Next Starship/Superheavy launch in March?

9:17 am

According to this detailed update on SpaceX’s work at Boca Chica by NASASpaceflight.com, we should expect the next orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy some time in March 2026.

As far as the launch date for this first flight of Block 3, sources point to March as the most likely viable timeframe. This launch will mark numerous firsts, from the vehicle, its Raptor 3 engines, and the first use of the upgraded Pad 2 architecture that will be mirrored at Pad 1, along with 39A and SLC-37 on the East Coast.

Block 3 refers to a major upgrade in Starship, which will fly prototype #39. Meanwhile, work getting Superheavy prototype #19 prepped has moved fast, following the loss of #18 from an explosion during ground fueling tests.

Recent observations show significant milestones: after welding the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank to the engine section (including pre-installed landing tanks and transfer tube), teams added methane tank barrels and the forward dome with its integrated hot staging ring. By December 20, all barrel sections were delivered and stacked, achieving this in just 25 days from November 25 — half the 42 days required for Booster 17, the final Version 1 booster.

The report also said that a February launch is a possibility, but is less likely.

Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting that the Trump administration is considering giving SpaceX about 775 acres in a wildlife preserve adjacent to Starbase in exchange for 692 acres SpaceX owns elsewhere. If confirmed, this deal would be similar to the land swap Texas had wished to do with SpaceX the company scrapped last year.

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Italian rocket company Avio wins two launch contracts valued at $117 million total

9:07 am

Last week the Italian rocket company Avio announced that it has signed launch contracts for its Vega-C rocket with two different unnamed satellite customers, the value of the contracts equaling $117 million total.

The satellites to be launched will be used for Earth observation, environmental monitoring and resource management purposes for civil and scientific applications, providing high-resolution imagery as well as best-in-class geolocation accuracy. The passengers will feature a mass ranging from more than 400 to more than 1,000 kilograms and will be deployed into a ~500 km Sun-synchronous orbit.

These contracts totally secure over EUR 100 million for launch services to be scheduled between 2028 and 2031.

Though the customers remain unnamed, the Avio release indicated that one was from Europe and the other was non-European. That latter contract deal could be linked to Avio’s announcement at about the same time that it is spending $500 million to build a rocket facility in Virginia. If the non-European customer was American and its satellites were for the Pentagon, having a U.S.-based facility made that contract award far more likely.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Recovering Maven appears increasingly dim

8:57 am

According to a NASA update late yesterday, engineers have still not been able to recover the Maven Mars orbiter since all communications ceased suddenly on December 6, and are now facing a month-long period when the Sun will block all communications with Mars entirely.

The MAVEN team also continues to analyze tracking data fragments recovered from a Dec. 6 radio science campaign. This information is being used to create a timeline of possible events and identify likely root cause of the issue. As part of that effort, on Dec. 16 and 20, NASA’s Curiosity team used the rover’s Mastcam instrument in an attempt to image MAVEN’s reference orbit, but MAVEN was not detected. Additional analysis will continue, but planned monitoring will be affected by the upcoming solar conjunction.

Mars solar conjunction – a period when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun – begins Monday, Dec. 29, and NASA will not have contact with any Mars missions until Friday, Jan. 16. Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA plans to resume its efforts to reestablish communications with MAVEN.

That December 6th tracking data had suggested the spacecraft was tumbling. Though NASA management has not yet given up hope, the longer the spacecraft remains out of touch and in an uncontrolled state, the less chance there will be for it to survive. Batteries will drain, equipment will freeze, and the spacecraft will die. Right now, that appears to be its fate.

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India launches AST SpaceMobile’s sixth Bluebird satellite

8:39 pm

India’s space agency ISRO today (December 24 in India) successfully launched AST SpaceMobile’s sixth Bluebird satellite into orbit, its Bahubali rocket (LVM3) lifting off from its Sriharikota spaceport on India’s eastern coast.

This Bluebird is an upgrade from the first five satellites, providing ten times the bandwidth. The constellation acts as satellite cell towers for smart phones. These Bluebird satellites have been the largest in size ever launched, and this satellite will break their previous records. It is also the heaviest satellite India’s Bahubali rocket has ever put in orbit, on its sixth launch.

For India, this is its fourth launch in 2025. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 144.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

December 23, 2025 Quick space links

2:48 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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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Hubble images gigantic protoplanetary disk

10:20 am

Largest known protoplanetary disk
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on February 8, 2025, and shows what scientists believe is the largest protoplanetary disk so far measured.

Located roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth, IRAS 23077+6707, nicknamed “Dracula’s Chivito,” spans nearly 400 billion miles — 40 times the diameter of our solar system to the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt of cometary bodies. The disk obscures the young star within it, which scientists believe may be either a hot, massive star, or a pair of stars. And the enormous disk is not only the largest known planet-forming disk; it’s also shaping up to be one of the most unusual.

…The impressive height of these features wasn’t the only thing that captured the attention of scientists. The new images revealed that vertically imposing filament-like features appear on just one side of the disk, while the other side appears to have a sharp edge and no visible filaments. This peculiar, lopsided structure suggests that dynamic processes, like the recent infall of dust and gas, or interactions with its surroundings, are shaping the disk.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. The structure of this system has left them with more questions than answers. They can’t see the central star due to the dust. They don’t know if any planets exist as yet in the system. They don’t really understand the structural details that they can see.

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Starlink added a million new customers in just the past month

9:58 am

According to a tweet by SpaceX yesterday, Starlink now has nine million active customers in 155 countries worldwide.

These numbers tell us the company is now getting more than a billion dollars per month in revenues, based on what it charges for its various plans. What make the numbers even more startling is how fast they are growing.

In a similar post from November 5, SpaceX said Starlink had 8 million customers, meaning that its customer base has expanded at a rate of more than 20,000 per day since that date.

At more than billion dollars per month, SpaceX essentially has about half the annual revenue of NASA, which it can use far more efficiently. And those numbers will only increase in the coming years, as the company opens up new markets worldwide and begins launching its upgraded Starlink satellites with Starship.

It still seems to me puzzling why, with these numbers, Musk is considering making the company public this coming summer. Though that move would bring in a gigantic amount of new investment capital from the stock sale, it would also subject the company to serious government regulation as a publicly-traded company. The Starlink revenue can only grow. Why add government interference when you can live without it?

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JAXA identifies cause of H3 rocket failure

9:44 am

In releasing today the preliminary results of its investigation into the failure on December 21, 2025 of the upper stage of its H3 rocket, Japan’s space agency pinned the likely cause on the rocket’s fairings.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency officials told a science ministry panel on Dec. 23 they suspect an abnormal separation of the rocket’s payload fairing—a protective nose cone shield—caused a critical drop in pressure in the second-stage engine’s hydrogen tank.

Engineers think the fairing might have hit the rocket at separation, damaging the tank.

Japan at present has no way to launch payloads. It has no operating independent commercial rocket companies, and its JAXA-owned H3 and Epsilon-S rockets have had repeated problems. The H3 failed on its first launch in 2023, causing a year-long delay, and Epsilon-S still in limbo because of repeated failures during development.

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No contact with Mars’ rovers for the next month

9:21 am

The Sun is about going to cause a month-long break in communications with Curiosity and Perseverance, the two rovers on Mars.

This communications pause occurs every two years, when the orbits of Earth and Mars align with the Sun in between.

his holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.

This is not a unique situation. Both rovers have gone through conjunction several times previously. The science teams will place the rovers in secure positions to hold them over during the break.

As for the orbiters circling Mars, it isn’t clear how much their operations will be impacted. The update at the link above makes no mention of them, and my memory says communications with them is less hampered, though reduced somewhat.

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China’s Long March 12A launches but fails to land the first stage

9:21 pm

China’s new Long March 12A reusable rocket completed its first launch today (December 23 in China), lifting off from the Jiuquan space spaceport in northwest China. The attempt to softly land the first stage vertically at a landing pad down range however failed.

According to one report, the rocket’s upper stage reached orbit, but this remains unconfirmed. A Google-translation of this Chinese state-run report confirmed the failure of the first stage:

The rocket lifted off successfully after ignition, and its flight appeared normal during the visual observation phase. However, reports from the recovery site indicated an anomaly during the first stage’s re-entry, resulting in a “mushroom cloud” formation, and the successful recovery of the first stage was not achieved.

Several Chinese outlets showed the same image of that cloud. This is the second unsuccessful attempt by China this month to land a first stage, the first being the December 2nd attempt by the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace’s Zhuque-3 rocket. The Long March 12A is built by the government, so there is no make-believe company involved.

UPDATE: China’s state-run press has confirmed the upper stage reached orbit.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 143.

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The first launch by South Korean rocket startup Innospace fails shortly after liftoff

8:47 pm

Less than five seconds after launch

Though details are not yet available, the first launch by South Korean rocket startup Innospace of its Hanbit-Nano rocket failed less than 2 minutes after liftoff from Brazil’s long unused Alcantera spaceport. The failure occurred sometime after the rocket passed through max-q, the moment when the aerodynamic pressure of the atmosphere and the speed of the rocket stresses the rocket the most.

The live stream provided no details, other than to say “we experienced an anomaly during the flight.” No other details have yet been released.

The image to the right is a screen capture of the rocket lifting off the pad, less than a few seconds after T-0. Though the rocket appeared to move upward in a smooth controlled flight, soon thereafter it became impossible to see anything but the bright engine flame at its base. Either the flames were so bright it overexposed the live stream, or the fire was spreading beyond the nozzles. At the moment however we know nothing about what happened.

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Tory Bruno resigns as CEO of United Launch Alliance

3:47 pm

According a brief announcement today from Robert Lightfoot (ULA Lockheed Martin Board Chair) and Kay Sears (ULA Boeing Board Chair), Tory Bruno has resigned as CEO and president of United Launch Alliance, effective immediately.

After nearly 12 years leading United Launch Alliance (ULA), current ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno has resigned to pursue another opportunity.

We are grateful for Tory’s service to ULA and the country, and we thank him for his leadership.

Effective immediately, John Elbon is named as the Interim CEO. We have the greatest confidence in John to continue strengthening ULA’s momentum while the board proceeds with finding the next leader of ULA. Together with Mark Peller, the new COO, John’s career in aerospace and his launch expertise is an asset for ULA and its customers, especially for achieving key upcoming Vulcan milestones.

No further information was provided.

The timing is intriguing, as after a decade of effort, Bruno was about to get ULA’s new Vulcan rocket launching on a regular basis. I could speculate, but at the moment there isn’t enough information to make even a good guess.

Hat tip to reader Gary.

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December 22, 2025 Quick space links

2:53 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.

  • Today, December 21, 2025, marks the tenth year anniversary of SpaceX’s the first successful landing of an orbital class Falcon 9 booster
    The video at the link, by National Geographic, unfortunately turns this historic event into a fake movie drama, with music and editing to rob it of its reality. Go here to watch the actual live stream.

    That landing changed rocketry forever. As I wrote the next day:

    Despite living in a time when freedom is denigrated, when free speech is squelched, and when oppressive regulation and government control is the answer to every problem, the enduring spirit of the human soul still pushed through to do an amazing thing.

    SpaceX’s success is only the beginning. The ability to reuse the engines and first stage will allow them to lower their launch costs significantly, meaning that access to space will now be possible for hundreds if not thousands of new entrepeneurs who previously had ideas about developing the resources of the solar system but could not achieve them because the launch costs were too high.

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There is little good will on the left, and the right seems eager to lose it too

12:46 pm

Good will toward men
This is what the Christmas season stands for.

The New Testament words celebrating the birth of Jesus are clear and bright, and are repeated by everyone in these weeks before the holiday: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The colloquial phrase people normally say this time of year is usually “Peace on Earth and good will toward men!”, with the hope that both will come to all.

It appears unfortunately that the idea of “good will” is vanishing from American society, and maybe for all of western civilization. Good will means you treat all persons with respect, even if you disagree with them. You also hope that everyone achieves the best they can in their personal lives, even your enemies. You don’t wish harm on others, only oppose anyone from doing harm to others.

Such good will once dominated American society. Just think of the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life! to get a taste of that American culture. In politics, there was often fierce debate, but after the Civil War especially the culture decided it was better to talk things out with good will to all then to grab guns and kill each other.

And most of all, during each year’s Christmas season the desire to promote good will was everywhere, in everyone’s hearts and minds.

This ideal now appears to be vanishing. On the left that vanishing began with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and has accelerated since. You cannot have a reasonable or rational discussion with practically anyone on the left about Trump. He is the devil incarnate to them, and anyone who even expresses the slightest positive thought about him must be blackballed, slandered, and even killed.

Think I am exaggerating? The widow of Charlie Kirk doesn’t think so. Neither does Donald Trump, who survived two assassination attempts. Nor does someone like Elon Musk, who now readily admits he can no longer appear in public out of fear of violence because of his support of Trump in the 2024 election.

A more benign but equally ugly example of this lack of good will occurred just last week — in the midst of this year’s Christmas season — and the anger and hate didn’t just come from the left. Watch the vile behavior of this leftist woman in a Walmart when she saw an senior citizen and Target worker wearing a Charlie Kirk “Freedom” t-shirt (warning: her language is decidedly obscene):
» Read more

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Two very different galaxies

9:54 am

Two very different galaxies.
Click for original.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today as the Hubble picture of the week. From the caption:

The trick is that these galaxies are not actually very close. The large blue galaxy MCG-02-05-050 is located 65 million light-years from Earth; its brighter smaller companion MCG-02-05-050a, at 675 million light-years away, is over ten times the distance! Owing to this, MCG-02-05-050a is likely the larger galaxy of the two, and MCG-02-05-050 comparatively small. Their pairing in this image is simply an unlikely visual coincidence.

The smaller blue galaxy, also called Arp 4, has an active nucleus that emits a lot of energy, suggesting the presence of a supermassive black hole. Less is known about the more distant orange galaxy.

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Florida opposition grows against renewing Blue Origin’s wastewater permit

9:32 am

Chicken Little strikes again!
Chicken Little gains support!

It appears the political opposition by local politicians and activists against renewing Blue Origin’s wastewater permit for its Florida rocket facilities is growing, and could result in major delays for the company.

Four weeks ago, Cocoa Beach Realtor Jill Steinhauser launched an online petition opposing Blue Origin’s draft permit to discharge wastewater into the Indian River Lagoon, writing that “decades of nutrient pollution, algae blooms, seagrass collapse, habitat loss, and record manatee deaths have pushed this fragile ecosystem to the edge.” Since then, Space Coast buzz has significantly grown opposing Blue Origin’s permit-renewal bid to operate a 490,000-gallon-per-day industrial wastewater treatment facility at its massive rocket manufacturing plant just south of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

And on Thursday, Dec. 18 — the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s deadline date for public comment — Steinhauser submitted 43,475 verified petition signatures to the state agency.

A five-year permit had first been issued in 2020, and now needs to be renewed. Steinhauser’s campaign has apparently caught the interest of local Democratic Party politicians, who see another great way for them to to block another American success. In early December the Democrats on the Brevard county commission came out against renewing the permit, and followed up with an official vote of opposition shortly thereafter. This was then backed by the Cape Canaveral City Council on December 16th. That same week “eight Democratic state legislators signed a letter opposing Blue Origin’s draft permit.”

It appears that unlike SpaceX’s closed loop system, Blue Origin’s system is open-looped, which carries the possibility that its system can overflow into the Indian River Lagoon. However, officials from Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) note that the system has more than ample capacity to avoid such an overflow.

The facility’s flow averages about 40,000 gallons per day, which is less than 10% of the maximum limit. The industrial wastewater covered by the permit does not come into contact with fuel or other hazardous materials, and it is discharged into a 9¼-acre stormwater retention pond. If the pond reaches its designed holding capacity during heavy rainfall, it overflows through a 3-mile-long drainage ditch along Ransom Road before eventually reaching the lagoon.

Though it is likely that this opposition will fail in the end, it could cause a delay in the permit renewal. If that happens, Blue Origin might find its launch plans for 2026 seriously hampered.

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Third proposed UK spaceport gets conditional airspace approval

9:09 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

The third proposed spaceport in Scotland, located on the northwest coast of the island of North Uist (as shown on the map to the right) has now received a conditional airspace approval by the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

While the airspace is designated as permanent, it will not be restricted indefinitely. Instead, it will be “activated by Notice to Aviation (NOTAM)” only when launch operations are scheduled to occur. The CAA noted that the approval is “subject to conditions” that the change sponsor must satisfy before the airspace can be fully utilised. Detailed regulatory assessments and the specific list of conditions are expected to be published on the CAA’s Airspace Change Portal shortly.

The spaceport’s airspace is set to become legally effective on Thursday, January 22.

Based on the CAA’s past behavior, this approval means very little. It will still require long lead times to issue any specific launch approvals, making any planned launches at this spaceport as difficult as all the other spaceports that have attempted to lift off from Great Britain. Those red tape delays put Virgin Orbit out of business. It has caused Orbex to abandon the Sutherland spaceport, which increasingly looks like a dead project. And it has caused numerous other small rocket startups to look everywhere else but Great Britain for a launch site.

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A tour of Stoke Space

8:01 am

Nova upper stage static fire test

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut yesterday released a long video in which he got a new tour the Stoke Space facility, led by the company’s CEO and founder, Andy Lapsa.

I have embedded that video below. The image to the right is a screen capture of a static fire test of the company’s Nova rocket’s upper stage engine that was done at the end of the tour. The engine uses a radical design of a ring of small nozzles, with a heat shield in the middle. The design aims to allow that upper stage to return to Earth for reuse, after it has deployed its payload. Nova’s first stage will also be reusable, landing vertically like the Falcon 9.

Though as usual Lapsa said nothing about schedule, it appears that the company is getting very close to its first launch. It appears the company’s launchpad in Florida will be ready for launch early in 2026. It also appears that all the rocket’s components are falling into place.

Lapsa noted that though both stages are designed to land and be reused, the goal for that first launch is simply to demonstrate they can get the rocket into orbit. Neither stage will attempt a landing. Once they’ve got that success under their belt, they will then go for other milestones.

Right now only SpaceX and Stoke Space are working to build a completely reusable rocket. SpaceX is going very big, with Starship. Stoke is aiming for the Falcon 9 market. If successful, it will be able to beat that rocket in price.
» Read more

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Japan launches a Japanese GPS-type satellite; upper stage fails however

10:01 pm

UPDATE: It is now confirmed the launch was a failure.

While the H3 was able to lift off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture at 10:51 a.m., the second-stage rocket engine did not start properly and stopped burning earlier than scheduled, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

Original post:
—————————-
Japan’s space agency JAXA this evening (December 22 in Japan) launched a Japanese GPS-type satellite designed to work in conjunction with the U.S. GPS constellation, its H3 rocket lifting off from its Tanegashima spaceport.

However, it appears the second stage engine shut down prematurely. The status of the satellite is presently uncertain.

This was Japan’s fourth launch in 2025, which is about the average number of annual launches it has managed for the past two decades. Japan only had three successful launches this year.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
85 China
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 142.

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Eutelsat/OneWeb to launch new 340 satellites by 2027

10:02 am

More business for rockets! The internet satellite company Eutelsat/OneWeb now has plans to launch another 340 satellites by 2027, partly to replace aging satellites but also to upgrade its constellation.

Eutelsat OneWeb plans to deploy a constellation of over 340 satellites for its second-generation (Gen-2) low-earth orbit (LEO) network by 2027, as it looks to strengthen its business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) offerings globally. Neha Idnani, Regional Vice President for Asia Pacific at Eutelsat OneWeb, told Business Today in an exclusive interaction that the company is gearing up for the next phase of its orbital expansion to boost network capacity, resilience and coverage worldwide.

OneWeb began deploying its Gen-1 satellites in 2019 and operates a constellation of around 640 satellites as of 2025. While the network is fully operational, close to 100 satellites from the initial fleet are due for replenishment. The Gen-2 rollout will mark a shift to a more advanced and flexible network architecture.

The article at the link touts India’s space agency ISRO as a likely launch provider for those missions, which isn’t surprising as a substantial percentage of Eutelsat/OneWeb is owned by an Indian investor. It is also likely however that other companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab, will be considered also.

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Rocket Lab completes its 7th launch for Japanese company iQPS

11:44 pm

Rocket Lab this evening successfully completed its 7th launch of a radar satellite for Japanese company Q-Shu Pioneers (iQPS), its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the two launchpads in New Zealand.

Q-Shu has signed Rocket Lab to do eleven launches total, so expect four more launches next year.

In 2025 Rocket Lab also completed three launches of its HASTE version of Election, which is designed to do suborbital hypersonic tests for the Pentagon. If we count these, the company has completed 21 launches in 2025. And even if we don’t count these suborbital launches, Rocket Lab has now launched more times than any other private company, except for SpaceX.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
85 China
18 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 142.

2 comments

Axiom gets $100 million of investment capital from Hungarian company

9:24 am

Axiom's new module assembly sequence
Axiom’s assembly sequence for its planned station, initially attached to ISS but subsequently detached

The space station startup Axiom has now obtained a $100 million investment by the Hungarian communications provider 4iG.

The company said Dec. 19 it has committed to invest $30 million in Axiom by the end of 2025, followed by an additional $70 million by March 31, 2026.

In October, 4iG announced a non-binding commitment letter to evaluate a potential $100 million investment in Axiom Space. The agreement outlined a separate $100 million framework for cooperation on the development of orbital data center systems over the next five years. 4iG said in a news release that the Axiom investment would provide Hungary with an opportunity to secure a long-term role in orbital data centre programs and space-based data processing and storage, but did not provide details.

In 2024 there were rumors the company had a serious cash shortage, though since then construction of its first two modules has proceeded as planned, with a launch of the first module still set for sometime in 2026. This new infusion of cash should shore up Axiom’s station construction considerably.

My rankings of the commercial space stations now under development:

» Read more

27 comments

China launches “communications technology test” satellite

8:59 am

China early today successfully launched a “communications technology test” satellite, its Long March 5 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

As is routine for China’s state-run press, little information about the satellite was released, simply saying it will be “used to carry out multi-band and high-speed communication technology validation tests.” That China used its most powerful Long March 5 rocket to launch it suggests it is a hefty satellite possibly placed in geosynchronous orbit. Or maybe it is a variation of AST SpaceMobile’s giant Bluebird satellites used for direct cell phone use.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
85 China (a new record)
17 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 141.

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December 19, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 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.

13 comments

Curiosity’s exploration of boxwork on Mount Sharp

11:55 am

Curiosity panorama, December 18, 2025
Click for high resolution panorama. For original images, go here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three photographs taken on December 18, 2025 (here, here, and here) by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The view is north, looking down the flanks of Mount Sharp and across the floor of Gale Crater to its rim about 20 to 30 miles away. In comparing this view with a similar one taken in July, it is obvious that the Martian atmosphere has become far dustier during the last six months. The rim and the mountains beyond are hardly visible now through the haze.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area covered by this panorama. The while dotted line indicates the rover’s travels, while the red dotted line its planned routes.

As you can see by both the rover’s tracks in the panorama above and the white dotted line in the overview, Curiosity has been traversing back and forth across the boxwork formation of criss-crossing ridges for more than half a year, as the science team attempts to decipher what caused these ridges and hollows. They have also done some drilling in this effort.

The science team has been getting close to the day it will move on, resuming Curiosity’s climb of Mount Sharp, but they keep finding things amidst this boxwork that requires additional study. For example, consider this from yesterday’s update:
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Spherex completes first infrared map of the sky

11:02 am

Spherex's first infrared map
Click for original image.

Astronomers have now released the first all-sky map produced by the new infrared space telescoe Spherex, launched in March.

The map to the right covers only some of the infrared wavelengths mapped, with the stars indicated by blue, green, and white, hot hydrogen gas by blue, and cosmic dust by red. Other false color maps map the universe’s galaxies, star forming regions, and numerous other heavenly phenomenon. From the press release:

Circling Earth about 14½ times a day, SPHEREx (which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) travels from north to south, passing over the poles. Each day it takes about 3,600 images along one circular strip of the sky, and as the days pass and the planet moves around the Sun, SPHEREx’s field of view shifts as well. After six months, the observatory has looked out into space in every direction, capturing the entire sky in 360 degrees.

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission began mapping the sky in May and completed its first all-sky mosaic in December. It will complete three additional all-sky scans during its two-year primary mission, and merging those maps together will increase the sensitivity of the measurements.

Spherex has a greater resolution across more infrared wavelengths than the previous wide-field infrared space telescope, WIRE. Its wide-field view also differs from Webb, which has a very small field of view to get high resolution infrared images of specific objects.

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