Private company Auxilium Biotechnologies successfully prints kidney and liver tissues on ISS

9:51 am

The private company Auxilium Biotechnologies today announced it has successfully printed kidney and liver tissues as well as manufactured 28 nerve implants during a recent mission on ISS.

During the mission, Auxilium’s AMP-1 orbital bioprinter successfully manufactured kidney, liver, and cartilage tissues while also producing 28 nerve repair implants. The achievement represents the first demonstration of kidney tissue manufacturing in space, the first demonstration of liver tissue manufacturing in space, and the first mission to manufacture three distinct tissue types during a single spaceflight. The production of multiple tissue types and clinically relevant nerve repair implants represents the first demonstration of a scalable, multi-product biomanufacturing platform in space.

Equally important, the mission demonstrated the ability of a single autonomous manufacturing platform to produce both living tissues and implantable medical products during the same flight. The simultaneous production of multiple tissue types alongside 28 nerve repair implants highlights not only the versatility of the platform, but also its scalability and higher-throughput manufacturing in space.

Because NASA forbids the manufacture of any products on ISS for sale later, this experiment by Auxilium is merely a demonstration of the technology. The company however already has a deal to do this work on Vast’s space stations, and appears in negotiation with the Starlab space station as well. Once those private stations launch, it is now certain that Auxilium will rent space on those stations to begin production and sale of these medical products.

In other words, these space stations have a growing and viable customer base, outside of NASA and the government.

6 comments

Blue Origin to seek private funding beyond Jeff Bezos

9:39 am

For the first time Blue Origin now intends to raise additional outside private funding, $10 billion total, beyond the billions Jeff Bezos has been investing in company for the past decade.

In a memo sent to employees on Wednesday and seen by Business Insider, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the company would raise [$10 billion in] funds at a $130 billion valuation.

…The New York Times’ DealBook earlier reported on the raise and said it is being led by asset management firm Coatue Management with a $2 billion contribution from Bezos.

By my count in 2020, Bezos had pumped somewhere between $2 to $6 billion into Blue Origin, the funds coming from sales of his Amazon stock beginning in 2017. With this new investment round, he will have committed another $2 billion.

Unlike the earlier funding from Bezos, however, this new investment is occurring with Limp as the company’s CEO. When the previous funding occurred the company’s CEO was Bob Smith, who essentially wasted more than five years from 2017 to 2023 accomplishing nothing. No rockets got built, engine development was delayed endlessly, and good engineers were seen fleeing the company. Since Limp took over in 2024 he has aggressively worked to change the moribund culture he inherited from Smith. Under his leadership this funding could really make a difference.

12 comments

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. If you buy it from 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

Rocket engine startup Venus Aerospace raises $91 million in investment capital

9:13 am

Following a successful suborbital test flight of its rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) in May, the rocket engine startup Venus Aerospace has now raised an additional $91 million in private investment capital, on top of $80 million raised previously.

Venus Aerospace today announced the close of a $91 million Series B financing led by Mercury Fund, a Houston-based venture capital firm, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, Green Sands Equity, Seraph Group, Trousdale Ventures, and other new and existing strategic and institutional investors.

…Unlike conventional rocket engines, which burn fuel through subsonic combustion,Venus’ RDRE employs a continuous supersonic detonation wave that rotates around the combustion chamber. The result is the most efficient rocket engine architecture ever flown, by a margin of 15 percent.

The company intends to develop the engine for sale to many rocket companies and across many platforms. It already had a significant investment from Lockheed Martin, which tested its own RDRE engine in January 2026.

0 comments

SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites; flies first stage for 36th time

8:42 am

SpaceX last night successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The first stage (B1067) completed its 36th flight (31 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight this booster maintained its second place position, behind the space shuttle Discovery, in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
36 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
29 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

82 SpaceX
44 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 82 to 76.

China will attempt the first launch of its reusable Long March 10B tonight. The first stage is designed to be reusable, but instead of landing vertically on its recovery vessel in the ocean, it will be descend horizontally and be caught by a netting system on the ship.

5 comments

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.

Anton Karas – Theme from the Third Man

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The movie, The Third Man (1949), was directed by Carol Reed and starred Orson Welles. This theme, played throughout, made the film something special. This live performance is from 1950. I like especially how it shows so clearly the intricate finger play.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

4 comments

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

July 8, 2026 Quick space links

2:58 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.

Note: If the X video won’t play, right click on the tweet and open it in a new tab. It should play there.

1 comment

Bright spokes in Saturn’s rings

11:46 am

Bright spokes in Saturn's rings
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped slightly to post here, was taken on December 26, 2008 from a distance of 350,000 miles by the Cassini spacecraft as it orbited Saturn. The resolution is about 37 miles per pixel.

I think sunlight is coming from the upper left, its light bouncing off the rings and thus making the those spokes bright and visible.

In the viewing geometry in which Cassini is looking approximately in the direction of the sun (called high phase), the spokes appear white against the rings because the very small particles comprising the spokes preferentially scatter light forward (in this case, toward Cassini).

At least that’s one theory for explaining the spokes that appear randomly and for only short periods within Saturn’s rings, sometimes bright, sometimes dark, depending on the angle of the Sun. According to a Hubble press release from 2023, the spokes are formed due to an interaction between Saturn’s magnetic field, the solar wind, and the tiny particles in the rings.

“The leading theory is that spokes are tied to Saturn’s powerful magnetic field, with some sort of solar interaction with the magnetic field that gives you the spokes,” said Simon. When it’s near the equinox on Saturn, the planet and its rings are less tilted away from the Sun. In this configuration, the solar wind may more strongly batter Saturn’s immense magnetic field, enhancing spoke formation.

Planetary scientists think that electrostatic forces generated from this interaction levitate dust or ice above the ring to form the spokes, though after several decades no theory perfectly predicts the spokes. [emphasis mine]

Just another strange alien phenomenon in space that remains unsolved. All we really know is that the spokes appear, remain visible for at most a rotation or two of the rings, and then disappear.

1 comment

Japan’s Ispace signs deal with SpaceX to use Starship for lunar cargo delivery

9:14 am

Ispace's mobile cargo system
Click for original.

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace yesterday announced it has signed an agreement with SpaceX to use its Starship lunar lander to transport cargo to the Moon’s surface.

The Ispace graphic to the right shows the company’s proposed “Mobile Cargo System” on the Moon after deployment from Starship.

In preparation for the new business offering, Ispace has secured 500 kilograms of payload capacity on Starship, scheduled for launch as early as 2030. Ispace is offering global customers with relatively small payload delivery needs, weighing 500 kilograms or less, a comprehensive service to integrate, transport and operate their payloads on the Moon.

As part of the integration process, Ispace will assess each customer’s payload requirements and implement the quality control necessary for lunar transportation. Ispace will then integrate multiple payloads into the dedicated “Mobile Cargo System” in development by the company and provide services, including interface coordination with Starship as part of the system. Upon landing on the Moon, Ispace aims to provide operational support through the “Mobile Cargo System” to ensure the smooth deployment of payloads onto the lunar surface, their movement across the lunar surface, and access to other infrastructure.

Ispace is clearly hoping this cargo system will be of interest to NASA for its Moonbase project. It is also something that will appeal to other commercial customers who want to get a payload to the Moon cheaply.

23 comments

Satellite company Loft Orbital signs multi-launch deal with European rocket startup Maiaspace

8:59 am

Because it appears SpaceX is ending its multi-payload Transporter Falcon 9 launches for smallsats after 2028, the satellite company Loft Orbital has now signed multi-launch deal with European rocket startup Maiaspace.

Although the announcement provided few details, it did share that the first flight was expected in 2028. In an 8 July press release, MaiaSpace explained that the multi-launch agreement “consolidates its launch manifest,” adding that the company has now sold more than half of all capacity for its first three years of operation.

To date, all Loft Orbital satellites have been launched aboard SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions. However, according to reporting from SpaceNews, in recent weeks, several customers of these missions have said that SpaceX is not accepting Transporter reservations beyond late 2028 or early 2029. The publication quoted Rocket Lab CFO Adam Spice as saying that there “seems to be a panic setting in.”

If the SpaceX aspect of this story is true, it means there will now be a slew of new satellite customers for all the many rocket startups, not just Maiaspace. In fact, it is puzzling Loft Orbital went to Maiaspace first. That company does not expect to do its first orbital test flight until late ’27. Meanwhile the Spanish startup PLD, the Indian startup Skyroot, the South Korean startup Innospace, the German startups Isar and Rocket Factory, and the American startups Stoke Space and Relativity are all expected to try their first launches before the end of this year. In addition, Rocket Lab has its Electron rocket, and hopes to launch its new Neutron rocket also by the end of this year.

That SpaceX is no longer taking reservations for Transporter flights after late 2028 also gives us a hint as to the company’s future plans for its Falcon 9 rocket. There has been much speculation it would be replaced by Starship, and this news suggests that transition from Falcon 9 to Starship is now beginning.

1 comment

Saxavord approves August launch window for Rocket Factory Augsburg

8:40 am

Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

The Saxavord spaceport yesterday announced it has approved a five week launch window beginning on August 10, 2026 during which the German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg will be permitted to attempt a launch of its RFA-1 rocket.

SaxaVord Spaceport said the launch window was designed to minimise disruption to everyday life in Unst while maintaining the highest safety standards. The window spans five weeks from Monday 10 August, but restrictions will not be in place continuously throughout that period. Instead, potential launch attempts can only take place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 4pm and 8pm.

In April Rocket Factory had applied for a launch window opening on July 1st. As expected, Saxavord did not give it, likely because of regulatory demands by the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). It appears the CAA had in 2024 required Saxavord to put in a perimeter fence surrounding the facility, and it had not done so. Last week the spaceport announced it would spend more than $100K to install the fence. I suspect this last delay is to give it time to do the work.

The launch itself will be Rocket Factory’s first attempt. In 2024 it was gearing up for a launch, but an explosion during the last static fire test of the first stage destroyed the stage and damaged the pad.

If this launch occurs as planned, it will end almost a decade of delays at Saxavord, almost all of which the result of red tape from the CAA. As a result, though Saxavord had a significant head start on the other spaceports shown on the map above, it remains uncertain whether it or Norway’s Andoya spaceport will achieve the first successful launch. The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has been trying to launch from Andoya since last year. Its first attempt in 2025 was a failure, and its second attempt has been scrubbed three times since January. A new launch attempt is tentatively scheduled for later this month.

1 comment

Firefly to build descent aeroshell for NASA’s Mars Skyfall helicopter mission

8:01 am

Skyfall concept
SkyFall helicopter deployment. Click for original animation.

In a press release yesterday, Firefly Aerospace announced it has won a $13 million contract to build the descent aeroshell that will be used to protect the three Ingenuity-class helicopters being sent to Mars in 2028 on NASA’s proposed Skyfall mission.

The SkyFall aeroshell, comprising both the backshell and heatshield, will be developed within Firefly’s new Gloworks innovation lab and manufactured at the company’s Rocket Ranch in Briggs, Texas. Firefly will utilize advanced carbon composite technologies from its proven Blue Ghost lunar landers, Elytra orbiters, and Alpha and Eclipse launch vehicles to rapidly produce high-strength, lightweight structures.

This press release provides the most details yet about the mission. The graphic to the right is a screen capture from a video from JPL, showing the mission concept. First the helicopters would descend through the Martian atmosphere encapsulated in Firefly’s aeroshell. The bottom half would then drop off, and parachutes would release from above. Once close to the ground, the helicopters would be lowered out of the shell on the frame shown to the right, turn on their rotors, and then be released to fly away and land on their own.

This technique utilizes an entry capsule to release the three helicopters during descent, eliminating the need for a landing platform. The helicopters will then fly to the surface and capture high-resolution surface imagery and subsurface radar data.

We still do not know the chosen landing location on Mars, though the press release mentions a search for water ice, suggesting it will not be in the dry equatorial regions, where almost all landers and rovers have gone, but in mid-latitudes or higher where glaciers and lots of near surface ice has been detected.

The mission is intended after launch to use the nuclear propulsion engines NASA is developing jointly with the Energy Department to get to Mars. I remain skeptical those engines will be ready by 2028.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

7 comments

July 7, 2026 Quick space links

2:44 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.

Note: If the X tweet videos don’t play, right click on the tweet and open it in a new tab. It should play there.

11 comments

The empty desolation west of Jezero crater

2:07 pm

The empty desolation west of Jezero crater
Click for full resolution image. For original images go here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from two pictures taken on July 1, 2026 (here and here) by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The white dotted marks the rover’s travels, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s last posted location as of July 6, 2026. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area viewed by the panorama, taken five days earlier at a previous location.

The panorama looks west, at a low ridge line about 1,000 feet from the rover (the white dot), with a distant hill beyond (the black dot), about 4,500 feet away. The ridge is only about 50-60 feet high, while the hill rises about 600 feet. The rover’s tracks can be seen on the left.

Once again, the view from Perseverance indicates starkly the lifeless nature of Mars. Maybe it once had microbiology (though this is certainly not indicated so far by any solid evidence), but if it did, it is long long gone, and in fact likely never prospered at this location at all. NASA might claim repeatedly that Perseverance’s mission is to search for life, but every geologist on the mission knows this is a very low priority. What they are doing is studying the alien geology of another world. This image gives one a hint of its alienness.

Most specifically, Perseverance is studying a region in the dry tropics of Mars, where no near surface water remains, but also carries ample evidence of potentially valuable mineralogy. Orbital data strongly suggests the region west of Jezero crater will become a major mining region for future settlers. It might not contain any life, but it carries resources that will sustain the life that is soon to come from Earth.

The Perseverance team has been scouting this region now for the last four months, without doing any additional drilling. In fact, the last drill samples were taken at Witch Hazel Hill, in the spring of 2025. It appears they are taking their time to look for the best place to get core samples.

2 comments

NASA wants its future space telescopes designed to be serviceable, like Hubble

11:04 am

In a briefing at a recent science conference, a NASA official made it clear that it wants its proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) — presently undergoing its initial design studies for launch in the 2040s — be designed in a way that it can be maintained, repaired, and upgraded, much like the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA is planning for HWO to be serviceable, which means that they will need to figure out a way to work on, repair, and maintain the observatory while it operates roughly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away. “HWO will have to be serviceable to some extent,” NASA’s astrophysics division director Shawn Domagal-Goldman told Space.com during a session at the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) 248th meeting in Pasadena, California.

This design decision not only makes sense, NASA should have made it common practice a decade ago. The ability for robots to do this work is becoming increasingly robust, and in the next decade will become commonplace. For NASA to have launched anything in the past decade without this in mind was shameful.

10 comments

Scientists tighten the protocols for announcing any evidence of alien life

10:56 am

New protocols developed by Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project and approved by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) now tighten significantly what the scientific community is expected to do if anyone detects evidence that might be extraterrestrial life.

You can read the full protocols here [pdf]. From the press release:

At the heart of the new rules is a reaffirmation of a core scientific principle: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Under the revised protocols, no public announcement should be made until a signal or artifact has been rigorously authenticated by independent organisations using different instrumentation.

“We do not shout “alien” the moment we see a strange blip,” Garrett added. “The scientific method demands we check, check again, and then ask others to check. Only when we have reached a consensus that a signal is credible do we bring it to the world.”

SETI’s press release notes this rule is necessary due to the modern nature of social media, which allows the wildest claims to be spread like poison almost immediately. As noted in this story, the new rules almost appear to be a direct slap at hack Harvard scientist Avi Loeb, who with both interstellar objects Oumuamua and Comet 3I/Atlas claimed evidence of alien technology when there was no evidence to say so.

The new rules also underline a second point: Under no condition will any scientist attempt to reply or contact any potential alien source. “The Declaration reaffirms the enduring principle that transmitting a response to an extraterrestrial intelligence is a decision that belongs to all of humanity and should only take place following international consultations, specifically through the United Nations.”

It will be impossible for the science community to enforce this rule, but by stating it they hope to encourage scientists to exercise more caution, and further ostracize those like Loeb who do not. I remain skeptical, especially because it will have no influence on government agencies like NASA, which love to scream “We have found alien biology!” at the slightest hint. Nor will it influence the public, which seems determined to accept such wild claims with no skepticism at all.

8 comments

In counting craters to determine age on other planets, AI does not do a good job

10:14 am

Researchers from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have found that all eight AI-generated lunar crater catalogs failed to meet the standards achieved by human catalogs.

Astronomers use crater counts on other planets to roughly determine the age of the surface.The more craters the older the surface. The work is however tedious and time-consuming, and it was hoped that artificial intelligence (AI) could speed up the process and make it more efficient. Unfortunately, this new study [pdf] shows that AI is not ready for prime time. From the abstract:

In this work, we compare eight crater databases using several standardized metric sets, including a tight tolerance based on manual researcher repeatability. Of the six databases that quote metrics, we find that under these strictest criteria, practically all databases return worse metrics—some dropping by factors of >10. When we resolve these metrics in diameter space, we find that most databases do well in some diameter ranges and poorly in others, meaning that single-value overall metrics can be misleading.

Our work shows that the current state of machine learning–based AI still has a long way to go before it can be relied upon to create a database comparable in quality with manual efforts. We recommend researchers examine any database they plan to use and independently determine if it is of sufficient quality for their application.

The researchers are not opposed to using AI for this purpose. They are simply warning others that it is not yet capable of doing what many promise.

2 comments

Canada’s Nova Scotia spaceport signs German rocket startup Isar Aerospace

9:45 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

After a decade of effort, Canada’s Spaceport Nova Scotia has finally closed a deal with a rocket company. German rocket startup Isar Aerospace yesterday announced it has finalized a deal first signed in May 2026 with Maritime Launch Services, which operates the spaceport for the Canadian government on a 10-year $200 million lease, to launch its Spectrum rocket there.

Maritime Launch Services will provide the licensed launch site, including the launch pad, assembly, integration and testing (AIT) facilities, a launch operations center, and a facility for payload integration. Build-out is planned to begin in 2026, with first orbital launches targeted for 2028. The launch site will be designed to support frequent launches, with the potential for Spaceport Nova Scotia to offer additional capacity for future expansion. To anchor its North American presence, Isar Aerospace has established a dedicated Canadian entity, Isar Aerospace Canada Inc.

Maritime was formed in 2016, but for a decade was unable to attract any customers. That changed in March 2026 when the present Canadian government signed its ten year lease, committing itself to finance the spaceport in order to develop what it called a “sovereign” Canadian launch capability.

This deal apparently convinced Isar that Nova Scotia was a viable launch site. The deal is for ten years, with the option for two more five year extensions. During the first 2.5 years all fees will be waived, after which Isar will pay Maritime $3.75 million quarterly, with the intention to ramp up to 40 launches per year by 2029. It will also pay additional per launch fees.

Isar however still has to successfully complete its first launch. It has had one launch failure in 2025, and has repeatedly scrubbed for technical reasons its second attempt in 2026, first in January, then in March, and then in June. Though there are indications it will try again later this month, no new launch date has been announced. All these launches have been from Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

The irony here is that the Canadian government isn’t really getting its own rocket capability. It is buying it from a German company.

3 comments

SpaceX launches 81 payloads on its 17th Transporter mission

9:17 am

SpaceX last night successfully placed 81 different commercial payloads in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenderg Space Force Base in California.

This was the company’s 17th Transporter mission, designed to provide launch services to very small satellites and payloads, including “cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying eight of those payloads to be deployed at a later time.”

The first stage (B1097) completed its eleventh flight (30 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairing halves completed their 19th and 35th flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

81 SpaceX
44 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 81 to 76.

0 comments
1 2 3 4 5 6 … 1,772