Andy Kaufman as Elvis Presley
An evening pause: A very talented comic actor once told me something very profound about comedy: “Play opposites, it works every time.” Performed live on the Tonight Show 1977.
Hat tip Cotour.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
April 13, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
I have also scheduled it earlier in the day because I am presently asleep, recovering from knee surgery.
- Artemis-2 Orion capsule being examined by NASA engineers
The video really shows nothing of note, as the capsule is sitting on the heat shield so it can’t really be seen in any detail.
- India’s space agency ISRO completes tests of landing engine to be used on its Chandrayaan-5 lunar lander
The mission includes a Japanese-built rover, and is supposed to launch in 2028.
- Details about Chang’e-7’s mini-hopper probe designed to go into the permanently shadowed craters near the lunar south pole and drill for water-ice
If China gets any reliable evidence of ice back from this hopper it will be a real coup. It is scheduled to launch later this year.
- Roscosmos head tells Putin an “enemy attempted to attack the Plesetsk cosmodrome with drones”
Apparently the attack — likely from the Ukraine — occurred during the scrubbed first attempt to launch the first 16 satellites of Russia’s Russvet internet constellation in March.
- Starlink production is apparently moving from California to Texas
We know this because SpaceX is looking to hire someone to direct the new Texas operations. It is unclear if the company intends to shut down its California operations, though no one should be surprised if it does.
- Virgin Atlantic will begin making Starlink available on its planes sooner, in May
The original plan was July or later.
- On this day in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space
He completed one orbit in his Vostok capsule.
- 45 years ago today, the space shuttle Columbia launched on its first orbital spaceflight
It flew 28 missions before being destroyed in 2003 during re-entry because falling foam from the external tank at launch damaged its thermal protection system.
A pause in posting…
Readers!
Do not expect many posts by me today or for the next few days. I am undergoing knee replacement surgery today, and will not be in shape for any work for at least the next day or so. Depending on my recovery, I could be posting by tomorrow, but don’t bet on it. More likely I will begin to resume work later in the week.
Today’s quick links will go up mid-morning. I have also scheduled evening pauses, so enjoy these. Other than that you will have to wait for my return for much else. I will then make sure to catch up and put up posts covering all the space news that occurred during this pause.
Note that such surgery these days is almost routine, so all should be well. I am hoping it will allow me to once again hike as I have done for my whole life, before the bones in the left knee in November decided to kiss painfully with each bend.
Three launches, two by SpaceX and one by China
Falcon 9 landing for its seventh time on today’s
third launch. See below.
Since last night there were three launches globally, two by SpaceX, and one by China.
First, in the wee hours of the morning SpaceX placed 25 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 32nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight, 43 days after the stage’s previous flight, it moved into a tie for fourth place in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicle:
39 Discovery space shuttle
34 Falcon 9 booster B1067
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1071
32 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
27 Falcon 9 booster B1077
27 Falcon 9 booster B1078
Next China launched a classified satellite to test “internet technology”, its Smart Dragon-3 (Jielong-3) rocket lifting off from a sea platform in international waters in the South China Sea. Though China has launched numerous times from this sea platform, previous launches were very close to the shore. This was the first time the platform was moved this far into the ocean.
Finally, SpaceX completed its second launch in less than eight hours, sending Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule on its way to ISS with 11,000 pounds of cargo, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. Of the two fairings, one was making its first flight, while the other was on its fifth flight.
This was SpaceX’s fourth Cygnus launch for Northrop Grumman. The company originally launched Cygnus on its own Antares rocket, but when that rocket ran out of its Russian first stage engines it was grounded. The company hired Firefly to build a new first stage, but that project remains uncompleted.
Cygnus is scheduled to berth with ISS in two days, on Monday, April 13, at 12:50 pm (Eastern).
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
44 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 44 to 34.
April 10, 2026 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
A military pilot’s perspective on downed pilot rescue in Iran Easter weekend
An evening pause: The details of the amazing search & rescue effort to recover a downed American pilot in Iran last weekend has been covered quite thoroughly in the media, especially the alternative press. This video gives us the compelling perspective of the men and women who made that rescue happen. Even if you oppose Trump’s present actions against Iran, Steeve’s reveals a fundamental aspect of the American way of war that illustrates again the best part of America. The key quote, “Will you be worth the trip?”
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Orion survives re-entry, crew splashes down safe
Orion just after main parachute deployment
Orion successfully survived re-entry tonight with its questionable heat shield, with the capsule splashing down off the coast of California at 8:07 pm (Eastern).
All four astronauts are healthy and safe. As of posting they were still in the capsule, floating on the ocean, with recovery crews on their way to it. [Update: those recovery crews, six boats with more than 40 people, are taking an ungodly amount of time to latch onto the capsule and begin recovery. Over an hour after splashdown the crew is still in the capsule.]
The Artemis-2 mission is now over, though the final condition of that heat shield still needs to be analyzed. In addition, engineers need figure out how to fix a bunch of other issues that took place during the mission:
- A leak in an internal helium tank on Europe’s service module
- Communication drop-outs several times
- the endless issues with Orion’s toilet
There were other minor issues that cropped up repeatedly, none significant but all of which should be fixed. And though it will be helpful to determine how this heat shield performed, it should be noted that the data is essentially irrelevant to future missions. The next mission, Artemis-3, will use a completely different design, and test it for the first time on a manned flight. That flight however will be in Earth orbit, so the stress on the shield will be far less than this return, even with the changed re-entry path.
Though many will call this lunar fly-by “historic,” it will likely be little remembered by future generations. It did little to move the settlement of the solar system forward. No truly useful engineering was tested. The rocket and capsule are engineering dead-ends. Neither will be of much use for establishing colonies on the Moon or Mars, as SLS is still too expensive and too difficult to stack and launch and Orion is too small for any interplanetary missions, being nothing more than an overweight and very expensive ascent/descent capsule.
The only plus of this mission is that it will likely give NASA’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, the political clout to institute major changes in the entire Artemis program, changes that could make the American colonization of the solar system more likely. There are strong indications that he wants to make better use of the private sector.
And that private sector is poised to bypass NASA, regardless of what NASA wants or tries to do, with capabilities far better then anything we have seen since the Apollo program.
April 10, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Roof and facility damage at Blue Origin’s Cape Canaveral test facility suggests it had a unintentional testing failure
The tweet says it is related to “a GS2 tank in the 2Cat test facility”.
- Blue Origin announces successful thermal vacuum chamber testing of its unmanned Blue Moon Mark-1 lunar lander
It is dubbed Endurance, and is now being shipped back to Florida. The company still plans to launch it to the Moon this year.
- Animation of Astrolab’s small Flip demo lunar rover, set to launch later this year on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander
Astrolab hopes the success of Flip will help it win a NASA contract to build its manned Flex rover.
- Images of Orion in space, taken by the Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory
Its nothing more than a dot, but it is still cool a ground-based telescope can track it.
Orion’s risky return-to-Earth happens tonight at 8:07 pm (Eastern)
The Earth and Moon during the lunar fly-by on April 6, 2026.
Click for original image.
After spending ten days in space, including a swing around the back of the Moon, the four-person Artemis-2 crew is now preparing for its return-to-Earth this evening, splashing down off the Pacific coast near San Diego.
At 10:53 p.m. EDT [last night], the Orion spacecraft ignited its thrusters for 9 seconds, producing an acceleration in velocity of 5.3 feet-per-second and pushing the Artemis II crew toward Earth. The crew is now more than halfway home.
About two hours before the burn, there was an unexpected return link loss of signal during a data rate change affecting the transmission of communications and telemetry from the spacecraft to the ground. Two-way communications were reestablished, and flight controllers resumed preparing for the upcoming burn with the crew shortly after.
…The third return trajectory correction burn is scheduled for April 10 at about 1:53 p.m. ahead of re-entry procedures.
This is I think the second time Orion has had a short loss of communications with ground control. In addition, the crew had to cancel a planned manual piloting demonstration of Orion while it flew past the Moon because of a leak in an internal helium tank, used to maintain pressure in the oxygen tank as the propellant is used. The leak was inside the European-built service module, which will be jettisoned before re-entry and burn up in the atmosphere.
Mission managers say this leak has not impacted any engine burns, but it will require attention before the next flight.
The return to Earth however carries the biggest risk of the entire mission. Orion’s heat shield is questionable. During its first use in the 2022 unmanned Artemis-1 flight around the Moon, it did not behave as expected, with large chunks breaking off instead of thin layers ablating away. Though mission engineers have adjusted the flight path through the atmosphere to mitigate stress, there is great uncertainty about that solution.
I have embedded NASA’s live stream of the return-to-Earth below. It begins at 6:30 pm (Eastern), though the first return event, jettison the service module, doesn’t occur until 7:33 pm (Eastern).
» Read more
Amazon to begin commercial availability of Leo internet service in mid-2026
In an annual letter [pdf] to shareholders, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy announced the company plans on inaugurating its Leo internet constellation to customers in “mid-2026,” assuming the company can get a significant more satellites in orbit in the next few months.
Jassy’s wording was interestingly vague, however, suggesting this target date is very uncertain.
Over the last seven years, we’ve built a low Earth orbit satellite network (Amazon Leo) and put more than 200 satellites into space (which is the third-largest low Earth orbit network operating today). With a few thousand more satellites launching in the coming years, the constellation is expanding rapidly.
…While Amazon Leo is officially scheduled to launch in mid-2026, we already have meaningful revenue commitments from enterprises and governments.
To be precise, Amazon presently has launched 241 satellites, out of the 1,616 it needs to launch by July 2026 to meet its FCC license requirement. Because it is not expected to meet that requirement, the company has asked for a time extension, which the FCC is presently considering. The entire first generation constellation is supposed to have 3,232 satellites, so it seems unlikely Amazon will be able to provide internet service by mid-2026, as promised. It won’t have enough coverage with less than a fourth of its constellation in orbit.
India conducts another parachute drop test for its Gaganyaan manned capsule
Click to watch video of drop test.
India’s space agency ISRO today successfully completed its second helicopter drop test of a dummy capsule, testing the parachute release system that its Gaganyaan manned capsule will use on return to Earth.
In this test, a simulated Crew Module, weighing about 5.7 tonnes, that is equivalent to the mass of the Crew Module in the first uncrewed Gaganyaan mission (G1), was lifted by an Indian Air Force Chinook helicopter to an altitude of about 3km and released over a designated drop zone in sea, near to Sriharikota coast.
Ten parachutes of four types were deployed in a precise sequence during the descent of the Crew Module, gradually reducing the velocity for safe touchdown. Subsequently, the simulated Crew Module was successfully recovered in coordination with Indian Navy. The IADT-02 test validated the parachute-based deceleration systems in the Crew Module.
The manned mission is presently scheduled for early next year, after a series of unmanned orbital test flights are completed in ’26. This schedule is significantly later than ISRO’s original schedule. When the program was first proposed in 2018, ISRO said the manned mission would happen in 2022.
China launches another set of satellites for its Guowang internet constellation
China yesterday successfully completed the 21st launch for its Guowang (Satnet) internet satellite constellation, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.
Though China’s state-run press provided no information on the number of satellites in the payload, all previous launches using the Long March 6A had carried five satellites. If so, that would mean the constellation now has 164 satellites in orbit, out of a planned 13,000. This fits with the information in the article at the link, which states the constellation now has “nearly 170 satellites” in orbit.
China’s state-controlled press also made no mention about where the rocket’s core stage (using very toxic hypergolic fuels) and its four solid-fueled strap-on boosters crashed inside China.
Another launch attempt today by the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace was scrubbed due to “a leak in a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV).” COPV tanks are used inside the main tanks. As the propellant in that main tank is used, the COPV releases helium to maintain the tank’s pressure. No new launch date has been announced.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
42 SpaceX
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 42 to 32. It has another Starlink launch scheduled for this evening.