Category: Points of Information

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

November 24, 2025 Quick space links

3:01 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • The Long March-2F carrying Shenzhou-22 is now on the launchpad
    It will carry only cargo to provide a lifeboat for the astronauts on Tiangon-3. While many in the west are speculating it will launch on November 25th due to road closure notices, all China has said so far is that it is “scheduled for launch in the near future.”
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NASA downgrades Boeing’s Starliner contract

12:36 pm

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS in 2024.

NASA today announced a major revision to its contract for Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule, changes that will require it to fly one more unmanned cargo mission to ISS before putting people on it again, while also reducing the total number of later purchased manned flights.

As part of the modification, the definitive order has been adjusted to four missions, with the remaining two available as options. The next Starliner flight, known as Starliner-1, will be used by NASA to deliver necessary cargo to the orbital laboratory and allow in-flight validation of the system upgrades implemented following the Crew Flight Test mission last year.

NASA and Boeing are targeting no earlier than April 2026 to fly the uncrewed Starliner-1 pending completion of rigorous test, certification, and mission readiness activities. Following Starliner certification, and a successful Starliner-1 mission, Starliner will fly up to three crew rotations to the International Space Station.

It has been rumored for months that NASA would require Boeing to fly another unmanned mission before certifying Starliner for manned flights. The question that this press release does not answer is whether NASA is paying for this unmanned flight. The original contract was fixed price, and required Boeing to meet certain milestones before further payments. Another cargo flight to ISS was not in that original deal.

I therefore suspect this is NASA’s way to get Starliner certified. Boeing has likely refused to pay for another demo flight, threatening instead in negotiations to cancel the project entirely. NASA however needs to get cargo to ISS. By buying a cargo mission from Boeing (possibly instead of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule, which is presently hindered because it lacks its Antares launch vehicle), NASA gets that cargo while also saving Starliner.

The bottom line remains fundamental: Will Boeing finally be able to do a successful problem-free Starliner flight in April 2026? We shall have to see. The fact that NASA appears to be reducing the total number of eventual Starliner missions to ISS indicates its own lack of confidence.

17 comments

Two Middle Eastern startups sign deal to build a mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx

9:15 am

LEAP71's aerospike test engine
Leap71’s smallscale aerospike engine during testing.
Click for original image.

A rocket startup in the UAE, Aspire, has signed a partnership deal with a rocket engine startup in Dubai, Leap71, to build a fully reusable mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx, not unlike the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle that Sierra Space has been trying to launch now for more than a decade.

As part of the plan, Leap71 will develop two types of engines for Oryx, including one using an aerospike nozzle.

Building on their ongoing cooperation, Aspire Space is now contracting LEAP 71 to develop the rocket engines powering the Oryx’s second stage. Each engine will produce 20 tons (200 kN) of thrust, and the partners are pursuing two parallel propulsion paths: a conventional engine and a novel aerospike configuration.

The aerospike concept, long studied but never flown, offers superior efficiency across both atmospheric and vacuum flight regimes — making it particularly well suited for reusable launch systems. LEAP 71 gained international recognition in December 2024 for successfully testing a 5 kN aerospike engine, validating key aspects of its design.

The picture to the right shows the LEAP aerospike engine during those 2024 tests. As I noted then, “The spike in the center acts as one wall of the nozzle, and the changing pressure of the atmosphere acting as the other side of the nozzle, allowing the nozzle size to change as the rocket rises, thus making its thrust as efficient as possible.”

Those tests were done in the United Kingdom, suggesting the company relied on British engineers using financing from Dubai. Even so, to go from that smallscale test to a full engine launching both a rocket and a reusable mini-shuttle will be a major challenge. Or to put it another way, to say their plans are aspirational is an understatement.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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A company that wants to shoot payloads into orbit with a cannon

9:23 am

Link here. The company is called Longshot. It isn’t the only company attempting to do this. I reported on another company, Green Launch, in 2022, but have heard little from it since then.

I leave it to the engineers in my readership to tell me if this company has any chance of success. It seems to me that any payloads it launches would likely have to be dead weight, like water or oxygen or fuel, as the speeds involve would damage delicate instrumentation.

33 comments

SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites; 1st stage flies for first time

9:14 am

UPDATE: When I wrote this post, several sources stated that the first stage was flying for its thirtieth time. I relied on those sources. As it turns out, they were wrong. The first stage on this launch was flying for its first time. The post below has been rewritten to correct this error.

———————–
SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

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

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

154 SpaceX (a new record)
72 China
15 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 154 to 120.

8 comments

Startup B2Space launches rocket from balloon

10:21 am

The startup B2Space has completed a test flight using a balloon to lift a solid-fueled rocket to high altitude, where the rocket was then launched.

In a 17 November update, the company announced that it had completed a test of its integrated rockoon launch system using a “rocket of lower power than that planned for the commercial version of the system.” The test was conducted from the Port of Vueltas in Valle Gran Rey in the Canary Islands. Its aim was to validate key elements of the company’s rockoon launch system, including the rocket rail alignment and ignition subsystems.

The balloon was launched at 4:00 CET and carried the small rocket to an altitude of 21.5 kilometres, at which point the rocket was launched. Speaking to European Spaceflight, B2Space CTO Valentin confirmed that the ignition system had been successful but did not share any details about the state of the rocket itself. In a 17 November update, the company confirmed that all elements of the launch system had been successfully recovered following the test.

Calling this company a startup is not quite accurate, as it has been around for almost a decade, pushing the idea of a a balloon-launched rocket, dubbed a “rockoon”. The idea itself is not new. If my memory serves me right, it had been tested intermittently in some form as early as the 1950s.

The company hopes to test a larger suborbital version in 2026, followed by an orbital test.

5 comments

SpaceX issues 1st statement regarding Superheavy test explosion

9:27 am

Damaged Superheavy
Click for original image.

SpaceX yesterday issued its first update regarding the explosion in the lower half of the Superheavy booster that it had planned to fly on the next orbital test flight.

Booster 18 suffered an anomaly during gas system pressure testing that we were conducting in advance of structural proof testing. No propellant was on the vehicle, and engines were not yet installed. The teams need time to investigate before we are confident of the cause. No one was injured as we maintain a safe distance for personnel during this type of testing. The site remains clear and we are working plans to safely reenter the site.

That no propellant was involved explains why the booster and test pad experienced relatively little damage. They were likely pumping nitrogen through the system to test it, and while something exploded, the gases were not volatile.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from aerial drone flights performed by RGV Aerial Photography and posted on nasaspaceflight.com. I have enhanced it to bring out the details. Note the lack of damage on all sides of the booster at its base. The explosion was clearly confined to the booster, and appears to have occurred from within.

22 comments

SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

1:02 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 9th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

153 SpaceX (a new record)
72 China
15 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 153 to 120.

0 comments

November 21, 2025 Quick space links

3:07 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.

  • On this day in 1998, the first module of ISS was launched from Baikonur
    Dubbed Zarya, it was built by Russia but paid for by the U.S., which still owns it. Though it is the oldest module on ISS, it is the Russian Zvezda module, launched two years later, that presently has the stress fractures in its hull from which the station’s atmosphere is leaking, and which threaten the station’s survival in the next four years.
9 comments

What might be the weirdest crater on Mars

12:44 pm

What might be Mars' weirdest crater
Click for original.

Cool image time! The picture to the right is taken from a global mosaic created from images taken by the wide-view context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The original source image was probably a photograph taken on February 15, 2020.

I normally begin with an image from MRO’s high resolution camera, but the only images that camera took of this crater did not show it entirely. This context camera shows it in all its glory, what to my eye appears to be one of the weirdest craters I’ve seen on Mars.

First, note its oblong shape — 5.5 miles long and 3.7 miles wide — which appears to narrow to the southeast. It certainly appears that if this crater was caused by an impact, the bolide came in at a very low angle from the northwest, plowing this 700-foot-deep divot as it drove itself into the ground. Research has shown that an impact has to come in almost sideways to do this. Even at slightly higher angles the resulting craters will still appear round.

But wait, there’s more!
» Read more

4 comments

Superheavy intended for next test flight damaged during static fire test

9:57 am

Damaged Superheavy
Click for source.

According to video taken by the Labpadre live stream of SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica, the Superheavy booster that the company was preparing for the next orbital test flight was damaged while it was being fueled for a static fire test.

The video, which I have embedded below, suggests a tank rupture occurred in the booster’s lower section, where its main oxygen tanks are located. Another post-incident image from different source on social media and to the right, shows the hull of that section badly deformed, with the far side not visible apparently blown out. It also appears the test stand experienced no or little damage.

This incident will likely delay the next orbital Starship/Superheavy test flight, but not significantly. SpaceX has more prototype Superheavys in the queue. While it might need to do some quick additional work preparing one, that should’t slow things down by much.

Figuring out what happened to cause this burst tank is more likely to cause a delay. The company needs to identify and fix the issue before it can proceed.
» Read more

18 comments

China launches a “communications technology test satellite”

9:33 am

China today successfully launched what its state-run press called a “communications technology test satellite,” its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No other details about the satellite were released. Nor did that state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

152 SpaceX
72 China (a new record)
15 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 152 to 120.

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