Year: 2025

Avio wins U.S. launch contract for its Vega-C rocket

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: In what I think is a first, the Italian rocket company Avio has won a Vega-C launch contract without any participation from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial division Arianespace.

The contract is also with an American company, SpaceLaunch, to put an “institutional Earth observation satellite” in orbit in 2027.

The significance of the deal is that Avio is now successfully marketing and selling its Vega-C rocket, without the middleman Arianespace taking a cut. As part of the shift of ESA and Europe to the capitalism model, whereby it no longer runs things but acts merely as a customer, it also freed Avio from the clutches of Arianespace. Previously, Avio built the rocket for that government agency, which then marketed and sold it to satellite companies. Avio had no control over profit or price. In fact, it didn’t really own its own rocket.

This absurd situation is now ending. There are still a handful of Vega-C launches that were contracted for under Arianespace, but after these Avio will be completely in charge. This deal, announced yesterday, is the beginning of that process.

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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites

9:08 am

The beat goes on. SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

121 SpaceX
54 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 121 to 93.

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Blue Origin wins contract to bring NASA’s Viper rover to the Moon

9:12 am

NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin a contract to use its Blue Moon lunar lander to transport the agency’s troubled Viper rover to the Moon’s south pole region.

The CLPS task order has a total potential value of $190 million. This is the second CLPS lunar delivery awarded to Blue Origin. Their first delivery – using their Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lander – is targeted for launch later this year to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies and Laser Retroreflective Array payloads to the Moon’s South Pole region.

With this new award, Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface in late 2027, using a second Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is in production. NASA previously canceled the VIPER project and has since explored alternative approaches to achieve the agency’s goals of mapping potential off-planet resources, like water.

The contract does not guarantee this mission. NASA has several options along the way to shut things down, depending on the milestones Blue Origin achieves. The first of course is the success of that first lunar lander.

The announcement does not make clear how NASA is going to pay for the work needed to finish Viper. VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch. Moreover, after getting eleven proposals from the private sector companies to finish and launch Viper, in May 2025 NASA canceled that solicitation.

It is very likely Blue Origin is picking up the tab, but if so the press release does not say so.

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September 19, 2025 Quick space links

3:10 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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FAA releases proposed revisions to environmental assessment at Boca Chica to accomodate full orbital testing and return of both Superheavy and Starship

12:33 pm

The planned return trajectories for both Superheavy and Starship
The planned return trajectories for both
Superheavy and Starship

The FAA today released [pdf] a new draft of the environmental assessment of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship operations at Boca Chica that will allow for full orbital flights as well as for both to return to that launchpad.

The two maps to the right show the two planned return paths for Superheavy (top) and Starship (bottom) as it comes back from orbit. In both cases the ships will return to Boca Chica to be caught by tower chopsticks. The reassessment analyzed the impacts of these trajectories, including its impact on aviation traffic, and concluded the proposal was acceptable. From its conclusion:

The 2022 PEA [Programmatic Environmental Assessment] and April 2025 Tiered EA [environmental assessment] examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship-Super Heavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship-Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this Tiered EA include aviation emissions and air quality; noise and noise-compatible land use; hazardous materials; and socioeconomics. In each of these areas, the FAA has concluded that no significant impacts would occur as a result of the Proposed Action. [emphasis mine]

This approval is still only a draft. It must go through a public comment period, ending October 20, 2025. There will also be a virtual public meeting on October 7, 2025. Information about submitting comments or participating in that virtual meeting can be found here.

Such meetings are likely to see the leftist anti-Musk crowd come out in droves, screeching how we are all gonna die if these launches are allowed. The FAA will nod its head, and then ignore the Chicken Littles and approve this plan.

The plan itself tells us that SpaceX is definitely gearing up the first orbital flights of Starship next year, along with the first attempts to catch it with the tower chopsticks.

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Inexplicable very large patterns found in Saturn’s upper atmosphere

9:40 am

Beads and arms in Saturn's upper atmosphere
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope’s infrared capabilities, scientists have detected several different and inexplicable large atmospheric structures linked somehow to the gas giant’s north pole aurora.

The two images to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, show both types of newly discovered features.

The international team of researchers, comprising 23 scientists from institutions across the UK, US and France, made the discoveries during a continuous 10-hour observation period on 29 November 2024, as Saturn rotated beneath JWST’s view. The team focused on detecting infrared emissions by a positively charged molecular form of hydrogen, H3+, which plays a key role in reactions in Saturn’s atmosphere and so can provide valuable insights into the chemical and physical processes at work. JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph allowed the team to simultaneously observe H₃⁺ ions from the ionosphere, 1,100 kilometres above Saturn’s nominal surface, and methane molecules in the underlying stratosphere, at an altitude of 600 kilometres.

In the electrically-charged plasma of the ionosphere, the team observed a series of dark, bead-like features embedded in bright auroral halos. [top picture] These structures remained stable over hours but appeared to drift slowly over longer periods.

Around 500 kilometres lower, in Saturn’s stratosphere, the team discovered an asymmetric star-shaped feature [bottom picture]. This unusual structure extended out from Saturn’s north pole towards the equator. Only four of the star’s six arms were visible, with two mysteriously missing, creating a lopsided pattern.

A more accurate word for the “beads” I think would be “patches”, as they are not small but major dark regions that appear to rotate with the planet, as do the arms. Both also seem to be related to each other as their rotations match, though one sits about 300 miles lower in the atmosphere. As noted in the press release, “the processes that are driving the patterns may influence a column stretching right through Saturn’s atmosphere.”

All guesses. All we have at this point is a truly intriguing observation.

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Luxembourg cargo capsule startup Space Cargo raises $32 million in private investment capital

9:14 am

The Luxembourg cargo capsule startup Space Cargo has now raised $32 million in private investment capital in a new funding round focused on developing its BentoBox platform for in-space manufacturing and experimentation.

On 15 September, the company announced that it had closed a €27.5 million Series A funding round led by Expansion Ventures and supported by Eurazeo. The round included participation from the European Innovation Council, the European Investment Bank, and the Luxembourg Future Fund II, which is managed by Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement and the European Investment Fund. It also included contributions from numerous private investors who participated through the crowd-equity platform Tudigo.

Unlike Varda’s returnable capsule, BentoBox is smaller and not designed to return to Earth. Instead it gets launched incorporated on orbital spacecraft built by others, such as Thales Alenia’s REV-1 tug and Atmos’s Phoenix returnable capsule.

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Astra is now targeting mid-’26 for first launch of its new Rocket-4 rocket

9:00 am

According to a presentation by Astra officials this week, the company now plans the first launch of its larger Rocket-4 rocket in the summer of 2026, followed by a second launch in the fall for the Pentagon.

The summer 2026 inaugural launch will be a test flight, Kemp said, followed by one in October or November for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program. Astra plans quarterly launches of Rocket 4 in 2027, with long-term goals for much higher launch rates. Astra has maintained plans to make Rocket 4 a transportable launch system using standard shipping containers, allowing it to operate from sites with little more than a concrete pad.

This company has had a checkered history. It built and launched its smaller Rocket-3 rocket several times back in 2021 and 2022, with mixed results. After those launch failures it then decided to retire that smaller rocket for Rocket-4, only to run out of cash in 2023-2024. In 2024 its founders put together the cash to buy up the company’s stock to go private, and since then it has made most of its money from that one military test contract as well as selling its electrical propulsion systems to satellite companies.

If it gets Rocket-4 off the ground and begins regularly launches it will be an amazing recovery.

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Japan closes down its Akatsuki Venus orbiter mission

8:50 am

japan’s space agency JAXA today announced that it has shut down down operations on its Akatsuki orbiter, in orbit around Venus since 2015.

Communication with “Akatsuki” was lost during operations near the end of April 2024, triggered by an incident in a control mode of lower-precision attitude maintenance for a prolonged period. Although recovery operations were conducted to restore communication, there has been no luck so far. Considering the fact that the spacecraft has aged, well exceeding its designed lifetime, and was already in the late-stage operation phase, it has been decided to terminate operations.

Akatsuki has a interesting history. Launched in 2010, it failed to enter Venus orbit as planned in two attempts in 2010 and 2011 because of a failure in its main engine. Engineers then improvised and — after orbiting the Sun for several years — were able to get it into Venus orbit in 2015 using only its attitude thrusters. Its primary mission ended in 2018, but it continued to study Venus’ atmosphere since.

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