Category: Behind The Black

NASA cancels Draper/Ispace unmanned lunar lander contract

12:45 pm

Artist rendering of Ispace's Ultra lunar lander
Artist rendering of Ispace’s Ultra lunar lander

According to a press release from the Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace, NASA last week canceled its contract with Draper for a lunar lander mission in 2030, a mission that Ispace was the main subcontractor.

Ispace technologies U.S., (Ispace-U.S.) an American lunar exploration company and subsidiary of Ispace, inc. (ispace), and Draper, a non-profit research, development and manufacturing company, today announced that Draper has mutually agreed with NASA to end the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order CP-12.

Since July 2022, Ispace-U.S. served as a subcontractor to Draper to provide a lunar lander transportation service for NASA’s CLPS task order CP-12. Following the agreement with NASA on the primary contract, Draper and ispace-U.S. expects the mutual termination of the subcontract between the two companies.

For that 2030 mission Ispace was really the main contractor — having already built and launched two failred lunar landers — but as a Japanese company (even with a U.S. division), it needed an American company to act as lead in order to win the NASA contract. Draper fulfilled that purpose.

Draper however has little experience building lunar landers. Ispace was really doing the job. The problem was that Ispace discovered with its two failures that its original lander design was insufficient. The development of a new larger lander, dubbed Ultra, has caused significant delays.

It appears NASA and Draper decided this arrangement was not acceptable. Both were probably uncomfortable with its faux lead position. Ispace’s delays also were likely a factor.

It is certainly possible for Ispace alone to win later contracts. It has said it intends to bid. Moreover, as Japan is both a partner in the Artemis program and a signatory to the Artemis Accords, there really is little reason for NASA or Ispace to play these games. NASA can issue a contract directly to it. It simply has to make sure it issues contracts to American companies first.

Below is the present rough schedule of missions in NASA’s Artemis program, as revised under NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s leadership, and adjusted to include this cancellation.

NASA’s Artemis mission schedule:
» Read more

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Indian’s private rocket startup Skyroot completes a perfect first launch

9:31 am

Vikram-1's perfect flight path
Click for source.

In a spectacular success, the Indian private rocket startup Skyroot today completed the first launch of its smallsat rocket Vikram-1, placing several payloads into orbit.

The graphic to the right shows the rocket’s flight path from the ground to orbit, overlaid over its nominal planned flight path. The match is precise. During the launch everything worked exactly as intended, an achievement on a first launch almost no rocket company has ever accomplished, including SpaceX.

During the broadcast there were several things I noticed that were of interest. First, Skyroot launched from India’s government spaceport at Sriharikota, operated by the country’s space agency ISRO. During normal ISRO launches the control room is filled with more than a hundred controllers, packed tightly in several rows. For this private launch, however, that control room appeared to have less than third of those numbers, many of which I suspect were ISRO employees tasked with monitoring the launch to protect the agency’s assets. Those controllers who appeared part of Skyroot’s team, in the front row, were few.

Second, in the viewing gallery at the back were several important ISRO managers, including the head of the agency. While everyone else around them cheered the success enthusiastically, they sat quiet, with some having very dour expressions. This could have simply been an effort at professionalism, but I suspect it also had an element of resentment and fear. Skyroot’s launch today of a smallsat private rocket is something ISRO has not been able to do for almost two years. The agency’s PSLV rocket has failed at launch twice in a row, and remains grounded.

In fact, right now Skyroot’s one launch is the only Indian launch of the year.

Moreover, Skyroot represents the future, and ISRO the past. The Modi government has been pushing hard to transition from the present government model, where ISRO owns, runs, and controls the entire Indian space program, to the capitalism model, where the private sector does it, and the government is merely the customer. ISRO has been somewhat resistant to this change, slow-walking many Modi directives.

This success signals the beginning of a new era in India, one in which private enterprise, competition, and freedom fuel innovation and success. It also signals an era where ISRO will become less powerful and important. Those ISRO managers know this, and some clearly didn’t like the prospect.

The leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged.

86 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 79.

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July 17, 2026 Quick space links

3:01 pm

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.

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DC government workforce slashed by almost 20% since Trump took office

12:34 pm

The drop in the DC federal workforce under Trump
Click for source.

According to recent data, the number of federal workers in the Washington, D.C. area has now reached a 30 year low, reduced by 60,000, from nearly 376,000 at the start of Trump’s second term to 312,500 in May.

The graph to the right shows how Trump’s arrival instigated the drop.

The Department of Education took the heaviest blow, with nearly 40 percent of its workforce slashed in 2025 as Trump made clear his goal: to dismantle the agency outright. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Treasury weren’t far behind, each shedding roughly a quarter of their staff, with the IRS bearing the brunt as the administration moved to gut tax enforcement.

Beyond those, USAID, Agriculture, HHS, the VA, and the Department of Labor all saw double-digit percentage losses in their workforce, with USAID and the USDA especially targeted.

What must also be noted is the lack of any significant consequences resulting from these reductions. It has had no impact on life in general. In fact, all economic indicators — which say the U.S. economy is generally doing well — suggest its only impact has been free up Americans and let them get on with their lives.

This however is only a start. A lot more non-workers in DC should get their walking papers. They contribute little or nothing, while squelching the freedom of the rest of us.

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Scientists find evidence of six landslides on Pluto in New Horizons’ archival imagery

9:57 am

Landslide on Pluto
Click for original image.

Using archival imagery from New Horizons’ fly-by of Pluto in 2015, scientists have identified the remains of six different landslides, once again indicating that this distant planet is geologically active despite being so far from the Sun.

Each of the landslides is located along the inner rim of an impact crater, where the terrain is steep. The largest is roughly 130 square kilometers in area, or about twice the size of Manhattan. That’s near the upper size range of landslides that typically occur on Earth, Brunetti says.

The landslides range in height from 1,500 to 2,200 meters. That’s somewhat puny compared with landslides elsewhere in the solar system, but these features have a trick up their proverbial sleeves: Compared with landslides of similar heights, those on Pluto tend to run out over longer distances. That’s a sign that material tumbling down a slope on Pluto experiences less friction, on average, the team concluded. That conclusion can help constrain the material properties of Pluto, Brunetti and her colleagues suggest.

The image to the right, shows the landslide in Coughlin Crater. The red line indicates the material that fell from the crater rim, while the dashed white line indicates a crater impact that might have instigated the landslide. The scientists estimate the avalanche flowed down into the crater flow about 1.4 miles.

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Evidence of an atmosphere detected for the first time on a rocky terrestrial exoplanet

9:25 am

Scientists have now detected the first evidence of an atmosphere on a rocky terrestrial exoplanet that is also located in the habitable zone. The exoplanet, dubbed LHS 1140 b, is located circling a red dwarf star about 48 light years away and is estimated to have about 5.6 times the mass of Earth and about 2.4 times the diameter.

To test their prediction, the team used the Warm Infrared Echelle (WINERED) Spectrograph on the Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. They observed a rare alignment, where LHS 1140 b and another planet [in the system] transited their star on the same night.

Although one planet showed no evidence of an atmosphere, the other, LHS 1140 b, showed helium escaping from around it, confirming that it retains an atmosphere.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. The discovery is of significance, as it proves finally — more than two decades after the first detection of an exoplanet — that rocky exoplanets outside our solar system can have an atmosphere. There is also evidence that this loss of helium might be seasonal in nature. From their abstract:

Helium absorption is detected in 2024 but not in 2025, indicating time-variable atmospheric escape. We interpret these results as indicating an upper atmosphere dominated by helium and depleted in hydrogen, with other volatile species trapped at lower altitudes, consistent with atmospheric fractionation models. No helium absorption is detected for LHS 1140c, a smaller and more strongly irradiated
exoplanet in the same system.

The planet has an orbit 24.7 days, and is located in the habitable zone, though overall it gets only 42% of the radiation from its star compared to Earth. Thus, it is very cold on this planet, with a gravity significant heavier than Earth’s. In other words, even if it has an atmosphere, it remains a very alien place.

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Mauritius signs Artemis Accords

8:52 am

On the same day Serbia officially signed the Artemis Accords, the island nation of Mauritius (located in the Indian Ocean) also joined, becoming the 70th nation within this American space alliance.

Serbia’s decision to join had been announced earlier this week, with the official signing today.

As Mauritius lies about thousand miles east of Africa, we could say it is part of that continent, thus raising the number of nations in that continent to have signed the accords to seven. Angola, Botswana, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Senegal are the others. For a variety of reasons, not many African nations have signed on.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

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Starship/Superheavy launch aborted at T-0; launch scrubbed

3:56 pm

Starship/Superheavy today, just after engine abort
Starship/Superheavy today, just after engine abort

While all looked perfect right up until engine ignition at T-0 second in today’s attempt to fly the 13th test orbital flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, the rocket then shut down, aborting the launch.

At T-0 the engines did ignite for a second, after the water deluge system had activated as planned. The company almost immediately announced they were scrubbing for the day. As many have noted below in the comments, once that deluge system runs, they can’t launch again that day. It takes too long to refill the tanks.

Subsequently we have learned that 4 Raptor engines in the inner ring of Superheavy did not light. Musk has since said that at least two will be replaced. I suspect after they inspect the engines they might replace all four. They will likely then do another full static fire test before attempting a launch. Expect a delay of about a week.

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July 16, 2026 Quick space links

3:03 pm

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.

Note: X now requires log in to view videos with sound. You can get around this by clicking on the three dots at the top right to get the embed code. Ask for the code for an “embedded video.” The video will then be available for watching with sound.

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SpaceX completes 3rd of 10 launches for Space Force’s Tranche constellation

1:42 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed another 21 satellites into orbit, the 3rd of a 10-launch contract for the Space Force’s Tranche-1 communications constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The 1st stage (B1103) completed its 4th flight (27 days after its last mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 5th and 6th flights respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

86 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 78.

As my readers are well aware, SpaceX has another launch later today, the 13th orbital test flight of its gigantic Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica in Texas. That 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 pm (Eastern). You can watch that here.

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Strange flows on the flanks of a small isolated Martian mound

11:54 am

Small flows on the flanks of a small isolated Martian mound
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, enhanced, and rotated so that north is to the top, was taken on May 30, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

This mound is small, only about 150 to 600 feet high, depending on where you mark the base. The science team labels the curved black arcs that cover the mound’s northern slopes as “small scale lobes,” suggesting they think these curves mark the foot of multiple small landslides, or more accurately described as “mass-wasting events,” as instead of an avalanche of discreet boulders and rocks, the slide is comprised of mud-like material sliding downhill en masse.

The black material at the foot of these slides as well as on the mound’s peak and south and eastern flanks is a bit more puzzling. The overview map below provides one possible explanation, but leaves us with other more tantalizing possibilities.
» Read more

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Watching today’s 13th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

10:48 am

The thirteenth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket is presently scheduled for 6:45 pm (Eastern) tonight, with a 90 minute launch window.

UPDATE: I have now embedded the SpaceX its live stream on X. Below I have embedded the live streams being provided from others.


» Read more

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Private capital investment in space soared in ’26

10:01 am

Investment in space since 2023
Investment in space since 2023

According to a new report by the investment company Space Capital, private capital investment in space has soared this year, with the money invested in the past three quarters exceeding by several times all past quarters.

The graph to the right, taken from the company’s report, illustrates this burst of investment. According to Space Capital, the total private investment capital raised in just the last 36 months has exceeded $70 billion, with investment in North America dominating. It attributes this rise to three factors:

The [second] quarter opened with four astronauts returning from the Moon and closed with the largest IPO in history. In between, investors ran out of reasons to ignore the space economy. Three things defined Q2: SpaceX went public as an AI company, Rocket Lab showed where access to orbit leads, and the public markets finally opened for the space economy at scale.

First, Space Capital sees SpaceX’s combination of AI, data centers, and space as an example of two plus two equals six, that is being applied across the entire industry. Second, it sees Rocket Lab’s successfully diversification beyond just being a launch company as demonstrating to investors there’s more to space than rockets. Third, SpaceX’s IPO put space investment on the map, bringing capital in from new sources previously untapped.

Will this rush to invest in space continue? Maybe, maybe not. For the moment it really doesn’t matter, as the burst of capital in the past three months is already in the hands of the commercial space industry. They will use that money to build rockets, satellite constellations, and a host of other related technologies. From this will grow competition and innovation, lowering costs and thus fueling profits for all.

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Blue Origin’s new employee stock options are better, though still inferior to SpaceX’s

9:26 am

Because its old stock options were essentially worthless and a scam that did nothing to retain good employees, Blue Origin is now offering its employees a new stock option plan that while significantly improved, is still apparently inferior to SpaceX’s.

Under the old plan, the options only became real if Blue Origin went public within ten years. As the company never had plans to do so, those options were rubbish. The new plan changes this, but carries other restrictions.

Blue Origin’s new stock options plan, adopted in May, offers more opportunities for employees to cash out, including certain external funding rounds. In addition, it includes several restrictions on how employees can cash in their equity.

Jeff Bezos, still treating employees like serfs
Jeff Bezos, apparently still treating employees like serfs

Under the agreement, Blue Origin employees would never actually own any of the company’s stock. Instead, once their options have vested and are exercised to buy shares during a “liquidity event”— either an IPO, a sale of the company, or certain external funding rounds — those shares are “immediately and mandatorily” repurchased by Blue Origin. Employees get paid for their options at a “fair market value,” which, if Blue Origin hasn’t gone public, is determined by the company.

Most importantly, the plan has one major caveat: If an employee leaves Blue Origin and takes a job elsewhere in the space industry, they will forfeit their options entirely.

The change is certainly an improvement, but it does suggest Blue Origin (and Jeff Bezos) is still unwilling to treat its workers with the same kind of respect as SpaceX, which includes no such rules.

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India restricts the ability of space agency employees to leave due to recent exodus

9:08 am

The effort of India's government to defeat private enterprise
The effort of India’s government to defeat private enterprise

Turf war! In what will eventually be a useless and counter-productive dictatorial action, the Indian government has issued a directive restricting the ability of employees of its space agency ISRO from retiring or resigning, an action taken due to a recent exodus of between 100 and 120 engineers, scientists, and managers, many of whom left to take jobs in India’s nascent but growing private space sector.

In a memorandum issued on July 14, the Department of Space (DoS) directed major ISRO centres, including the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), not to routinely approve resignation or voluntary retirement requests from Group ‘A’ scientific and technical personnel associated with the Gaganyaan mission and other “important missions/projects”. Instead, such requests will require scrutiny by the Department of Space before a final decision is taken.

…Under the new directive, all resignation and voluntary retirement requests from scientific and technical personnel, including those at and below the rank of scientist and engineer, must be forwarded to the Department of Space along with “clear recommendations” from the respective centre directors, who will no longer have the authority to routinely clear such requests.

Multiple news reports from India today cite a recent spate of resignations and retirements, with many of those exiting employees getting jobs in private industry, with the most notable that of former ISRO chairman S Somanath, who has taken a position on the board of directors of the rocket startup Agnikul, which hopes to launch its own reusable rocket at some point in the future.

The government claims it has taken this action to make sure it doesn’t lose critical ISRO employees needed for its Gaganyaan and space station government projects, both of which are facing delays and technical challenges.

This directive will likely fail, however, for two reasons, both of which might in the long run be beneficial to India. First, young people just out of college will see it and decide it is better to get jobs in the private sector right off the bat. Why work for someone who will try to turn you into a serf who can’t leave? Second, it will guarantee an even greater exodus over time, as ISRO employees who want to leave will now take aggressive action to get out, as soon as they can. In both cases, the directive will encourage people to work for private industry, not the government.

At the same time, this directive suggests the government and ISRO is now taking action to squelch that new private sector. This order will limit the commercial industry’s ability to hire experienced ISRO people, thus slowing its development.

Similar actions were taken by NASA in the 2000s and 2010s when the agency began its transition to the capitalism model. There was great resistance within the government to ceding power to the private sector, resistance that still exists and showed itself again during the Biden administration. That government effort in the U.S. however has largely failed, because the public has elected a government (Trump and the Republicans in Congress) that favors the private sector, and because the private sector is getting the job done.

How things will play out in India remains unknown. Its administrative state is much more powerful, and its cultural traditions are not grounded as much in private enterprise, as is the U.S.

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South Africa makes deal with Amazon for Leo internet service

8:42 am

Amazon Leo logo

While SpaceX has still not made a deal with South Africa to provide Starlink service to its citizens, Amazon yesterday announced it has finalized its own agreement to allow a South Africa telecommunications operation to sell its Leo satellite internet service there.

Amazon Leo has entered into an agreement with Herotel, South Africa’s largest fixed internet service provider, to bring satellite internet to South Africa through a new service called evry, powered by Amazon Leo. Under the agreement, Herotel will use Amazon Leo’s technology as part of Herotel’s new service evry. Evry is expected to launch commercially in 2027 to connect residential customers in South Africa. This is the first Amazon Leo agreement of this kind in Africa.

SpaceX initially refused to agree to the South African government’s demands that the company sell some ownership of its company to locals under a racial quota system that favored blacks. That racial quota system however was lifted in December 2025. For some reason however SpaceX has not worked out a deal since then (possibly because it refused to pay bribes), and so Amazon apparently moved in and grabbed the business.

Whether SpaceX can work something out as well is not known. Regardless, the competition is good, as it is always better to have more than one option in any product field.

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Katalyst engineers overcome some issues in commissioning its Link rescue spacecraft

8:23 am

Image of Link firing one of its engines during check-out
Image of Link firing one of its ion engines during check-out.
Click for original.

It appears there were some communications and attitude control issues soon after Katalyst’s Link spacecraft was launched by Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket, issues that the company’s engineers have now resolved as they prepare Link for its rescue mission to the Gehrels-Swift space telescope.

LINK launched July 3, completed its initial postlaunch sequence, and began system checkouts. After completing solar array deployment and establishing communications, Katalyst now has commissioned LINK’s power systems and avionics, as well as conducted propulsion system checkouts. This has involved firing the spacecraft’s xenon-fueled thrusters, which will be used to travel to Swift and slowly raise its orbital altitude over the course of several months.

The Katalyst team also quickly addressed early communications and attitude control issues seen during flight operations, including an issue with one of the spacecraft’s three reaction wheels. After identifying the cause, they implemented flight software patches and operational updates that restored reliable communications and stable attitude control.

The spacecraft’s check-out will continue for another two weeks or so, and then engineers will use its ion-engines to slowly raise its orbit to match Gehrels-Swift’s.

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