Category: Behind The Black

July 20, 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.

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.

  • On July 18, 1966 John Young and Michael Collins launched on the Gemini 10 mission
    They were the first to achieve a clean docking in space, with no problems. After docking with their own Agena target, they then rendezvoused with the Agena target that Gemini 8 had docked with but shortly thereafter had to make an emergency undocking and return to Earth due to an unexpected thruster firing. Collins then did a spacewalk across to that Gemini 8 Agena, traveling across about 10 feet of space.
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Solar scientists come up with another “method” for predicting the Sun’s future sunspot activity

2:41 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using archival data from the last four sunspot cycles, solar scientists think they have found a new method for predicting the Sun’s future sunspot activity, based on what they claim is a “switch-off” moment in each cycle when the most extreme solar events stop happening.

The new prediction method builds on Professor Chapman’s previously developed ‘sunclock’, which maps the Sun’s irregular cycles onto a standard clock. This revealed that the most extreme space weather does not gradually fade away but instead switches off at a distinct point in each solar cycle.

Professor Chapman’s team has found that the number of sunspots present at this switch-off point is closely linked to the peak number of sunspots in the following solar cycle. This provides a new forecasting method that can predict the strength of the next solar cycle around six to seven years before it reaches its maximum, giving a longer lead time than current methods, which rely on waiting until the solar minimum.

Sounds good, eh? I would not bet one plug nickel on this prediction method. It might work, or it might not, but even if it does, it is not based on any real understanding of why sunspots rise and fall every eleven years. Nor does it explain why the Sun’s magnetic field flips polarity in line with that sunspot cycle. This prediction is merely using past behavior to predict future actions, a method that every stock broker will tell you is fraught with danger.

Knowing however that there is a moment in each cycle where the most active sunspots and solar flares stop happening is useful. This pattern could help theorists figure out what is really going on inside the Sun.

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Another bad indicator relating to the UK’s space effort

2:30 pm

A space junk removal demo mission first proposed in 2024 by the United Kingdom’s space agency has apparently missed a deadline for issuing the final contract award to one of two startups to fly the mission.

The UK Space Agency has missed a deadline to award a £75.6 million contract for the country’s first mission to capture and remove dead satellites from low Earth orbit.

A call for Phase 3 of the mission’s development was published in July 2025, with the contract initially expected to be awarded by 30 March 2026. However, in its final annual report as an independent entity, published on 14 July, UKSA admitted that the contract award had been delayed. The agency is now targeting summer 2026 but has not explained the reason for the delay or provided a more precise timetable.

The two companies are Astroscale (based in Japan with a UK division) and Clearspace, which has been attempting to launch a junk removal mission for the European Space Agency now for almost a decade, with nothing getting off the ground.

This delay should not be a surprise. The Labor government that is presently in power has been in the process of shutting down the space agency, even as it has allocated a half billion dollars for space-related government projects. It has also done nothing to eliminate the red tape that is squelching its private space industry.

It thus makes great sense that this contract hasn’t been issued. For one, the bureaucracy involved is probably in chaos as the Labor government rearranges deck chairs. For another, there is probably little interest by the private sector to do any work in the UK, because the red tape there is stifling, and has already bankrupted two rocket startups and one spaceport. It is very possible both companies declined to bid. Or if they did, the confusion in the government made any decisions impossible.

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India’s government invests approximately $7 million in home-grown satellite company

9:21 am

In a complicated arrangement involving the Indian government and an Indian venture capital firm, the Indian satellite company Dhruva announced last week that it obtained approximately $7 million in private investment.

The money comes out of a government investment fund of just under $200 million — dubbed the Antariksh Venture Capital Fund — established by the agency IN-SPACe but administered by the venture capital company SIDBI Venture Capital Limited. Unlike India’s space agency ISRO — which has for decades run India’s entire space program — IN-SPACe is focused on encouraging a competitive and independent private space sector.

This was the first investment in that government investment fund, coming just before the first successful launch this past weekend by a private Indian rocket company, Skyroot. Besides building satellites, Dhruva appears to also act as a satellite aggregator, obtaining launch services from rocket companies for other satellite companies and then serving to integrate and deploy their satellites. With this investment the company now has $330 million in capital in hand.

It is a bit puzzling why this first investment went to a satellite company, rather than a rocket startup, of which India has several. For India’s space sector to really grow, it needs home-grown commercial rockets. Satellites can’t reach orbit without rockets.

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Russia launches 2nd set of Rassvet satellites

8:51 am

Russia today successfully launched 16 more Rassvet satellites as part of its own Starlink-type internet constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

This launch was originally scheduled for April but never occurred. Furthermore, Russia issued multiple flight plans for this launch covering a period of 24 hours, all likely designed to prevent the Ukraine from targeting the actual launch with drones. The Ukraine considers this constellation a direct military threat, and it appears it has attempted to use drones to attack Plesetsk during earlier launches.

With this launch the Rassvet constellation has 31 satellites in orbit. It is being built by Bureau (Buro) 1440, a so-called private company in Russia, which hopes to get the full 700+ satellite constellation in orbit by 2035.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

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

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 80.

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

1:20 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T-4:00 minutes on July 13th
Starship/Superheavy at T-4:00 minutes on July 16th.
Click for source.

Now that SpaceX has confirmed the launch date for the 13th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy for July 20, 2026 July 23, 2026, with a 90-minute launch window beginning at 5:45 pm (Central), it is time to provide my readers with the many ways they can watch the launch. I have embedded several live streams below. When SpaceX makes its own live stream available I will add it here as well.

The flight plan remains the same as last week, a low orbit that will bring the ship down in the Indian Ocean. The main goals are to test the Raptor-3 engines, bring Superheavy back as planned, relight a Raptor-3 engine in orbit, and test the ship’ thermal tile system during re-entry. In addition, the company will attempt to deploy 20 actual Starlink satellites rather than dummies.
» Read more

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SpaceX: 13th Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch now set for July 23, 2026

9:09 am

UPDATE: Less than a few hours after I posted this announcement, SpaceX changed the launch date from July 20th to July 23rd. The post below now reflects that change.

SpaceX today issued an update confirming the company’s intention to launch Starship/Superheavy on its 13th test orbital launch July 23, 2026, one week after the rocket had a launch abort at T-0 seconds.

The 90-minute launch window opens at 5:45 pm (Central).

The update describes the mission, which remains unchanged from last week, but provides no details as to what the company has done to correct the issue that caused four Raptor-3 engines in Superheavy to misfire. Previously Musk had indicated they would replace two engines, but no further information has as yet been released.

Regardless, it is clear the company is pushing hard to complete this launch, as it wishes to go to full orbital test flights on the next mission.

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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.

2 comments

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.

4 comments

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.

35 comments

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.

55 comments

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.

3 comments

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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