Author: Robert Zimmerman

Pluto’s implausible atmosphere, as seen in 2015 by New Horizons

2:07 pm

Pluto's implausible atmosphere
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on July 14, 2015 by the camera on the New Horizons probe as it flew past Pluto, the only time a human craft has gotten close to this distant planet. From the link:

These high phase angle images show many artifacts associated with scattered sunlight; the Sun was less then 15 degrees from the center of the LORRI frame for these observations. But the outline of Pluto and its hazy atmosphere are also visible.

To see the atmosphere the light from the planet itself has been blocked out.

What is implausible about Pluto’s atmosphere is the location of the planet, about 3.7 billion miles from the Sun, out in the nether reaches of the solar system. At that distance sunlight is very weak, and produces very little energy. And yet, there is enough energy here to produce an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen gas, with trace amounts of metane and carbon monoxide. Scientists think this atmosphere only exists when Pluto is closer to the Sun in its somewhat oblong orbit, and freezes out the rest of the time. As Pluto was just retreating in 2015 from that closest approach in the last two decades of the 20th century, New Horizons could detect its presence.

But then, we really can’t be sure if this atmosphere truly vanishes when the planet is farthest from the Sun, as we have only so far observed 96 years in Pluto’s 248-year orbit.

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French startup The Exploration Company completes first splashdown tests of Nyx capsule prototype

9:31 am

The French cargo capsule startup, The Exploration Company, has successfully completed the first splashdown tests of a smallscate prototype model of its proposed Nyx capsule.

On 5 February, The Exploration Company announced that it had successfully completed a splashdown test campaign at the National Research Council’s Institute of Marine Engineering (CNR-INM) in Rome.

A 1:4-scale mockup of Nyx, with a mass of around 135 kilograms, was built for the test campaign by Poli Model, a small Turin-based model builder. For reference, the full-scale capsule will be 4 metres wide and stand at 7 metres tall. The subscale model’s exterior was fitted with pressure sensors, accelerometers, and a gyroscope.

The tests were conducted in the CNR-INM facility’s Umberto Pugliese towing tank, a 470-metre-long pool measuring 13.5 metres across and 6.5 metres deep. Between 13 and 28 January, a total of 20 drops were conducted at varying heights and speeds in calm water, which the company explained maximised repeatability.

The company hopes to fly a fullscale demo mission to ISS in 2028, and wants to upgrade Nyx to manned capabilities in the 2030s.

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Israeli weather satellite startup raises $175 million in investment capital

9:17 am

An Israeli weather satellite startup, dubbed Tomorrow.io, has now raised $175 million in investment capital to build an AI-driven constellation of satellites to supplement the smallsat constellation it has already launched.

This financing builds on a proven foundation of execution. Tomorrow.io has completed the full deployment of its first satellite constellation, having launched 13 satellites to space, achieving 60-minute global revisit, while scaling an AI-driven intelligence platform now embedded across critical industries. DeepSky extends this foundation into the next phase of the company’s roadmap, supporting continued commercial growth, expanding data coverage, and unlocking new high-frequency sensing capabilities.

I find this new desire to label all computer programming “AI”, when in many cases it is simply the same software slightly upgraded that these companies have been using for years.

Nonetheless, this story signals the continuing transition in the weather satellite industry from the government/Soviet-style model, where all weather satellites are built and operated by governments, to the capitalism model, where governments and industry buy weather data from privately built, launched, and maintained commercial constellations.

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Astronomers use SphereX infrared space telescope to study interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas

8:32 am

False color images of SphereX infrared data
False color images of SphereX infrared data.
Click for original.

Using NASA’s SphereX infrared space telescope, astronomers have now detected a range of new molecules in the coma surround interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas as that coma brightened and grew in December 2025 following the comet’s closest approach to the Sun in the fall.

You can read the research paper here. From the press release:

In a new research note, mission scientists describe the detection of organic molecules, such as methanol, cyanide, and methane. On Earth, organic molecules are the foundation for biological processes but can be created by non-biological processes as well. The researchers also note a dramatic increase in brightness two months after the icy body had passed its closest distance to the Sun, a phenomenon associated with comets as they vent water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide into space.

In every way this interstellar object continues to behave like an ordinary comet, which is actually quite profound. It tells us the rest of the universe is not that different than our solar system.

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German rocket startup Isar Aerospace opens new rocket testing facility at Esrange spaceport

8:03 am

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

Though the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace is using Norway’s Andoya spaceport to launch its Spectrum rocket, it is now expanding significantly its testing facilities at Sweden’s Esrange spaceport to the east.

European space company Isar Aerospace is significantly expanding their testing operations with SSC Space at Esrange Space Center in Sweden, opening a second test site to support the development and production of its ‘Spectrum’ rocket. The new facility will enable testing of 30+ engines per month, along with expanded integrated stage testing capabilities, increasing testing capacity and enabling faster development.

Launching from Esrange is a problem because of its interior location, but testing engines there, close to Germany and the Andoya spaceport makes great sense.

Isar had hoped to make its second attempt to complete the first orbital launch of Spectrum in January, but postponed the launch until March to deal with a valve issue.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Midnight repost: Truth, Justice, and the American Way

11:58 pm

Tonight Diane and I decided to watch again the 1978 Richard Donner movie, Superman. The overall film is lighthearted entertainment that captures the myth of this super-hero perfectly. However, it has two scenes that remain among the best moments in movie history (which you can watch here and here). The first captures the myth in every way. The second shows us that Superman truly stood for the best in America.

In watching the movie tonight again and reliving the myth I grew up with — that great things are possible if you believe and follow sincerely Superman’s motto of “truth, justice, and the American way” — I decided to repost my essay from 2020 where I attempted to explain what that motto really meant.

Enjoy!
———————

The heroic Superman as envisioned in the 1950s
George Reeves as the heroic Superman as envisioned
in the 1950s television show, emulated later by Richard
Donner in his 1978 movie. Click for show’s opening credits.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

The words spoken during the opening credits of a 1950s children’s television show:

Faster than a speeding bullet.
More powerful than a locomotive.
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Look up in the sky!
It’s a bird.
It’s a plane.
It’s Superman!

Yes, it’s Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American Way.

That television show was obviously Superman, starring George Reeves, and these opening words expressed the mythology and basic ideals by which this most popular of all comic-book super-heroes lived.

I grew up with those words. They had been bequeathed to me by the American generation that had fought and won World War II against the genocidal Nazis, and expressed the fundamental ideals of that generation.

Much of the meaning of these fundamental ideals is outright and clear.
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SpaceX wants revisions to federal rural grant program that has awarded it $733 million

4:05 pm

SpaceX is presently asking for changes in the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program that awards grants to companies that provide internet in rural areas and has already awarded the company $733 million in grants.

BEAD was part of the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure act – originally a $42 billion program to bring broadband internet to areas of the country with little or no broadband access. The Trump administration eliminated other infrastructure act programs, and cut BEAD outlays to $21 billion, along with rule changes to allow satellite providers.

SpaceX applied for BEAD funds in 2025. The company won $733 million worth of BEAD projects nationwide, including $109 million in Texas.

Initially the Biden administration awarded SpaceX almost a billion dollar grant, because its Starlink constellation was the only broadband outlet actually doing the job. Then Musk began to campaign for Republicans, and suddenly the Biden administration pulled that grant, saying absurdly that SpaceX was failing to provide its service to rural areas, when that was exactly what it was doing.

Now SpaceX wants BEAD to ease some of its requirements, and wants these grant funds upfront.

I say, this whole BEAD program is a waste of taxpayer money and a perfect example of crony capitalism. I’m glad Trump cut it in half, but that wasn’t good enough. It should be shut down entirely. SpaceX doesn’t need this handout. It is making money hand-over-fist on its own.

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February 4, 2026 Quick space links

2:58 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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One of Saturn’s many weird moons

11:47 am

Saturn's moon Atlas
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 13, 2017 by the orbiter Cassini as it began it last close loops around Saturn before diving into its atmosphere to burn up.

Those close loops allowed it to get good close-up images of a few of the tiny moons that orbit in or close to the gas giant’s rings. On the right is one of those pictures, of the moon Atlas, taken from a distance of about 10,000 miles.

The moon’s weird ravioli shape is thought to be caused by the accretion of dust and ice from the nearby rings along Atlas’s equator.

Scientists also found the moon surfaces to be highly porous, further confirming that they were formed in multiple stages as ring material settled onto denser cores that might be remnants of a larger object that broke apart. The porosity also helps explain their shape: Rather than being spherical, they are blobby and ravioli-like, with material stuck around their equators. “We found these moons are scooping up particles of ice and dust from the rings to form the little skirts around their equators,” Buratti said. “A denser body would be more ball-shaped because gravity would pull the material in.”

Atlas itself is about 25 miles wide and about 11.5 miles thick, at its thickest point. I suspect if you tried to walk on it you would sink into the accumulated dust and ice, as it is likely no more dense as newly fallen snow.

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A nice summary of all space-based research of reproduction in space

10:12 am

Regulatory recommendations by these scientists
Click for original.

Link here to the press release. The paper itself can be read here.

The paper is an excellent summary of practically all the research that has been done in space and on the ground studying the impact of the harsh environment of space on reproduction. It notes above all that we really know very little despite this research, because the risks to the newborn have precluded direct study. From the paper’s abstract:

Despite over 65 years of human spaceflight activities, little is known of the impact of the space environment on the human reproductive systems during long-duration missions. Extended time in space poses potential hazards to the reproductive function of female and male astronauts, including exposure to cosmic radiation, altered gravity, psychological and physical stress, and disruption to circadian rhythm.

This review encapsulates current understanding of the effects of spaceflight on reproductive physiology, incorporating findings from animal studies, a recent experiment on sperm motility, and omics-based insights from astronaut physiology. Female reproductive systems appear to be especially vulnerable, with implications for oogenesis and embryonic development in microgravity. Male reproductive function reveals compromised DNA integrity, even when motility appears to be preserved. This review examines the limited embryogenesis studies in space, which show frequent abnormal cell division and impaired development in rodents.

In the paper’s conclusion, these academics sadly revert to type, and propose the establishment of an international regulatory framework for controlling this issue, as shown in the graphic to the right. This is empty foolishness, because such regulations will only do more harm than good, stifling research while failing to accomplish anything.

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Commercial changes at France’s French Guiana spaceport

9:41 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad.)

Once France’s space agency CNES regained control of its spaceport in French Guiana several years ago from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial pseudo-company Arianespace, it has moved aggressively to make that spaceport attractive to the new European rocket startups.

Beginning in 2022, it began to sign deals with every one of those rocket startups to allow them to establish launch facilities at the spaceport using several long abandoned pads, including the French Diamant rocket site not used for decades as well as the Soyuz launch site unused due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

CNES decided to standardize Diamant for multiple rocket companies, while leasing the Soyuz site to one.

In a news story today, it appears the startup MaiaSpace, a wholly owned subsidiary of the much larger aerospace company ArianeGroupk, has shifted its launch plans at French Guiana. Initially it was going to launch its rocket from the Diamant pad. In 2024 however it won the contract to use the Soyuz pad, and it has now withdrawn its plans to use Diamant entirely.

CNES has therefore put out a call to the European rocket industry to fill this slot at Diamant. At present Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude have agreements to use Diamant, though only Latitude and PLD had done any development work on their facilities there.

As far as I know, these companies comprise the entire cadre of new European rocket startups, so I don’t know what other users CNES hopes to find. Furthermore, CNES had wanted to standardize the launch site for everyone, and the companies had balked at that idea. PLD got a deal to use its own pad at Diamant. I suspect the reason Isar and Rocket Factory have done little there is because they want their own facilities as well.

Either way, French Guiana is moving the direction of supporting competitive commercial operations, and that is a very good thing.

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Midnight repost: Genocide is coming to America

11:58 pm

Today I came across this tweet:

“At the time this aired this behavior was shocking to see. It literally looks exactly like how the left behaves on a regular basis now.”

The comparison between the tactics of the Nazi storm troopers and our modern Antifa thugs is apt. It illustrates the time we now live in. It also immediately made me want to repost my 2020 essay, Genocide is coming to America. That essay sadly remains pertinent, because the same unwillingness of decent Germans to believe the Nazis were a threat is the same unwillingness of too many modern Americans to believe the same thing about Antifa and the Democratic Party (which now enthusiastically uses Antifa as its storm troopers).

Worse, we now have a large minority of Americans who support this violent behavior. To them, violence is wholly justified against those who disagree with them. The proof of this horrible fact was demonstrated in the 2025 elections, where in Virginia a Democrat won his election despite openly wishing death not only on a Republican but on that Republican’s children, while in New York an anti-Semitic communist won election as mayor.

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Genocide is coming to America

In my last visit to Israel in 2018, my brother and sister-in-law took me sight-seeing to the northern parts of Israel near the Sea of Galilee. On our first night, we stayed at the home of one of their older friends, a man in his seventies.

That night we sat around their kitchen table so that they could catch up on family matters. At one point in the conversation our host reminisced about an older woman, now gone, who he had known in his childhood in the 1950s who had lived in Germany before and during World War II and had survived a concentration camp.
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February 3, 2026 Quick space links

2:47 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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Isaacman: SLS stands on very thin ice

2:46 pm

Though NASA administration Jared Isaacman continues to support unequivocally NASA’s planned Artemis-2 ten-day manned mission around the Moon — presently targeting a March launch date — in a statement today on X he revealed that he also recognizes the serious limitations of the SLS rocket.

And it takes two-plus years between launches
And it also takes two-plus years between launches

The Artemis vision began with President Trump, but the SLS architecture and its components long predate his administration, with much of the heritage clearly traced back to the Shuttle era. As I stated during my hearings, and will say again, this is the fastest path to return humans to the Moon and achieve our near-term objectives through at least Artemis V, but it is not the most economic path and certainly not the forever path.

The flight rate is the lowest of any NASA-designed vehicle, and that should be a topic of discussion. It is why we undertake wet dress rehearsals, Pre-FRR, and FRR, and why we will not press to launch until we are absolutely ready.

These comments were also in connection with the first wet dress rehearsal countdown that NASA performed with SLS/Orion in the past few days, a rehearsal that had to be terminated early because of fuel leaks. NASA now plans to do another wet dress rehearsal, requiring it to push back the Artemis-2 launch until March.

I think there is more going on here than meets the eye.
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Pluto and Charon come out of the dark

1:40 pm

Pluto and Charon come out of the dark
Click for original image.

Cool image time! I have decided to start delving into the archives of some of the older planetary missions, because there is value there that is often forgotten now years later, that should not be forgotten.

In looking through the archive of images from the main camera on New Horizons as it sped past Pluto in July 2015, I found the picture to the right, taken on July 10, 2015 when New Horizons was still about three million miles away.

This is the raw image from that camera, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. It is also the first time in human history we had a sharp look at these two planets that sit at the outer fringes of the solar system. The science team that day released a version that they enhanced to bring out the details, which I immediately posted. They then noted the following:

A high-contrast array of bright and dark features covers Pluto’s surface, while on Charon, only a dark polar region interrupts a generally more uniform light gray terrain. The reddish materials that color Pluto are absent on Charon. Pluto has a significant atmosphere; Charon does not. On Pluto, exotic ices like frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide have been found, while Charon’s surface is made of frozen water and ammonia compounds. The interior of Pluto is mostly rock, while Charon contains equal measures of rock and water ice. “These two objects have been together for billions of years, in the same orbit, but they are totally different,” said Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

This difference is quite clear in the raw image, with Charon markedly dimmer than Pluto even though they are getting the same amount of light from the Sun.

More than any other objects in the solar system, the double planet system of Pluto-Charon demonstrates how uniquely different every object in the solar system is from every other object. Even when formed together, as these two planets were, they formed in a manner that made them drastically different.

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Lawrence of Arabia: Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction

12:01 pm

Larence in Arabia

One of the 20th century’s greatest movies is David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia. The story it tells — of the clash of cultures, of war, and of colonization — combined with the personal story of T.E. Lawrence during World War I, is one of high drama that is unforgettable to anyone who has ever seen it.

Yet, the events it tells seem too dramatic to be believed. Did Lawrence actually rescue a man in the desert, by himself and against the advice of his Arab allies who knew better? Did he actually later execute that man coldly to prevent a tribal war that would have destroyed the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire? Did he actually lead those Arab tribes across a deadly desert to take the town of Aqaba from the rear?

And did he actually lead that Arab revolt so successfully that it took Damascus ahead of the British, only to lose it because that medieval tribal culture knew nothing about modern technology?

For years I wondered about these questions and tried to find out. I read T.E. Lawrence’s own memoir of his time there, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and found it to be unclear and obscure, answering none of my questions. Other histories about World War I merely touched upon these events, treating them as a minor side show. And histories about the Middle East during that time seemed uninterested in telling this part of the story.

So, the questions remained: Did these events really happen? They seemed too good to be true.

I have now discovered that these stories are not only largely true, the reality of T.E. Lawrence’s life and his time in Arabia was even stranger than I could suppose. I learned this from Scott Anderson’s fine biography of Lawrence, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Anderson not only unveiled Lawrence in all his inexplicable glory in this book, he made clear the complex political background that shaped the Middle East, and made it as we know it today.
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Dumb science: Researchers claim Jupiter is 0.0028% thinner than previously measured

9:29 am

Stupidity on display: According to researchers using data from the Jupiter orbiter Juno, Jupiter is a tiny bit thinner at the equator and flatter at the poles than previously measured.

Leading an international team from Italy, the United States, France and Switzerland, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers [Israel] have produced more precise measurements of Jupiter’s size and shape than ever before, using new data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The peer-reviewed research, published today in Nature Astronomy, shows that the radius of Jupiter is about four kilometers (2.5 miles) thinner at its equator and 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) flatter at the poles than believed in earlier assessments. The scientists determined the planet has a radius of 71,484 kilometers (44,418 miles). Earlier data measured it at 71,492 kilometers (44,423 miles).

The absurdity of this research is galling. The revision they claim is tiny, a mere 0.0028% difference at the equator, and 0.0084% at the poles. These numbers are insignificant. Moreover, Jupiter is a gas giant. It has no precisely known surface. Instead, it has an atmosphere that gradually thins as you go up. To claim any precise diameter is absurd, especially because seasonally and over time that atmosphere will expand and shrink.

And of course, at least two mainstream news outlets, Scientific American and The Times of Israel (linked above), report this story without any skepticism, as if this is a Earth-shaking discovery. All that tells me is that when it comes to science, both are incompetent sources of information.

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India schedules next PSLV launch for June, claims it knows cause of January launch failure

9:10 am

India's space agency ISRO, as transparent as mud
India’s space agency ISRO,
as transparent as mud

According to a statement by a government minister yesterday, India’s space agency ISRO now knows what caused the January launch failure of its PSLV rocket, and has thus scheduled its next launch for June 2026.

This had been the second PSLV launch failure in a row, both of which occurred with the rocket’s third stage at almost the exact same time. With the first failure, ISRO never outlined publicly the cause, though it claimed it had solved the issue. According to the minister’s statement, the failure of the second launch was unrelated to the first.

The minister also said that the two PSLV missions that had failed—PSLV-C61 in May 2025 and PSLV-C62 in January this year—were unrelated. “It wasn’t the same problem. When the first mission failed, there was a detailed assessment, and the problem was fixed. Both the issues were different,” Singh said.

He also added that separate internal and external failure assessment committees have been set up to analyse what went wrong in each of the missions.

No word however as to the cause of the failure has yet been released. Though he also claimed the PSLV has not lost its customers due to these issues, ISRO’s lack of transparency says otherwise. If it claims the two failures came from different causes, it should provide the details in order to reassure potential customers.

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NASA makes right decision and delays Artemis-2 launch to do a 2nd dress rehearsal countdown

8:53 am

Artemis Program logo

NASA management announced today that it has decided to postpone the launch of the manned Artemis-2 mission around the Moon until March in order to give it time to do a second wet dress rehearsal countdown of the rocket and fix the hydrogen fuel leaks that occurred in yesterday’s rehearsal.

Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives. To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.

Moving off a February launch window also means the Artemis II astronauts will be released from quarantine, which they entered in Houston on Jan. 21. As a result, they will not travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday as tentatively planned. Crew will enter quarantine again about two weeks out from the next targeted launch opportunity.

It should be understood that these hydrogen leaks have been systemic to SLS’s core stage rocket engines, which come from the shuttle era. Shuttle launches were routinely delayed due to similar leaks. This was partly because hydrogen is extremely difficult to control, as its atom is so small and light, and partly because of the engine design. This was the first rocket system ever to use hydrogen as fuel, and was thus cutting edge, in the 1970s. We should not be surprised by such issues.

Newer hydrogen-fueled designs have apparently overcome the problem. For example, Blue Origin uses hydrogen as a fuel in the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket, and though it has only launched twice, it has not had such issues on either launch.

In its announcement NASA also noted a bunch of other issues that occurred during this first rehearsal, all of which suggest that a delay is called for. There was a valve issue in the Orion capsule, some audio communication channels kept dropping out, and the cold weather affected some equipment. Waiting until warmer weather will help alleviate some of this.

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Falcon 9 upper stage has issue preventing de-orbit burn; SpaceX pauses launches

8:34 am

According to a SpaceX tweet yesterday afternoon, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that successfully launched 25 Starlink satellites “experienced an off-nominal condition” when it was preparing to do its final de-orbit engine burn.

During today’s Falcon 9 launch of @Starlink satellites, the second stage experienced an off-nominal condition during preparation for the deorbit burn. The vehicle then performed as designed to successfully passivate the stage. The first two MVac burns were nominal and safely deployed all 25 Starlink satellites to their intended orbit.

Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight

It appears that SpaceX has temporarily paused its launch schedule while it reviews this incident, shifting a launch that was supposed to occur last night back three days to February 5th. While the launch itself was successful, the company likely wants to get a handle on what went wrong before resuming launches.

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Fuel leaks cause Artemis-2 dress rehearsal countdown to terminate at T-5:15, several minutes early

11:15 pm

Artemis Program logo

Two hydrogen fuel leaks during today’s Artemis-2 dress rehearsal countdown forced an early termination of the count as well as the cancellation of a second practice countdown.

The Artemis II wet dress rehearsal countdown was terminated at the T-5:15 minute mark due to a liquid hydrogen leak at the interface of the tail service mast umbilical, which had experienced high concentrations of liquid hydrogen earlier in the countdown, as well. The launch control team is working to ensure the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket is in a safe configuration and begin draining its tanks.

An earlier leak of hydrogen in the count forced a hold and a recycling of the count, though it did not stop the rehearsal.

The initial plan had been to do two terminal counts. First they would run the countdown down to T-33 seconds, hold for a few minutes, then recycle back to T-10 minutes and do it again. Because of that first leak delay the launch director canceled the second count. And because of the second leak they were unable to run that one count all the way to T-33 seconds.

The wise action would be for NASA to review their data, figure out what caused the leaks, correct it, and then do another dress rehearsal countdown. This being NASA, do not be surprised if they review the data, figure out what caused the leaks, and decide they can go ahead with the launch on February 8, 2026.

Why not? They are already launching this manned 10-day mission around the Moon with an untested life support system and a questionable heat shield. Might as well try a launch when you haven’t worked out all the fueling kinks.

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Musk: I have merged xAI with SpaceX

3:35 pm

Elon Musk today announced that he has merged the company xAI (which includes X) with SpaceX, because in his mind the needs of the two companies interlace perfectly.

The requirement to launch thousands of satellites to orbit became a forcing function for the Falcon program, driving recursive improvements to reach the unprecedented flight rates necessary to make space-based internet a reality. This year, Starship will begin delivering the much more powerful V3 Starlink satellites to orbit, with each launch adding more than 20 times the capacity to the constellation as the current Falcon launches of the V2 Starlink satellites. Starship will also launch the next generation of direct-to-mobile satellites, which will deliver full cellular coverage everywhere on Earth.

While the need to launch these satellites will act as a similar forcing function to drive Starship improvements and launch rates, the sheer number of satellites that will be needed for space-based data centers will push Starship to even greater heights. With launches every hour carrying 200 tons per flight, Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year, enabling an exciting future where humanity is out exploring amongst the stars.

The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.

My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space. This cost-efficiency alone will enable innovative companies to forge ahead in training their AI models and processing data at unprecedented speeds and scales, accelerating breakthroughs in our understanding of physics and invention of technologies to benefit humanity.

Many sources online are speculating that this new merged company will make the company’s initial public offering (IPO) now rumored for this summer even more sky high. I remain puzzled however why Musk would want to do it, and this merger today illustrates why. He controls both SpaceX and xAI completely, as both are privately owned. He didn’t need to convince government regulators of anything. Once the company is public, with publicly traded stock, that will change. He will no longer have such freedom of action.

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February 2, 2026 Quick space links

2:55 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.

2 comments

A galaxy’s swirling dust lanes

12:07 pm

A galaxy with swirling dust lanes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of follow-up observations of a now faded supernovae that occurred there two years earlier.

This was on purpose: the aim of the observations was to witness the aftereffects of the supernova and examine its surroundings, which can only be done once the intense light of the explosion is gone.

The galaxy itself, NGC 7722, is 187 million light years away, and is unusual in itself.

A “lenticular”, meaning “lens-shaped”, galaxy is a type that sits in between the more familiar spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies. It is also less common than these — partly because when a galaxy has an ambiguous appearance, it can be hard to determine if it is actually a spiral, actually an elliptical galaxy, or something in between. Many of the known lenticular galaxies sport features of both spiral and elliptical galaxies. In this case, NGC 7722 lacks the defined arms of a spiral galaxy, while it has an extended, glowing halo and a bright bulge in the center similar to an elliptical galaxy. Unlike elliptical galaxies, it has a visible disc — concentric rings swirl around its bright nucleus. Its most prominent feature, however, is undoubtedly the long lanes of dark red dust coiling around the outer disc and halo.

The streak in the lower left is a very distant background galaxy, seen on edge.

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Amazon buys ten more launches from SpaceX to place its Leo satellites in orbit

10:59 am

Amazon Leo logo

Hidden in Amazon’s submission last week to the FCC, requesting more time to launch its Leo internet constellation, was this tidbit:

Less than two years after the Commission granted its authorization, Amazon Leo announced the largest commercial launch procurements in history to deploy its initial constellation. It has since added to this launch capacity, and today has contracted for 102 launches across four providers: 18 launches on Arianespace’s Ariane 6, 24 launches on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 38 launches on ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, 9 launches on ULA’s Atlas V, and 13 launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrases indicate the significant changes. In my initial post last week I was focused solely on whether the FCC would grant Amazon the time extension to get its constellation in orbit. At the moment it has only 180 satellites operating in orbit, and to meet its license requirement it must have 1,616 launched by July.

Thus, I didn’t look closely at these launch contract numbers. While the number of launches for Arianespace (18) and ULA (47) appears to match Amazon’s contract numbers from its original 2022 announcement, Blue Origin’s total has dropped by three launches, 27 to 24.

SpaceX in turn has gained another ten launches, on top of its original already completed 2023 three-launch contract. (In 2023, faced with a stockholder lawsuit for ignoring SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the only operational rocket among all of these at the time and by far the cheapest, Amazon’s management quickly signed SpaceX to that three-launch contract.)

The submission last week tells us that sometime recently Amazon signed SpaceX to a new contract for ten more launches. The numbers also suggest that the company took three launches away from Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Apparently, Amazon is not happy with Blue Origin’s launch pace, and signed SpaceX to help get more satellites in orbit. Without question, SpaceX will get these ten additional launches off faster than ULA, Arianespace, or Blue Origin combined. In fact, I bet it gets all ten done before the middle of this year, assuming Amazon can deliver it the satellites.

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SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites; uses 1st stage for 31st time

9:28 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The 1st stage (B1071) completed its 31st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Though this number set no records, it moved that booster closer to catching the records for the most reused launch vehicle, presently held by the shuttle Discovery:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1067
31 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

The 2026 launch race:

14 SpaceX
6 China
2 Rocket Lab

This list is likely inaccurate, as Russia had a Soyuz-2 launch of a classified payload planned just prior to SpaceX’s launch, but as yet there been no confirmation of its success. SpaceX also has another launch schedule for this evening. I will include both when I update then.

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