It is the beginning of the month, so it is time for my monthly sunspot update. According to NOAA’s June update of its monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere, the amount of sunspots in May surprised us once again by increasing upward, though the totals continue to be below prediction.
That graph is below, annotated with extra information by me to illustrate the larger scientific context.
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The French Guiana spaceport. The ELM-Diamant launch site
is labeled “B.” Click for full resolution image. (Note: The
Ariane-5 pad is now the Ariane-6 pad, and the now destroyed
Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup MaiaSpace.)
The Spanish rocket startup PLD, preparing for the first orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket before the end of this year, has significantly raised its investment in its leased launch facilities in France’s spaceport in French Guiana, from about €11 to €16 million to €35 million, with much of the planned construction aimed at shared facilities that other European rocket startups can use.
PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has announced a €35 million investment in the development and deployment of its Launch Complex at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in Kourou (French Guiana) over the 2025-2026 period. This investment positions PLD Space as the first private operator to deploy capital expenditure at this scale at the ELM-Diamant site, contributing to the diversification and strengthening of Europe’s historic spaceport.
Of the total investment, €22 million is being executed within the French industrial ecosystem, with €13 million directly allocated to more than 20 companies based in French Guiana, including a significant number of SMEs. This approach reinforces PLD Space’s commitment to embedding its industrial activity within the local territory and strengthening the regional space ecosystem beyond established players.
France, which owns French Guiana, decided in 2024 to refurbish the long-abandoned ELM-Diamant launch site as a common pad for the many small European rocket startups. It appears it has strong-armed PLD to pay for much of that joint infrastructure. “You want to launch first? Then pay for this work that others will use.” It is possible PLD will be able to recover this investment from those other companies, but its press release does not say so.
Impulse’s Helios tug, transporting its proposed
lunar lander to the Moon. Click for original image.
The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced today that it has successfully raised $500 million in private investment capital.
The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, bringing the company’s total capital raised to over $1 billion. The funding will support hiring and manufacturing growth as the company scales its effort to build in-space mobility infrastructure: the vehicles, propulsion systems, and operational architecture that determine where and how spacecraft move after launch.
The company was founded by Tom Mueller, who was one of SpaceX’s first employees and helped develop the Merlin engine used on the Falcon 9. It has a fleet of tugs, with its Mira tug having already completed a number of missions. Its larger Helios tug is scheduled for its first mission next year.
Hat tip reader Nate P.
Astronomers using two different ground-based telescopes were able to measure the wind speeds on seven different gas giant exoplanets, and found the speeds also suggested the presence of planetary magnetic fields, the first time such magnetic fields have been deduced on an exoplanet.
In the study, the researchers investigated the wind speeds on seven exoplanets orbiting different stars. These are gas giants similar to Jupiter, which are very close to their star. Elspeth Lee explains: “The rotation of the planets was synchronized with their orbits by the tidal forces of the parent star. Just as we only ever see one side of the moon, these planets always have one side facing the star. Thus, a glowing hot day side and a permanently dark night side have formed on the planets. The extreme temperature differences in turn lead to the generation of extremely strong winds.”
…The research team was able to show that wind speeds of around 7,200 km/h to over 25,000 km/h prevail on the exoplanets. For comparison: the fastest winds measured on Jupiter reach speeds of around 1,500 km/h.
The data showed that the hotter the planet, the slower the wind, the opposite of what was expected. The scientists believe that each planet’s magnetic field is acting to brake the winds, with the hotter planets likely having more powerful fields.
Mission’s to the Moon’s south pole.
The space station startup Voyager Technologies, the lead company in the consortium building the Starlab space station, announced today that is its acquiring the lunar lander startup Astrobotic Technology.
The acquisition directly supports NASA’s Artemis program and Administrator Jared Isaacman’s commitment to a permanent American presence on the Moon by 2028. Voyager intends to accelerate investment to scale Astrobotic’s lunar and reusable rocket programs in support of America’s Moon Base plans.
Following Voyager’s strategic investment in Max Space’s expandable habitat architecture, the company’s capabilities will span the full arc of lunar operation. This includes lunar mission management, communications and propulsion; surface delivery via Astrobotic’s Peregrine and Griffin landers; surface power through Astrobotic’s LunaGrid solar distribution system; long-duration habitation through Max Space; dust mitigation with Voyager’s clear-dust repellent coating; and in-situ resource production.
After three years of delays, Griffin is scheduled to launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket before the end of this year, landing near the south pole with four NASA payloads and Astrolab’s Flip demo rover, as indicated on the map to the right. Astrobotic has launched one previous lander in 2024, but was unable to attempt a landing because of a fuel leak that occurred shortly after launch.
For scale, note the tiny people watching on
shore. Click for source.
The giant specially designed barge that SpaceX plans to use to transport Starships and Superheavys from Boca Chica to Florida, dubbed “You’ll Thank Me Later”, arrived in Texas last week.
Avid Space, a Starbase streaming outlet part of Labpadre, captured the barge’s arrival, posting images, of which the one to the right is a screen capture. From the first link:
The retrofitted barge Marmac 31, nicknamed “You’ll Thank Me Later” by Elon Musk’s space firm, arrived at the Port of Brownsville last week. It will be used to carry Starship megarockets built at Starbase to Florida and eventually other destinations.
The Starbase-headquartered company has said it would use barges to float the rockets to Florida for launches from there until the Starship factory that it’s building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is complete. The company has been in talks with port officials about a 50-year lease for an 83-acre site that would be used as a terminal for the 400-foot-long rockets. Those negotiations are ongoing.
This barge’s arrival in Texas not only makes Starship launches from Florida more likely in the near future, it gives SpaceX the option to buy other launch sites along the Gulf coast, such as that rumored purchase in Louisiana.
Comet 3I/Atlas’s methane as seen by Webb.
Click for full image.
Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have now detected methane in the cloud of material released by the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas as it zipped past the Sun last fall.
The observations were taken using Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) on two separate dates as the comet traveled back out of our solar system after whipping around the Sun (post-perihelion). The first observation occurred Dec. 15 to 16, when the comet was about 205 million miles from the Sun. This was followed by a second observation Dec. 27, when the comet was about 236 million miles from the Sun.
For the first time on an interstellar visitor, Webb directly detected methane gas. Methane is highly volatile, meaning it sublimates from solid ice into a gas very easily. Its delayed appearance in comet 3I/ATLAS suggests it was buried below the comet’s top surface layer and protected from sublimation until heat from the comet’s close pass to the Sun reached deeper parts of the icy subsurface. The amount of methane relative to water found is surprisingly high, with few similar analogs in our own solar system.
Webb’s observations also confirmed that comet 3I/ATLAS remains unusually rich in carbon dioxide, releasing far more carbon dioxide relative to water when compared to typical solar system comets.
You can read their peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. This new data confirms that Comet 3I/Atlas is not from our solar system, as its make-up is sufficiently different from solar system comets to show this. It also gives us a hint as to the solar system it came from. At the same time, the comet’s behavior is remarkably similar to solar system comets, suggesting our solar system evolved much like others.
Bowing to the unanimous opposition by the three most advanced commercial space station startups, NASA official Bethany Stevens yesterday announced that it is abandoning its proposed core module space station concept and returning its commercial space station program to its original plan, whereby the private stations all compete independently.
Industry has provided extensive feedback making the case for a sustainable commercial market in which NASA is one customer among many, along with assurances regarding available transportation capabilities. The industry position will now shape the path forward as NASA proceeds with the original commercial strategy.
Over the coming weeks, NASA will work with stakeholders and industry to refine flexible requirements and acquisition plans, with a draft RFP expected later this month.
The original plan was for the private sector to compete for one or two major construction contracts from NASA. The core module approach, put forth under NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s leadership in March, instead made them all part of a government space station, like ISS, at least initially. Under that plan the new commercial space stations would attach their first modules to a government-built core module that NASA would first build and own. Isaacman proposed this because he and NASA believed it didn’t have the budget to finance more than one commercial station, and that the agency didn’t think there was sufficient market to make up the difference.
Officials from Vast, Starlab, Axiom and elsewhere all expressed opposition to the core module plan, insisting there was sufficient market to finance their stations, even without NASA. They also opposed the core module plan because it would require major changes in their present designs, and they had great doubt NASA could build that core module quickly enough for their financial purposes.
Isaacman and NASA apparently listened to these objections, and were convinced their idea was a mistake and the industry was right. It is now reviewing its budget and will decide whether it can do what it originally hoped, award two stations a major contract.
Either way, the recent news from all these three stations suggests they are increasingly in a strong position, whether or not they win that NASA contract.
Artist rendering of Haven-1 with docked
Dragon capsule
In a major deal that solidifies its future space station plans, the space station startup Vast yesterday announced that the French government had agreed to fly two Vast manned missions, first to ISS and then to its Haven-1 single module space station scheduled for launch in 2027.
Today at the Choose France Summit, created by the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, Vast announced its commitment to establish its European headquarters in Paris and an agreement with the Government of France, for two missions involving two French astronauts: the sixth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station and the Haven-1 test flight, the first crewed mission to Vast’s Haven-1 commercial space station scheduled to launch in 2027.
…Both missions are expected to last approximately two weeks and are planned for 2027, with transportation provided by SpaceX on a Dragon spacecraft launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
For the ISS mission, the astronaut will be rookie Arnaud Prost. For the Haven-1 mission, the astronaut will be veteran Thomas Pesquet, who has flown twice to ISS with a cumulative total of just under 400 days in space.
Vast had previously signed preliminary deals with Lithuania, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Japan, the Czech Republic, and the Maldives, but none of those deals had committed to a manned mission. I had speculated that these nations were waiting for Haven-1 to launch and be declared operational. France has decided not to wait.
This deal is also a major coup for Vast over its space station competitor Starlab, which had previously signed a deal with the European Space Agency and Airbus in an effort to position itself as Europe’s future space station. That deal however had not included any actual missions.
UPDATE: Vast appears to have also signed an agreement with the United Kingdom to fly one of its astronauts to Haven-1. And in this case the astronaut, John McFall, is a former paralympian who lost one leg in a motorcycle accident. This would would make him the first person with disabilities ever to fly in space.
My present ranking of the five stations under development, with Vast now in the lead and Starlab and Axiom tied for second.
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New Glenn launchpad damage. Click for
video source.
In a tweet on X late yesterday, Blue Origin’s CEO David Limp gave a generally positive report of the damage to the launchpad and facilities after last week’s explosion during a static fire test of its New Glenn rocket.
The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” [first stage] and the three GS-2s [upper stages] that were onsite in the integration facility also look good.
…In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector.
He added that they will proceed quickly in launching the present design of New Glenn, instead of upgrading to the proposed more powerful version, as some in the space community have speculated. He then said what I quote above: “We will fly again before the end of this year.”
While many in the space community appear skeptical of this possibility, I am not. Getting the launchpad rebuilt and workable again based on this report does not seem a gigantic challenge. If the Russians can rebuild their Soyuz pad in just over three months there is no doubt an American company with the financial and technical resources of Blue Origin can do as well if not better. Moreover, except for the replacing the strongback with a vertical mobile transporter, the rest of the work requires no redesign.
The big question however will be tracing the cause of the explosion and fixing that. But even here, I can’t see this taking more than seven months. I might have said so three years ago, before Limp took over from Blue Origin’s previous very bad CEO, but Limp has made a decided effort to quicken Blue Origin’s operational pace. I think he will make this happen.
I also think there is a potential very bright silver lining to this failure. If Limp does what he should, Blue Origin is going to recover from this incident a much better company. By forcing quick action, Limp is going to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff in his staffing, and weed out the bad eggs in the company.
An evening pause: Performed live 1985.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
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.
