Category: Behind The Black

SpaceX yesterday completed one launch while China had two launch failures

8:20 am

There were three launches attempts yesterday, though the two by China were both failures.

First, China’s Long March 3B rocket attempted a launch from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China but the rocket failed at some point. All that China’s state-run press said was that “an anomaly occurred during its flight” and “the cause of the failure is under investigation.” We therefore do not know when the failure occurred, or where any of the rocket stages crashed, inside China or elsewhere.

Next, China’s pseudo-company Galactic Energy attempted the first launch of its new Ceres-2 rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. Once again, China’s state-run press provided little information, stating merely that “an anomaly occurred during its flight.”

The Ceres-2, like its predecessor the Ceres-1, is a solid-fueled rocket, though its final stage upgrades the rocket with liquid fuel. Both are based on missile technology, which is why this pseudo-company is “pseudo,” as everything it does is closely supervised by the Chinese government.

Finally, SpaceX placed a National Reconnaissance Office classified satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 2nd flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairings in turn completed their 13th and 30th flights respectively.

The 2026 launch race:

7 SpaceX
4 China

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January 16, 2026 Quick space links

2:55 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.

8 comments

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high resolution camera is showing its age

10:53 am

More data drop-outs from MRO

In a cool image earlier this week I noted that, in going through the archive of images most recently sent back from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) high resolution camera, it appeared the camera was exhibiting more anomalies, and that we must therefore “be prepared for the loss of this camera and orbiter in the somewhat near future.”

In reviewing the archive again yesterday I noticed even more evidence of deterioration, as illustrated by the picture to the left. Not only are there blank vertical strips of no data, but the color drops out of the color strip halfway down, something I had never seen before. Nor was this the only picture with these issues.

I decided to email Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona. who until recently had been the camera’s principal investigator, to find out what is really going on. His answer:

Yes, HiRISE is getting old, just like us. There are 2 issues:

  • 1. Sometimes RED4 fails, leaving a gap in the RED products and color.
  • 2. Bit flips create bad pixels (zeros) in RED1_1 and RED3_1. This can still be mitigated by raising electronics temperatures, and we were just approved for an increase, so this problem should soon be reduced for a year or two. One problem with these increased temperatures is that our calibration isn’t correct, leading to the stripe-ing and strange colors that you noted, although dusty air can also create such issues. The calibration will eventually get updated, but funding is extremely tight.

The first issue explains the drop-out in the color strip. This appears to be a relatively new problem.

The second issue explains the two additional black strips to the right of the color strip. (Bit flips are cases where the radiation of space causes a binary bit to flip randomly from 0 to 1, or visa versa.) Bit flips are something engineers expect in spacecraft, but it appears on MRO they are occurring with more and more frequency.

A third issue, the failure of the electronics unit for CCD RED4 that occurred in August 2023, causes a loss of data in the color strip (see the b&w version of the image above for an example), which the camera team has compensated for using other color filters in that area.

According to McEwen, while the team seems confident the increased temperatures, combined with re-calibration, will fix or reduce issue #2, it is less confident about its impact on the camera’s lifespan.

We wish we knew. We’ve raised temperatures many times and it still works, so we keep raising temperatures incrementally just in case.

All in all, however, McEwen says he expects the high resolution camera to be able to produce images for at as long as MRO operates (at least a decade more), though with time we might be finding the images become narrower and narrower strips.

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Astronomers detect a bar of iron in the center of the Ring Nebula

9:17 am

Composite image showing iron bar inside Ring Nebula
Composite image showing iron bar inside Ring Nebula.
Click for original.

The uncertainty of science: Using a new instrument on the Herschel Telescope in Chile, astronomers have detected a bar of iron cutting across the hole in the center of the Ring Nebula. You can read their paper here.

The cloud of iron atoms, described for the first time in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is in the shape of a bar or strip: it just fits inside the inner layer of the elliptically shaped nebula, familiar from many images including those obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope at infrared wavelengths. The bar’s length is roughly 500 times that of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun and, according to the team, its mass of iron atoms is comparable to the mass of Mars.

The bar does not cross the nebula’s central star, nor does it exhibit the kind of motion seen by jets flowing outward from such stars. From the paper’s conclusion:

At present, there seem to be no obvious explanations that can account for the presence of the narrow ‘bar’ of [Fe v] and [Fe vi] emission seen in our WEAVE spectra to extend across the central regions of the Ring Nebula. Fresh observations of this newly uncovered feature at much higher spectral resolution seem essential to make progress

The scientists toss out the possibility that the bar is the remains of a rocky planet vaporized at some point in the system’s past, but that is simply a wild guess.

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The recent computer hack of the European Space Agency was bigger than it admitted

9:00 am

After the European Space Agency (ESA) claimed in December that a computer hack that stole about 200 gigabytes of data was “limited,” it turns out that the agency had been hacked more than once preveious this past fall, and that the data stolen was far larger and apparently not limited at all.

The European Space Agency on Wednesday confirmed yet another massive security breach, and told The Register that the data thieves responsible will be subject to a criminal investigation. And this could be a biggie.

Earlier in the week, Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters told us that they gained initial access to ESA’s servers back in September by exploiting a public CVE, and stole 500 GB of very sensitive data. This, we’re told, includes operational procedures, spacecraft and mission details, subsystems documentation, and proprietary contractor data from ESA partners including SpaceX, Airbus Group, and Thales Alenia Space, among others.

And, according to the crims, the security hole remains open, giving them continued access to the space agency’s live systems.

“ESA is in the process of informing the judicial authorities having jurisdiction over this cyber incident to initiate a criminal inquiry,” an ESA spokesperson said via email. The agency declined to answer The Register’s specific questions about the intruders’ claims.

The article at the link outlines a slew of other hacks at ESA over the last decade. The agency seems unable to clean up its act.

2 comments

China launches four satellites for another Chinese constellation

8:41 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy early today successfully launched another four satellites in the Tianqi satellite constellation, its Ceres-1 solid-fueled rocket lifting off from a sea platform off the northeast coast of China.

This was the sixth launch for the Tianqi constellation, which apparently is an internet-of-things constellation. It has launched 41 satellites so far, though only 29 are presently operational, with 12 having had their orbits decay.

The 2026 launch race:

6 SpaceX
4 China

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French rocket startup MaiaSpace wins ten-launch contract from Eutelsat

8:01 am

The French rocket startup MaiaSpace, which has not yet launched anything, has won a ten-launch contract from Eutelsat to place an unspecified number of its next generation OneWeb satellites into orbit.

Eutelsat has ordered around ten launches from MaiaSpace to launch some of the 440 new OneWeb satellites. These launches are scheduled from late 2027 to 2029. MaiaSpace has thus secured 50% of the launches planned for this period.

MaiaSpace is a wholly owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, the company that builds Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket. ArianeGroup created it when it realized the expendable Ariane-6 rocket was not going to do well competing with the new reusable rockets. MaiaSpace’s Maia rocket will launch from French Guiana, and is being designed to eventually be reusable.

What makes this deal puzzling is that MaiaSpace is far behind at least thee other rocket startups in Europe, Germany’s Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Spain’s PLD, all of which are much closer to an orbital launch. I suspect ArianeGroup used its clout to win the contract.

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Chris Rea – The Road To Hell

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live 2006.

Hat tip Alec Gimarc, who adds these details: “Chris Rea passed away last week. About our age. Over 30 studio albums. British. Very much an acquired taste. Been listening to him for nearly 40 years. Smooth, smoky voice. He specialized in slide guitar. Road to Hell is probably his greatest hit.”

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January 15, 2026 Quick space links

2:43 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.

5 comments

Martian glacier flowing past small peak

12:32 pm

Overview map

Martian glacier flowing past small peak
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

As is proper, the science team labels this vaguely as a “flow obstacle in lobate debris apron.” The obstacle is that small peak. The lobate debris apron is the material flowing past, resembling in almost all details what a glacier looks like on Earth. The scientists use vague terms because they don’t want to trap themselves into a conclusion before it is confirmed.

Nonetheless, based on all the data MRO and other Mars orbiters have been gathering for the past decade, we are almost certainly looking at near-surface ice flowing downhill and past that peak.

The white dot in the overview map above marks the location, on the western end of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I label “glacier country,” because practically every image from this region shows features such as this.

The arrow in the inset shows the direction of the downhill grade, dropping from 2,000 to 3,000 feet from the surrounding plateau. The peak itself rises about 130 feet above the flow on the uphill side, but 650 feet above on the downhill side. Apparently the flow piled up somewhat as it hit the peak.

That flow however is likely inactive at this time. Though the researchers have repeatedly monitored the many glacial flows they have found on Mars in the decade since MRO arrived in Mars orbit, so far I have heard of no example showing any movement. And that covers about five Martian years.

These images do prove one thing: Mars is not dry. It has plenty of water near the surface, though locked in ice.

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