Author: Robert Zimmerman

German rocket startup Isar Aerospace wins launch contract from Astroscale

8:03 am

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

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has won a launch contract using its Spectrum rocket to launch Astroscale’s ELSA-M space junk removal mission, with a launch now targeting 2028.

The mission involves a $15 million contract Astroscale won from the space agencies of the UK and Europe to de-orbit a defunct OneWeb satellite. This demo mission however has been delayed repeatedly since it was first announced in 2022. Then it had a launch date of 2024. In 2024 that launch date was shifted to 2026. With this new announcement it is delayed again, to 2028.

Isar meanwhile has not yet achieved a successful launch of its Spectrum rocket. The first attempt, in March 2025, failed mere seconds after launch due to a loss of attitude control. Its second attempt is presently scheduled for March 19 from Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

If successful, this launch would be the first from a European spaceport, and the first from one of Europe’s new rocket startups.

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China completes two launches early today

7:40 am

China early today resumed launches after a month-long pause, apparently for the Chinese New Year.

First, it completed the 20th launch for the Guowang (Satnet) internet satellite constellation, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wencheng spaceport.

Though China’s state-run press provided no information on the number of satellites in the payload, all previous launches using the Long March 8A had carried nine satellites. If so, that would mean the constellation now has 159 satellites in orbit, out of a planned 13,000.

Next, China placed two “test satellites” into orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China. Its state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

30 SpaceX
10 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25. Though it has up to now almost doubled the launch pace of everyone else, with China resuming launches that pace will likely end.

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Cubesat ultraviolet space telescope achieves first light

5:05 pm

Sparcs first light images
Click for original images.

A new low-cost cubesat-sized NASA ultraviolet space telescope, dubbed Sparcs, has achieved first light, successfully taking both near- and far-ultraviolet false-color images of a nearby star.

Those images are to the right, with the top the far-ultraviolet image and the bottom in the near ultraviolet. From the press release:

Roughly the size of a large cereal box, SPARCS will monitor flares and sunspot activity on low-mass stars — objects only 30% to 70% the mass of the Sun. These stars are among the most common in the Milky Way and host the majority of the galaxy’s roughly 50 billion habitable-zone terrestrial planets, which are rocky worlds close enough to their stars for temperatures that could allow liquid water and potentially support life.

The question astronomers will try to answer with this telescope is whether the solar activity on these stars is high enough to prevent life from forming in the star’s habitable zone. Because these stars are dim and small, the habitable zone is quite close to the star, which means solar activity has a higher impact on the planet. We don’t yet have sufficient data to determine the normal activity of such stars. Sparcs will provide a good first survey.

It will also demonstrate the viability of such small low-cost cubesats for this kind of research. If successful expect more such telescopes, some of which are likely to be private, like Blue Skies Space’s Mauve optical telescope already in orbit.

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NASA now targeting an April 1st launch of Artemis-2

3:54 pm

At a press briefing today, NASA officials said they are now targeting an April 1, 2026 launch date for the Artemis-2 mission, a ten-day manned mission sending four astronauts around the Moon.

NASA completed the agency’s Artemis II Flight Readiness Review on Thursday, March 12, and polled “go” to proceed toward launch. NASA is targeting Thursday, March 19, to roll the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft to launch pad 39B in advance of a launch attempt Wednesday, April 1, pending close out of remaining open work.

The repair work involved replacing a helium seal that was preventing flow to and from the tanks and testing it to confirm the new seal worked. It also involved replacing batteries as well as some oxygen seals.

NASA officials also stated that they do not plan to do another wet dress rehearsal, that they are satisfied by the testing they did in the assembly building. Instead, they are go for full launch countdown, with the hope they can lift-off with no more fueling issues. They have also determined that if there is a scrub, they will also have several launch opportunities through April 6th.

To underline the risks of this mission, the Orion capsule in which they are sending four astronauts around the Moon has an uncertain heat shield and an untested life support system. To mitigate the shield uncertainties, they must hit a specific flight path through the atmosphere upon return.

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March 12, 2026 Quick space links

2:44 pm

As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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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Real change at the FCC?

1:51 pm

Brendan Carr during Breitbart interview
Brendan Carr during Breitbart interview

FCC chairman Brendan Carr this week didn’t simply make a public statement yesterday against Amazon, as I reported earlier today. The day earlier, on March 10th, he did an hour-long interview with Breibart News, providing a more complete summary of the FCC’s overall agenda since the change of administrations from Joe Biden to Donald Trump.

You can watch that interview here. To put it mildly, the shift in policy and approach at the FCC is significant, and appears to be generally moving in the right direction.

To understand the context, we need to first review the FCC’s approach during the Biden administration. My regular readers will remember the many stories during that time describing the FCC’s aggressive effort to expand its regulatory power, in many cases in areas completely exceeding its fundamental statutory authority. For example, it proposed new regulations designed to tell satellite companies how and when to de-orbit their satellites. It also wanted to its own bureaucracy for imposing those regulations, and went ahead and created it without any congressional approval. It also under Biden attempted to limit satellite operations that the astronomy community opposed, an action that was once again outside its statute authority.

Overall, the goal of the FCC under Biden was to expand the power of the administrative state, in as many areas as possible. And though there was push back from Congress, as long as a Democrat was president it was clear that this power-grab was going to grow exponentially.

After the 2024 election, however a Democrat was no longer president. Trump quickly moved in 2025 to squash the FCC’s power grab, with a stated public goal to instead streamline FCC regulations and speed license approvals.

Carr’s interview earlier this week essentially gave us an update on that Trump policy, and it appears this new anti-regulatory policy is moving forward, with a goal to eliminate ten regulations for every one regulation added. According to Carr:
» Read more

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A close-up of the dark side of Saturn’s moon Iapetus

11:55 am

Iapetus' equator ridge
Click for original image.

Cassini's first global close-up of Iapetus
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is a double-header! The picture above, cropped to post here, was taken on September 10, 2007 during Cassini’s fly-by of Saturn’s moon Iapetus, taken from approximately 1,000 miles above the surface. It looks at the dark side of this two-toned planet (see yesterday’s cool image). As the moon’s rotation is tidally locked so that one side always faces Saturn, one hemisphere always leads while the other always trails. For some reason still unexplained, the leading hemisphere is covered with an almost pitch-black material, while the trailing hemisphere is bright and very white, its icy surface quite visible.

For context, to the right is a global image of that dark side taken during Cassini’s first fly-by of Iapetus on December 31, 2004. This picture highlights the long ridge that runs along the planet’s dark hemisphere’s equator that was the focus of the close-up image above. From the 2005 press release:

The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The ridge is conspicuous in the picture as an approximately 12 miles band that extends from the western (left) side of the disc almost to the day/night boundary on the right. On the left horizon, the peak of the ridge reaches at least 8 miles above the surrounding terrain. Along the roughly 800-mile-length over which it can be traced in this picture, it remains almost exactly parallel to the equator within a couple of degrees. The physical origin of the ridge has yet to be explained. It is not yet clear whether the ridge is a mountain belt that has folded upward, or an extensional crack in the surface through which material from inside Iapetus erupted onto the surface and accumulated locally, forming the ridge.

Iapetus itself has a diameter of about 900 miles, so this ridge essentially crosses most of the dark hemisphere.

The 2007 press release did not provide enough information to pinpoint exactly where along that ridge the close-up is located, but no matter. Both images make very clear what we are looking at.

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China’s giant Spacesail constellation seeks more funding

9:57 am

Spacesail, one of the largest of China’s planned constellations designed to compete with Starlink, is now seeking more funding to build its full constellation of 10,000 to 14,000 satellites.

Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, or SpaceSail, a satellite communications company developing a massive constellation known as “Qianfan,” disclosed plans to bring in new investors through a capital increase, according to a notice published on the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange.

At present, this Chinese pseudo-company has launched only 119 out of the constellation’s first phase of 648 satellites. While it has gotten Airbus to sign a contract to use its constellation on its airplanes, it also appears to be somewhat cash poor, having only about $150 million on hand (much of it government funding), and is not going to meet its international licensing requirement to get those 648 satellites in orbit by the end of this year.

This new funding round announcement suggests it is in need of capital, and is having trouble getting the Chinese government to cough up the additional funds.

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Have astronomers spotted the collision of two exoplanets around a Sunlike star?

9:36 am

Changes in the infrared

Using data from a number of orbiting space telescopes, astronomers think they have detected the collision of two exoplanets, producing debris that for about 200 days variably blocked the light from the system’s star.

The images to the right come from figure 1 of their published paper [pdf], showing changes in the infrared as detected by the WISE space telescope. From the press release:

The star, named Gaia20ehk, was about 11,000 light-years from Earth near the constellation Pupis. It was a stable “main sequence” star, much like our sun, which meant that it should emit steady, predictable light. Yet this star began to flicker wildly. “The star’s light output was nice and flat, but starting in 2016 it had these three dips in brightness. And then, right around 2021, it went completely bonkers,” said Tzanidakis, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at the University of Washington. “I can’t emphasize enough that stars like our sun don’t do that. So when we saw this one, we were like ‘Hello, what’s going on here?’”

The cause of the flickering had nothing to do with the star itself: Huge quantities of rocks and dust — seemingly from out of nowhere — were passing in front of the distant star as the material orbited the system, patchily dimming the light that reached Earth. The likely source of all that debris was even more remarkable: a catastrophic collision between two planets.

…“The infrared light curve was the complete opposite of the visible light,” Tzanidakis said. “As the visible light began to flicker and dim, the infrared light spiked. Which could mean that the material blocking the star is hot — so hot that it’s glowing in the infrared.”

A cataclysmic collision between planets would certainly produce enough heat to explain the infrared energy. What’s more, the right kind of collision could also explain those initial dips in light.

The data suggests the collision occurred at an orbit comparable to that of the Earth’s, and took more than a half a year to largely dissipate.

All of this is a reasonable hypothesis based on the data available. Though there is a lot of uncertainty in this conclusion, the researchers considered other explanations, such as variability in the star itself, and found them less credible.

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FCC chairman blasts Amazon and its Leo satellite constellation

9:08 am

FCC logo

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, yesterday harshly criticized Amazon for filing papers opposing SpaceX’s application to place a million new satellites into orbit while failing to meet its own FCC license requirement to get 1,600 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit by July 2026.

Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit.

To put it mildly, Carr’s point is well taken. In legally protesting SpaceX’s proposed constellation while failing to launch on time as promised, Amazon is following what appears to be standard Jeff Bezos’ practice, epitomized by his rocket company Blue Origin. When customers begin favoring others because the Bezos company either submits a poor bid or fails to meet schedules, the Bezos companies routinely go to court in an attempt to squelch that better competition.

Carr is demanding Amazon stop this, and focus instead on getting its own job done for once. Carr is also signaling the FCC’s position on both SpaceX and Amazon. It is likely going to reject Amazon’s filing and give its okay to SpaceX’s million-satellite constellation, in one form or another.

Carr is also telling Amazon that it faces some push back for failing to launch the required number of Amazon Leo satellites on time. Though it is extremely unlikely the FCC will cancel Amazon’s Leo license, the FCC might fine it heavily. Or it could impose new limits on the constellation. Carr is also indicating the FCC will treat future Amazon license applications much more stringently.

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NASA’s Van Allen Probe A burns up over the Pacific

8:49 am

We didn’t all die! Van Allen Probe A, one of two NASA spacecraft launched in 2012 to study the Van Allen radiation belts that circle the Earth, yesterday burned up harmlessly over the Pacific ocean as expected.

Both Van Allen probes have been defunct since around 2019, when they ran out of fuel. Van Allen Probe B weighed about 1,300 pounds, so some pieces probably reached the ocean. Had it returned over land it did carry the small risk of doing harm.

The orbit of the other probe, Van Allen Probe B, is expected to decay sometime around 2030. Like its twin, it is heavy enough that some parts will survive re-entry. It is therefore a prime target for a demonstration mission proving the technology for removing space junk safely and under control. NASA should put out a request for bids to the many orbital tug companies that now exist to do exactly that, as it is NASA’s responsibility to make sure this spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere safely.

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