny glimpse, very superficial and lacking in any larger context.

The two images above were taken on January 17, 1986 when Voyager 2 was till 5.7 million miles away, on approach.

The picture at left has been processed to show Uranus as human eyes would see it from the vantage point of the spacecraft. The picture is a composite of images taken through blue, green and orange filters. The darker shadings at the upper right of the disk correspond to the day-night boundary on the planet. Beyond this boundary lies the hidden northern hemisphere of Uranus, which currently remains in total darkness as the planet rotates. The blue-green color results from the absorption of red light by methane gas in Uranus’ deep, cold and remarkably clear atmosphere.

The picture at right uses false color and extreme contrast enhancement to bring out subtle details in the polar region of Uranus. Images obtained through ultraviolet, violet and orange filters were respectively converted to the same blue, green and red colors used to produce the picture at left. The very slight contrasts visible in true color are greatly exaggerated here. In this false-color picture, Uranus reveals a dark polar hood surrounded by a series of progressively lighter concentric bands. One possible explanation is that a brownish haze or smog, concentrated over the pole, is arranged into bands by zonal motions of the upper atmosphere. The bright orange and yellow strip at the lower edge of the planet’s limb is an artifact of the image enhancement. In fact, the limb is dark and uniform in color around the planet.

The third cool image below of Uranus’s rings was taken just after the closest approach, when Voyager-2 was in Uranus’s shadow and looking back at its rings from a distance of 142,000 miles.
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Ursa Major test flies a new liquid-fueled missile engine for Air Force

10:51 am

Ursa Major's Draper engine being tested in flight

The rocket engine startup Ursa Major last week announced it had successfully completed for the Air Force a test missile launch of its new Draper liquid-fueled rocket engine.

As shown on the right, the Air Force’s Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator (ARMD) suborbital rocket was used to fly the engine. More information here.

On January 27, 2026, AFRL and Ursa Major launched the Draper liquid rocket engine on a demonstrator flight. While many details remain classified, the company says the test vehicle reached supersonic speeds during its flight. The test marked a transition from ground-based validation to in-flight evaluation, allowing engineers to study propellant stability, engine throttling performance, and how the system behaves under real flight conditions.

The Draper engine is designed to address key limitations of current hypersonic systems by making them cheaper, more scalable, and easier to operate. It runs on hydrogen peroxide and kerosene, fuels that are safer to store and handle compared to traditional alternatives.

The War Department’s hypersonic testing program has certainly heated up since the military switched to the capitalism model in the past five years. Beforehand, when the military tried to do its own testing, it took it years to get little done, while spending a fortune. Now it is flying suborbital rocket tests with Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and Firefly. It is testing new engines on flights such as Ursa’s above. And it testing hypersonic avionics on Varda’s orbiting capsules upon their return to Earth. Based on this commercial activity, it appears the U.S. military might get some real hypersonic capabilities in the very near future.

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