Elina Garanca – When I hear the sound of the cymbal
An evening pause: From the operetta Gypsy Love.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Year: 2026
March 24, 2026 Quick space links
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.
- Amazon outlines its effort to accelerate the launch of its Leo satellites
Sounds good, but it will all depend on whether the rockets it depends on, other than SpaceX or ULA, can get off the ground. Right now it is questionable Blue Origin’s New Glenn and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 can launch soon or very quickly.
- A Florida-based company, Seagate Space, is developing modular offshore launch platforms
It joins two European companies attempting to do the same.
- Blue Origin touts the ongoing assembly of its 2nd Blue Moon MK1 unmanned lunar lander
Blue Origin still has to launch the first.
- Rocket Lab touts its Rutherford rocket engine, having launched more than 800 so far on its Electron rocket
The company hopes in 2026 to launch another 200+.
- More moons for Jupiter and Saturn!
Jupiter now has 101, while Saturn has 285. Nor should anyone expect these numbers to remain this low.
- Gus Grissom and John Young became the first astronauts to fly the Gemini spacecraft on this day in 1965
The 5-hour Gemini-3 mission tested the new maneuverable Gemini spacecraft, designed expressly to demonstrate docking and rendezvous as well as missions from one to two-weeks long.
- On March 23, 1983, the Soviet Union launched the Astron-1 space telescope on its Proton rocket from Baikonur
It operated in a highly elliptical orbit to study sources of UV and X-rays and functioned for about 6-8 years.
Lunar Gateway dead as NASA announces major changes to its future space station, lunar, and Mars plans
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.
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On the Space Show tonight
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.
Satellite repair startup Katalyst awards Arianespace and its Ariane-6 rocket a launch contract
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.
Russia launches the first 16 satellites in its own internet satellite constellation
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:
37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.
Progress docks with ISS
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.
Fair Play Crew – Video Game
An evening pause: To really appreciate this skit, you really would have had to have spent hours playing early coin-operated video games in the 1980s and 1990s.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
March 23, 2026 Quick space links
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.
- New study says giant exoplanets spin fast while brown dwarf stars spin slow
The distinction, if confirmed, will help astronomers figure out which is which, since sometimes it has been hard to tell them apart.
- Summary of new Chinese papers describing its manned lunar mission
Specifically, the papers outline the Mengzhou command module’s abort plans if something goes wrong in lunar orbit, and the Lanyue lunar lander’s mission profile for landing on the Moon
- “If the astronomers don’t like Starlink satellites, they haven’t seen nothing yet”
There are a lot more much larger satellite constellations coming. Time for astronomy to get off the Earth and above this stuff.
- On this day in 2001 Russia’s Mir space station burned up over the Pacific, after 15 years in space
In interviewing many Russian astronauts in 2003 they were routinely appalled the Russia didn’t try to salvage some parts of it, if only for studying how its materials were impacted after so many years in space.
The battle of Gettysburg as seen by those who lived it
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:
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Juno data suggests lightning on Jupiter is a hundred to a million times more powerful than lightning on Earth
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.
Changes to the Crab Nebula 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.