Tag: spaceflight

Starship/Superheavy launch aborted at T-0; launch scrubbed

3:56 pm

Starship/Superheavy today, just after engine abort
Starship/Superheavy today, just after engine abort

While all looked perfect right up until engine ignition at T-0 second in today’s attempt to fly the 13th test orbital flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, the rocket then shut down, aborting the launch.

At T-0 the engines did ignite for a second, after the water deluge system had activated as planned. The company almost immediately announced they were scrubbing for the day. As many have noted below in the comments, once that deluge system runs, they can’t launch again that day. It takes too long to refill the tanks.

Subsequently we have learned that 4 Raptor engines in the inner ring of Superheavy did not light. Musk has since said that at least two will be replaced. I suspect after they inspect the engines they might replace all four. They will likely then do another full static fire test before attempting a launch. Expect a delay of about a week.

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SpaceX completes 3rd of 10 launches for Space Force’s Tranche constellation

1:42 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed another 21 satellites into orbit, the 3rd of a 10-launch contract for the Space Force’s Tranche-1 communications constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The 1st stage (B1103) completed its 4th flight (27 days after its last mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 5th and 6th flights respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

86 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 78.

As my readers are well aware, SpaceX has another launch later today, the 13th orbital test flight of its gigantic Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica in Texas. That 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 pm (Eastern). You can watch that here.

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Strange flows on the flanks of a small isolated Martian mound

11:54 am

Small flows on the flanks of a small isolated Martian mound
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, enhanced, and rotated so that north is to the top, was taken on May 30, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

This mound is small, only about 150 to 600 feet high, depending on where you mark the base. The science team labels the curved black arcs that cover the mound’s northern slopes as “small scale lobes,” suggesting they think these curves mark the foot of multiple small landslides, or more accurately described as “mass-wasting events,” as instead of an avalanche of discreet boulders and rocks, the slide is comprised of mud-like material sliding downhill en masse.

The black material at the foot of these slides as well as on the mound’s peak and south and eastern flanks is a bit more puzzling. The overview map below provides one possible explanation, but leaves us with other more tantalizing possibilities.
» Read more

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Watching today’s 13th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

10:48 am

The thirteenth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket is presently scheduled for 6:45 pm (Eastern) tonight, with a 90 minute launch window.

UPDATE: I have now embedded the SpaceX its live stream on X. Below I have embedded the live streams being provided from others.


» Read more

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Private capital investment in space soared in ’26

10:01 am

Investment in space since 2023
Investment in space since 2023

According to a new report by the investment company Space Capital, private capital investment in space has soared this year, with the money invested in the past three quarters exceeding by several times all past quarters.

The graph to the right, taken from the company’s report, illustrates this burst of investment. According to Space Capital, the total private investment capital raised in just the last 36 months has exceeded $70 billion, with investment in North America dominating. It attributes this rise to three factors:

The [second] quarter opened with four astronauts returning from the Moon and closed with the largest IPO in history. In between, investors ran out of reasons to ignore the space economy. Three things defined Q2: SpaceX went public as an AI company, Rocket Lab showed where access to orbit leads, and the public markets finally opened for the space economy at scale.

First, Space Capital sees SpaceX’s combination of AI, data centers, and space as an example of two plus two equals six, that is being applied across the entire industry. Second, it sees Rocket Lab’s successfully diversification beyond just being a launch company as demonstrating to investors there’s more to space than rockets. Third, SpaceX’s IPO put space investment on the map, bringing capital in from new sources previously untapped.

Will this rush to invest in space continue? Maybe, maybe not. For the moment it really doesn’t matter, as the burst of capital in the past three months is already in the hands of the commercial space industry. They will use that money to build rockets, satellite constellations, and a host of other related technologies. From this will grow competition and innovation, lowering costs and thus fueling profits for all.

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Blue Origin’s new employee stock options are better, though still inferior to SpaceX’s

9:26 am

Because its old stock options were essentially worthless and a scam that did nothing to retain good employees, Blue Origin is now offering its employees a new stock option plan that while significantly improved, is still apparently inferior to SpaceX’s.

Under the old plan, the options only became real if Blue Origin went public within ten years. As the company never had plans to do so, those options were rubbish. The new plan changes this, but carries other restrictions.

Blue Origin’s new stock options plan, adopted in May, offers more opportunities for employees to cash out, including certain external funding rounds. In addition, it includes several restrictions on how employees can cash in their equity.

Jeff Bezos, still treating employees like serfs
Jeff Bezos, apparently still treating employees like serfs

Under the agreement, Blue Origin employees would never actually own any of the company’s stock. Instead, once their options have vested and are exercised to buy shares during a “liquidity event”— either an IPO, a sale of the company, or certain external funding rounds — those shares are “immediately and mandatorily” repurchased by Blue Origin. Employees get paid for their options at a “fair market value,” which, if Blue Origin hasn’t gone public, is determined by the company.

Most importantly, the plan has one major caveat: If an employee leaves Blue Origin and takes a job elsewhere in the space industry, they will forfeit their options entirely.

The change is certainly an improvement, but it does suggest Blue Origin (and Jeff Bezos) is still unwilling to treat its workers with the same kind of respect as SpaceX, which includes no such rules.

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India restricts the ability of space agency employees to leave due to recent exodus

9:08 am

The effort of India's government to defeat private enterprise
The effort of India’s government to defeat private enterprise

Turf war! In what will eventually be a useless and counter-productive dictatorial action, the Indian government has issued a directive restricting the ability of employees of its space agency ISRO from retiring or resigning, an action taken due to a recent exodus of between 100 and 120 engineers, scientists, and managers, many of whom left to take jobs in India’s nascent but growing private space sector.

In a memorandum issued on July 14, the Department of Space (DoS) directed major ISRO centres, including the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), not to routinely approve resignation or voluntary retirement requests from Group ‘A’ scientific and technical personnel associated with the Gaganyaan mission and other “important missions/projects”. Instead, such requests will require scrutiny by the Department of Space before a final decision is taken.

…Under the new directive, all resignation and voluntary retirement requests from scientific and technical personnel, including those at and below the rank of scientist and engineer, must be forwarded to the Department of Space along with “clear recommendations” from the respective centre directors, who will no longer have the authority to routinely clear such requests.

Multiple news reports from India today cite a recent spate of resignations and retirements, with many of those exiting employees getting jobs in private industry, with the most notable that of former ISRO chairman S Somanath, who has taken a position on the board of directors of the rocket startup Agnikul, which hopes to launch its own reusable rocket at some point in the future.

The government claims it has taken this action to make sure it doesn’t lose critical ISRO employees needed for its Gaganyaan and space station government projects, both of which are facing delays and technical challenges.

This directive will likely fail, however, for two reasons, both of which might in the long run be beneficial to India. First, young people just out of college will see it and decide it is better to get jobs in the private sector right off the bat. Why work for someone who will try to turn you into a serf who can’t leave? Second, it will guarantee an even greater exodus over time, as ISRO employees who want to leave will now take aggressive action to get out, as soon as they can. In both cases, the directive will encourage people to work for private industry, not the government.

At the same time, this directive suggests the government and ISRO is now taking action to squelch that new private sector. This order will limit the commercial industry’s ability to hire experienced ISRO people, thus slowing its development.

Similar actions were taken by NASA in the 2000s and 2010s when the agency began its transition to the capitalism model. There was great resistance within the government to ceding power to the private sector, resistance that still exists and showed itself again during the Biden administration. That government effort in the U.S. however has largely failed, because the public has elected a government (Trump and the Republicans in Congress) that favors the private sector, and because the private sector is getting the job done.

How things will play out in India remains unknown. Its administrative state is much more powerful, and its cultural traditions are not grounded as much in private enterprise, as is the U.S.

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South Africa makes deal with Amazon for Leo internet service

8:42 am

Amazon Leo logo

While SpaceX has still not made a deal with South Africa to provide Starlink service to its citizens, Amazon yesterday announced it has finalized its own agreement to allow a South Africa telecommunications operation to sell its Leo satellite internet service there.

Amazon Leo has entered into an agreement with Herotel, South Africa’s largest fixed internet service provider, to bring satellite internet to South Africa through a new service called evry, powered by Amazon Leo. Under the agreement, Herotel will use Amazon Leo’s technology as part of Herotel’s new service evry. Evry is expected to launch commercially in 2027 to connect residential customers in South Africa. This is the first Amazon Leo agreement of this kind in Africa.

SpaceX initially refused to agree to the South African government’s demands that the company sell some ownership of its company to locals under a racial quota system that favored blacks. That racial quota system however was lifted in December 2025. For some reason however SpaceX has not worked out a deal since then (possibly because it refused to pay bribes), and so Amazon apparently moved in and grabbed the business.

Whether SpaceX can work something out as well is not known. Regardless, the competition is good, as it is always better to have more than one option in any product field.

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Katalyst engineers overcome some issues in commissioning its Link rescue spacecraft

8:23 am

Image of Link firing one of its engines during check-out
Image of Link firing one of its ion engines during check-out.
Click for original.

It appears there were some communications and attitude control issues soon after Katalyst’s Link spacecraft was launched by Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket, issues that the company’s engineers have now resolved as they prepare Link for its rescue mission to the Gehrels-Swift space telescope.

LINK launched July 3, completed its initial postlaunch sequence, and began system checkouts. After completing solar array deployment and establishing communications, Katalyst now has commissioned LINK’s power systems and avionics, as well as conducted propulsion system checkouts. This has involved firing the spacecraft’s xenon-fueled thrusters, which will be used to travel to Swift and slowly raise its orbital altitude over the course of several months.

The Katalyst team also quickly addressed early communications and attitude control issues seen during flight operations, including an issue with one of the spacecraft’s three reaction wheels. After identifying the cause, they implemented flight software patches and operational updates that restored reliable communications and stable attitude control.

The spacecraft’s check-out will continue for another two weeks or so, and then engineers will use its ion-engines to slowly raise its orbit to match Gehrels-Swift’s.

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NASA outlines the mission plan for Artemis-3

8:01 am

Artist's rendering of Orion docked to Starship
Artist’s rendering of Orion docked to Starship.

In a press release late yesterday, NASA detailed at length its present plans for the Artemis-3 mission next year, in which a crewed Orion capsule will conduct docking maneuvers first with a Blue Origin test version of its Blue Moon manned lunar lander and next with a SpaceX refitted Version-3 Starship.

For the Artemis III mission, the Blue Moon test lander will be based on Blue Origin’s current architecture for its Mark 2 crew lander, incorporating all the major avionics and flight software and control systems to ensure flight operations from this demonstration mission can directly translate to crewed lunar flights. Up to two crew members, donning orange Orion crew survival system suits, will open the hatch to enter the Blue Origin test lander. The production hardware must incorporate many of the same systems and subsystems, including an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), a crew cabin, and avionics. The Blue Origin lander also will fly with an instrumented lunar surface spacesuit mass simulator. Like the suited “Moonikin” manikin that flew aboard Orion during the uncrewed Artemis I test flight, the low-fidelity spacesuit mass simulator will provide real-time feedback about the environment within the Blue Moon crew cabin.

SpaceX’s Starship lander test article will use a Starship Version 3, currently in production and testing, with an added docking system installed on the nose of the 171-foot spacecraft, enabling NASA and SpaceX to evaluate how the entire integrated stack of Orion and the Starship test lander interact. NASA and SpaceX are identifying controllability and communications tests for the Artemis III mission. Astronauts will not enter the Starship test lander during Artemis III.

The launch sequence will have Blue Origin use its New Glenn rocket to launch its Blue Moon test vehicle first, with a maximum orbital mission of 30 days. During that time period SLS will launch Orion, which will then conduct its rendezvous and docking with Blue Moon. Once this is completed SpaceX will then launch Starship on Superheavy. Once in orbit Orion will rendezvous and dock with it.

That’s the plan at this point, though much remains uncertain. New Glenn remains grounded after the May 28, 2026 launchpad explosion. Starship has not yet flown a full orbital mission. No version of Blue Moon, either manned or unmanned has flown at all. Whether all three will be ready for this mission, presently scheduled tentatively for late ’27, is a question we cannot answer at this moment.

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Scientists detect Jupiter-sized exoplanet hidden in debris disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris

12:53 pm

Using spectroscopic infrared data from the Webb Space Telescope as well as ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with two times the mass of Jupiter hidden inside the well-studied debris disk that surrounds the nearby star Beta Pictoris.

Located 63 light-years from Earth and about 23 million years old, Beta Pictoris is a nearby system in the Milky Way offering a rare glimpse of the interactions between newborn planets and the disk of dust and debris left behind from their formation.

The team estimates that the newfound Beta Pictoris d is likely at least two times the mass of Jupiter, making it the smallest of the three known giant planets in the system. Modeling suggests it likely circles around its star at about 30 astronomical units, comparable to the region occupied by Neptune in our own solar system. It’s the widest orbit of the known three planets, but still located inside the inner edge of the debris disk.

Beta Pictoris’ debris disk has been a point of interest for astronomers for decades. The star is somewhat comparable to our Sun though significantly younger, and it is believed the disk is a baby solar system in formation. This new planet’s location near the disk’s inner edge might explain the sharpness of that edge: The planet is shepherding the material in the disk.

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Perseverance data documents the multiple impact history at Jezero Crater

12:34 pm

Spherules at Broom Point
Figure 8 from the paper.

Using data obtained last year when the Mars rover Perseverance did its first exploration outside of Jezero Crater, scientists now believe that material documents not only the impact that formed Jezero, but the much larger Isidis Basin impact eons earlier.

You can read their paper here. The image to the right is the paper’s Figure 8, showing the many impact spherules found at the site, dubbed Broom Point. From the press release:

While volcanoes can produce similar glassy droplets, they rarely occur in such high abundance, pointing to asteroid impacts, instead, as the primary architect. In fact, the largest beads rival those flung out by the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid’s impact on Earth.

In reviewing the data, the scientist found evidence of two major impacts.

First, a colossal asteroid impact created the 1,200-mile-wide (1,900-kilometer-wide) Isidis Basin, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, upending and tilting the once-flat rock layers. Later, a second asteroid likely struck, forming Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles (45 kilometers) across. This second impact fractured and uplifted the already-tilted rocks into the dramatic formations the rover sees today.

This conclusion is not surprising. Orbital data has clearly suggested this sequence of events for decades. Scientists now have confirmed it geologically with actual ground samples.

In addition, the data suggested the occurrence in the past of fast debris flows, likely caused “when molten rock hits water or ice that instantly flashes into steam.” Though Jezero Crater is now in the dry equatorial regions of Mars, the geological evidence has consistently suggested there was once ice or water there. This data reinforces that conclusion.

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Serbia to sign Artemis Accords

10:24 am

European members of Artemis Accords

NASA today announced that Serbia tomorrow will become the 69th nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

With this signing, almost every European nation has now joined this American alliance, as shown in blue on the map to the right. Russia is indicated by red, illustrating also how its former Soviet bloc has almost completed joined this American space alliance. The only remaining exceptions are Belarus, Moldova, and several nations formed out of Yugoslavia. The signing of Serbia tomorrow, which joins Slovenia as two former Yugoslavia regions now part of the accords, suggests those other regions will soon sign on as well.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

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Russia agrees to extend ISS partnership through 2030

9:32 am

Russia today announced that it will extend its operations at ISS through 2030, including agreeing to continue the barter exchange of astronaut flights as long as the station is operational.

Russian-American crews will continue conducting seat-swap flights to the International Space Station (ISS) as long as the orbital outpost remains operational, Russian State Space Corporation (Roscosmos) Director General Dmitry Bakanov said. “We have agreed in principle on extending the terms (for the ISS – TASS) until 2030, and of course, since the ISS has a Russian and an American segment, seat-swap flights involving Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronauts will also continue,” he said at a press conference following the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft’s docking with the ISS.

Bakanov added, however, that it was too early to say when a formal legal agreement would be signed.

The present Russian plans to transition from ISS to its Russian Orbital Station
Russia’s plan for launching its new station.
Click for full resolution image.

These agreements come from meetings between Bakanov and NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in Russia this week. Isaacman’s visit is the first by a NASA administrator in about eight years. As part of the discussions, Russia also agreed to “begin more detailed coordination of satellite operations to prevent collisions.”

Isaacman likely had a very easy time getting Russia to agree to these items, as Russia’s ability to launch its own planned new Russian Orbital Station (ROS) is becoming increasingly difficult due to the war in the Ukraine and the overall decline in its industrial capabilities in the past two decades. Bakanov knows ROS will almost certain not launch on time. The present public plan — as shown in the graphic to the right — says its first module will launch sometime in the next four years, but don’t bet on it.

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Hiking into the solar system’s biggest canyon

12:09 pm

Overview map

The canyon walls in one spot in Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 3, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The white dot on the overview map shows the location, on the northern interior wall of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. The scientists took this image to get a good look at those canyon walls. I am highlighting the image because it provides a good way to illustrate the monumental scale of this vast canyon.

The inset on the overview map includes an orange dotted line, following the likely route for a trail along the nose of this ridge, going from the rim to the canyon floor. The picture to the right shows only one small section of that ridge trail, near the top. And yet, from the upper left to the lower right of the photograph a hike along that ridgeline would cover 2.2 miles and descend about 4,500 feet, a descent somewhat comparable to hiking into the Grand Canyon though dropping much more steeply. On either side of you the slopes would drop off from 1,600 to 2,000 feet.

To hike from the top of the rim to the canyon floor however would be far more challenging and be even more spectacular. The length of that orange dotted line is about 17.3 miles, with the total elevation drop about 23,000 feet — 3,000 feet greater than climbing the highest mountain in the U.S., Mount McKinley in Alaska.

Think about it. Along this part of Valles Marineris the elevation difference between the canyon floor and the rim is routinely much greater than the height of America’s tallest mountain. Every hike down into that canyon along the north wall would present a similar challenge. And from this point that northern canyon wall extends more than 650 miles westward and about 250 miles eastward. That’s a lot of Mount McKinley’s lined up in a row!

With these scales, it is at present difficult to imagine what the view from that rim would be like. You would see farther and deeper than most places on Earth, on a planet with a far thinner but more dusty atmosphere.

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Another recoverable capsule company enters the competition

9:28 am

Artist rendering of Enos in orbit
Artist rendering of Enos in orbit. Click for original animation.

A new recoverable capsule company, dubbed Reditus, says it has completed construction on its own small recoverable capsule — similar to Varda’s — and is now searching for either commercial or military customers.

Stef Crum, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told Breaking Defense that the spacecraft, called ENOS, can carry payloads for military testers wanting to evaluate how a specific system or technology functions in a hypersonic environment — or instead serve as a Mach 25+ target vehicle for interceptors both above and within the atmosphere.

The spacecraft is “designed to be launched and operate on-orbit like a satellite, leveraging the existing, and increasingly expanding launch-infrastructure. ENOS is capable of maintaining operations on-orbit, for days, months or years, providing operators with maximum mission flexibility. Then, ENOS can initiate its own reentry, and be recovered under parachute,” the Reditus announcement explained.

Reditus is only two years old and has raised $7.85 million in seed money. It plans to launch its first Enos demo mission on a Falcon 9 rocket, but apparently hopes to get a customer as well for that mission.

The recoverable capsule competition is sure getting crowded. In the U.S. Reditus joins Varda, SpaceX, Inversion Space, and Sierra Space, all of whom have raised money or won contracts for doing such orbital work. In Europe, The Exploration Company in France, Atmos in Germany, PLD in Spain, Genesis in Croatia, and Space Cargo in Luxembourg have also raised capital. So far, however, Varda is the only company to successfully fly capsules operationally, for a variety of customers.

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Thailand proceeding with plan to establish its own commercial spaceport

9:07 am

Thailand
Click for source.

In a follow-up to a 2025 proposal, the Thailand government is now putting together a plan to build a commercial spaceport for use by international rocket companies.

The Thai government is preparing to anchor itself in the global space race with a blueprint to develop a domestic spaceport. By deploying a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) framework, the state aims to attract international investment and ease the burden on the national budget.

The article claims Thailand’s location gives it a natural launch advantage, but the map to the right says otherwise. It has no easy clear launch path to the east (for equatorial launches) or south (for polar launches). Unless the rocket 1st stages are reusable, launches from Thailand will risk dropping stages on Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, or Vietnam.

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NASA switches launch provider from ULA to SpaceX for its SunRise solar mission

8:39 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has switched the rocket it will use to launch its SunRise six-cubesat mission to study the Sun’s corona, from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, becoming a secondary payload on a Space Force launch.

NASA’s SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, shifting from its original ride into space aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur vehicle. NASA will share updated launch timing in the near future. The heliophysics mission will fly as a rideshare sponsored by the United States Space Force’s Space Systems Command.

The launch was originally supposed to take place now, in the summer of 2026, but at present the Vulcan rocket is grounded due to problems with its solid-fueled strap-on boosters. NASA apparently decided it would be better to switch to the Falcon Heavy launch, even though as a secondary payload it loses control over exactly when it can launch, and at present the Space Force’s next Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled for 2027.

The switch means a loss of more income for ULA due to its inability to get Vulcan launching regularly and reliably. It also suggests Vulcan repairs remains stalled, and that it will not resume regular launches until next year.

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Three launches, two by SpaceX and one by Russia

8:24 am

The global rocket industry completed three launches since last night.

First, SpaceX placed 27 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 lifting off last night from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1093) completed its 15th flight (29 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

SpaceX then followed up with a morning launch, placing 29 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage (B1080) completed its 28th flight (32 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This launch tied this booster for ninth place with the space shuttle Columbia in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicles.

Finally, Russia successfully placed one American and two Russian astronauts into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Russia’s Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. Their Soyuz capsule docked with the Prichal module on the Russian half of ISS several hours later, beginning an eight month mission for this crew.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

85 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 85 to 78.

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FAA seeking comments on SpaceX’s request to expand Starship’s landing zones

4:43 pm

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today released its draft environmental reassessment [pdf] that would allow SpaceX to both expand add landing zones for bringing its Starship spacecraft back from orbit.

From the introduction:

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is seeking to obtain a modification of its existing vehicle operator license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to account for Starship reentry contingency operations in the Pacific Ocean as well as an additional Starship reentry trajectory for landing at the Boca Chica Launch Site in Starbase, Texas (TX). SpaceX must obtain a license modification from FAA to land the Starship vehicle in the Northern Pacific Basin (south of the Aleutian Islands), as well as information for airspace closures for an additional trajectory which includes landing at the Boca Chica Launch Site in Starbase, TX. SpaceX also intends to expand the previously evaluated landing areas in the Hawaii and Central Pacific Basin (southwest of the Hawaiian Islands) and the Southeast (SE) Pacific (off the coast of Chile) as additional contingency landing locations for Starship.

Starship flight path over the Pacific for landing at Boca Chica
Starship flight path over the Pacific for landing at Boca Chica

The map to the right shows Starship’s proposed flight path for returning to Boca Chica.

The key quote however is in the FAA’s conclusion, after reviewing all the typical potential issues:

FAA has concluded that no significant impacts would occur as a result of SpaceX’s Proposed Action.

At this stage of the reassessment the FAA is seeking public comment through July 26, 2026. Expect the typical protests from the left, hostile to anything new (especially if Elon Musk is involved). Based on past rulings in these matters by the FAA (even when Biden was president), expect this expansion of landing sites to be approved. Under Trump expect the decision to be made more quickly, especially because this landing site expansion is crucial for allowing the company to begin routine orbital flights of Starship in preparation for NASA’s Artemis lunar landing.

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