February 26, 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.
- A graphic of the crew ejection system on the Soviet Union’s Buran shuttle
The copycat of the American shuttle only flew once, unmanned. For all we know this was never installed or even built.
- None of the Soyuz equipment at French Guiana will be preserved as rocket startup MaiaSpace takes over the launchpad
Some want it put in a museum. The director of the spaceport: “I’m not of that mindset.”
- Australia’s space agency touts its support for India’s Gaganyaan manned mission
India’s space agency ISRO has installed a tracking antenna at one of Australia’s facilities.
- On this day in 1972 the Soviet Union’s 2nd lunar sample return mission, Luna 20, returned a core sample to Earth
The sample came from the Moon’s Sea of Fertility. The tweet shows a 2010 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of Luna 20 on the lunar surface.
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 from 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. If you buy it from 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
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.
- A graphic of the crew ejection system on the Soviet Union’s Buran shuttle
The copycat of the American shuttle only flew once, unmanned. For all we know this was never installed or even built.
- None of the Soyuz equipment at French Guiana will be preserved as rocket startup MaiaSpace takes over the launchpad
Some want it put in a museum. The director of the spaceport: “I’m not of that mindset.”
- Australia’s space agency touts its support for India’s Gaganyaan manned mission
India’s space agency ISRO has installed a tracking antenna at one of Australia’s facilities.
- On this day in 1972 the Soviet Union’s 2nd lunar sample return mission, Luna 20, returned a core sample to Earth
The sample came from the Moon’s Sea of Fertility. The tweet shows a 2010 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of Luna 20 on the lunar surface.
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 from 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. If you buy it from 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
Appropos of nothing, I notice this report from Politico’s Audrey Decker:
“Senate Commerce’s reauth bill would prohibit NASA from acquiring more than 50% of launch services from one provider, according to bill text I obtained. SpaceX currently dominates the market.
However, bill says the administrator can seek waivers.”
https://x.com/i/status/2027048287358857330
Usual caveats: We haven’t seen the text wording yet; and this is not law yet, but it stands a chance of becoming law now. It could be that the waiver exception as written is so big that a NASA admin could drive a Mobile Launcher through it.
Which hope it is, because right now the U.S. launch industry is not at a point where it could reduce SpaceX to launching only 50% of NASA payloads. Maybe it will be in 5 or 10 years; but not today.
Richard M,
James Muncy, in the responses, poses the key question – “50% by total revenue, by payload mass, or by # of launches?” Using either of the last two of these metrics would certainly require waivers – probably quite a few. But using a total revenue metric would not likely change things at all given how much it costs to launch an SLS-Orion stack. Even if only every three or four years, that still makes NASA’s bill for SLS-Orion launches well over a billion dollars annually. I’m pretty sure SpaceX doesn’t do much more than a billion dollars worth of launches for NASA in a typical year – couple of Crew Dragons, couple of Cargo Dragons and some odds and ends including CLPS missions.
Hello Dick,
Yeah, James’s question is on point. What metric or metrics does the bill use? Does it use any at all? (Yes, the staffers might have been thoughtless enough not to even define it.)
Now, I don’t know if SLS even enters the discussion, because I don’t know if this alleged provision only controls launches that NASA procures from outside, or all of its launches.
Important to remember (as I know you do!) NASA’s Launch Services Program has a system for certifying commercial launch vehicles for its payloads, based on the risk it wants to assume as related to the mission’s value. This is a key issue that will impact this process, because to the best of my knowledge, Atlas V, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy are the only rockets certified for Category 3 payloads; Vulcan, New Glenn and Neutron have Cat 1 certification . . . I would not be surprised to see Vulcan and New Glenn get at least Cat 2 certification within the next 12 months, if all goes well. (Starship is a LSP certified launcher now but it has yet to get Cat 1 certification, at last check; it is hard to judge how fast it will rise through the certification process). Obviously not all NASA payloads are Cat 3, but it helps to keep this issue in mind — NASA is required to contract rockets that are certified for a given payload.
It would be good to have a competitive launch market from which NASA (and the Pentagon) purchase their launches. But this feels like a ham-handed attempt by Congress to impose arbitrary requirements on the LSP process, likely motivated in part by loathing for Elon Musk and a keen desire to limit government reliance on his company.
P.S. Good catch on the CLPS missions — does this even apply to them? It is the CLPS contractors who buy those launches, technically, not NASA. Does the bill try to control those, too?
Massive changes to the Artemis Program are coming: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/nasa-shakes-up-its-artemis-program-to-speed-up-lunar-return/
Nate P: I’ve posted on this. Refresh your browser.
Wow. Big Artemis news today. Did not see this coming.
(I will wait for Bob’s post on this before saying more.)
Richard M: The post is up.
Exciting news! There is a new battery that can survive well in cold conditions
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-hfc-electrolyte-energy-dense-lithium.html