Category: Behind The Black

FAA cancels one of three public meetings on the Starship/Superheavy environmental reassessment

9:38 am

The FAA today announced that it has canceled one of three meetings that it plans to hold in the Brownsville region next week to obtain public feedback on SpaceX’s request to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica to 25 launches per year.

The FAA was scheduled to hold in-person public meetings on January 7th and 9th, 2025. However, due to the designation of January 9, 2025 as a National Day of Mourning to honor the late former President Jimmy Carter, the January 9th meetings are now cancelled.

The meeting schedule is now as follows:

  • In-person meeting: Tuesday, January 7, 2025; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT at the Texas Southmost College, Jacob Brown Auditorium, 600 International Boulevard, Brownsville, TX 78520
  • Virtual on-line meeting: Monday, January 13, 2025; 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT Registration Link here. Dial-in phone number: 888-788-0099 (Toll Free), Webinar ID: 879 9253 6128, Passcode: 900729

As I noted in November when the new environmental reassessment and these meetings were announced, it is practically certain that the fringe anti-Musk activists groups SaveRGV, Sierra Club, the Friends of Wildlife Corridor, and the fake Indian Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas (which never existed in Texas) are organizing to be there in force, demanding SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations be shut down.

If the rest of the public, which is the vast majority of the Brownsville community, does not show up to counter these fringe activists, it will make it much easier for the bureaucrats who hate Musk at the FAA to take action against SpaceX. It is essential that the business community at least make an appearance, as the arrival of SpaceX has brought billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to Brownsville.

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Parker confirms it gathered science data during its record-breaking solar fly-by on December 24th

9:06 am

Parker flight plan
The flight plan for Parker. Click for original.

Engineers have now confirmed that during its record-breaking close fly-by of the Sun on December 24, 2024 all of its science instruments functioned as planned and were able to collect data as to that previously unexplored near-solar environment.

Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at 430,000 miles per hour — faster than any human-made object has ever moved. A beacon tone, received in the mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, late in the evening of Thursday, Dec. 26, confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the encounter safely.

The telemetry (or housekeeping data) that APL began receiving on Jan. 1 provided more detail on the spacecraft’s operating status and condition. It showed, for example, that Parker had executed the commands that had been programmed into its flight computers before the flyby, and that its science instruments were operational during the flyby itself.

A full download of this data will occur later this month, after the spacecraft further retreats from the Sun and gets in a better position to transmit it.

This ain’t the end, however. Parker has two more similar close-up fly-ups coming in March and June. Neither will break December’s records, but both will be almost as close to the Sun. After this the probe’s primary mission will be complete. At the moment there is no word if it will get extended should the probe survive intact after those fly-bys.

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A detailed review of space-related legislation in the ending session of Congress

8:55 am

Link here. The story can be summed up in one sentence that applies to everything this 118th Congress tried to do: Not much legislation was passed.

One piece of legislation that did pass however could have a major impact during the upcoming Trump administration in shutting down the federal red tape at the FAA that has been squelching the space industry:

The FY2025 bill [on national security] also extends the “learning period” that prohibits new FAA commercial human spaceflight regulations, and authority to provide third-party indemnification for commercial space launches and reentries, for three years each to January 1, 2028 and September 30, 2028 respectively. Those provisions wouldn’t ordinarily be in an NDAA, but it became clear that other legislation wouldn’t make it through and this was the best solution since the deadlines were near.

For the past three years, the FAA has essentially been violating this law by its strict regulation of SpaceX and others in developing new rockets. While Trump already has a great deal of legal power to cut a lot of red tape, the extension of the “learning period” gives him clear authority to do so. It even gives him the authority to tell the FAA that its odious Part 450 regulations do not apply to any rocket under development. And if he does so it will be backed by the clear bi-partisan approval of Congress, which despite its factional and partisan conflicts felt this learning period so important it united to get it past.

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On the radio

3:40 pm

This coming Sunday night, January 5, 2025, I will be doing two hours on Coast to Coast with George Noory, beginning at 11 pm (Pacific). I hope my readers tune in and ask questions.

Then, on Thursday, January 9, 2025, I will appear for two hours on the UAP Cross-Fire podcast, available both here and on youtube.

Both shows should be quite entertaining, especially because the hosts will likely be taking a different take on space and the future.

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January 2, 2025 Quick space links

3:33 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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India and SpaceX announce their planned launch goals for 2025

1:21 pm

We now have predictions from both India and SpaceX on the number of times each will attempt orbital launches in 2025.

In a tweet from India’s space agency ISRO today, the agency announced it plans ten launches in 2025. This count includes one launch of its man-rated Heavy Lift Vehicle-Mark 3 (HLVM3) rocket in March, testing its unmanned Gaganyaan manned capsule, one launch of its slightly smaller LVM3 rocket, four launches of its older GSLV rocket, three of its even smaller PSLV rocket, and one of its smallest new rocket, the SSLV. The last two the Indian government hopes to transfer to the private sector. (Note: The tweet says nine launches, but the graphic shows ten.)

This prediction does not include any additional orbital launches that India’s two private rocket startups, Agnikul and Skyroot, might attempt. Both have said they hope to do their first launches in 2025.

SpaceX meanwhile is hoping to smash its own record in 2024. According to comments made by the company’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell in mid-December (comments that I missed at the time), the company is planning 175 to 180 launches in 2025. This increase will likely come from two sources. First, it is my understanding that the company is adding another drone ship to its recovery fleet, allowing for more Falcon 9 launches. Second, it is probably going to be able to conduct Starship/Superheavy launches much more frequently, because the Trump administration is almost certainly going to eliminate much of the FAA regulatory red tape that has stymied the entire American rocket industry these last four years.

In the coming weeks I expect more nations and companies will announce their intended launch targets for 2025.

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Sunspot update: Is this sunspot maximum over, or will it become another doubled peaked maximum?

12:43 pm

Well, after almost fifteen years it had to happen at last. In preparing to do my monthly sunspot update today, which I had done every month since I started Behind the Black in 2010, I discovered that I had completely forgotten to do the update in December. Sorry about that.

No matter, the changes from month-to-month are not often significant, and fortunately that turned out to be the case in November and December of 2024. Since my last update at the beginning of November 2024, sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Sun has been relatively stable, based on NOAA’s monthly graph tracking that activity. In November the activity dropped slightly, only to recover a small amount in December.
» Read more

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The global launch industry in 2024: A year of amazing highs and depressing lows, with the best yet to come

9:40 am

For the past five years the entire global rocket industry has experienced a revolution that has resulted in a rise in global launch numbers unprecedented since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. 2024 was no different, with the total number of successful launches topping 256, two to four times the average number of launches that had occurred yearly prior to 2020.

This success has almost entirely been driven by the arrival of many private rocket companies competing for government and commercial business — led largely by SpaceX — aided by the decision by governments worldwide to get out of the way and let private enterprise do the job. The result has been spectacular, so much so that it now seem possible in the very near future to see humans finally revisiting the Moon and even getting to Mars and the asteroids.

At the same time, 2024 saw some significant signs that this success is not guaranteed, and could vanish in an instant if care is not taken.

The graph below, my annual count of launches world wide, provides the groundwork for these conclusions.
» Read more

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A detailed look at SpaceX’s investors and its stock valuations

8:52 am

Link here. The article provides a good review of some of SpaceX’s major investors as well as the recent rounds whereby employees who hold common stock are allowed to sell some shares as a bonus.

Secondary sales like this remain one of the only ways that employees have to sell their shares. Another bit of good news for employees in this sale [in December] was that the $70 per share price was an improvement over the previous tender of $56 when adjusting for the stock split, Bloomberg reported at the time. And Bloomberg also reported last month that the next tender offer may be as high as $108 to $110 apiece.

SpaceX remains a private company however. This is not stock that can be traded on the stock market, but privately issued (under strict rules) to raise money without giving stock-holders rights to operate the company.

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January 1, 2025 Quick space links

4:16 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who surprised me today with these links. I had assumed he’d take the day off!

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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An apparent rocket part falls in Kenya

10:00 am

What appears to have been a rocket stage separation ring fell in Kenya on December 30, 2024, and local officials from Kenya’s space agency are attempting to confirm and identify the source.

The pictures of the ring show a lot of details, so it should not be hard to identify what rocket it came from, assuming the owner is willing to come forward. While most will do so, China might not.

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Seventh Starship/Superheavy test launch now targeting January 10, 2025

9:55 am

Based on a single word tweet by Elon Musk as well as the FAA’s license approval, it now appears that SpaceX is targeting January 10, 2025 for the seventh Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch.

According to the FAA license, the launch window that day opens at 4 pm (Central), with backup launch opportunities each day through January 15th.

Reading that license is very illuminating. The depth in which the FAA now demands compliance from SpaceX is beyond daunting, and illustrates the mission creep the agency has used to grow its power. Based on a recent Supreme Court ruling, the company likely has grounds to sue and win, correctly claiming that Congress never gave it such power over so many things, and that its regulatory oversight is unconstitutional.

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Space Force starts environmental impact study of SpaceX’s launches at Vandenberg

3:35 pm

In mid-December the Space Force initiated a new environmental impact study (EIS), reviewing SpaceX’s request to significantly increasing the number of launches it would do out of Vandenberg, an increase that could climb to as much as a hundred launches per year.

The EIS will examine the environmental impacts from the redevelopment of Space Launch Complex (SLC) 6 for use by SpaceX for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. The Space Force awarded SpaceX access to SLC-6, aka “Slick Six,” in 2023 after the final launch of United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 from the site.

SLC-6 was built in the 1960s for the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which was canceled in 1969 before any launches took place. It was later converted to support Space Shuttle launches, but mothballed after the Challenger accident in 1986 before hosting a single launch. ULA took over the site in 2006.

The EIS would also allow SpaceX to conduct up to 100 launches annually between SLC-6 and its existing launch pad at Vandenberg, SLC-4. That includes booster landings at both launch sites as well as droneships downrange.

This is where we are are in the first quarter of the 21st century. Nothing new can be done anywhere without detailed environmental impact statements that take months, sometimes years, to complete, and almost always conclude that the proposed work can proceed without harm. Often however that conclusion can only come if the government and the private sector agree to funnel cash to environmental causes and organizations, if only to shut them up and prevent further lawsuits. (That’s exactly what happened in Boca Chica. Expect the same now in California.)

It must be noted again that we now have almost eight decades of empirical proof in both Florida and California that rocket launches do no significant harm to the environment, and that if anything they act to protect wildlife by creating large undeveloped refuges in the surrounding land. These new impact statements forced on SpaceX in California, in Florida, and in Boca Chica are therefore nothing more than a government power play, done in order to tell everyone who really is boss.

A new boss however takes over the executive branch of the federal government in only a few weeks. I suspect he will not look kindly at these games. Expect some quick changes almost immediately.

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December 31, 2024 Quick space links

3:20 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.

Before we get to the links, I think it is time to send a hearty Happy New Year to all my readers. Thank you again for making 2024 the best year so far. And best of all, next year should even be better!

  • SpaceX touts the completion of its fifth manned Dragon capsule
    The tweet says this will be the last manned Dragon capsule, but Jay suspects that means the “last built in California.” He thinks future capsules will be built in Florida, the work driven from California due to its almost communist government. I’m not so sure. SpaceX remember is hoping Starship will replace the capsules in the future. Why build more in that case?
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A strange dune in the high southern latitudes of Mars

2:56 pm

A strange dune in the high latitudes of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 24, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have also rotated the image so that north is to the top.

The scientists label this a “dune with seasonally persistent light-toned features.” As the location is in the high southern latitudes, only about 800 miles from the south pole, light-toned features should vary by seasons, as such features usually signal the coming and going of frost, whether it be water ice or dry ice. In this case however the light tones remain from season to season, which suggests the lighter colors are intrinsic to the ground and possibly signal some interesting geology or mineralogy.

The color strip down the center of the dune is an effort to decipher this question. According to the explanation about the colors [pdf] provided by the science team, the orange and light green probably indicates fine dust, while the greenish area along the ridge’s rim as well as its eastern slope suggests frost. Thus, based on the superficial information available to the public, the colors tell us little.
» Read more

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Italian government awards former Ukrainian startup a $1.14 million development loan

10:07 am

A former Ukrainian startup, Kurs Orbital, has won a $1.14 million loan from Italy’s National Agency for Investment Attraction and Business Development (Invitalia) in order to build and sell its module providing rendezvous and docking capabilities for satellites.

Kurs Orbital was founded in 2021 by the former director of Ukraine’s space agency, Volodymyr Usov. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the company relocated to Turin, Italy. The company is currently developing its ARCap system, a rendezvous and proximity operations module that can be integrated with a wide range of vehicles, including satellites, orbital transfer vehicles, and even cargo or crew spacecraft. Possible applications for the technology include satellite life extension missions, in-orbit servicing, and space debris removal.

On 30 December, the company announced that it had secured a €1.1 million soft loan from Italy’s National Agency for Investment Attraction and Business Development (Invitalia). A soft loan provides the borrower with more favourable terms than traditional lenders typically offer. The loan was awarded through the agency’s Smart&Start programme, which focuses on supporting the growth of innovative startups by providing financing of between €100,000 and €1.5 million.

The Kurs rendezvous and docking system was first developed in the Ukraine for the Soviet-era space stations. When the Soviet Union broke up it continued to sell them to Roscosmos, but over time the Putin government increasingly worked to block these deals as it tried (and generally failed) to develop the capabilities within Russia. The Ukrainian companies then began marketing their products, with some success, in the west. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of the Ukraine those companies have either died, or done what Kurs Orbital did, move to the west.

While this story might resemble the actions of the Chinese government as described in my previous post, there is one very fundamental difference. In Italy the law protects the property rights of this company. The Italian government might provide it loans and assistance, like the Chinese, but it does not have the power or right to take it over, at its whim, as the Chinese communists can.

The story also illustrates the foolishness of Russia’s power-hungry policies. It not only has wasted its youth and industry on a useless war, it has driven away companies and technology that formerly gave it capabilities it now lacks.

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Chinese pseudo-company gets major cash influx for its Starlink copycat constellation

9:53 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Genesat, which is making the satellites for the 14,000 Starlink-type satellite constellation being developed by the Chinese pseudo-company SpaceSail, has been awarded $137 million in cash from a variety of Chinese sources, most of which are government agencies focused on encouraging development by these pseudo-companies.

Superficially everything about these companies appears real. They compete for contracts and investment capital, and can only function if they make a profit. They also compete with other similar Chinese pseudo-companies. The reality however is that they only exist because the Chinese government wants them to. For example, Genesat was formed by a partnership of SpaceSail and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (which is entirely government-run). And SpaceSail was formed earlier with support of both the national and local Shanghai governments. For example, consider today’s story:

Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, also known as Genesat, announced the more than 1 billion yuan (approximately $137 million) funding round Dec. 30. The main investors include China’s National Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading Fund, China Development Bank Science and Technology Innovation, Guosheng Capital, SIMIC Capital and Shanghai FTZ Fund.

The first two backers are both government agencies created to funnel government cash to these pseudo-companies.

Overall this approach by the communist Chinese government has worked remarkably well. It has created an robust space industry within a competitive and innovative atmosphere. That industry only exists however as long as the present policies of the Chinese government exist. If there is a major change in leadership it all could vanish in a moment, as there are no property rights in China. A new government could do as Putin did in Russia, consolidate all these pseudo-companies into a central government-run agencies in order to more closely control them.

For the present however China’s pseudo-capitalist approach means it will be a major player in space in the coming years. That success might even lead to a positive change in government, throwing the communists out of power eventually. It is not only demonstrating the advantages of freedom and competition over a top-down command economy, it is developing a class of people doing it. They might eventually have enough wealth and power to take over the government and changes things for real.

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SpaceX launches another set of Starlink satellites

10:48 pm

SpaceX tonight completed its last launch of 2024, successfully placing 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.

The first stage completed its sixteenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Though there is always a chance that China will fly one more unannounced mission in the next day, it looks like the numbers below will be the final totals in the leader board for the 2024 launch race:

137 SpaceX
65 China
17 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 157 to 98, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 137 to 118.

My full annual global launch report, showing the full set of launches in 2024, will be posted later this week.

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India gets nine bids involving 30 companies on proposal to build satellite constellation

4:01 pm

Capitalism in space: India’s space agency in charge of promoting commercial space, In-Space, has received nine different bids involving 30 Indian companies on its proposal that an Earth observation satellite constellation be built by a private company, not by the country’s space agency ISRO.

The regulator had sought “expressions of interest” (EoI) in July to build home-grown satellite constellations as part of a broader strategy to monetize the sector and ensure data sovereignty.

India is doubling down on its small satellite and data services market to carve out a leading role in the global commercialization of space. The market for such services, increasingly key for industries ranging from telecoms to climate monitoring, is projected to reach $45 billion by 2030.

The applicants for IN-SPACe’s latest effort in this regard include startups such as Google-backed Pixxel and Baring Private Equity-backed SatSure, as well as larger entities like Tata Group’s Tata Advanced Systems. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is all part of the Modi government’s effort to shift from a government-run space program, controlled by ISRO, to the capitalist model where private companies compete for business and there is no “program” at all, at least not one that controls everything. The government becomes nothing more than one of many customers, buying services and products from the private sector to achieve its “program”. The companies in that sector then follow their own goals, and profit and innovation dictate who succeeds best. The result under this freedom model is always more development faster for less cost.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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December 30, 2024 Quick space links

3:52 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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Beware the DEI shell game

1:09 pm

Don't trust it to do the right thing
Don’t trust the leftists who run it to do the right thing

In the past few months the conservative has been repeatedly celebrating the retreat of the racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) movement. From corporations to universities DEI departments are being shut down.

Today I report on one of the most recent examples, but I do so as a warning. Just because a university or company announces plans to shut down a DEI department does not mean this racist policy is no longer being taught or used in hiring. In many cases, the shut down is merely a shell game to fool the general public while the policies continue, under the radar.

On December 17, 2024, the University of Iowa announced that was shuttering a number of programs, including its department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, and combining them into a new department dubbed the School of Social and Cultural Analysis. From the university’s press release:

Under the proposed plan, the college would close the departments of American Studies and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, as well as the current majors in American Studies and in Social Justice, which have fewer than 60 students combined, and create a new major in Social and Cultural Analysis. The existing programs have limited faculty and overlapping curricula, causing challenges for faculty in sustaining teaching capacity. The new curricula will not only streamline operations but offer clarity and flexibility in students’ educational pathways.

“Right now, these programs are administered by multiple department chairs and multiple directors,” said Roland Racevskis, CLAS associate dean for the arts and humanities. “Under this proposed plan, the school would have a single leadership team dedicated to overseeing the operations of the programs. This new structure would provide better coordination of curriculum across these related programs, easier pathways for degree completion, and support for interdisciplinary research opportunities.”

Existing minors and certificates in associated areas would move into the new school. No changes to graduate programs are currently being proposed. [emphasis mine]

One of the reasons for this action is that the state legislature had recently passed an education appropriations bill [pdf] that specifically banned spending any money on DEI-type programs. From page 8 of the bill:
» Read more

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A fading supernova 650 million light years away

10:18 am

A fading supernova 650 million light years away
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in March 2024, and shows the fading blue light of a supernova that was first discovered by another survey telescope six weeks earlier. The galaxy, dubbed LEDA 22057, is estimated to be about 650 million light years away.

The supernova is the bright spot in the galaxy’s southeast quadrant near the edge of the galaxy’s bright body. From today’s caption release:

SN 2024PI is classified as a Type Ia supernova. This type of supernova requires a remarkable object called a white dwarf, the crystallised core of a star with a mass less than about eight times the mass of the Sun. When a star of this size uses up the supply of hydrogen in its core, it balloons into a red giant, becoming cool, puffy and luminous. Over time, pulsations and stellar winds cause the star to shed its outer layers, leaving behind a white dwarf and a colourful planetary nebula. White dwarfs can have surface temperatures higher than 100,000 degrees and are extremely dense, packing roughly the mass of the Sun into a sphere the size of Earth.

While nearly all of the stars in the Milky Way will one day evolve into white dwarfs — this is the fate that awaits the Sun some five billion years in the future — not all of them will explode as Type Ia supernovae. For that to happen, the white dwarf must be a member of a binary star system. When a white dwarf syphons material from a stellar partner, the white dwarf can become too massive to support itself. The resulting burst of runaway nuclear fusion destroys the white dwarf in a supernova explosion that can be seen many galaxies away.

The rate in which this supernova fades will help astronomers untangle the processes that cause these gigantic explosions. Though the caption makes it sound as if we know how this happens, we really don’t. There are a lot of assumptions and guesses involved in the description above, based on the limited knowledge astronomers have gathered over the past few centuries looking at many supernovae many millions of light years away.

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India launches its first attempt to do an in-space docking demo

9:46 am

India’s space agency ISRO today successfully launched a mission, dubbed Spadex, to make its first attempt to do an in-space unmanned docking between two satellites, its PSLV rocket lifting off from its coastal Sriharikota spaceport. From the Spadex mission webpage:

The SpaDeX mission consists of two small spacecraft (about 220 kg each) to be launched by PSLV-C60, independently and simultaneously, into a 470 km circular orbit at 55° inclination, with a local time cycle of about 66 days. The demonstrated precision of the PSLV vehicle will be utilized to give a small relative velocity between the Target and Chaser spacecraft at the time of separation from the launch vehicle. This incremental velocity will allow the Target spacecraft to build a 10-20 km inter-satellite separation with respect to the Chaser within a day. At this point, the relative velocity between the Target will be compensated using the propulsion system of the Target spacecraft.

At the end of this drift arrest maneuver, the Target and Chaser will be in the same orbit with identical velocity but separated by about 20 km, known as Far Rendezvous. With a similar strategy of introducing and then compensating for a small relative velocity between the two spacecraft, the Chaser will approach the Target with progressively reduced inter-satellite distances of 5 km, 1.5 km, 500 m, 225 m, 15 m, and 3 m, ultimately leading to the docking of the two spacecraft. After successful docking and rigidization, electrical power transfer between the two satellites will be demonstrated before undocking and separation of the two satellites to start the operation of their respective payloads for the expected mission life of up to two years.

For India’s plans to build a manned space station this capability is essential. It will also be needed for its plans to send humans to the Moon.

As this was only India’s fifth launch in 2024, the leader board for the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:

136 SpaceX
65 China
17 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 156 to 98, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 136 to 118.

At the moment only one more launch remains in 2024, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch scheduled for tomorrow night. I will be publishing my year-end global launch report later this week.

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ESA approves a slightly smaller preliminary budget for 2025

9:26 am

The council running the European Space Agency (ESA) has now approved a preliminary budget for 2025 of $8 billion, a very slight reduction from the 2024 budget.

According to [ESA’s director general Josef] Aschbacher, the budget includes €4.8 billion in contributions from ESA member states, approximately €1.7 billion from the European Union, and €1.2 billion from “some other sources.” A more detailed breakdown of the 2025 ESA budget will be released during the DG’s annual press briefing, which is expected to occur on 9 January 2025.

It is also expected that the final budget will be higher once the legislatures of ESA’s numerous member states approve their contributions to the agency. Right now German, France, and Italy are the largest contributors. All three governments have in the past two years clearly signaled their determination to support commercial space. This should translate into support for ESA, though the two are becoming increasingly separated. Those nations could also decide there is no reason to give cash to this bureaucracy, and instead use it to directly fund their new private rocket startups.

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China replaces head of its space agency

9:16 am

The man who has headed China’s space agency since 2018 during its most aggressive and successful period, Zhang Kejian, has been replaced by the Chinese government. Zhang has also been removed from another important political post.

Zhang, 63, who has been head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) since May 2018, is to be removed as Party Secretary of the State Administration for National Defense Science, Technology, and Industry (SASTIND), the agency announced Dec. 26. Shan Zhongde, 54, has been appointed as his replacement. The leader of SASTIND typically also heads CNSA and the China Atomic Energy Authority, both of which are subordinate agencies to SASTIND. CNSA has yet to announce the expected change.

China’s state run press provided no explanation for this change, though it also follows the removal of two other high ranking managers this year from another space agency, CASC, that is supervised by CNSA. Those removals are thought related to reports of corruption.

In the past two decades CNSA administrators went on to become heads of Chinese provinces, the approximate equivalent of a state governor in the U.S. and a somewhat powerful position. It appeared the Xi government was using its space agency as a training ground for its future political leaders. This in turn gave its space operations a favorable political position within the government.

Zhang’s removal in this manner and the rumors of corruption suggest this policy failed in his case. Another possibility is ven more significant if true. It might imply Zhang was involved in some power struggle that threatened Xi and his leadership. If this last possibility is so, the present favored political position of China’s space operations might be seriously threatened. Xi might have decided he did not like the power its leaders have garnered, and is now moving to squash it.

This does not mean the government will now move to reduce its space effort. It could mean however that funding will be more closely watched, and new projects questioned and rejected more easily.

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SpaceX completes two launches tonight from opposite coasts

10:09 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully completed two launches. First it placed 20 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 configured for direct-to-cell capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its sixteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Next SpaceX successfully launched four satellites for the smallsat startup Astranis, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, while the two fairing halves completed their 12th and 22nd flights.

Astranis had previously launched one demonstration satellite, proving that its smallsat design could do the work in geosynchronous orbit traditionally done by much larger and more expensive satellites. The four satellites on this launch are its first attempt to provide commercial service. If successful it places this American company in a good position to grab the market share from the older geosynchronous companies like Intelsat, SES, and Eutelsat.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

136 SpaceX
65 China
17 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 156 to 97, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 136 to 117.

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