June 23, 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.
- Starlab touts its Bishop Airlock on ISS, the station’s first and only commercial airlock
It is used to launch cubesats and small experiments into space.
- Starliner remains in limbo according to Space News
Ars Technica claims NASA has a tentative launch date of August 1, 2026, but no one believes it. As I first reported in May, NASA has given all crewed missions to SpaceX through 2030, leaving Boeing and Starliner nothing. It thus appears Boeing no longer wants to spend any money on it.
- New Horizons sends home an A-OK signal, indicating all is well as it hibernates
The science team gets this signal every Monday.
- China touts both the ’27 launch of the Xuntian space telescope as well as the planned expansion of its Tiangong-3 station
This confirms the delayed launch date this Hubble-class optical telescope, which was originally supposed to launch in ’24. As for the station’s expansion, no dates of any kind were indicated.
- Blue Origin touts the Power Tower on its Blue Moon MK1 unnmanned lunar lander for getting solar power at the Moon’s south pole
Rather than this empty PR, we’d much rather get some solid updates on the company’s recovery from its New Glenn launchpad explosion.
- Vast gets a $32.75M tax credit from California
The company seems proud to stay and even expand in California, which could be a big mistake as long as that state’s government remains decided leftist and hostile to private enterprise.
- On this day in 1960, the U.S. launched the world’s first successful reconnaissance satellite GRAB-1
Designed to track Soviet air defense radars, the program was declassified in 1998.
- In 2000, Pizza Hut paid the Roscosmos $1 million to put their logo on the Proton rocket that launched ISS’s Zvezda module
That was 26 years ago. The module itself had been built a decade earlier. No wonder it is leaking now.
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
Re: Vast California Tax Credits
How do the California Vast employees feel about:
California Assembly Bill (AB) 1967 that is moving through the California Legislature. It would allow children of any age to initiate state dependency proceedings against their own parents. Divorce their parents.
“”Government control over children is only one purpose of AB 1967. The second is financial. Once the county takes custody of the child, it is almost certain that he will be removed from the parent-directed residential facility. Detained children must be placed in an AFDC-FC-eligible nonprofit facility, foster care home, or institution. This requirement creates a direct financial incentive for nonprofits and their affiliated attorneys to facilitate the child’s transfer into county-approved placements.
Each nonprofit can receive up to $17,616 per month in state and federal funding for a short-term residential therapeutic placement.””
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/06/california_want_to_do_what.html
They feel the same way sheeple always feel, ‘oh that will never happen’ or ‘that won’t/can’t happen to me’
Elon Musk IS John Galt!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FBphOiJZf88?feature=share
I reread Atlas Shrugged recently. I would suggest that government regulation and interference, with its’ attendant corruption, was more of the John Galt focus. Taxes are the seen, while regulation and corruption are the unseen, at least by the majority of people.
Anti-icing
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ice-crystal-growth-polymer-nanoparticles.html
Flex-Cat can produce different products…good for ISRU
Then pain of having to defend Jeff Bezos
admittedly, Bezos is a pretty lousy example of a space entrepreneur,
BUT
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aCbC_su_E9U?feature=share
Mr Z,
I did not see that you had covered this. I searched, so if I missed it apologies.
It was posted on June 11th. The fact that almost no one noticed it says volumes.
‘Astra’s next-generation rocket just crossed the Atlantic.’
https://x.com/Astra/status/2065073555143028755
Scott Manley covered it in his latest Deep Space update.
Kemp suggested Saxaford as the launch site and implies Europe’s need for launch capability and recent investment of Euros into the Space sector is an opportunity.
(Based on replies to this thread: https://x.com/Kemp/status/2065081832362701245)
My favorite comment from the first thread, however:
“Shipping container makes sense, its the only way the rocket will get to where its supposed go. Good job
Maersk !”
The cynic in me believes that Kemp saw Rocket Lab’s purchase of Mynaric, which was rumored to be the start of “Rocket Lab Europe”, and decided he must follow suit.
I have not covered this. But then, when it comes to Astra and Kemp, I don’t take much serious these days until something concrete happens.
Starship booster recovery
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9yii_nvXaPM?feature=share
Sheer beauty.
“And that, gentlemen, is how we do that.”
.
Several days ago Limp claimed that they had finished the job of clearing wreckage from the pad – which seems hard to believe, honestly, unless they decided to dispense with that part of root cause analysis. But other than that, they haven’t said anything else. For that matter, neither NSF or SFN or anyone else has done any flyovers of SLC-36 the last couple weeks.
I wonder if they were paid not to.
Anatoly Zak reports: The prime contractor at the Angara launch site in Vostochny spaceport goes through bankruptcy in the final phase of construction.
CONTEXT: https://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostochny_angara.html
https://x.com/i/status/2069791262446698564
Recall that last November, the Far Eastern Energy Company disconnected power to areas of the spaceport still under construction after PSO Kazan accumulated about US$627,000 in unpaid electricity bills, prompting bankruptcy proceedings.
Just another typical Wednesday in the former Worker’s Paradise. Ah well, the PRC can straighten all of this out when they take Vostochny over.
Russian planes, at least, are a tad better with respect to Dutch roll….but it does ask the pilot to participate
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W6G_Ut5qByo&pp=ugUHEgVlbi1VUw%3D%3D
Which politician gets the kick back.
“we’d much rather get some solid updates on the company’s recovery from its New Glenn launchpad explosion.”
Speaking of updates, have the BE-4s been eliminated as a possible cause of the explosion?
I suspect ULA would very much like to know.
So far we have heard nothing from Blue Origin about the explosion itself or the cause. And yes, I am sure ULA is breathing down Blue Origin’s neck for an answer.
New resource
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-web-archive-easily-millions-documents.html