Juno flies past the Jupiter moon Thebe

11:07 am

Jupiter's moon Thebes
Click for original image.

Though the Jupiter orbiter Juno is in its final orbits as it is running out of fuel, on May 1, 2026 it did a close fly-by of the 50 by 72 mile-wide Jupiter moon Thebe, getting within 3,100 miles.

The picture to the right, cropped and expanded to post here, is the best image released from that fly-by. It is very comparable to a photo taken by the Galileo orbiter on January 4, 2000. Both show the very large crater, dubbed Zethus.

The picture was taken by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) camera, designed not to do science but to “image star fields for navigation.” Thus, the picture is somewhat fuzzy, and was pointed poorly so the moon is on the far right, almost off camera.

It is very unclear how much longer Juno will function. It has apparently survived attempts by the Trump administration to zero out its operating budget, but there have been indications that its fuel supply is low.

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Multiple Russian, Chinese, and American satellites in maneuvering dance in orbit

9:41 am

Three different articles in the aerospace media today document multiple maneuvers by multiple military satellites from Russia, China, and America, either doing proximity operations near each other or moving close to another country’s satellites to spy on them.

This article in space.com describes the rendezvous operations of Russia’s Cosmos 2581, 2582, and 2583.

The satellites, known as COSMOS 2581 and COSMOS 2583, got within just 10 feet (3 meters) or so of each other on April 28, according to COMSPOC, a Pennsylvania-based space situational awareness software company. “This wasn’t a coincidental pass — COSMOS 2583 performed several fine maneuvers to maintain this tight configuration,” COMSPOC wrote in a May 1 post on X, which featured an animation of the rendezvous.

The two satellites and a third one, COSMOS 2582, launched to low Earth orbit in February 2025 atop a Soyuz rocket. According to COMSPOC, all three of them were involved in the recent rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), as was “Object F,” a subsatellite previously deployed by COSMOS 2583.

Then russianspaceweb.com had two different articles describing different similar operations. First, a set of satellites launched in February 2026 appeared to be testing operations in very low orbit, illegally transmitting data using frequencies that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) allocates for amateur radio operations.

Finally, the website reported a complex dance between Russian, American, and Chinese satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

Almost immediately after entering the geostationary orbit, Kosmos-2589 was “approached” by a presumed American inspector satellite, officially known as USA-325. On April 19, 2026, the US satellite, itself drifting eastward relative to the geostationary position and the Earth’s surface, seemingly overshot Kosmos-2589, but once the Russian satellite stabilized at 98 East longitude, USA-325 stopped and returned. By around April 28, 2026, … one approach under favorable lighting conditions for the “inspector” was within 13 kilometers from Kosmos-2589, according to a team of observers from Exton, PA, cited by COMSPOC.

In turn … Kosmos-2589 essentially occupied a position registered by China under designation CHNSAT-98E, with three Chinese commercial and military satellites deployed in relative vicinity of that location.

… Moreover, in April 2026, China’s presumed inspector satellite — TJS-10 — pre-positioned itself at 92.4 degrees East longitude after an easterly drift, which would put it on a rendezvous course with Kosmos-2589 at 98.0 East longitude. Instead, the Chinese satellite stopped its drift with a maneuver on May 1, 2026, which “fixed” it in a geostationary orbit at 92.4 degrees East longitude, in the vicinity of the US AEHF military satellite, which carries high-security communications of the US military and its allies.

With this last story, we have this almost absurd situation: The U.S. satellites are spying on Russian satellites, which are spying on Chinese satellites, which are spying on American satellites.

All this maneuvering however indicates once again that the ability of commercial satellites to rendezvous with other objects — either to de-orbit space junk or repair damaged satellites — is only going to get better. The military might control these capabilities now, under a veil of secrecy, but such capabilities always leak out into the private sector shortly thereafter.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Russia arrests Angara contractor for fraud

9:17 am

Fraud is a given when it comes to government operations, whether in the U.S. or Russia. A contractor doing work on the production facilities for Russia’s new Angara rocket has now been arrested for stealing more than $7 million.

In May 2026, Gazeta.ru, citing regional courts, reported an arrest of Dmitry Zolotarev, the Director General at OOO RST Genpodryad, which was involved in renovations and upgrades of facilities for serial production of Angara rockets at PO Polyot under a contract with GKNPTs Khrunichev.

Zolotarev and his accomplices were accused of stealing 545 million rubles (approximately $7.3 million) during a period from 2022 to 2025, by submitting the Federal treasury agency in Moscow forged documents with an inflated purchase price of overhead cranes and pocketing the difference. According to Gazeta.ru, Zolotarev was suspected of other similar schemes and faced 10 years in prison if convicted.

Government routinely does a bad job in monitoring its spending, which thus creates an easy temptation for others to put their hands in the cookie jar and take what’s not theirs. We can see this same thing occurring now in the U.S. with many so-called “safety net” programs. Since Russia’s entire aerospace industry is government controlled, this kind of corruption therefore happens frequently within it.

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Lockheed Martin fights request to ease 2018 restrictions on Northrop Grumman’s solid rocket business

8:58 am

A legal fight between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman has broken out over Northrop Grumman’s recent request to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ease a 2018 consent order that restricts Northrop Grumman’s ability to market its solid rocket motors (SRM).

On April 2, Northrop petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to drop a 2018 consent order helmed when Northrop acquired solid rocket motor maker Orbital ATK. The consent agreement requires Northrop to supply SRMs to its competitors in the missile market on a non-discriminatory basis and to firewall its SRM business away from its other operations.

At the time, the FTC believed the measure was necessary due to Northrop’s status as a prime contractor and Orbital ATK’s position as one of only two American makers of solid rocket motors.

Northrop is not a major manufacturer in the American missile space, which is dominated by Raytheon and Lockheed. However, if the order is dropped, Northrop will be able to vertically integrate its solid rocket motor business with any munitions the company designs in the future — including potentially prioritizing SRM supplies for Northrop over competitors, Lockheed stated in a response to the petition.

This consent order has prevented Northrop from marketing its solid-fueled rockets openly. Instead, it appears it forces the company to sell to its competitors, such as Lockheed, who then garners the big profits in marketing them. That order I think has also limited Northrop’s ability to use its boosters for other purposes, such as launching satellites.

Overall it appears this consent order has been very counter-productive, in hindering competition in the American solid-fueled rocket industry. At present there is a shortage of production capacity in the U.S., so much so that the Italian rocket company has moved in to market its own solid-fueled rockets here. In fact, it is selling its rockets to Lockheed and Raytheon, which suggests Northrop is entirely justified in asking to be released from this order.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Indian rocket startup Skyroot raises $60 million in private investment capital

8:37 am

Even as it prepares for the first orbital launch attempt of its Vikram-1 rocket, the Indian rocket startup Skyroot has raised $60 million in private investment capital in a recent funding round, bringing the total raised by the company to $160 million.

The startup announced it had raised $60 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion prior to the funding. The round was co-led by early Google investor Ram Shriram’s venture capital firm, Sherpalo Ventures, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC. New investors in the round include funds managed by BlackRock, Playbook Partners, Shanghvi Family Office, and others. Existing investors that also participated in the round include the founders of Greenko Group and Arkam Ventures.

The company hopes to launch Vikram-1 in about two months, though no specific launch window has been announced. The rocket is presently being shipped to India’s Sriharikota spaceport.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Ed Kowalczyk – Heaven

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Chorus:

Take back your evidence
It has no power to deceive
I`ll believe it when I see it for myself
I don`t need no one to tell me about heaven
I look at my daughters, and I believe.
I don`t need no proof when it comes to God and truth

Hat tip Clark Jerrell.

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May 6, 2026 Quick space links

2:47 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

Will Canada’s Telesat really complete its Lightspeed constellation by 2028?

11:26 am

According to the most recent financial report from the Canadian satellite communications company Telesat, it expects its Lightspeed low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to be launched and operational by 2028.

During the first quarter, Telesat invested $171 million into the Lightspeed program, reflecting $19 million in operating expenses and $152 million in capital expenditures, bringing its total investment to date to approximately $2.7 billion.

The company reported advancing through several technical milestones in early 2026. “During the quarter, we held further design reviews with our satellite and launch vehicle dispenser manufacturers and progressed our work on user terminals, network and satellite operations software development, and ground station deployments,” noted Telesat President and CEO Dan Goldberg.

The company confirmed it remains fully funded, utilizing cash on hand and existing financing facilities, to reach full global commercial service around the end of the first quarter of 2028.

At the moment however the company has launched no satellites in this LEO constellation. Moreover, in a recent amendment to its FCC application, the company reduced the size of the constellation from 1,671 satellites to only 300, with no explanation.

We shall see what happens. My instincts sense a bit of blarney here. This constellation will likely launch, but I think the company’s proposed schedule is questionable.

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Curiosity unintentionally picks up a rock slab

11:15 am

Sequence showing slab picked up and then dropped
Click for movie. Original images found here, here, here, and here.

In their latest drilling campaign using the drill on the Mars rover Curiosity, the science team picked up a big surprise that could have been a serious problem, but turned out all right in the end. When they tried to extract the drill from the hole, the drill instead stayed stuck to the rock, and picked the whole rock up instead.

The four images to the right show the sequence, sourced from here, here, here, and here.

On April 25, 2026, Curiosity drilled a sample from a rock nicknamed “Atacama,” which is an estimated 1.5 feet in diameter at its base, 6 inches thick and weighs roughly 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms). When the rover retracted its arm, the entire rock lifted out of the ground, suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit. Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rocks in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve. The team initially tried vibrating the drill to shake off the rock, but saw no change.

Then, on April 29, they tried reorienting Curiosity’s robotic arm and vibrating the drill again. Imagery in the GIF shows sand falling from Atacama, but the rock stayed attached to the rover.

Finally, on May 1, Curiosity’s team tried again, tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating the drill, and spinning the drill bit. The team planned to perform these actions multiple times but the rock came off on the first round, fracturing as it hit the ground.

Had they not been able to release the rock it could have seriously impacted the mission, even ended it.

As noted by the science team in their own update today about this situation:

Future activities involve wrapping up the drill campaign on Atacama and, nominally, seeking a more firmly rooted drill target in order to collect drill tailings for analysis, which were lost from Atacama as part of the effort to dislodge the drill bit from the rock.

In other words, they are going to have hunt around for a better drill spot, as they really do want to study some drill samples at this location. They have left the boxwork area and have moved uphill closer to the pure sulfite unit, and want to see how the geology has changed.

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The UK’s Sutherland spaceport now appears dead

9:45 am

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

In a news report yesterday about the failure of the United Kingdom’s rocket startup Orbex in February 2026, the following details about the Sutherland spaceport in Scotland suggests that spaceport is now defunct, with little chance of being revived.

Administrators say that one of Orbex’s key remaining assets is the Sutherland Spaceport site near Melness – although the only construction work undertaken at the site is some 600m of access road. The company responsible for it, Sutherland Spaceport Ltd (SSL), remains financially stable, according to administrators. This means the site could still be sold or potentially restarted, even though no launch activity is currently taking place.

The spaceport sits on land leased from local crofters under a long-term arrangement managed through Highlands and Islands Enterprise. SSL holds a 50-year sublease, with an option to extend for 25 years, and a break clause in 2027.

Orbex had originally intended to launch from Sutherland — close to the rocket factory it had built — but local opposition by billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen (who is a major owner in the competing Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands) as well as endless bureaucratic delays from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority made that impossible. The company attempted to switch its launches to Saxavord, but the cost and new licensing requirements were too much.

No other launch company has expressed any interest in using Sutherland, and it appears none will be forthcoming in the near future. The red tape in the UK, combined with that powerful local opposition, has made Sutherland a pariah to the smallsat rocket companies looking for launch sites.

Though the spaceport might say it is “financially stable”, without any customers I guarantee it is going to disappear at some point.

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Former NASA administrator Bridenstine moves from lobbyist to CEO of orbital tug startup

9:29 am

Jim Bridenstine
Jim Bridenstine testifying before Congress
as a big space lobbyist

Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has taken the job of CEO for the orbital tug startup Quantum, ending his post-NASA career as a lobbyist for some of the biggest old space companies.

Since his departure from NASA, Bridenstine has worked as a managing partner of The Artemis Group consulting firm, and the appointment to Quantum Space marks the first time he has taken up an official corporate post, he told Breaking Defense.

“I was asked several times” to be a CEO, he said, but “never accepted until now.”

Bridenstine waxed enthusiastic about Quantum Space’s plans for its Ranger spacecraft that is being designed to support “sustained maneuver for dynamic space operations.”

Bridenstine’s lobbying for the Artemis Group was mostly aimed at encouraging a giant NASA space program, comparable to the 1960s Apollo effort, with the main beneficiaries the older established companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, and at the expense of the new space industry led by SpaceX. That effort was largely a failure, as it has become very clear these old companies can’t get the job done, at least not at a price anyone can afford.

At Quantum Bridenstine is back on the side of new space, pushing a new orbital tug company whose Ranger tug can “carry a whopping 4,000 kilograms (8,818.49 pounds) of hydrazine fuel to orbit, Bridenstine explained, and will use that fuel for both chemical propulsion and electric propulsion.” It plans on launching the first Ranger demo mission in early 2027, after which the company hopes to win both commercial and military contracts using Ranger’s tug capabilities.

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

10:15 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 24th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

55 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 55 to 44.

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May 5, 2026 Quick space links

2:38 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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Two lawsuits against SpaceX, claiming company operations damage local homes

9:26 am

Starship and Superheavy during ascent
Starship and Superheavy ascending during October test flight.

SEE UPDATE BELOW for info on 2nd lawsuit.
—————————-
In what appears to be another frivolous lawsuit aimed at SpaceX, about 80 homeowners located from five to ten miles away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site at Boca Chica have now sued the company, claiming Starship launches have damaged their homes.

The 53 homes are in small towns between 5 and 10 miles from SpaceX’s launch complex near Boca Chica Beach outside Brownsville with 43 in Port Isabel and the others in Laguna Vista, Laguna Heights and South Padre Island.

The lawsuit doesn’t describe the specific damage incurred by each homeowner, but there have been reports of houses shaking, items falling off shelves and broken windows after previous launches and landings of Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket.

“SpaceX has repeatedly subjected the surrounding areas to extraordinary amounts of acoustic energy including noise, vibrations, and sonic booms,” it said of the flights, which can produce multiple sonic booms in addition to the sustained noise of launch, depending on the mission. Starship operations have subjected the plaintiffs’ homes “to repeated intense and damaging acoustic events,” the lawsuit said. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the launches are noisy, and might have caused some things to fall off shelves and might have broken windows. Note too that in Florida the safety zone around launches is three miles, and comparable rockets to Superheavy/Starship (Saturn-1B, Saturn-5, the Space Shuttle and SLS) have repeatedly launched there without causing any noticeable damage. I myself watched a shuttle launch from five miles away and found the sound of the launch actually disappointing. It certainly wasn’t going to cause damage to anything at that distance.

This lawsuit therefore appears simply to be a case of some lawyer trying to blackmail a big company for some ready cash. Its origin might also stem from the insane leftwing hate of Musk because he had to gall to support the election of Donald Trump in 2024. Note too that the author of the article at the link, Brandon Lingle, seems to be one of those insane anti-Musk haters, as he never has anything good to say about SpaceX, and treats all environmentalists like saints.

UPDATE: It appears the same law firm behind the lawsuit above has filed a second lawsuit for 80 other landowners in the vicinity of SpaceX’s MacGregor test site near Waco, claiming the static fire engine tests there are causing them unspecified problems as well. As with the lawsuit above, it appears the claims are mostly an attempt to squeeze money from SpaceX, with some of that effort fueled by anti-Musk hatred.

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Lockheed Martin joins partnership to build off-shore launch platform

9:01 am

Artist's rendering of Seagate platform
Artist’s rendering of Seagate platform. Click for original.

According to a post yesterday by Johnathon Caldwell, a vice president and general manager at Lockheed Martin, the company will be joining the partnership of Seagate and Firefly to build an off-shore launch platform from which Firefly hopes to launch its Alpha rocket.

The three companies will work together on mission‑application concepts and flight‑demonstration projects that leverage Seagate’s Gateway offshore launch platform. This sea‑based launch facility, combined with Firefly’s responsive Alpha launch vehicle, will provide rapid, flexible access to space from diverse locations, an essential capability for tactical payloads and national‑security missions.

Seagate only went public with this project in late March. Firefly signed on in April. Now Lockheed Martin has joined. It appears the concept has great potential for it to attract so much interest so quickly. Nor should this be surprising. The Chinese have been very successful in the past two years with its own sea platform, and the concept was proven years ago with Sea Launch.

Though Firefly presently launches Alpha from Vandenberg, the company also has deals with Sweden’s Esrange spaceport and a lease for a pad at Cape Canaveral. It has also been studying launching from a proposed commercial spaceport in northern Japan. This partnership with Seagate might allow it to abandon all these land-based sites, or supplement them.

Lockheed Martin in the past has invested heavily in new rocket companies, including Rocket Lab, ABL, Orbex, and X-Bow. Of these, only Rocket Lab has succeeded. With this deal Lockheed is looking for another option for getting its commercial and military payloads into orbit, with a much greater launch flexibility.

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Malta signs Artemis Accords

8:33 am

On the same day (May 4th) Ireland officially signed the Artemis Accords (as announced on May 1st), Malta also signed the accords, becoming the 66th nation to join this American space alliance.

The Republic of Malta became the 65th signatory to the Artemis Accords on Monday during a ceremony in the town of Kalkara with NASA and U.S. Department of State officials present. … Malta’s Minister for Education, Youth, Sports, Research and Innovation Clifton Grima signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of the country. … U.S. Ambassador to Malta Somers W. Farkas and NASA Europe Representative Gregory Mann witnessed the signing together with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tourism Ian Borg.

As I predicted on April 30th, the success of the Artemis-2 mission has caused a lot of third world smaller nations to quickly jump on the bandwagon, with Latvia, Jordan, Morocco, Ireland, and now Malta all signing in just the past week.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

Expect more nations to sign on in the coming weeks.

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Blue Origin’s 1st unmanned lunar lander completes ground testing

8:01 am

Blue Moon MK-1 in testing chamber
Blue Origin’s unmanned Blue Moon MK-1 lunar lander
in test chamber. Click for original image.

Blue Origin’s 1st unmanned lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon Mark-1 (MK-1) or “Endurance,” has completed ground testing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, prior to its planned launch before the end of this year.

The NASA press release however said nothing about the results of that testing.

Testing in NASA Johnson’s Chamber A, one of the world’s largest thermal vacuum test facilities, enabled engineers to model the vacuum of space and the extreme temperature conditions the spacecraft would experience during flight. By recreating these conditions on the ground, teams evaluated system performance and verified structural and thermal integrity prior to launch. NASA and Blue Origin will incorporate lessons learned from MK1’s design, integration, and testing to support NASA’s future Artemis missions that will return American astronauts to the Moon.

Normally when such testing is completed the press release touts their success. The vagueness in the language above is to my instincts somewhat concerning. Did they find something in that testing that needs modification prior to launch? If so, getting this lander off the ground before the end of the year is going to be questionable, as those fixes will have to be incorporated and then tested again.

Any delay such as this would in turn impact the first test in orbit of Blue Origin’s manned Blue Moon MK-2 lunar lander, scheduled for late 2027 during the Artemis-3 manned mission, where NASA wishes to test rendezvous and docking for both Blue Origin’s lander and SpaceX’s Starship.

Some clarity here would be reassuring.

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May 4, 2026 Quick space links

2:50 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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Sunspot update: The number of sunspot continues to decline

9:21 am

For only the second time since I started this website in 2010, I forgot last month to do my monthly sunspot update. No matter. The Sun’s behavior in producing sunspots in the past two months was actually amazingly similar, so doing both months at once works.

According to NOAA’s monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere, the amount of sunspots in both March and April continued to be low, well below the predictions put forth by NOAA’s panel of scientists in their April 2025 prediction.

That graph is below, annotated with extra information by me to illustrate the larger scientific context.
» Read more

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China imposes extensive regulations on its pseudo-commercial space industry

8:01 am

China's communists to its citizens
China’s communists to its citizens “Nice business you got here.
Shame if something happened to it.”

As I predicted when China announced in the fall 2025 that it was creating a special agency to supervise the pseudo-companies in its faux commercial space industry, the Chinese government last week announced the release of what it calls its “Commercial spaceflight standards system,” covering all aspects of the operations its pseudo-private companies.

The standards cover six different areas, but the first best expresses the government’s overall goal:

‘Industry Governance Standards’ focuses on the sector’s characteristics of rapid development, agile response, and short delivery times, alongside space safety concerns such as debris mitigation and protection. With subcategories including market access, safety supervision, space environment governance, certification, energy conservation, and occupational health, it is intended to establish hard regulatory constraints as the compliance foundation for orderly commercial space development. [emphasis mine]

The screen capture from a Monty Python skit to the right says it all. The communists running China apparently did not like the chaotic free nature of this pseudo-industry, with the different companies coming up with many wild and innovative ideas, some of which were bound to fail. The communists also saw that some of these pseudo-companies were also making a lot of money that the communists weren’t getting.

And so, the government formed this agency, and it called the companies together to lay down the law.
» Read more

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Is SpaceX buying a 200-plus square mile patch of Louisiana?

11:20 am

Pecan Island SpaceX facility?

According to a real estate agent in Louisiana, there is credible but unconfirmed evidence that SpaceX is in the process of buying a 136,000 acre plot of land owned by Exxon on the coast of Louisiana west of New Orleans, near the unincorporated town of Pecan Island.

The rumor — repeated in private group chats, in coffee shops in Abbeville, and in hunting camps from Forked Island to Grand Chenier — is that SpaceX has acquired or is in the process of acquiring approximately 136,000 acres of coastal Louisiana marshland straddling Pecan Island and Freshwater City in Vermilion Parish. The footprint reportedly stretches from south of Highway 82 down to the Gulf of America, encompassing some of the most ecologically rich and economically untouched wetlands in North America.

If true, this would be the single largest private land acquisition in the modern history of Vermilion Parish. To put it in perspective: 136,000 acres is roughly 212 square miles — bigger than the entire city of New Orleans. SpaceX’s existing Boca Chica/Starbase facility in South Texas, which has reshaped Brownsville’s economy and real estate market in just five years, is built on a footprint of less than 100 acres. A 136,000-acre Louisiana site would not be a launch pad. It would be an industrial campus on a scale never before seen in American aerospace.

I must emphasize that this agent is speculating, and that there is no confirmed evidence that SpaceX is the rumored buyer. At the same time, the agent has done his homework. This purchase by SpaceX would make sense on multiple levels. It would give it a very large facility smack dab between Boca Chica and Florida, on the Gulf, so that if Starships are manufactured here they could be easily shipped both east and west to those launch sites. This facility would also give SpaceX to option of shifting more of its operations out of unfriendly California and to a more friendly state, something Elon Musk has been doing since the Covid panic.

It would allow for the construction of larger data centers and satellite manufacturing factories, without much opposition from local communities.

Finally, there is the possibility this location could also serve as a spaceport, though it would only work well for polar orbits.

Stay tuned. If this speculation is true we should find out momentarily.

Hat tip reader Steve Golson.

27 comments

SpaceX launches South Korean Earth imaging satellite plus 44 other smallsats

12:06 am

SpaceX at about midnight tonight successfully launched a South Korean Earth imaging satellite as well as 44 other smallsats, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. As of posting the satellites had not yet been deployed.

The first stage (B1071) completed its 33rd flight, landing back at Vandenberg, 50 days after its previous flight. With this flight, the booster moves into a third place tie with the Atlantis shuttle shuttle in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

39 Discovery space shuttle
34 Falcon 9 booster B1067
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1071
32 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
27 Falcon 9 booster B1077
27 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

54 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 54 to 44.

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$2 bill that Gene Cernan carried on three missions sells for more than $90K

3:23 pm

The $2 bill that astronaut Gene Cernan carried on all three of his space missions in 60s and 70s has now sold at auction for $91,519.

Signed and flight-certified by Cernan, the bill is encapsulated and graded by Paper Money Guaranty (PMG) as Choice Fine 15. The holder notes its provenance as having been flown aboard Gemini 9A (1966), Apollo 10 (1969), and Apollo 17 (1972), and traces its origin to Cernan’s personal collection.

A signed letter of provenance from Cernan states that the bill was originally owned by his father and later carried by the astronaut on each of his spaceflights. The letter documents its presence during low Earth orbit on Gemini 9A, lunar orbit on Apollo 10, and on the lunar surface during Apollo 17.

This auction was space-focused and realized a total of $1,764,603. It included items from a number of other Gemini and Apollo missions, including an American flag that astronaut Dave Scott flew on Gemini 8, the mission that achieved the first docking in space but then had to due an emergency splashdown because a thruster began firing uncontrollably. It sold for $47,406.

Hat tip reader Wayne DeVette.

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No Starliner mission to ISS this year

3:07 pm

Though in February 2026 NASA officials suggested there might be a Starliner cargo mission to ISS sometime in April 2026, the new schedule released today for ISS manned and cargo missions for the rest of this year shows no Starliner missions at all.

The press release hinted an extra Starliner mission could be added, but don’t but too much faith in this:

Launch opportunities for NASA’s uncrewed Boeing Starliner-1 cargo mission remain under review as teams continue working through technical issues discovered during the Crew Flight Test in 2024, as well as final actions from the Program Investigation Team report. The agency is assessing operational readiness and space station traffic to determine the earliest feasible launch window.

What I think is happening in NASA is that the agency under Isaacman wants a better assurance from Boeing that the problems with Starliner have been fixed, and Boeing is having trouble satisfying them. If so, it seems he is doing what I suggested in February, demand from Boeing the highest quality work or don’t buy anything from it at all. If so kudos to Isaacman.

It is also possible Isaacman doesn’t want to spend extra money paying Boeing for this extra cargo mission to prove out Starliner’s systems. Boeing’s contract for Starliner is fixed price, and the capsule’s multiple problems has now cost the company more than a billion dollars. It is unlikely it will have make a profit on it, which is why it wants NASA to pay for that cargo flight.

Either way, the first operational manned mission using Starliner continues to recede into the future, to the point where ISS might be gone before the capsule is finally okayed for manned flights.

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May 1, 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.

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