Category: Points of Information

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

First launch of Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket delayed until 2026

8:34 am

Artist's rendering of the Neutron first stage deploying its second stage
Artist’s rendering of Neutron’s first stage fairings opening
to deploy the payload with the second stage engine.

Despite a concerted effort in the past year to achieve the first launch of its new reusable larger Neutron rocket before the end of 2025, Rocket Lab this week revealed that the company is now targeting a 2026 launch instead.

Sir Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, announced the shift in plans during the third quarter earnings call with investors on Nov. 10. He said that the company’s goal is to get the rocket out to Launch Complex 3 at the Virginia Spaceport Authority’s (VSA) Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) within the first quarter of 2026 “with first launch thereafter.”

“As always, this is a rocket program that’s been completed at a pace and a cost that nobody has achieved before and the financial and long-term impacts are insignificant to take a little bit more time to get it right,” Beck told investors on the call.

During the call officials also made clear that there would be no attempt to recover the first stage on that first flight, as the landing barge won’t be ready by then. It hopes a landing attempt will occur on the second flight.

Finally, officials revealed that the company has spent a bit more to develop Neutron then the originally planned cost of between $250 to $300 million. Right now it expects to spend about $360 million by the end of 2025.

This delay or the increased cost are relatively inconsequential when looked at in context. Rocket Lab had only started this project in 2021. To create a new rocket in less than five years for only about a quarter of a billion dollars is quite unprecedented.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:47 pm

Note: My original post mistated the time of launch. Below is a corrected text:

SpaceX tonight at 10:21 pm (Eastern) successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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

I specify the launch time because it occurred just outside the FAA’s so-called curfew banning all launches from 6 am to 10 pm local time, due to the government shutdown and a shortage of air traffic controllers to coordinate aviation and rocket launches. Though the Senate today voted to end the shutdown, that shutdown has not yet ended, and won’t until the House passes the Senate budget version and Trump signs it.

Thus, it appears Blue Origin has negotiated an exemption for its now planned launch of New Glenn on November 12, 2025 in the afternoon.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

147 SpaceX (a new record)
70 China
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 147 to 115.

Note that I had made an error in entering my numbers earlier this week in regards to China, and have now corrected the mistake, thus revising the numbers in the last few launch reports.

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November 10, 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.

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Curiosity looks downhill at past travels

9:31 am

Curiosity looks downhill
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 6, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The picture looks north across Gale Crater, its distant rim about 20-30 miles away barely visible in the dusty atmosphere. In the foreground can be seen Curiosity’s recent tracks, showing how the science team had it travel back and forth several times, probably to check out several different interesting nearby ground features, as well as see how the ground changed by that travel. The rover has been traveling in an area called boxwork, a series of small intercutting ridges and hollows. Several of those ridges can be seen just beyond the tracks.

The red dotted line indicates my rough estimate as to the rover’s route uphill to get to this point, traveling up and to the left and following ridges just out of view.
» Read more

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Isaacman shows up as surprise speaker at Turning Point USA event in Alabama

9:57 am

In what could very well explain why Donald Trump changed his mind about Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA administration, Isaacman showed up unexpectedly at a Turning Point USA event at Auburn University in Alabama this past week, where he described how the murder of Charlie Kirk had profoundly changed his outlook on life.

[O]n a very personal note, I didn’t grow up very religious at all — my mother’s family, we celebrate Christmas. My father’s family, we celebrated Hanukkah. But I can tell you, having gone to space twice and looking back on our planet, looking at the stars around us, it is very hard not to be spiritual.

But it was only recently, in the last couple weeks that I was inspired for the first time in a very long time to pick up the Bible, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s because of Charlie, and it’s for Charlie, and there’s millions others just like me. Thank you.”

One of the theories as to why Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination in May was because of Isaacman’s past political and financial support for numerous Democratic Party candidates, along with his apparent support for DEI at his companies. It was speculated that once Trump learned of these associations during the confirmation process he decided Isaacman was not trustworthy and dumped him.

I wonder now if Isaacman changed Trump’s mind when they met several times in the past few weeks by talking about Kirk’s assassination and how it had changed Isaacman. I can easily see how that would have influenced Trump.

This is also another case of the Democrats and their most radical and public cohort doing a good job of alienating another former Democrat, simply by advocating and committing violence against those who disagree. They did it to Trump and Elon Musk, both former Democrats, and apparently they have done it to Isaacman as well.

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Three launches since yesterday, with a fourth upcoming today [scrubbed]

9:19 am

The beat goes on: Since yesterday there were three launches globally, two by China and one by SpaceX, with a fourth launch scheduled by Blue Origin only a few hours hence. UPDATE: Blue Origin launch scrubbed due to weather].

First China’s solid-fueled Long March 11 rocket placed three classified military test satellites into orbit, lifting off from an ocean platform off China’s northeastern coast.

Next, China’s solid-fueled Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1) rocket placed two “technical satellites” into orbit, lifting off from the “commercial” launchpad at the Jiuquan spaceport in the country’s northwest. As is normal, China’s press provided no information about the satellites, nor where Kinetica-1’s lower stages crashed inside China. The rocket itself is supposedly commercial, but it is built by a government agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Finally, in the early morning hours today SpaceX placed 29 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage (B1069) completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this launch this booster tied the space shuttle Columbia for the number of reuses by a launch vehicle. As the rankings for the most reused launch vehicles below show, SpaceX now has four boosters close to becoming the most reused rockets ever.

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
29 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

146 SpaceX (a new record)
69 China (a new record)
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 146 to 114.

Blue Origin hopes to launch two NASA smallsat Mars orbiters later today from Cape Canaveral, using its New Glenn rocket. That launch is scheduled for 2:35 pm (Eastern). The company will once again attempt to land the first stage on a platform in the Atlantic. I have embedded the live stream below.

UPDATE: Launch scrubbed due to weather. The negotiations with the FAA (see below) now take on greater importance.

This will be the second launch of New Glenn, eleven months after its maiden flight in January. As has been the company’s culture for the past decade, it has moved very slowly from that first launch to this second. This pace however must accelerate soon, as Blue Origin has a 27-launch contract with Amazon to launch part of its Kuiper satellites. Amazon only has 154 satellites in orbit, and needs to get about 1,600 in place by July 2016 to meet the requirements of its FCC license. It also has launch contracts with ULA (46 launches, three of which have been completed) and ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6 (18 launches), but neither can on their own launch enough to do the job.

One last note: For this launch, Blue Origin is trying to arrange an exemption from the FAA’s curfew on day launches that begins tomorrow, in case some issue causes a scrub today. No word as yet on whether the FAA will agree.
» Read more

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November 7, 2025 Quick space links

3:12 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.

4 comments

Crazy layers inside a Martian crater

2:49 pm

Crazy layers in a Martian Crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 30, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label this image with the term “layers”, but to my eye this is kind of an understatement. The geology in the top half of this picture is more than simply layers, it is an example of that unique Martian geological feature dubbed “brain terrain”, but on steroids.

No one yet knows what causes brain terrain, though scientists think it is related to the sublimation of near surface ice. Normally the tubelike formations are much smaller, only ten to thirty feet long, not hundreds of feet as we see here.

In this case the location of these features makes their formation even more puzzling, as there is no near surface ice found here.
» Read more

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Profits for Luxembourg satellite company SES drop due to U.S. budget cuts and shutdown

10:10 am

According to its third quarter report, the profits of Luxembourg satellite company SES were impacted negatively because of the budget cuts of the Trump administration, and were then further impacted because of the extended government shutdown.

Revenue over the first nine months of this year rose 20% to €1.75 billion while losses mounted to €55 million so far in 2025. Part of the problem was the Trump administration reassessment of spending that had been decided last year, including the delay of contract renewals and decisions on new awards, Chief Executive Officer Adel Al-Saleh said. Large contracts have also been delayed by the longest congressional budget standoff in US history, now in its sixth week, he said. “We’re experiencing timing delays in some contract awards due to the continuing resolution and subsequent government shutdown,” Al-Saleh said on a conference call with stock analysts.

The company remains in the black, and it expects to make up these losses from other customers. It is also in the process of completing its purchase of the satellite company Intelsat, which has also impacted its profits.

The article notes one interesting aspect of this Luxembourg company, that reflects the unique approach to tax dollars by that nation’s government: “Luxembourg taxpayers own one-sixth of SES shares, but wield a third of the voting power after underwriting its creation four decades ago.” The government doesn’t simply spend its tax revenue, like most governments. It treats that revenue as investment capital, and uses it to make money for the benefit of its citizens.

If only more governments would take this approach!

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Webb tracks volcanic eruptions on Io

9:59 am

Different Webb infrared detections of Io over time
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have tracked two different volcanic eruptions on Io that too place from 2022 to 2023, detecting sulfur monoxide both from those eruptions as well as sulfur from the magnetic plasma torus produced as the planet travels through Jupiter’s strong magnetic field. From the paper’s abstract:

Volcanic thermal emission was detected from Loki Patera and Kanehekili Fluctus [two volcanic vents]. The main changes in the shape of the thermal emission spectra since [Webb] observed Io in November 2022 were consistent with the continued cooling of emplaced lava flows in the Kanehekili Fluctus region, and the crust that had formed on the surface of the lava lake in Loki Patera. Images of Io in the SO 1.707 μm emission band [sulfur monoxide] show a concentration above Kanehekili Fluctus and in two regions in the northern hemisphere. The emissions are sourced from SO molecules ejected from volcanic vents. We further detected, for the first time, sulfur line emissions at 1.08 and 1.13 μm. These emissions are distributed homogeneously across a band in Io’s northern hemisphere. They are mainly produced through excitation by electrons from the plasma torus, penetrating Io’s atmosphere.

The top image to the right shows the heat signature above the two volcanoes, one to the southwest and the second to the northeast. The middle image shows the sulfur monoxide emissions detected by Webb above those volcanoes from their on-going eruptions. The bottom image shows the more diffuse sulfur emissions, mostly in the northern hemisphere, believed produce by interactions with the plasma torus.

This research also relied on data obtained by both the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope.

There are of course uncertainties with these results. For example, the conclusion that the more diffuse sulfur is produced by interactions with the plasma torus is not as certain. First, those sulfur emissions still appear closely linked to the volcanoes, which suggests this still could be a source.

Second, the observations also cover only two data points in time, in 2022 and 2023. To get a more precise map of the activity on Io we really need an orbiter there observing the planet on a continuous basis, something that is at this time impossible, not only because no mission is planned but because the hostile radiation environment this close to Jupiter makes the engineering quite challenging. It is this reason why Europa Clipper is not going into orbit around Europa when it arrives there in 2031. Better to orbit Jupiter and only periodically dip into that harsh radiation environment.

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U.S. budget cuts shifts Blacksky’s satellite imaging business to international customers

9:24 am

Because of budget cuts by the Trump administration, the revenues of the satellite imaging company Blacksky fell in the third quarter of 2025, but the company expects to make up that loss with new income from international customers.

The administration’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal includes a one-third reduction to the National Reconnaissance Office’s commercial imagery procurement, a move that has rippled through companies like BlackSky that rely heavily on government intelligence contracts. The cuts specifically affect the Electro-Optical Commercial Layer (EOCL) program — an NRO initiative to buy satellite imagery from commercial providers.

BlackSky reported $19.6 million in third-quarter revenue, missing analyst expectations and down from the previous quarter. Chief Executive Brian O’Toole told analysts the reduction stemmed from adjustments to the company’s EOCL contract “to reflect the potential baseline budget submitted by the administration.”

Sound terrible, eh? Not so fast.

Despite the domestic headwinds, BlackSky is seeing a sharp uptick in overseas business. The company said international sales now account for about half of total revenue, up from 40% a year ago. O’Toole said foreign demand is “outpacing our U.S. government business” and that the company expects international sales to exceed U.S. sales for the first time in 2026.

Blacksky is of course blocked from selling its high resolution reconnaissance imagery to hostile powers, but there are plenty of American allies out there who want this data.

The situation is simple. When American companies are given the freedom to produce, they will create products of value. And the sky won’t fall if the federal government can no longer be their main customer.

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