Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

March 5, 2026 Quick space links

3:32 pm

As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, there wasn’t going to be a quick links today. Then Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas sent me the two links below. Thank you Robert!

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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New Webb data says asteroid 2024 YR4 will miss the Moon in 2032

2:54 pm

Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the mid-infrared
Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the
mid-infrared in April 2025. Click for original image.

New Webb data collected in February has now eliminated any chance the potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4 will hit either the Earth or the Moon when it makes its next close pass on December 22, 2032.

Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observations collected on Feb. 18 and 26, experts from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have refined near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4’s orbit and are ruling out a chance of lunar impact on Dec. 22, 2032. With the new data, 2024 YR4 is expected to pass by the lunar surface at a distance of 13,200 miles (21,200 km).

Earlier less precise data had suggested 2024 YR4 had a 4.3% chance of hitting the Moon in 2032. That chance is now zero. This result is actually disappointing, in that an impact of this asteroid, estimated to be about 200 feet in diameter, would have not only been spectacular, but would have been scientifically useful. We would have been able to observe it closely with many ground- and space-based telescopes, and garnered a lot of useful information about the asteroid, the Moon, and the very nature of impacts.

The impact would have also eliminated the chance this asteroid might hit the Earth in the future. 2024 YR4 orbits the Sun about every four years. Previous calculations suggested another potentially dangerous fly-by of Earth in 2047, but these numbers are unreliable because the orbit will be changed by the 2032 fly-by in ways that cannot be predicted as yet.

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Vast raises $500 million in new private investment capital

1:47 pm

Haven-2
Vast’s full Haven-2 station once completed

The space station startup Vast today announced it has raised another $500 million in new private investment capital, bringing the total so far invested in the company’s space station project to more than one billion.

The financing round was led by Balerion Space Ventures with participation from IQT, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Mitsui & Co., Ltd, MUFG, Nikon Corporation (Nikon), Stellar Ventures, Space Capital, and Earthrise Ventures. Jed McCaleb, founder and first investor, also participated in the round. As part of the transaction, Balerion Advisor A.C. Charania, former Chief Technologist for NASA, will join the Vast board.

…To date, more than $1 billion has been invested in Vast’s space stations technologies and facilities—resources that NASA and government partners can leverage to ensure readiness to replace the ISS in 2030. The latest financing includes $300 million in Series A equity and $200 million in debt to support the continued development of Vast’s Haven space stations. The funds will be used to expand facilities, grow the team, and advance the company’s proposed successor to the ISS, Haven-2, designed to ensure continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit for the United States and its allies.

Hat tip to reader Richard M for letting me know about this announcement.

In my rankings below of the five American commercial space stations presently in development, I rank Vast #1. This new investment helps solidify its first place standing.
» Read more

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The auroras of Jupiter and Ganymede

11:13 am

According to two different university press releases in the past month, new details have been discovered about the auroras found on Jupiter as well as its largest moon, Ganymede, caused by the interaction of Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field not only with Ganymede’s weak one but with the motion of all four Galilean moons as they orbit the gas giant.

The first study used data from Juno when it made a close fly-by of Ganymede in 2021. It not only showed how the aurora was caused by interaction between the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Ganymede, it found that Ganymede’s auroras were similar to those on Earth.

Similar structures, known as ‘beads’, have been observed in the auroras of Earth and Jupiter, where they are linked to sub-storms and dawn storms, large-scale rearrangements of the magnetosphere that release enormous amounts of energy and produce intense auroral activity,” explains Alessandro Moirano, post-doctoral researcher at LPAP.

Ganymede interacts with Jupiter’s space environment in a similar way to how Earth interacts with the solar wind; therefore, the discovery of auroral patches on Ganymede similar to those on Earth suggests that the fundamental physical process(es) could be generally induced in the coupling between any celestial body, its magnetosphere, and external forces.

The aurora's on Jupiter
The auroral footprints of Io and Europa
on Jupiter

The second study, released yesterday, used the Webb Space Telescope to a get a more detailed look at Jupiter’s auroras, caused as the four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — travel through Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field, causing energetic particles to following Jupiter’s magnetic field lines down to its poles, there creating the auroras.

Webb’s data found that the auroral footprints on Jupiter caused by each moon were different from Jupiter’s own aurora.

However, the footprints created by Io and Europa, did not have the characteristics expected from Jupiter’s main aurora, which contains a lot of hot material. Instead, in one snapshot, they discovered a cold spot within Io’s auroral footprint that registered temperatures much lower than expected, with extraordinarily high densities.

As the data was limited to a single 22-hour window, the results are very uncertain. More observations are planned, covering a longer time period, to see if this phenomenon can be captured again.

All of these results are very tantalizing, but to really get a handle on what is going on will require continuous observations over years, from many spacecraft devoted exclusively to Jupiter. And that isn’t going to happen for quite some time.

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The United Kingdom’s Labor government to spend £500 million on space

10:07 am

The UK Space Agency, gone but not forgotten
The UK Space Agency, gone but not forgotten

My heart be still! The United Kingdom’s present Labor government yesterday announced it has allocated an additional £500 million ($665 million) on a wide range of space projects, all of which are either new government programs or facilities or direct subsidies to its failing space businesses.

Nowhere in this announcement did government officials address the choking regulations and burdensome licensing requirements that have essentially driven away all space business while bankrupting two different rocket startups, Virgin Orbit and Orbex.

In addition to the £1.7 billion committed to European Space Agency (ESA) programmes in November 2025, the government is allocating more than £500 million to national space programmes:

  • £105 million to develop civil capabilities for in-orbit servicing and manufacturing (ISAM) – an emerging market where the UK has a strong competitive edge and opportunities to deliver significant commercial returns and strengthen national resilience
  • £85 million to develop the National Space Operations Centre, including £40 million to build a new ground‑based sensing network, supporting the 24/7 requirement to protect satellites and manage an increasingly crowded space environment
  • £80 million to deliver the Connectivity in Low Earth Orbit (C-LEO) programme, including for a new £30m funding call opened today to support UK businesses developing smarter satellites, advanced hardware and AI‑enabled data delivery
  • £65 million for the National Space Innovation Programme to accelerate breakthrough technologies and boost commercialisation
  • £40 million for the Unlocking Space Programme to drive market demand for space technology, develop national security capabilities and attract private investment to support the scale up of UK firms
  • £37 million to develop space clusters, building on local strengths and ensuring the benefits of space reach every corner of the UK
  • £20 million to accelerate spaceport infrastructure development in Scotland

The announcement was made in connection with the decision by this Labor government to eliminate the UK Space Agency as a separate bureaucracy, consolidating it into the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The consolidation was intended to save money and make the government more efficient, but this announcement suggests it is being used to funnel more cash into DSIT’s bureaucracy, simply under a different name.

None of this is going to do much to promote an independent space industry in Great Britain. As long as it continues to take years to get launch licenses, rocket companies are not going to launch from its spaceports. And without those launches, its space industry is going to be seriously handicapped. And dumping cash into these various government programs won’t do much either to promote competition or innovation. All the UK will get is more bureaucracy and government control.

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Does weightlessness cause blood clots?

9:44 am

The uncertainty of science: A new study on Earth using an “dry immersion tank” now suggests that weightlessness could increase the chances that female astronauts could get blood clots during long space missions.

First reported in 2020, an International Space Station mission detected an unexpected blood clot in a female astronaut’s jugular vein. To date, space-health research has had more male participants but with the number of female astronauts on the rise, a new SFU–European Space Agency study examined how microgravity affects blood clotting specifically in women. Key findings

  • 18 female participants experienced five days of continuous simulated microgravity in a European Space Agency (ESA)-sponsored VIVALDI I dry immersion study.
  • Coagulation time (the time it took for blood clots to start forming) was longer.
  • Once started, clots formed faster.
  • Once formed, the strength and stability of the clots was greater

The dry immersion tank is “a specially designed water bath with a waterproof sheet to keep participants dry while floating, and simulating weightlessness.”

The researchers admit these results are very uncertain. For one, none of the clots that occurred during the study were “clinically concerning,” which means they were the kind of clots that the body deals with normally without threat. The researchers also noted in their paper’s abstract that “current published research on this topic is male-centered,” which explains the female focus of this particular research.

This research suggests that blood clots could be an issue on long missions in weightlessness, but the data is sparse and very incomplete. Moreover, based on more than a quarter century of missions longer than six months in space, it appears the one blood clot cited above might have been the only incident so far recorded. And any results using immersion tanks on Earth is questionable, as they are a poor substitute for actual weightlessness in space.

Nonetheless, these results add weight to the need for developing interplanetary spaceships with some sort of artificial gravity. Without it, the health of any passengers going on long missions to other planets like Mars is certainly at risk, not simply from blood clots but from bone loss, vision damage, spinal deformities, and overall loss of cardio-vascular and muscular strength, all issues that have been documented well in space.

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Third launch attempt by Japanese rocket startup Space One fails

8:17 pm

Kairos rocket just after failure

In another attempt to do the maiden launch its orbital Kairos rocket today, the Japanese rocket startup Space One experienced its third launch failure, with the rocket breaking up about a minute after launch.

The screen capture to the right shows the rocket just after failure. The cloud arc in the upper left is the moment some burst occurred. Within seconds it was clear that the rocket was now in several pieces.

The launch attempt, which took place from the company’s own spaceport, Spaceport Kii, on the southern coast of the main island of Japan, was the third failure in a row, all involving failures of the first stage. The first launch in March 2024 blew up mere seconds after launch. The second attempt in December 2024 failed about 90 seconds after launch when the rocket began to spiral out of control.

This third launch appeared more controlled, but it also occurred only a minute after launch.

Whether the company can survive a third straight failure, none of which got even close to main engine cutoff and stage separation, is unknown. The company has some major investors, including Canon, several major Japanese banks, and the government-owned Development Bank of Japan. While they might stick with the company, it would not be surprising if there was a major shake-up in management.

Japan at the moment has no operational launch capability. Space One is its only private rocket startup, while the two rockets belonging to its space agency JAXA, H3 and Epsilon, are both grounded due to launch failures.

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NASA initiates new program to grab talent from the private sector

4:00 pm

Where new talent will now go to wither
Where new talent will now go to wither.

As part of NASA administrator’s effort to remake NASA into a cutting edge agency, “the global leader in space,” the agency in partnership with the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has initiated a new program, dubbed NASA Force, to recruit talent from the private sector for two-year terms, after which they can then try to get a full time job either with NASA or a private aerospace company.

NASA Force will identify and place high-impact technical talent into mission-critical roles supporting NASA’s exploration, research, and advanced technology priorities, ensuring the agency has the cutting-edge expertise needed to maintain U.S. leadership in space.

Tech Force, led by OPM, was established to recruit elite technical professionals into federal service, embed them at partner agencies to modernize systems, accelerate innovation, and strengthen mission delivery. NASA Force represents a focused expansion of that effort, tailored to the unique technical demands of space exploration and aerospace research.

“America’s leadership in space depends on extraordinary talent,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “NASA Force will help us attract the next generation of innovators and technical experts who are ready to solve the toughest challenges in exploration, science, and aerospace technology. This partnership strengthens our workforce and helps ensure the United States remains the global leader in space.”

This program however has things entirely backwards. The last thing any engineer who has just graduated college should do is get a short two-year job at NASA. He or she will learn all the wrong lessons, working for a government agency not interested in efficiency or profit.

Instead, it is essential the first job new engineers get is in the private sector, to learn how to do things fast and efficiently. It Isaacman had the right priorities, he would use this money to fund these jobs in the private sector, so that new graduates will get the right training. Unfortunately, that is not Isaacman’s priority. He wants the government to lead.

Moreover, NASA’s job was never intended to be “the global leader in space.” Its job was to formulate the federal government’s needs in space, and then ask the private sector — the American people — to get the job done. Isaacman instead wants to have NASA do the job, as it did for a half century after Apollo, quite poorly. Only after the agency began relying on private enterprise beginning in 2008, the capitalism model, did things finally start happening again.

The worst aspect of this program is that it will take talent away from the private sector. A lot of good and talented young engineers will gravitate to these NASA positions for the high pay, relatively easy good hours, and prestige. They won’t accomplish much there, and their training will be wrong-headed. Meanwhile, the private sector will lose that talent and have to find it elsewhere, assuming it is available at all.

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March 4, 2026 Quick space links

2:55 pm

As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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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The mysterious spokes in Saturn’s rings

11:59 am

A bent spoke in Saturn's rings
Click for original.

Cool image time! When Voyager-1 did its fly-by of Saturn in December 1980, its cameras captured something in the gas giant’s rings that no one had predicted or expected, spokes of brightness pointing outward along the surface of the rings at right angles to the planet. Even more puzzling, these spokes actually appeared to rotate around Saturn, always pointing away from it.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on March 7, 2007 by the Saturn orbiter Cassini. It shows a close-up of one such spoke, though in this case it is bent. From the press release:

A bright spoke extends across the unilluminated side of Saturn’s B ring about the same distance as that from London to Cairo. The background ring material displays some azimuthal (i.e., left to right) asymmetry. The radial (outward from Saturn) direction is up in this view. A noticeable kink in the spoke occurs very close to the radius where ring particles orbit the planet at the speed of Saturn’s magnetic field. Such a connection is most intriguing to scientists studying these ghostly ring phenomena.

If gravity alone were affecting the spoke material, there would be no kink and the entire spoke would be angled toward right, like the bottom portion. That it bends to the left above the kink indicates that some other force, possibly related to the magnetic field, is acting on the spoke material. The shape might also indicate that the spoke did not form in a radial orientation, thus challenging scientists’ assumptions about these features.

In other words, the spokes exist because of multiple factors, some still unknown, that cause these streaks of brightness in the rings. For some reason, the millions of tiny ice particles that comprise the rings are brightened along these spokes, and it isn’t just gravity that is causing it.

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South Korean rocket startup Innospace signs another spaceport launch deal

10:18 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace, which has attempted one launch of its Hanbit-Nano rocket (a failure), has now signed a launch deal with the proposed Spaceport Nova Scotia, run by Maritime Launch Services.

Maritime Launch Services announced a strategic partnership with South Korean rocket developer Innospace. Under a new Letter of Intent (LOI), the two companies will evaluate hosting the HANBIT launch system at Spaceport Nova Scotia, potentially transforming the Atlantic coast into a primary North American hub for the South Korean firm.

Innospace’s first launch was from Brazil’s long unused Alcantera spaceport on its northeast coast. The company has also signed deals with Portugal’s proposed Santa Maria spaceport, two spaceports in Australia (Southern Launch and Equatorial Launch), and Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

This new deal in Nova Scotia is still preliminary, with the two companies having until the end of the year to finalize the specifics. For Innospace, it appears the company its trying to give itself as many spaceport options as possible. It can also launch from the government spaceport in South Korea, but that provides much more limited orbital flight paths, and presents scheduling difficulties.

For Maritime, this deal might finally get this spaceport off the ground. It was first proposed in 2016, offering satellite companies both a launch site and a Ukrainian-built rocket. That plan fell through when Russia invaded the Ukraine and the rocket became unavailable. Since then Maritime has struggled to convince rocket companies to use the spaceport, all to no avail. It signed some deals, but none has gone anywhere. This deal is its first with a rocket startup that has actually attempted a launch, though that launch was a failure.

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The first orbiting private space telescope releases “first light” image

9:55 am

Mauve's first light image and data
Click for original image.

The first orbiting private space telescope, owned by Blue Skies Space and dubbed Mauve, has successfully taken its first image and data, a 5 second long exposure of a single star.

That image is to the right, with the spectroscopic data shown by the magenta line. The Hubble Space Telescope’s spectroscopic data is shown in blue and while for comparison.

As part of early commissioning, Mauve was pointed at its first calibration target, eta Ursae Majoris (eta UMa), a bright star in the constellation Ursa Major, approximately 104 light-years from Earth, for a 5-second observation. Eta UMa is a hot, blue-white star, much hotter than our Sun. Eta UMa shines brightly in ultraviolet light, making it an ideal calibration target for a UV observatory like Mauve.

The telescope has a 5-inch mirror, so its resolution is far lower than Hubble’s 94-inch mirror, but because it is above the atmosphere its view is far better than larger ground-based telescopes. Mauve is intended as a three-year-long demonstration project, during which it will study flares from nearby stars that are thought to have exoplanets, as well as binary star systems and variable stars. It is also making this data available to scientists, for a subscription fee. It already has almost a dozen universities signed up.

Blue Skies hopes Mauve’s success will help it raise the capital to build Twinkle, a space telescope with an 18-inch primary mirror. If that succeeds, the company plans to scale up to even bigger orbiting telescopes.

This private sector astronomy model is how the U.S. did things routinely prior to World War II. Then, for many reasons, the government took over for the next three-quarters of a century. It now appears the pendulum is shifting back to the private sector.

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ESA asks for proposals on building its own space station

9:33 am

ESA logo

The European Space Agency (ESA) last week issued an open call for proposals outlining the construction of its own space station, independent of the five American stations presently in development to replace ISS.

On 27 February, ESA published an intended call for tenders for two Pre-Phase A studies under Scenario 3. According to the call, the studies will consolidate the “feasibility, architecture, utilisation, and technology requirements of a European-led LEO outpost” and propose cooperation with the Canadian Space Agency, Japan’s national space agency JAXA, and “additional partners.” The results of the two parallel studies will be used to enable ESA decision-making for its post-ISS transition by the end of 2026.

Do not expect these “studies” to produce a European-led space station any time soon. It is the ESA way to do lots of studies, and then after reading these to do more detailed follow-up studies outlining what they will do. Then, after years of review, it might finally get started on construction, which always proceeds somewhat slowly.

In the meantime, ESA has signed agreements with three of the five American space station projects (Axiom, Starlab, Vast), with its deal with the Starlab station the most extensive. All three deals leave open the possibility that Europe will rent time at each station to fly experiments and astronauts there.

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Spanish rocket startup PLD raises $209 million in new investment capital

9:16 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD, which hopes to launch its orbital Miura-5 rocket this year, has now raised an additional $209 million in new investment capital, bringing the total capital it has raised to more than $400 million.

PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has closed a €180 million Series C equity funding round led by the renowned Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, alongside with other investors.

The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI) and its INNVIERTE fund, and the Spanish public funds management company COFIDES, through its FOCO investment fund, have co-invested in this round. Ultimately, the European renowned Spanish fund Nazca Capital, via Nazca Aeroespacial y Defensa INNIVERTE I FCR Fund, close the round.

The company hopes to ramp up its launch pace to as many as 30 launches per year by 2030, though these numbers are clearly aspirational. It has already won two launch contracts, and it is building its own launchpad in French Guiana, where that first launch will take place, and has also signed a deal with Oman to launch from its proposed spaceport in Duqm. PLD has also said it is in negotiations for a third launch site, not yet named.

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Varda rents new 200K-square-foot facility in California

8:57 am

Varda's W-5 capsule after landing today
Varda’s fifth capsule after landing on January 29, 2026

The startup Varda, which launches returnable capsules for manufacturing products in space, has now rented a large building in California to build those capsules.

In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls. The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.

Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E. Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said

The company will take control of the building in December, and will then need another four to eight months to install its production facilities.

Varda has launched and recovered five capsules so far. Some produced pharmaceuticals for sale on Earth, others other products, while two did hypersonic tests for the Pentagon during re-entry. It has a deal in Australia to land as many as 20 more capsules, and presently has ten more missions scheduled on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:32 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage completed its 25th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2026 launch race:

28 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

Not only is SpaceX this year leading the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — at the moment it has launched twice as much as the rest of the globe.

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Engineers locate helium flow issue on SLS upper stage

8:01 am

NASA last evening posted an update on the status of its SLS rocket, noting that engineers had located the seal that had caused the helium flow issue in the upper stage during unfueling after the wet dress rehearsal two weeks ago.

Engineers determined a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from the ground systems to the rocket, was obstructing the pathway. The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved. Engineers are assessing what allowed the seal to become dislodged to prevent the issue from recurring.

Though this information is somewhat vague, it strongly suggests the seal with the problem was in the upper stage, not the umbilical line that is part of the ground systems.

Before they can return the rocket to the launchpad, they need to make sure they identified the exact issue that caused the seal to not work properly. They also are replacing the batteries in the rocket’s self-destruct system as well as flight batteries in the upper stage, core stage, and two strap-on solid-fueled boosters. It also appears they are replacing another seal the oxygen feed line for the core stage.

Once this work is finished and confirmed, they will still need to roll SLS back to the launchpad and likely do another wet dress rehearsal countdown, though that rehearsal might be condensed to focus on these issues specifically.

The present launch window closes on April 6th, so the timeline is very tight. NASA management is reviewing later windows in late April as well as May and June.

Despite the major reshaping of the later missions in the Artemis program that NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week, this upcoming Artemis-2 mission remains the same, a ten-mission carrying four astronauts around the Moon using an Orion capsule with a questionable heat shield and an untested life support system.

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March 3, 2026 Quick space links

2:52 pm

As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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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Charon’s surface, completely unlike Pluto

1:09 pm

Panorama of part of Charon's surface
Click for full resolution. For original images go here, here, and here.

Charon

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from three images taken by New Horizons as it began its July 14, 2015 fly-by of the Pluto-Charon double planet system (found here, here, and here), show in close-up one specific swath of Charon cutting across its equatorial regions.

The true color global image of Charon to the right shows the approximate area covered by the panorama above. For scale, Charon has a diameter of about 750 miles, about half that of Pluto. For clarity I have rotated the panorama so that it more closely aligns with the rectangle of global image.

One of the most remarkable discoveries made during New Horizons’ fly-by was how completely different Pluto and Charon appeared, despite their likely formation together at the same time and in the same location of the early solar system. While Pluto had frozen nitrogen seas and water ice mountains floating at the shores, Charon more resembled Mercury, cratered with many large ridges and canyons criss-crossing its service. Both planets appear to be icy, but somehow Charon appears to lack the large differentiated variety of materials seen on Pluto.

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Old and new optical space telescopes team up to view the Cat’s Eye

9:39 am

Cat's Eye Nebula as seen by both Hubble and Euclid
Click for original images.

Astronomers using both NASA’s long established Hubble Space Telescope and Europe’s new Euclid space telescope have produced new optical/infrared images of the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula.

Those images are to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. The Hubble image at bottom shows the complex structure of the nebula itself, located about 4,400 light years away and believed created by the inner orbital motions of a binary star system that act almost like the blades in a blender, mixing the material thrown off by one or both of the stars as they erupt in their latter stages of life.

In Euclid’s wide, near-infrared, and visible light view, the arcs and filaments of the nebula’s bright central region are situated within a halo of colorful fragments of gas zooming away from the star. This ring was ejected from the star at an earlier stage, before the main nebula at the center formed. The whole nebula stands out against a backdrop teeming with distant galaxies, demonstrating how local astrophysical beauty and the farthest reaches of the cosmos can be seen together with Euclid.

Euclid has a primary mirror 1.2 meters in diameter, about half that of Hubble. Though it can’t zoom in with the same resolution, its view is as sharp since it is in space above the atmosphere. It thus provides a wider view, which in this case helps provide a larger context to the detailed close-up view provided by Hubble.

In many ways Euclid is Hubble’s replacement, produced by the European Space Agency, as NASA and the American astronomy community has not been able to get together to build their own new optical orbiting telescope.

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Japan to do vertical tests of its own Grasshopper-type demo stage this month

9:13 am

Japan’s space agency is about to attempt two test vertical take-off-and-landing test flights of of its own Grasshopper-type demo stage, dubbed RV-X later this month.

First flight of a small experimental version of a reusable launch vehicle has been scheduled for March 6 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The 24-ft.-tall vertical-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (VTVL) RV-X is planned to make a short hop at the agency’s Noshiro Rocket Testing Center on the Sea of Japan coast.

RV-X is the first of two flight experiments planned by JAXA on the path to development of a reusable first stage for a next-generation launch vehicle. A second vehicle is planned to fly in 2027 under the multinational Callisto program.

Callisto is being developed jointly with the European Space Agency. Both it and RV-X have been in development for about a decade. Both were initiated in response to SpaceX’s successful reuse of its Falcon 9 first stage. Both projects however appeared stalled until the last two years or so, with little happening.

The JAXA engine on RV-X is apparently the engine it is providing for Callisto. If the flight tests are successful this March, it will be the be transferred to French Guiana for Callisto tests planned no sooner than ’27.

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Russia completes repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur

8:47 am

According to Roscosmos, it has completed the repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur, and will do launch a Progress freighter to ISS on March 22, 2026.

According to the State Corporation, a total of 150 workers from four contractor organizations prepared and painted 2,350 square meters of structures, replaced all the attachment devices, replaced and tuned up electric equipment and inspected or serviced all the systems and mechanisms of the service platform. The team also made 250 welding lines.

The most complex task was the installation of the platform elements, some of which had a length of 19 meters and mass of 17 tons, which required a development of special methodic, Roskosmos said.

The State Corporation confirmed that the first mission departing from the repaired launch pad at Site 31 was scheduled for March 22, 2026, carrying the Progress MS-33 cargo ship to the ISS.

For Russia, this repair was completed remarkably fast. But then, the Russians generally get things done fast when it is absolutely essential to do so. Without that pad, Russia had no way to launch any astronauts in space. Nor could it send supplies to ISS. A delay would have been very public and embarrassing.

If there is no immediate need, however, its projects drag on endlessly.

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March 2, 2026 Quick space links

2:46 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who is off on a two week vacation, so no quick links for awhile. 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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Two moons of Saturn against its majestic rings

12:25 pm

Mimas and second moon against Saturn's rings
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on December 23, 2005 by Cassini as it orbited Saturn.

The larger cratered moon is Mimas, known best for the single giant crater that dominates one hemisphere. I have not been able to identify the brighter but smaller moon.

Note the pattern within the largest bright central ring in the background. It is possible this is an optical illusion, but it is also possible this pattern is inherent in the ring itself. Other images show similar patterns that scientists have concluded were real.

This image was part of a set of eight images all taken in the space of less than two minutes, as the smaller moon moved from the lower left to the upper right and was eclipsed by Minas as it did so. Below are four of those pictures, showing the sequence.
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Indian rocket startup Agnikul completes static fire test of three-engine cluster

8:59 am

The Indian rocket startup Agnikul has now released a video of a 40-second static fire test of three-engine cluster it hopes to use on its Agnibaan orbital rocket.

The engines, powered by electric motor-driven pumps, were designed and manufactured in-house at Agnikul’s Rocket Factory-1. All three were fully 3D-printed as single-piece hardware units, reflecting the startup’s focus on advanced manufacturing and indigenous engineering.

Co-founder and chief executive Srinath Ravichandran said that increasing the number of engines improves rocket performance and that a three-engine system is required for commercial missions. The clustered test involved calibrating six pumps and six motors and fine-tuning six independent speed control algorithms to function in synchronisation. The goal was to achieve uniform startup, steady-state operation and shutdown performance across all three engines, a technically complex process given the precision required in semi-cryogenic propulsion systems.

The company has completed one suborbital test launch in May 2024, and in September 2025 said its orbital rocket’s first stage will land vertically and be reused.

Agnikul however has not released any schedule for launch, and based on this static fire test appears years from a first launch. It is making progress, but slowly. At the same time, it says it has raised $500 million in private investment capital, giving it the resources to build the rocket.

Based on testing and published progress, Agnikul appears to be trailing India’s other rocket startup Skyroot, though this could change in the coming year.

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Rocket Lab completes in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters

8:38 am

Built by Rocket Lab for NASA and launched in November 2025, the company has now completed the in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters and is about to hand operations over to the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UC-Berkeley).

With both spacecraft now fully commissioned and successfully operating at the Earth–Sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), Rocket Lab is preparing to hand over operational control to [UC-Berkeley], who will lead science operations at L2 and prepare the mission for its cruise to Mars.

Under contract from [UC-Berkeley], Rocket Lab was selected to design, build, and provide commissioning operations of the two high delta-V Explorer-class interplanetary spacecraft for ESCAPADE. Rocket Lab moved from concept to launch readiness in just over three years, proving commercial collaboration can deliver important science key to supporting future human and robotic exploration of Mars on ambitious schedules and for significantly smaller budgets than typical interplanetary missions. This speed was made possible through Rocket Lab’s vertically integrated spacecraft production, with key components including solar arrays, reaction wheels, propellant tanks, star trackers, radios, avionics, and flight software designed and built in-house.

Launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in November 2025, the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, completed spacecraft commissioning and executed two precise trajectory correction maneuvers, placing both spacecraft into their loiter trajectory near L2, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

Both spacecraft will be sent on their way to Mars in December 2026 when orbital mechanics between the Red Planet and Earth are right for the journey. Once in Mars orbit the two orbiters will allow for a three-dimensional study of the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere.

Though this is a NASA-funded mission, note that it was built a commercial company and operated not by NASA but by a university. For this reason, it was not only built fast and at a low cost, it uses an innovative flight path that allowed it to be launched anytime and wait in orbit for the right moment to go to Mars. This last innovation provides for a lot more flexibility.

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SpaceX completes its second Starlink launch today; Firefly scrubs launch

8:05 pm

SpaceX successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites in orbit this evening during its second launch today, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage completed its 26th launch, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Firefly meanwhile scrubbed its launch of its Alpha rocket due to high winds. No new launch date as yet been scheduled. This would be Firefly’s first launch since it had a launch failure in April 2025, followed by a static fire test explosion in September 2025. According to the company, this Alpha launch will be the last of this version before it begins flying an upgraded rocket.

The 2026 launch race:

27 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.

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SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites

8:37 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The 2026 launch race:

26 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.

Both SpaceX and Firefly have launches scheduled for later today. The Japanese rocket startup Space One has now rescheduled the third launch attempt of its Kairos rocket for March 3, 2026.

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Cargo Dragon successfully returns to Earth

11:49 am

A cargo Dragon capsule successfully splashed down in the Pacific late Thursday, February 26, 2026, bringing back several thousand pounds of hardware and experiments.

The ship had been docked at ISS for the past six months, during which it used its engines six different times to raise the station’s orbit. That capability has traditionally been done by Russian Progress freighters, but NASA has been testing other options as they are unsure Russia will remain with the station after 2028. Furthermore, there are risks using Progress to do these reboosts, as the burns take place when Progress is docked to its Zvezda module port, and the hull of the Zvezda module has been developing stress fractures in the past five years that could catastrophically fail.

Not only has Dragon now demonstrated this boost capability, so has Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule.

I strongly expect Russia to stick with ISS for as long as it can, mainly because its own proposed new space station is not likely to launch as presently scheduled later this decade. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Roscosmos has consistently been unable to complete almost any new proposed projects, and the few it has completed launched literally decades late.

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time. The leaks in Zvezda now appear to have been sealed, but there is no guarantee more stress fractures will not appear as dockings continue at its port.

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