Category: Behind The Black

The suborbital spaceplane company Dawn Aerospace raises $25 million in private capital

9:19 am

The crew and Mk-II Aurora
The crew and Mk-II Aurora

According to a press release issued June 16, 2026, the suborbital spaceplane company Dawn Aerospace has now raised an additional $25 million in private investment capital, more than doubling the amount of money raised by the company.

Dawn Aerospace today announced the close of its Series B funding round, raising $25 million at a $195 million post-money valuation. The round was led by US-based VC, Balerion Space Ventures.

Since its Series A in 2022, Dawn Aerospace has become the leading provider of non-toxic chemical propulsion worldwide with 200 thrusters in space on more than 50 satellites. Dawn has also flown supersonic with the Aurora suborbital spaceplane, making it the first privately developed aircraft to fly supersonic since the Concorde, and one of only two supersonic UAVs operating globally today.

…Commercially, revenue has grown from less than $3 million in FY22 to well over $15 million with growth of over 90% in the last 12 months and cash-flow positive operations.

The company has not only been flying its supersonic small MK-II Aurora spaceplane numerous times successfully, including doing so at least once twice in one day, it has been successfully selling space on those flights.

None of those flights however have been to space. The company says it launch a bigger version of Aurora within the next 12 months with the capability of reaching suborbital space, and plans to begin regular suborbital spaceplane flights from Oklahoma in 2027. It also hopes to demonstrate in orbit a refueling system for satellites by 2028.

If it succeeds, it will likely grab the market share that Blue Origin’s has abandoned when it shut down its New Shepard suborbital capsule, and that Virgin Galactic has lost by not flying for the past few years. Moreover, even if these companies resume suborbital operations, because Dawn’s spaceplanes are not designed for human flight, they are likely much cheaper to fly, and will grab more business.

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France changes the companies to use its old Diamant shared launchpad

9:00 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad, and the Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup
MaiaSpace.)

France’s CNES space agency, which manages the French Guiana spaceport France owns, has now made some major changes in the rocket startups it will let share use of its old long unused Diamant launchpad.

In 2021, CNES opened a call for interest in a new commercial launch facility that it would build on the grounds of the old Diamant launch site at the Guiana Space Centre. On 25 July 2025, the agency announced seven companies that had been shortlisted: HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Latitude, MaiaSpace, and Avio.

Since that announcement, Avio and HyImpulse have been removed from the list, with CNES offering no explanation. MaiaSpace voluntarily gave up its space after CNES, in September 2024, selected the company to assume control of the former Soyuz launch facility, now renamed ELM2.

The story today is that another new European rocket startup, Sirius Space, has been selected as a user of this pad. Thus, this shared launchpad will now be used by five companies, PLD, Isar, Rocket Factory, Latitude, and Sirius.

Of those five, the first three appear closest to launch, though only PLD intends to use this pad at present. Isar hopes to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport on June 20th (after numerous scrubs). Rocket Factory has requested a launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to launch its RFA-1 rocket in July from the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, but that remains to be seen, considering the CAA’s past slow behavior.

Meanwhile, PLD has committed €35 million to the Diamant site to prepare it for its own first launch of its Miura-5 rocket, presently expected before the end of 2026. How it will get reimbursed when those other companies begin using the launchpad facilities it built and paid for is not clear.

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One more launch yesterday for China

9:00 pm

UPDATE: China finally confirmed the launch today (June 18, 2026).

Original post:
————————–
Though China has still not issued any official update, it appears the Chinese pseudo-company Expace successfully placed seven satellites into orbit yesterday, its Kuaizhou-11 solid-fueled rocket lifting off from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

The launch itself was observed by locals, and later spent stages were found in “established hazard zones” in China. No announcement of any kind however has been released by China. There were rumors of a failure of the upper stages or the payloads, but according to Space Force tracking data, the launch itself appears to have been a success.

Tracking data from the U.S. Space Force suggests that Kuaizhou-11 achieved orbit and deployed seven satellites, then performed a deorbit burn. Based on the orbital inclination, 55 degrees, and source chatter, those satellites likely belong to Future Navigation’s positioning service, being its third deployment of them.

The lack of any announcement so far from China suggests some or all of the satellites had issues.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

72 SpaceX
40 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 72 to 68.

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NASA awards Relativity the launch and management contract for new Mars orbiter

4:31 pm

NASA today awarded the rocket startup Relativity the contract to provide the service module, rocket, and operations for the launch of its proposed four instrument Aeolus Mars orbiter, focused on studying the Martian atmosphere.

NASA will provide the Aeolus atmospheric‑science instrument payload suite, while Relativity Space supplies the spacecraft, rocket, and cruise operations necessary to deliver the instruments to Mars.

…Aeolus, scheduled to launch in 2028, is a NASA‑developed suite of four complementary instruments designed to provide the first integrated, daily, global view of Martian winds, temperatures, dust, and clouds. By improving models for dust, winds, temperature, and seasonal atmospheric behavior, Aeolus will generate the detailed environmental knowledge required to reduce risk for future crewed and uncrewed landings. These measurements will directly inform entry, descent, and landing systems and support safer, more predictable mission planning for astronauts.

…NASA will support operations of science instruments for at least one Martian year, while Relativity Space maintains the spacecraft.

The announcement made no mention of contract price. Relativity meanwhile has only launched once, a failure of its small Terran-1 rocket in 2023, after which the company abandoned that 3D-printed design to focus on its larger Terran-R rocket, which it hopes to launch for the first time before the end of this year.

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Gwynne Shotwell: Starship flight 13 in about a month, flights monthly thereafter

3:26 pm

According to a short clip from an interview with SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell earlier this week, she stated the company expects to fly the next Superheavy/Starship mission, #13, in about a month, and will then begin monthly test flight thereafter.

Full orbital flights should begin with #14, “and then from there on out.”

She also expressed certainty about an operational Starship in orbit before the end of the year. That likely includes a deployment of Starlink satellites, as well as a likely refueling test mission involving two Starships. In an October 2025 Starship update SpaceX described this mission, noting it was targeting a late 2026 launch:

It will start with a Starship launched from Starbase to spend an extended time on orbit, gathering data on vehicle propulsion and thermal behavior on an extended duration mission, including long duration propellant storage and boil-off characterization. A second Starship will then launch to rendezvous with the first to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer in Earth orbit.

All the evidence continues to suggest the company is going to meet this schedule, or only miss it by a few months at most.

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Spotting dozens of Martian dust devils in one observation

10:50 am

Overview map

Dozens of active dust devils in one image
Click for source.

Using Europe’s Mars Express orbiter, scientists have found it is possible to identify multiple active dust devils at a time on the surface of Mars.

The circles on the image to the right shows dozens of such dust devils, at the outlet region of a valley on Mars dubbed Mamers Valles, located at the western end of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country (as shown on the overview map above), because practically every image of this region shows glacial features. This location is where Mamer Valles drains into the northern lowland plains.

Mars Express is uniquely equipped to spot these mini whirlwinds. To form a single image using its High Resolution Stereo Camera – the instrument responsible for these new snapshots – the spacecraft combines sequential views from up to nine separate camera channels (which look at Mars in a different colour, from a different direction, or a mix of the two). If nothing changes on the martian surface while these are being taken, the multiple perspectives align – but if something is moving about, it stands out clearly from its surroundings.

In this new set of images, Mars Express captures not one but dozens of active dust devils.

The image to the right covers about a hundred miles from top to bottom. It is part of a long term project using Mars Express to map the dust devil activity on the entire Martian surface. Not surprisingly, dust devils do not occur everywhere in equal amounts. It appears they favor certain locations, with more generally found in the high latitudes of the cratered southern hemisphere.

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Tianwen-2 appears to be correctly approaching its target asteroid Kamo-oalewa

9:41 am

Though China has made no official update on the status of Tianwen-2, its first asteroid sample return mission, the spacecraft’s maneuvers that amateurs have been tracking suggest it is approaching its target asteroid Kamoʻoalewa as planned, with a rendezvous set for July.

Despite the lack of official updates, the observed maneuvers fit the approach sequence described in Tianwen-2’s mission design. According to a paper by Zhang Rongqiao and colleagues published in SCIENTIA SINICA Physica, Mechanica & Astronomica, the spacecraft’s approach to Kamo’oalewa follows a planned sequence of phases, including the June 7 rendezvous, concluding when the probe has closed to within 20 kilometers of the asteroid’s surface, marking the starting point for close-proximity science operations. This will include global mapping and surveying and sample site selection.

A mission engineer, delivering a presentation on behalf of Zhang He at the 35th Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) June 11, confirmed Tianwen-2 is scheduled to arrive at Kamo’oalewa in July, without providing details on current distance from the asteroid.

The mission is somewhat similar in concept to NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex and Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid missions, both of which rendezvoused with an asteroid and grabbed samples to return to Earth. China however has posted little information about Tianwen-2, including few pictures. One can’t help wondering if this reticence is because the spacecraft’s design its stolen, and China doesn’t want to make this obvious. It is known that China hacked into the computer systems of JPL, NASA, and Japan’s space agency JAXA.

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The satellite repair startup Katalyst raises $12 million in private investment capital

9:23 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

The startup Katalyst, which aims to become a major robotic satellite servicing company and is about to launch its first mission to rescue NASA’s Gehrels-Swift space telescope, has just completed a funding round where it raised $12 million in private investment capital.

Katalyst Space raised $12 million to develop Katalyst’s Nexus robotic spacecraft and expand satellite servicing to multi-orbit, multi-mission operations. … It’s a space robot that will reposition, repair, refuel, refit satellites post-launch, and build the next generation of space infrastructure.

The funding round was led by Geodesic Capital, with significant participation from Fortitude Ventures and other investors.

Nexus’ first mission in 2027 will be to geosynchronous orbit, though it is not yet determined what satellite the spacecraft will service. The company appears to be in negotiation with both the government and commercial satellite operators.

Meanwhile, Katalyst’s Link spacecraft is now integrated within Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket, awaiting a planned launch later this month. That rescue mission, only awarded to Katalyst by NASA in November 2025, will attempt to capture Gehrels-Swift, which has no capture mechanism, and raise its orbit.

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Cargo Dragon splashes down in Pacific after spending a month at ISS

9:04 am

ISS today, after undocking of cargo Dragon
ISS today, after undocking of cargo Dragon.
Click for original.

SpaceX today successfully recovered a cargo Dragon from ISS, the capsule undocking and splashing down in the Pacific, bringing back a variety of experimental samples and hardware.

Research returning includes bioprinted organ and cartilage tissue, data on improving cryogenic fuel storage for future space missions, and DNA‑inspired materials to develop new cancer treatments. The returning hardware includes an ocular imaging device used to monitor crew members’ eye health, an absorbent bed that filters trace contaminants from cabin air, and a separator pump from the waste and hygiene compartment.

The Dragon had spent a month at ISS, just long enough for astronauts to unload its cargo from Earth and place this ISS material aboard.

The graphic to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, shows the present spacecraft docked to ISS. It also shows the location of Russia’s leaking Zvezda module, with a Progress docked to its aft port. Note that a Progress and the permanent modulc are also docked to its bow docking hub. Zvezda is an essential part of the Russian half of ISS. Replacing it is impossible.

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Four launches, two by China, one by SpaceX, and one by Arianespace

8:01 am

The beat goes on. Since yesterday the global rocket industry completed four separate launches on three separate continents.

First, China’s Long March 3B rocket placed “an experimental satellite” into orbit, lifting off yesterday from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China. The state-run press provided no information as to where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

China followed up with the launch of another nine satellites in the Guowang (Satnet) internet constellation, its Long March 12 rocket lifting off today from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. This was the 22nd launch for this constellation, bringing the total number of operational satellites in orbit to 175, according to the report at the link, which also added this:

This year, it is planned that 310 satellites will be deployed, followed by 900 in 2027, and 3,600 every year beginning in 2028 to sustain and grow the constellation. In the 2030s, up to 13,000 satellites could be in operational orbit.

Though launched over the ocean, the rocket’s lower stages fell within the territorial waters of the Philippines, requiring its space agency to issue a warning to local residents and boat owners.

Next SpaceX in the early morning hours successfully launched three Bluebird satellites for AST SpaceMobile’s cell-to-satellite constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. AST now has 10 satellites in orbit. It needs to launch 45 to become operational, something it now hopes to achieve by early 2027.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 16th and 33rd flights respectively. The first stage (B1077) completed its 29th flight (27 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight the stage moved past the space shuttle Columbia, putting it in seventh place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

Finally, several hours later Arianespace launched 36 Leo satellites for Amazon, its Ariane-6 rocket lifting off from French Guiana. This launch was the most powerful configuration of Ariane-6 yet launched and the third in Arianespace’s 18-launch Amazon contract. With this launch, Amazon now has 367 satellites in orbit. It needs to get 3,232 in orbit by July 30, 2029 to meet its FCC license requirements.

This was Arianespace’s third launch this year. The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

72 SpaceX
39 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 72 to 67.

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SpaceX demolishes SLC-6 launchpad at Vandenberg

3:16 pm

The SLC-6 launchpad during my 2015 tour of Vandenberg
The SLC-6 launchpad during my 2015 tour of Vandenberg

As part of its plan to launch both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, SpaceX today demolished the SLC-6 launchpad there that had been built in the 1980s for space shuttle launches (but never used) and then leased to ULA for its Delta rocket (now retired).

Below the fold is a video showing the controlled demolition. The quality is very poor, as it was taken on a smart phone looking at a live stream of the demolition, broadcast inside a nearby auditorium. Vandenberg officials did not allow anyone access to any nearby location to watch live.

SpaceX will now rebuild the pad for its own Falcon rockets. Once completed, it will have two launchpads at Vandenberg, allowing it to up its launch rate there to as much as 100 launches per year.

To get a sense of the size and scale of SLC-6 prior to today, see the photos from my 2015 tour of Vandenberg. The picture to the right attempts to capture it, with its mobile launch tower on left and larger assembly building on the right. As I wrote then when taken inside the rocket assembly building:

I can sum up the experience however in one word: Big! The interior space was incredibly large, so large they have repeated problems chasing birds and raccoons from within it. When we took the elevator to the 20th level, almost the highest point inside, the room echoed with the sounds of birds whistling away. I wonder how they react when a rocket takes off.

It is now gone. It will however be replaced by something better. The history of SLC-6 was that of a largely expensive and under-used facility. SpaceX intends to change that.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
» Read more

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June 16, 2026 Quick space links

2:48 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.

  • Upper stage of China’s Zhuque-2E rocket launched June 9th breaks apart
    The pieces pose only a temporary problem as they are low enough they will all burn up in a few months. The break-up however highlights China’s irresponsibility in this matter, as this is not the only Chinese upper stage to do this. Its Long March 6 did so four times in 2024. Moreover, China makes relatively little effort to bring these upper stages down quickly in a controlled manner.
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On the Space Show tonight

2:15 pm

After reading my essay June 13, 2026 about SpaceX’s IPO and how it lays the groundwork for the colonization of the solar system by private enterprise, David Livingston has scheduled a special Space Show tonight to allow his advisory board to discuss this possibility. I intend to join in.

The show starts at 6 pm (Pacific), aired live on Zoom. To join that Zoom meeting as a video participant you need to be a supporter of the Space Show by donating at least $100.

However, anyone can listen and participate by phone without donating. To do so you need to email David Livingston at drspace@thespaceshow.com prior to airtime for both the Zoom phone numbers and access permission. The name and the phone number you provide should agree with the same on your telephone number log in when you enter the Zoom waiting room. The Space Show is following Zoom security requirements in inviting public participation in this program.

Without the access codes, you will not be able to join.

You can also place a comment below saying you want to participate, and I will then put you in touch with David.

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Astronomers discover a third galaxy devoid of dark matter

12:22 pm

Galaxy DF9
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered a galaxy that apparently has no dark matter, the third such galaxy discovered.

The galaxy, dubbed DF9, is shown to the right. It is part of a region that includes the other two galaxies with no dark matter, suggesting all three were formed in linked circumstances.

The team used Keck Observatory’s Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) to measure the motions of stars inside DF9 by analyzing the light emitted across different wavelengths. Those measurements revealed that DF9 has a mass of only about 100 million Suns, consistent entirely with the galaxy’s visible matter. If the galaxy contained a typical amount of dark matter, astronomers would expect it to be about 100 times more massive.

Dark matter was invented by astronomers in the 1960s to explain the inexplicable fast rotation of stars in the outer fringes of every galaxy they looked at, much faster than accounted for by the visible mass of each galaxy. That fast rotation suggested there was a lot more matter there that could not be seen, as much as one quarter of all mass according to some models. This unseen matter was then labeled “dark matter”, though even three-quarters of a century later it still remains undetected directly.

That these galaxies have no dark matter poses a difficult problem. At present the scientists are trying to come up with scenarios for creating these galaxies without it, but I suspect they will be hard-pressed to come up with any theory that convinces anyone.

I can’t help wondering if the problem isn’t the fast rotation of the stars, but the observations themselves. Maybe there is something we are missing or are unable to detect, because of the vast distances and faint nature of the light. Either way, dark matter, there or not, remains one of the big fundamental mysteries of cosmology.

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Curiosity sees smooth ground for the first time in years

11:01 am

June 12, 2026 Curiosity panorama
Click for full resolution version. Click here, here, and here for original images.

Overview mapd
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three pictures taken on June 12, 2026 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity (see here, here, and here). It shows the immediate ground uphill in front of the rover, which appears to be the smoothest ground that Curiosity has seen in about five years, since it entered the foothills at the base of Mount Sharp in 2021.

Since then the terrain has been routinely boulder strewn. In one case, the ground was so rocky and rough that the science team had to back off from their original plans and find a different route.

The panorama above shows something wholly different, a patch of relatively smooth ground with only a scattering of sharp rocks protruding periodically from below. This ground is likely the rover’s first taste of what the science team calls the “yardang unit”, the light colored hills in the lower right of the overview map to the right. For years that team has looked at those hills, wondering what it would be like to drive Curiosity on them. Their geology suggests a much softer terrain, sand shaped into dunes (yardangs) by the wind. The unknown was always whether the ground was structurally strong enough for the rover to traverse it.

It looks like they are about to get their first clue. Based on the panorama above, the ground appears very promising.

On the overview map, the blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, with the red-dotted line is planned route and white-dotted line its actual travels. The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama.

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SpaceX gets an additional $10 billion from its IPO, bringing total raised to $85.7 billion

9:05 am

SpaceX logo

SpaceX yesterday announced that it has raised an additional $10 billion from its initial public offering (IPO) because its original private investors have decided to exercise their option to purchase stock, bringing the total raised to $85.7 billion.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (“SpaceX”) today announced the closing of its initial public offering of an aggregate 638,888,888 shares of its Class A common stock, including the full exercise by the underwriters of their overallotment option to purchase an additional 83,333,333 shares of Class A common stock from SpaceX. The issuance of all shares closed on June 15, 2026, bringing the gross proceeds from the initial public offering to SpaceX to approximately $85.7 billion. The shares of Class A common stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas on June 12, 2026, under the ticker symbol “SPCX.”

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Deutsche Bank Securities, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank, and Wells Fargo Securities acted as book-running managers for the offering. Cantor, Needham & Company, Raymond James, Societe Generale, Stifel, William Blair, BTG Pactual, ING, Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc., Mirae Asset Securities, Mizuho, and Santander acted as co-managers.

The actual cash raised for the company is less than $85.7 billion, as the various financial institutions listed in the second paragraph above get a cut for managing the IPO, which is only 0.75%, the lowest percentage for an IPO since 2010. Thus, SpaceX raised more than $85 billion for its own use.

As I noted a few days ago, this nest egg of cash is only part of the company’s resources. It presently earns about $31 billion in revenue yearly from Starlink and its computer hardware divisions. That number is also certain to rise in the coming years.

Meanwhile, subsequent trading of the company’s stock on Wall Street remains brisk, with the price continuing to rise. It is presently trading at over $200 per share. Though this higher price doesn’t mean more money to SpaceX (as it only represents resales of the stock), it does tell us that the market considers the stock more valuable than its initial price. Thus, the predictions of many financial experts that the IPO was over-valued are so far turning out to be wrong.

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