Year: 2026

Fairing from India’s Bahubali rocket launched in December found in Maldives

9:00 am

A man fishing off an uninhabited island in the Maldives discovered what appears to be pieces from the fairing used by India’s LVM3 rocket, also dubbed Bahubali, when it launched AST SpaceMobile’s sixth Bluebird satellite in December.

A similar discovery was made on December 28, 2025 in Sri Lanka. In both cases it is theorized that the material came from the fairings of the December Bahubali launch.

I am unable to determine the flight path of the Bluebird launch, but the location of this debris suggests it headed strongly south from India’s east coast spaceport. The fairing pieces then drifted south and west to reach the Maldives after two months.

SpaceX routinely recovers its fairing and resuses them, which due to the fairing’s basic shape has turned out to be relatively straightforward. They have the shape of a boat’s hull, and after parachuting softly down can simply float on the surface until they can be picked up. It is absurd no one else does this.

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SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites

8:42 am

SpaceX in the early morning hours today successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 10th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2026 launch race:

19 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.

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Chinese pseudo-company raises $729 million

10:35 pm

The Chinese pseudo-company rocket startup Ispace announced on February 13, 2026 that it has raised $729 million in new investment capital.

Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd., also known as iSpace, announced the D++ funding worth 5.037 billion yuan Feb. 12, following a D+ round of $98 million (700 million yuan) in September 2025. The round appears to be the largest disclosed funding round so far for a Chinese launch startup, eclipsing the previous rounds secured by Space Pioneer ($350 million) and Galactic Energy ($336 million) in 2025.

A press statement outlines a hybrid syndicate of numerous funding round participants, incgovernment industrial funds, state-linked strategic ecosystem investors, municipal and provincial investment vehicles and private equity. This follows a trend of strong strategic investment in space companies in China over the past couple of years since the central government identified commercial space as a strategic emerging industry and key driver of high-tech development. Co-leads Tongchuang Weiye and existing shareholder Jingming Capital represent market-oriented investors focused on advanced manufacturing and aerospace, and were joined by repeat backing from private equity players such as CDH Baifu and Ganquan Capital. [emphasis mine]

It is hard to determine how independent these Chinese investment firms are from the government. I suspect the communists are closely involved in some manner or another.

The press release made no mention of a timeline for when Ispace will attempt the first launch and recovery of its Hyperbola-3 rocket. It had previously targeted a 2025 launch, but that never happened.

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February 13, 2026 Quick space links

2:46 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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NASA testing SLS fuel leak repairs; UPDATE: Problems!

10:33 am

UPDATE: NASA posted a late update today describing vaguely the results of this fueling test, and revealed that while the test of the replacement seals appeared to go well, there were other problems:

During the test, teams encountered an issue with ground support equipment that reduced the flow of liquid hydrogen into the rocket. … Engineers will purge the line over the weekend to ensure proper environmental conditions and inspect the ground support equipment before replacing a filter suspected to be the cause of the reduced flow.

In other words, the SLS fueling system is like playing whack-a-mole. You fix one problem, and others show up.

I predicted this. It remains entirely possible NASA will not be able to complete a perfect full wet-dress rehearsal countdown in time to launch before April 6th, when this present launch window closes.

Original post:
———————-
NASA yesterday did an unannounced test fueling of its SLS rocket to check out the repairs in the fueling system.

NASA is loading liquid hydrogen aboard its Space Launch System moon rocket at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday for an unpublicized but crucial test of the repairs made to a leaky umbilical that derailed a countdown rehearsal on Feb. 2.

The operation to load liquid hydrogen into the huge fuel tank on the rocket’s core stage was thought to be already underway at launch complex 39B on Thursday morning. The test will determine if new seals installed in the launch pad umbilical are working. “As part of our work to assess the repair we made in the area where we saw elevated hydrogen gas concentrations during the previous wet dress rehearsal, engineers are testing the new seals by running some liquid hydrogen across the interface and partially filling the core stage liquid hydrogen tank. The data will inform the timeline for our next wet dress rehearsal,” a NASA spokesperson said about the previously unannounced test.

If the new seals work on these fueling tests, another full dress rehearsal countdown could take place as early as next week.

Posting is going to very light for the rest of the day. I am fighting a bad head cold and just want to go back to bed.

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FAA confirms “no significant impact” to environment for Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica

9:42 am

The FAA today released [pdf] its final environmental assessment reviewing SpaceX’s request to expand operations of Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica, confirming that it has determined there will be “no significant impact” to environment.

The 2022 PEA and April 2025 Tiered EA 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 noise and noise‐compatible land use; aviation emissions and air quality; hazardous materials, solid waste, and pollution prevention; and socioeconomics. In each of these areas, the FAA has concluded that no significant impacts would occur as a result of the Proposed Action.

The approval will allow SpaceX to do 25 launches per year (three of which are at night). The approval also appears to lay the groundwork for bringing Superheavy back not only to Boca Chica, but to Florida. It also lays the groundwork for bringing Starship back to Boca Chica after completing an orbital flight, to be caught by the tower chopsticks.

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Axiom raises another $350 million in private investment capital

8:24 pm

Axiom's module assembly sequence
Axiom’s module assembly sequence

The space station Axiom today announced that it has raised another $350 million in private investment capital, in addition to the $100 million commitment obtained in December from the Hungarian communications company 4iG.

Type One Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) co-led the round, with participation from 1789 Capital, 4iG, LuminArx Capital Management, and others. Axiom Space Founder and Executive Chairman Kam Ghaffarian also participated in the round, reinforcing his commitment to the company’s mission. J.P. Morgan served as sole placement agent to Axiom Space in connection with the financing.

It appears that even if the 2024 rumors that the company was having cash flow issues were true (they were never confirmed), those issues are now long gone.

Below is my revised rankings of the five American consortiums/companies developing space stations. The rankings haven’t changed, but I have updated the text.
» Read more

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Abraham Lincoln – a tragic and heroic life

6:03 pm

An evening pause: To celebrate the birthday today one of America’s greatest man, a short biography.

The video below does a really fine job in a very short time. Lincoln’s life was filled with heart-breaking tragedy, far more than most Americans today realize. Yet the man endured, so that he ended up changing his nation so that it finally honored fully its founding documents. As he said so eloquently in 1863:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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