Tag: spaceflight

SpaceX: 13th Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch now set for July 20, 2026

9:09 am

SpaceX today issued an update confirming the company’s intention to launch Starship/Superheavy on its 13th test orbital launch July 20, 2026, one week after the rocket had a launch abort at T-0 seconds.

The 90-minute launch window opens at 5:45 pm (Central).

The update describes the mission, which remains unchanged from last week, but provides no details as to what the company has done to correct the issue that caused four Raptor-3 engines in Superheavy to misfire. Previously Musk had indicated they would replace two engines, but no further information has as yet been released.

Regardless, it is clear the company is pushing hard to complete this launch, as it wishes to go to full orbital test flights on the next mission.

0 comments

NASA cancels Draper/Ispace unmanned lunar lander contract

12:45 pm

Artist rendering of Ispace's Ultra lunar lander
Artist rendering of Ispace’s Ultra lunar lander

According to a press release from the Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace, NASA last week canceled its contract with Draper for a lunar lander mission in 2030, a mission that Ispace was the main subcontractor.

Ispace technologies U.S., (Ispace-U.S.) an American lunar exploration company and subsidiary of Ispace, inc. (ispace), and Draper, a non-profit research, development and manufacturing company, today announced that Draper has mutually agreed with NASA to end the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order CP-12.

Since July 2022, Ispace-U.S. served as a subcontractor to Draper to provide a lunar lander transportation service for NASA’s CLPS task order CP-12. Following the agreement with NASA on the primary contract, Draper and ispace-U.S. expects the mutual termination of the subcontract between the two companies.

For that 2030 mission Ispace was really the main contractor — having already built and launched two failred lunar landers — but as a Japanese company (even with a U.S. division), it needed an American company to act as lead in order to win the NASA contract. Draper fulfilled that purpose.

Draper however has little experience building lunar landers. Ispace was really doing the job. The problem was that Ispace discovered with its two failures that its original lander design was insufficient. The development of a new larger lander, dubbed Ultra, has caused significant delays.

It appears NASA and Draper decided this arrangement was not acceptable. Both were probably uncomfortable with its faux lead position. Ispace’s delays also were likely a factor.

It is certainly possible for Ispace alone to win later contracts. It has said it intends to bid. Moreover, as Japan is both a partner in the Artemis program and a signatory to the Artemis Accords, there really is little reason for NASA or Ispace to play these games. NASA can issue a contract directly to it. It simply has to make sure it issues contracts to American companies first.

Below is the present rough schedule of missions in NASA’s Artemis program, as revised under NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s leadership, and adjusted to include this cancellation.

NASA’s Artemis mission schedule:
» Read more

3 comments

Indian’s private rocket startup Skyroot completes a perfect first launch

9:31 am

Vikram-1's perfect flight path
Click for source.

In a spectacular success, the Indian private rocket startup Skyroot today completed the first launch of its smallsat rocket Vikram-1, placing several payloads into orbit.

The graphic to the right shows the rocket’s flight path from the ground to orbit, overlaid over its nominal planned flight path. The match is precise. During the launch everything worked exactly as intended, an achievement on a first launch almost no rocket company has ever accomplished, including SpaceX.

During the broadcast there were several things I noticed that were of interest. First, Skyroot launched from India’s government spaceport at Sriharikota, operated by the country’s space agency ISRO. During normal ISRO launches the control room is filled with more than a hundred controllers, packed tightly in several rows. For this private launch, however, that control room appeared to have less than third of those numbers, many of which I suspect were ISRO employees tasked with monitoring the launch to protect the agency’s assets. Those controllers who appeared part of Skyroot’s team, in the front row, were few.

Second, in the viewing gallery at the back were several important ISRO managers, including the head of the agency. While everyone else around them cheered the success enthusiastically, they sat quiet, with some having very dour expressions. This could have simply been an effort at professionalism, but I suspect it also had an element of resentment and fear. Skyroot’s launch today of a smallsat private rocket is something ISRO has not been able to do for almost two years. The agency’s PSLV rocket has failed at launch twice in a row, and remains grounded.

In fact, right now Skyroot’s one launch is the only Indian launch of the year.

Moreover, Skyroot represents the future, and ISRO the past. The Modi government has been pushing hard to transition from the present government model, where ISRO owns, runs, and controls the entire Indian space program, to the capitalism model, where the private sector does it, and the government is merely the customer. ISRO has been somewhat resistant to this change, slow-walking many Modi directives.

This success signals the beginning of a new era in India, one in which private enterprise, competition, and freedom fuel innovation and success. It also signals an era where ISRO will become less powerful and important. Those ISRO managers know this, and some clearly didn’t like the prospect.

The leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged.

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 79.

1 comment

Scientists find evidence of six landslides on Pluto in New Horizons’ archival imagery

9:57 am

Landslide on Pluto
Click for original image.

Using archival imagery from New Horizons’ fly-by of Pluto in 2015, scientists have identified the remains of six different landslides, once again indicating that this distant planet is geologically active despite being so far from the Sun.

Each of the landslides is located along the inner rim of an impact crater, where the terrain is steep. The largest is roughly 130 square kilometers in area, or about twice the size of Manhattan. That’s near the upper size range of landslides that typically occur on Earth, Brunetti says.

The landslides range in height from 1,500 to 2,200 meters. That’s somewhat puny compared with landslides elsewhere in the solar system, but these features have a trick up their proverbial sleeves: Compared with landslides of similar heights, those on Pluto tend to run out over longer distances. That’s a sign that material tumbling down a slope on Pluto experiences less friction, on average, the team concluded. That conclusion can help constrain the material properties of Pluto, Brunetti and her colleagues suggest.

The image to the right, shows the landslide in Coughlin Crater. The red line indicates the material that fell from the crater rim, while the dashed white line indicates a crater impact that might have instigated the landslide. The scientists estimate the avalanche flowed down into the crater flow about 1.4 miles.

3 comments

Evidence of an atmosphere detected for the first time on a rocky terrestrial exoplanet

9:25 am

Scientists have now detected the first evidence of an atmosphere on a rocky terrestrial exoplanet that is also located in the habitable zone. The exoplanet, dubbed LHS 1140 b, is located circling a red dwarf star about 48 light years away and is estimated to have about 5.6 times the mass of Earth and about 2.4 times the diameter.

To test their prediction, the team used the Warm Infrared Echelle (WINERED) Spectrograph on the Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. They observed a rare alignment, where LHS 1140 b and another planet [in the system] transited their star on the same night.

Although one planet showed no evidence of an atmosphere, the other, LHS 1140 b, showed helium escaping from around it, confirming that it retains an atmosphere.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. The discovery is of significance, as it proves finally — more than two decades after the first detection of an exoplanet — that rocky exoplanets outside our solar system can have an atmosphere. There is also evidence that this loss of helium might be seasonal in nature. From their abstract:

Helium absorption is detected in 2024 but not in 2025, indicating time-variable atmospheric escape. We interpret these results as indicating an upper atmosphere dominated by helium and depleted in hydrogen, with other volatile species trapped at lower altitudes, consistent with atmospheric fractionation models. No helium absorption is detected for LHS 1140c, a smaller and more strongly irradiated
exoplanet in the same system.

The planet has an orbit 24.7 days, and is located in the habitable zone, though overall it gets only 42% of the radiation from its star compared to Earth. Thus, it is very cold on this planet, with a gravity significant heavier than Earth’s. In other words, even if it has an atmosphere, it remains a very alien place.

7 comments

Mauritius signs Artemis Accords

8:52 am

On the same day Serbia officially signed the Artemis Accords, the island nation of Mauritius (located in the Indian Ocean) also joined, becoming the 70th nation within this American space alliance.

Serbia’s decision to join had been announced earlier this week, with the official signing today.

As Mauritius lies about thousand miles east of Africa, we could say it is part of that continent, thus raising the number of nations in that continent to have signed the accords to seven. Angola, Botswana, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Senegal are the others. For a variety of reasons, not many African nations have signed on.

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, Mauritius, 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.

4 comments

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.

49 comments

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.

2 comments

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

0 comments

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

10 comments

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.

0 comments

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.

2 comments

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.

14 comments

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.

2 comments

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.

0 comments

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.

10 comments

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.

0 comments

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.

0 comments

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.

5 comments

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.

3 comments
1 2 3 … 806