Tag: capitalism

Two launches by SpaceX

12:02 am

In the past two days SpaceX completed two more launches. The first, yesterday morning, placed 25 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 8th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Then tonight SpaceX launched a GPS satellite for the Space Force, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage completed its 7th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. That drone ship, “Just read the instructions,” is now being shifted to support Starship operations, and will no longer be used for Falcon 9, after supporting 155 first stage landings. What it will do in connection with Starship has not been made clear. The two fairing halves completed their 2nd and 3rd flights respectively.

The Space Force had originally intended to launch this satellite on a ULA Vulcan rocket, but a month ago it shifted the contract to SpaceX because of the nozzle problem that has plagued two different ULA Vulcan launches. Because of this shift, the time from contract award to launch was the quickest by SpaceX for the Space Force.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

48 SpaceX
21 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 48 to 36.

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NASA’s IG: With only Axiom building NASA’s future spacesuits, the agency’s lunar program faces great scheduling risk

12:23 pm

Axiom's two spacesuits being tested underwater
Axiom’s two spacesuits being tested underwater in October 2025.
Click for original.

According to NASA’s inspector general’s report today [pdf] on the state of NASA’s effort to create new spacesuits for use by its astronauts on future space stations as well as in its Artemis lunar program, the planned schedules for the lunar landing and those stations are threatened because the agency presently has only one contractor, Axiom, building new suits, and has not established any spacesuit standardization rules should it want to issue contracts to others. From the report’s conclusion:

While NASA is taking steps to mitigate schedule risk, it must also contend with the unique risks inherent to a single-provider environment until future competition is introduced. … If Axiom cannot satisfy its contractual requirements in a timely or cost-effective manner, then NASA could be forced to continue using the problematic EMUs throughout the life of the ISS and significantly adjust its lunar plans. [EMUs are the complex suits presently used on ISS, and would not work well for any lunar landing mission.]

While xEVAS [the new suit concept] is flexible enough to allow for additional providers, doing so may not help the Agency meet its more immediate Artemis goals. Critically, NASA must address existing design and safety risks resulting from the lack of standard requirements for spacesuits to be compatible with various lunar spacecraft and assets.

As shown by the photo above, the development of Axiom’s spacesuit has been proceeding, and seems likely to be available for next year’s Artemis-3 Earth orbit test mission. At the same time, it is still behind schedule, a fact that has been mitigated because NASA’s entire Artemis program is equally behind schedule.

The report lists three commercial companies that might be able to provide alternative suits, and thus some redundancy, as shown by the image below.
» Read more

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New Glenn launches for 3rd time, reuses first stage and lands it, but fails to put satellite in correct orbit

11:54 am

New Glenn's first stage, just prior to landing
New Glenn’s first stage, just prior to landing

Blue Origin in the early morning hours today successfully completed the third launch of its New Glenn rocket, lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida and placing in orbit AST SpaceMobile’s Bluebird-7 cellphone satellite. For Blue Origin, this launch was the first for a commercial outside customer, a significant step forward for the company, which has sadly earned a reputation for operating too slowly.

Unfortunately, according to an update from Blue Origin the satellite was deployed but in an “off nominal orbit.” An update just posted by AST states the satellite is a loss and is being de-orbited. This satellite would have been the seventh in AST SpaceMobile’s 45-60 satellite constellation designed to act as cell towers in space. AST hopes to have at least half the constellation in orbit by the end of ’26. Several major phone companies, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Vodaphone in Europe, have already signed on.

For Blue Origin, the launch wasn’t a total failure. The rocket’s first stage had flown in November 2025 on the second New Glenn flight, and was refitted (with a new set of engines) to fly again on this flight, the rocket’s third. It not only did its job, getting the upper stage into space, it successfully landed for the second time on New Glenn’s barge in the Atlantic. This fast reuse and successful landing should do a great deal to improve the company’s slow reputation. Unfortunately, the failure to deliver the customer’s satellite will counter that most significantly.

As for Blue Origin, this was its first launch in 2026, and it was also unsuccessful. The leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged:

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

46 SpaceX
21 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 46 to 36.

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Final ground testing begins of Katalyst’s Swift rescue spacecraft

5:46 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

Only seven months after NASA awarded the satellite repair startup Katalyst the contract to save the Gehrels-Swift space telescope, the company has delivered the completed LINK spacecraft to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for final ground testing.

Katalyst will move forward with LINK’s vibration and thermal tests using NASA Goddard’s in-house facilities in the coming weeks before installation into Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Gehrels-Swift has been one of NASA’s most productive space telescopes. Unfortunately its orbit is decaying and if nothing is done to raise that orbit it will burn up in the atmosphere in 2029 or so. To extend this timeline engineers have stopped almost all science work in February.

Katalyst hopes to launch LINK as soon as later this year. It was able to get it built so quickly because it was already under construction as the company’s first demo of its repair technology. When NASA put out a bid for boosting Swift, the company shifted gears and reconfigured LINK for this mission.

If successfully, the achievement will be a major coup for this startup.

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The space station startups: NASA’s new space station plan is mistaken

9:01 am

The American space stations under development

At a conference event this week officials from three of the five American space station startups expressed strong disagreement with NASA’s new space station plan.

The new plan would have NASA build and launch its own new core module, dock it with ISS, and have the new stations attach their first modules to it prior to flying freely. NASA proposed this plan because it does not believe there is enough market to sustain the stations independently and NASA doesn’t have the budget to fully fund them.

The officials repeatedly disagreed about the market issue.

“We believe not only we can be ready by 2030” when the International Space Station is slated to be retired, “but we also believe that we can be profitable on the current market, not waiting for the future market we all will develop and will be successful at,” said Max Haot, CEO of Vast [building the Haven-1 and Haven-2 stations].

…Haot and executives from Axiom Space and Starlab Space said their responses to NASA’s request for information — which were due April 8 — show otherwise. “We put in 390 pages of independent analysis, research studies, datas, contracts, those types of things,” said Marshall Smith, CEO of Starlab Space, which is targeting 2029 for its station to be on orbit. “We’re being very clear and what we can do and how that works.”

One prominent revenue stream the panelists pointed to is other space agencies and nations eager to send their astronauts and payloads to space. “We’ve flown 12 people to space that paid us money to do that,” said Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space, referring to the four private astronaut missions it’s conducted to ISS. “We’ve flown 166 payloads today. All of those are paying payloads that generate revenue for the company.” The Texas company plans to begin operating in 2028 when its first two station modules are slated to be in orbit, then gradually grow the station to five modules.

The officials also said the core module idea would actually slow things down. NASA would have to first build and launch it, and would be starting from scratch to do so. It takes years to build such a thing, and it will certainly not be ready by 2030, when ISS is presently supposed to be retired. Moreover, forcing them to dock to this module would force them all to completely change their own plans, something they all find counter-productive.

In announcing NASA’s core module plan, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman also stated that he was open to industry feedback. I suspect that his core module proposal is going to die, and be replaced with the more direct transition from ISS to these private stations, the approach these companies favor.

I should add that the three startups that spoke up at this conference are also the three that are in the lead to build their stations, according to my rankings below. As far as I can tell, they are all tied for first place, with their station development very robust and well financed.
» Read more

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Latvia to sign Artemis Accords

3:27 pm

NASA announced today that Latvia will be signing on to the Artemis Accords on April 20, 2026, becoming the 62nd nation to join this American alliance in space.

The Republic of Latvia will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 9 a.m. EDT Monday, April 20, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host Dace Melbārde, Latvia’s minister for education and science; Jānis Beķeris, chargé d’affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia to the United States; and Jacob Helberg, under secretary of state for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

With this signing, all three of the Baltic states that were once occupied and part of the Soviet Union have now joined this American alliance. So have the former Soviet provinces of the Ukraine and Armenia, as well as the nations of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia, all of which were once part of the Soviet Bloc, behind the Iron Curtain. In fact, almost all of Russia’s neighbors in Europe have allied themselves with the U.S. Artemis space alliance. It does appear that Putin’s stupid effort to recapture the Ukraine has backfired badly, encouraging these nations to come to us out of fear of the aggressive tyrant on their borders. These nations also probably recognize that Russia’s space effort is a Potemkin Village, hollow and of little worth. If they want to go to space, they need to align themselves with American technology.

The full list of all signatories to this American space alliance:

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, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, 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.

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Saxavord spaceport faces new regulatory and financial issues

9:19 am

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

The long-delayed Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands in Great Britain appears to now face two new problems that could block future launches, one regulatory and the second financial.

First the financial issue: The spaceport, which has lost about $7 million in both ’23 and ’24, appears to be in technical default of a loan of a bit more than $14.3 million. In this case, the lender is willing to ignore the technical issue, assuming the spaceport meets certain conditions presently being negotiated.

The regulatory issue however is more serious, and could block the spaceport’s expected first launch later this year by the rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg.

Despite claiming to be ready for launch, the spaceport has also been subject of a formal complaint to the SIC [Shetland Islands Council] over allegations that the facility has not yet been granted a completion certificate or approval for occupation. The complaint alleges that the fire detection and alarm systems appear not to have been installed and that the premises may be in use without adequate fire precautions. It asks the council to confirm whether the premises has been subject to regulatory oversight and whether it has undertaken an inspection of the site.

The SIC said in response: “Concerns have been raised with the council and these are being looked at by our building standards service. A site inspection is scheduled this week as part of the live building warrant process, including to establish the current position in relation to the building on the site that falls within the council’s building standards remit. Any further action will be considered in light of the findings of that inspection.”

In other words, if the local council finds the fire detection and alarm systems not installed and within its regulatory responsibility, it will deny Saxavord its launch permit.

Meanwhile, the spaceport has been trying for years to get other rocket companies interested in using Saxavord, to no avail. Rocket startups have enough difficulties. They quite rightly don’t need the added delays caused by the UK’s red tape, delays that contributed to the bankruptcy of two different rocket startups. For example, most of the regulatory delays — lasting years — have initially come from a variety of national agencies, with Great Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority leading the way. This new issue is local, an additional bureaucratic layer that must be satisfied.

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Vast unveils a proposed docking port more than 3x larger than standard space station ports

8:01 am

Vast's larger port compared to standard ports now used at ISS
Click for short movie.

The space station startup Vast yesterday unveiled its proposed Large Docking Adapter, designed to provide a docking port more than three times wider than the standard space station ports presently used on ISS.

The image to the right provides an clear comparison. The two smaller ports on the left are presently used on ISS. Vast’s new port is on the right.

Vast, the company developing next-generation space stations, announced today at the 41st Space Symposium the Large Docking Adapter, including its current development, its availability for purchase, and Vast’s plans to open-source its interface.

Future space stations will use larger modules, have greater overall mass, and dock with a new generation of bigger crewed vehicles. New docking standards and universal hardware are required for the future generation of space vehicles and habitats. The Large Docking Adapter is engineered to support higher mass and increased structural demands while enabling varying types of modules and vehicles to dock together. By open-sourcing the interface, slated for May 2026, Vast is intending to encourage industry-wide collaboration and accelerate the development of interoperable space systems.

Animations of the adapter at this Vast website suggest strongly that the company wants to encourage SpaceX to use the adapter on Starship. Since the company is releasing the design as open-source, it also wants everyone to use it as the standard.

Such a port could also be used on a variety of other spacecraft designs presently under development, and if used would enhance their capabilities significantly.

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Voyager wins slot to fly tourist mission to ISS in 2028

4:24 pm

Starlab design as of December 2025
Starlab design as of December 2025

NASA today announced that it has awarded Voyager Technologies a slot to fly a tourist mission to ISS in 2028.

The mission, named VOYG-1, is expected to spend as many as 14 days aboard the space station. A specific launch date will depend on overall spacecraft traffic at the orbital outpost and other planning considerations.

Voyager will submit four proposed crew members to NASA and its international partners for review. Once approved and confirmed, they will train with NASA, international partners, and the launch provider for their flight.

Voyager is the lead company in the consortium that is building the Starlab station, a single very large module to be launched on SpaceX’s Starship.

At this moment three of the five commercial stations that are developing private space stations — Axiom, Vast, and Voyager — now have deals to fly such missions to ISS. The two remaining likely didn’t pass muster with NASA, for different reasons. Max Space is a late comer to this competition, only declaring that it is building its own station this year. Orbital Reef, led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space, is apparently a dead project, with neither company doing anything to sell its project for the past year or so.

In my rankings below of the five American commercial space stations presently in development, the first three are essentially tied at this point.
» Read more

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Sweden’s space agency signs cooperative licensing agreement with the FAA

11:40 am

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

The Swedish Space Agency has signed a cooperative licensing agreement with the FAA to help facilitate orbital launches by American rocket companies from its Esrange spaceport.

While the Esrange Space Centre has been in operation since the 1960s, it has strictly been used for suborbital flights. In 2023, SSC Space, the commercial operator of the facility, inaugurated a new launch complex at Esrange to support orbital missions. While the facility has yet to host a launch, South Korea’s Perigee Aerospace and US launch provider Firefly Aerospace have both committed to using it in the future.

Sweden’s efforts to enable US rocket launches from Esrange took another step forward on 15 April 2026, as the Swedish National Space Agency signed an agreement with the FAA to coordinate the licensing of those missions. The agreement builds on a 2025 Technology Safeguards Agreement between the two countries, which laid the groundwork for US launch providers to export what the US government considers “advanced space technology” to Sweden.

Esrange’s interior location remains a problem, however. Any orbital launch is going to have to fly over other countries, either Finland, Russia, or Norway, and it remains unclear whether those countries will approve. Norway has already expressed opposition.

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Three launches today, two by SpaceX and one by China

9:37 pm

The launch beat goes on! First, China launched eight satellites using its Kinetic-1 (Lijian-1) rocket, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. China’s state-run press provide no further information about the satellites, nor did it provide information about where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

Next, SpaceX completed two Starlink launches on opposite coasts. First it placed 29 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage completed its 26th flight, 42 days after its previous flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The company then did its second launch of the day, placing 25 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 21st flight, 45 days after its previous flight and landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

46 SpaceX
20 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 46 to 34.

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Firefly’s delays launch of its Eclipse rocket to 2027

9:31 pm

Eclipse as of April 2026
Click for original image.

It appears that Firefly has delayed the first launch of its new more powerful Eclipse rocket — being built in partnership with Northrop Grumman — to 2027.

The company made no specific announcement, but in a tweet today touting the rocket’s “fresh look”, with no details, the company linked to its Eclipse webpage (in the first link above) that describes the rocket in detail. In the last paragraph adds that the first launch is now scheduled for “no earlier than 2027”, a delay from the 2026 launch date both companies were originally targeting.

This guarantees that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is going to get more launch contracts taking Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule to ISS.

Firefly says Eclipse is being built for re-usability, but the graphics of the rocket, as shown above, are puzzling in that they show grid fins but no landing legs.

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Space Force selects Blue Origin as possible lessor of “Sudden Flats” site at Vandenberg for future heavy lift rocket launches

3:46 pm

Vandenberg Space Force Base

The Space Force has chosen Blue Origin to help develop the plans and possibly lease the “Sudden Flats” site — also dubbed Space Launch Complex-14 (SLC-14) — at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for the launch of heavy lift commercial rockets.

The location is shown in the map to the right. The Space Force had requested proposals for developing the site in December 2025.

Respondents were evaluated based on technical capability, financial maturity and alignment with U.S. government requirements. The selection of Blue Origin reflects their ability to meet these criteria and contribute to the development of heavy or super-heavy launch capabilities at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

SLC-14 is considered the most viable site at [Vandenberg] for heavy and super-heavy launch operations due to its location.

Several crucial milestones must be achieved before any construction or launch activities can commence, to include safety assessments and an environmental impact analysis. The timeline for increased launch activity will depend on the completion of the safety and environmental analysis and subsequent infrastructure development.

I suspect that Blue Origin won this bid because SpaceX didn’t offer a proposal. It already has three launch sites for Starship/Superheavy, and probably decided it didn’t need this site.

Blue Origin meanwhile in November 2025 announced planned upgrades to its New Glenn rocket that would make it as powerful as NASA’s SLS rocket, but much cheaper because its first stage is reusable. The company is likely hoping to build that rocket, dubbed New Glenn 9×4 (based on the number of engines on the first and second stages respectively), and launch it from this site.

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Update on Superheavy/Starship: Both ships doing final static fire testing

2:41 pm

Link here. The report includes a lot of very interesting information about how SpaceX is evolving its launch platforms and the tank farms that fuel the stages in order to make them operate more efficiently. For example:

In the past, on Pad 1, SpaceX had only four Liquid Oxygen (LOX) Pumps and six subcoolers, and three Liquid Methane (LCH4) Pumps with three subcoolers. This setup allowed SpaceX to start booster load at T-41:15 on Flight 11.

On Pad 2, SpaceX has five pumps and about 10 subcoolers worth of capacity on the LOX side, and four pumps alongside about six subcoolers worth of capacity on the LCH4 side. With these upgrades, along with larger supply lines, SpaceX can now load a full booster within 30 minutes, and each LOX ring takes only about 90 seconds to load. This now means SpaceX can load the Superheavy booster faster than a Falcon 9 and carry over 10 times the propellant. [emphasis mine]

Many of the tests have been more to prove out the fueling systems and launchpad than to test Superheavy.

Other tests however have been to prove out the new Raptor-3 engine. The company have increased the number of engines step by step so that the next test will be the first to test all 33 engines. I suspect that test will also be the full dress rehearsal countdown prior to launch.

Starship meanwhile is undergoing testing on the company’s nearby Massey test stand, the one that I think was rebuilt after an explosion last year.

Stay tuned. It appears the next and 12th orbital test flight will not be long in coming.

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Three launches, two by SpaceX and one by China

10:10 am

Falcon 9 landing for its seventh time
Falcon 9 landing for its seventh time on today’s
third launch. See below.

Since last night there were three launches globally, two by SpaceX, and one by China.

First, in the wee hours of the morning SpaceX placed 25 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 32nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight, 43 days after the stage’s previous flight, it moved into a tie for fourth place in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicle:

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

Sources here and here.

Next China launched a classified satellite to test “internet technology”, its Smart Dragon-3 (Jielong-3) rocket lifting off from a sea platform in international waters in the South China Sea. Though China has launched numerous times from this sea platform, previous launches were very close to the shore. This was the first time the platform was moved this far into the ocean.

Finally, SpaceX completed its second launch in less than eight hours, sending Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule on its way to ISS with 11,000 pounds of cargo, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. Of the two fairings, one was making its first flight, while the other was on its fifth flight.

This was SpaceX’s fourth Cygnus launch for Northrop Grumman. The company originally launched Cygnus on its own Antares rocket, but when that rocket ran out of its Russian first stage engines it was grounded. The company hired Firefly to build a new first stage, but that project remains uncompleted.

Cygnus is scheduled to berth with ISS in two days, on Monday, April 13, at 12:50 pm (Eastern).

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

44 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 44 to 33.

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Amazon to begin commercial availability of Leo internet service in mid-2026

9:21 am

Amazon Leo logo

In an annual letter [pdf] to shareholders, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy announced the company plans on inaugurating its Leo internet constellation to customers in “mid-2026,” assuming the company can get a significant more satellites in orbit in the next few months.

Jassy’s wording was interestingly vague, however, suggesting this target date is very uncertain.

Over the last seven years, we’ve built a low Earth orbit satellite network (Amazon Leo) and put more than 200 satellites into space (which is the third-largest low Earth orbit network operating today). With a few thousand more satellites launching in the coming years, the constellation is expanding rapidly.

…While Amazon Leo is officially scheduled to launch in mid-2026, we already have meaningful revenue commitments from enterprises and governments.

To be precise, Amazon presently has launched 241 satellites, out of the 1,616 it needs to launch by July 2026 to meet its FCC license requirement. Because it is not expected to meet that requirement, the company has asked for a time extension, which the FCC is presently considering. The entire first generation constellation is supposed to have 3,232 satellites, so it seems unlikely Amazon will be able to provide internet service by mid-2026, as promised. It won’t have enough coverage with less than a fourth of its constellation in orbit.

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Now on Starlink!

9:37 pm

Starlink logo

My posting this afternoon today was interrupted because I was spending the day going up and down from my roof as I and friend Ken worked to install my new Starlink antenna.

As always with these kinds of jobs, there were moments that reminded me of a motto of mine when I used to assembly Ikea furniture as a part-time job: “It’s ‘Do everything twice day!'” In the end, the problems were minor and quickly solved, such as discovering that the Starlink ethernet cable from the power supply to the router could only be plugged in in one direction. The plugs on either end looked identical, but we struggled for almost twenty minutes trying to get the plug to click into the router, to no avail. Then a light bulb went off, and we decided to flip the cable. Lo and behold, both ends clicked in instantly.

Setting up the account and the Wi-Fi and the computers went very quickly, mostly thanks to my lovely wife Diane. Starlink only allows you to do this stuff on a smart phone, and I won’t touch one of those with a 200-foot pole. She got it all going within a very short time.

I had hesitated doing this for the past two years, mostly because it involved a lot of other non-Starlink-related time-consuming stuff too boring to describe but that we both wanted to avoid. We finally got that stuff taken care of in the past month and could make the switch.

The Zimmerman household is linked to the world, through space. Seems entirely appropriate.

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European Union to restructure its space bureaucracy

10:38 am

The European Union
This label would be more accurate if it read
“NOT made in the European Union”

The European Commission of the European Union (EU) announced earlier this week that it is renaming its “European Union Agency for the Space Programme” to the “European Union Space Services Agency (EUSPA)”, with the new agency aimed at running the EU’s various satellite projects, including its Galileo GPS-type constellation, its proposed communications constellations, and its various European security satellite projects.

The proposed regulatory document can be read here [pdf]. More details can be found here:

In the text of the draft regulation, the Commission says the agency is expected to play a crucial role in implementing Union space systems and wider space policy from 2028 to 2034 as part of the European Competitiveness Fund. That places the agency firmly inside the next generation of EU planning for satellite navigation, Earth observation, secure connectivity, space situational awareness and related civil and defence applications.

One of the clearest elements in the proposal is the agency’s planned renaming. The draft regulation states that the current European Union Agency for the Space Programme would become the European Union Space Services Agency. The Commission says this is meant to reflect more accurately the body’s current and future role as an operational actor supporting the delivery of Union space systems rather than simply administering a programme framework. That change in title is therefore intended to signal a broader institutional shift rather than a cosmetic rebranding.

The language above as well as the actual regulation itself I think illustrates well why the European Union is increasingly falling behind the rest of the world in space. The wording is obtuse, complex, and jargon-filled, often aimed at making things seem more significant than they really are.

The number of different bureaucracies involved is also a bad sign. On top is the EU. Under that is the European Commission. Below that is this new agency EUSPA. On the side is the European Space Agency, which though it will have a representative at all EUSPA meetings the division of responsibilities between it and EUSPA is very unclear.

All told, everything about this document and the government bureaucracies involved seems designed to do things slowly and in a manner guaranteed to cost more.

No wonder many member nations of the EU and ESA have decided to go their own way, even as they politely maintain membership in these organizations. Germany, France, Spain, and Italy are all now pushing the development of new commercial independent space companies within their borders, all attempting to launch similar space assets, but with the ability to eventually do it faster and cheaper.

I would expect those new private companies will soon eclipse anything proposed by EUSPA in the coming decade.

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ESA paid Arianespace about $96 million for an Ariane-6 launch

9:24 am

According to a story today on European Spaceflight, the European Space Agency (ESA) paid its commercial division Arianespace €82 million [about $96 million] for its Ariane-6 launch in November 2025 of ESA’s Earth observation Sentinel-1D satellite.

The European Space Agency has disclosed that launching the Sentinel-1D Earth observation satellite aboard an Ariane 62 rocket in November 2025 cost €82,070,773. As part of its involvement in the development of the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation satellite constellation, ESA is responsible for placing contracts with European industry for the development, launch, and operation of satellites. As part of this responsibility, the agency publishes an annual list of all contracts awarded with a value of more than €15,000. In 2025, this included the disclosure of the cost of launching Sentinel-1D aboard an Ariane 6 rocket in its two-booster variant [dubbed Ariane-62].

This is the first time ESA or Arianespace have revealed any price figures for using Ariane-6, and shows that Arianespace is attempting to price Ariane-6 competitively with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The article notes that SpaceX charged ESA about $90 million for an earlier Sentinel launch.

Because Falcon 9 is mostly reusable, SpaceX’s profit margin is far higher than Arianespace’s. Ariane-6 is expendable, and thus costs more. Thus, if necessary SpaceX could significantly lower its price, but hasn’t because it hasn’t yet felt any competitive pressure to do so. When the new reusable rockets from Stoke Space and Rocket Lab begin launching sometime this year, then launch prices will drop considerably, and Ariane-6 will find itself very over-priced, with no way to lower its cost enough to compete.

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Saxavord spaceport lost about $7 million in both ’23 and ’24; Andoya launch scheduled for today

9:00 am

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

According to a report in the Times of London yesterday, the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands lost about $7 million in both ’23 and ’24.

Annual accounts for Shetland Space Centre, the SaxaVord operating company, show a near 32 per cent rise in revenue to £2.5 million for 2024. The document, recently lodged at Companies House, shows a £5.4 million [$7.25 million] pre-tax loss, compared to £5.1 million [$6.85 million] in 2023.

The spaceport is controlled by billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, who had been instrumental in using the courts to block launches from the other proposed spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland. Saxavord meanwhile was first proposed about four years ago, but it has also not yet had its first launch. In both cases, the major obstacle has been the United Kingdom’s regulatory bureaucracy run by its Civil Aviation Authority, which has taken years to issue permits and licenses. Those delays have bankrupted two rocket companies, Virgin Orbit and Orbex, because they were unable to launch as scheduled.

Saxavord hopes its first launch will occur later this year, from the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg. That company had hoped to launch in 2024 — after more than a year delay due to red tape — but an explosion during the final static fire test of the first stage ended those plans.

Meanwhile, the first orbital launch from Norway’s Andoya spaceport is now expected later today by the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace. This will be the second launch of its Spectrum rocket, the first failing just after lift-off in 2025. This second attempt had been scrubbed in January and March, and is now scheduled for 1 pm (Pacific) today. I have embedded its live stream below.
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Update on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy launchpad improvements at Boca Chica

9:35 am

Link here. The article provides many details about the design improvements and testing that SpaceX is doing at the Boca Chica launchpad prior to the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight, now expected sometime in mid-May.

All the improvements appear designed to allow for quicker reuse of the pad, including protecting it better when both Starship and Superheavy return to be captured by the chopstick towers. For example:

On the tower, work has progressed on the Ship Quick Disconnect (SQD) arm, which connects to the Starship upper stage for propellant loading. This week, technicians added steel reinforcements to the lower side of the arm’s shoulder section. These additions are believed to strengthen the structure while enabling the arm to retract more quickly during launch.

A faster swing-out reduces the risk of damage from the intense exhaust plume of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines at liftoff. This improvement should minimize post-launch refurbishment and contribute to a higher launch cadence. The core work on the SQD arm itself appears largely complete, and scaffolding may soon be removed as final preparations continue.

Other work includes a new tower roof structure to protect it from the rocket’s engine exhaust, and other work on the pad itself to facilitate faster fueling. These additions have been accompanied by testing to make sure they work.

All this work appears intended to make it possible to launch frequently once the next test launch is completed.

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Orbital repair startup Starfish raises $100 million in private investment capital

9:13 am

Remora rendezvous
Images taken by Starfish’s camera.

The orbital servicing startup Starfish Space has now raised an additional $100 million in private investment capital, in addition to the $29 million raised previously.

Seattle-based Starfish announced April 7 it closed a Series B round led by Point72 Ventures, raising more than $100 million. Activate Capital and Shield Capital co-led the round, with major participation from Industrious Ventures and NightDragon. Several other new and existing investors were also part of the funding round.

…The company, which raised $29 million in November 2024, says the funding will enable it to scale up production of its Otter line of spacecraft designed for in-space servicing of other spacecraft. The company has won several contracts from government and commercial customers for missions to extend the lives of satellites or deorbit defunct satellites.

Starfish has already won contracts to do a variety of demo and satellite repair missions with the military (see here, here, and here) totaling about $144 million.

This financial success has occurred despite the fact that Starfish’s Otter servicing robot has yet to dock and repair any satellite. It has done two rendezvous and proximity demo missions, the second of which was supposed to do a docking but could not when the owner of the target satellite backed out of the project. The Otter-2 robot is still working in orbit, but the company has not been able to find a new target spacecraft to dock to. The company has also demonstrated its camera on another company’s orbital tug, as shown by the images above.

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Astroscale to fly mission to rendezvous and inspect two different satellites

8:01 am

Screen capture of ISSA-J1 operations around ALOS
Click for full animation.

The Japanese orbital tug company Astroscale this week announced a 2027 mission to fly an inspector satellite to rendezvous and inspect closely two different defunct satellites in different orbits.

The ISSA-J1 mission will inspect two retired Japanese satellites launched in the early 2000s. By approaching them in orbit, ISSA-J1 will observe their current condition more than 20 years after launch, including their attitude, rotation behavior and signs of degradation. The mission will conduct close‑range observations of multiple objects, closer than traditional monitoring methods, demonstrating new possibilities for on‑orbit inspection services.

The screen capture graphic to the right shows ISSA-J1’s proximity flight path around the first defunct satellite, ALOS, which was an Earth resource satellite that operated from 2006 to 2011. After completing its inspection of ALOS, it will then move into a higher orbit to inspect ADEOS‑II, another Earth observation satellite that operated in 2003.

Astroscale has already demonstrated it can do these kinds of inspection missions with its ADRAS-J mission, which flew within fifty feet of an abandoned rocket upper stage. Its eventual goal is to do space junk removal missions, grabbing this kind of space junk and de-orbiting it.

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Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur-4 rocket launches three payloads for War Department

8:40 am

Northrop Grumman early this morning successfully placed three experimental payloads into orbit for the War Department’s Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), its Minotaur-4 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

NRL’s payloads included the Lasersheet Anomaly Resolution and Debris Observation (LARADO) instrument; the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Orbiting Situational Awareness Sensor (GOSAS); and the Gadolinium Aluminum Gallium Garnet (GAGG) Radiation Instrument (GARI-1C).

The first is testing new methods for tracking space junk, the second improved GPS-type location and navigation for military operations, and the third new gamma-ray detection technology for tracking nuclear tests.

This was Northrop Grumman’s first launch in 2026, so the leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged:

42 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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Firefly signs deal with modular sea launch startup Seagate

8:02 am

The startup Seagate, which is building a modular sea launch platform for any rocket company, has now signed a partnership deal with the rocket company Firefly to jointly develop that sea platform.

Seagate Space Corporation announced today a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Firefly Aerospace to collaborate on the development of an offshore launch platform that enables a sea-based launch capability for Firefly’s Alpha rocket. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in expanding responsive, resilient launch solutions for the rapidly growing space economy.

Under the MOU, Seagate Space is working closely with Firefly to mature the design of an integrated offshore launch system capable of supporting the unique requirements of liquid-fueled orbital rockets. Central to this development is the integration of Seagate Space’s Gateway Series, the industry’s first purpose-built offshore spaceport designed specifically for launch operations.

Firefly presently has one operational launchpad, at Vandenberg, though it has a deal to launch its Alpha rocket from Sweden’s Esrange spaceport as well as a lease for a pad at Cape Canaveral. It has also been studying launching from a proposed commercial spaceport in northern Japan. Apparently, the company wants more spaceport options, and a sea platform gives it the most flexibility.

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SpaceX launches 25 Starlink satellites using new first stage

7:58 pm

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

This was the first flight for the first stage, which landed safely on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race.

42 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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Japan’s lunar lander startup Ispace wins contract with Korean rover startup

9:18 am

Artist rendering of Ispace's Ultra lunar lander
Artist rendering of Ispace’s Ultra lunar lander

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace has won a new customer for its next attempt to soft-land on the Moon, with the South Korean startup Unmanned Exploration Laboratory (UEL) signing a contract to put its proposed two-wheeled rover on that mission.

Under the terms of the agreement, the UEL rover will be integrated as a commercial payload on ispace’s ULTRA lunar lander for Mission 3, currently scheduled to launch in 2028. The mission would mark the first Korean rover to explore the Moon’s surface and underscores the growing commercial collaboration between Japan and Korea in the aerospace industry.

Mission 3 will serve as the inaugural flight for ispace’s ULTRA lunar lander.

Ispace so far has a very mixed record. It has successfully gotten two landers to the Moon, but both failed just before landing. It has also recently had to delay its lander mission for NASA because it had to replace the lander’s engine, the previous engine found to be inadequate.

Ultra is Ispace’s new larger lander design, intended to fly on all future missions. It remains untested in flight. The company presently has lander contracts for the following missions:

  • 2028: a Japanese mission funded by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
  • 2029: a Japanese mission funded by Japan’s Space Strategy Fund (designed at encouraging the private space sector
  • 2030: NASA’s mission, being built in partnership with the American company Draper

At the moment, everything about Ispace remains tentative. It needs to finally land something on the Moon to truly establish itself.

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Japanese rocket startup Interstellar gets another $47 million grant from Japan

8:58 am

The Japanese rocket startup Interstellar last week announced it has been awarded a new $47 million grant from Japan’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, in addition to the $53 million awarded in earlier grants.

The SBIR is a 3-phased governmental program aimed to promote the implementation of advanced technologies developed by startups in Japan. Interstellar was selected in September 2023 under the space section focused on the “Development and Demonstration of Private Launch Vehicles”, a project spanning for 5 years, from September 2023 to March 2028. After being selected as one of the four participating companies, Interstellar became one of three companies to pass the Phase 1 review in September 2024.

In this latest round, Interstellar is one of only two companies to pass, moving into the 3rd and final phase, which includes flight demonstration. Including the funds of the previous phases the total amount has reached a maximum of 15.4 billion JPY ( 98.97 million USD).

The company has also raised a little under $130 million in private investment capital, and has also signed contracts placing seven satellites on the first launch of its proposed Zero rocket. That launch was originally supposed to occur in 2025, but did not. No new launch date has been set, though this new grant suggests the company is getting close, though I also doubt it will occur in 2026.

At the moment Japan has no launch capability, as the two rockets controlled by its space agency JAXA are both grounded due to launch failures. It has several startups trying to build their own rockets, but none has succeeded as yet. The only one to attempt a launch, Space One, has tried three times to reach orbit with its Kairos rocket, all failures.

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Avio delays next Vega-C launch due to “technical issue”

8:40 am

The Italian rocket company Avio announced yesterday that is has postponed the May 9, 2026 launch of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Smile solar wind spacecraft due to “a technical issue” discovered by a subcontractor in a component used by the Vega-C rocket.

The press release provided little information:

The launch of the Smile satellite has been postponed, due to a technical issue occurred on a subsystem component production line after VV29 launcher integration. Additional investigations are needed to exclude any relation between such issue and the VV29 launcher in order to safeguard flightworthiness. The new launch date will be announced following the completion of these activities, as agreed with the supplier.

This launch will be the first entirely managed by Avio since it regained control of its rockets from ESA’s Arianespace division. The rocket itself was grounded for two years in 2023 and 2024 due to nozzle issues. It has since flown four times successfully.

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ULA launches 29 Leo satellites for Amazon

8:31 am

ULA early this morning successfully placed 29 Leo satellites for Amazon’s internet constellation, its Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

This was the heaviest Atlas-5 payload so far launched by ULA, and ULA’S fifth launch for Amazon’s Leo constellation, which now has 241 satellites in orbit, out of the 1,616 it needs to launch by July to meet its FCC license requirement. Because it is not expected to meet that requirement, the company has asked for a time extension, which the FCC is presently considering.

ULA is in the process of retiring the Atlas-5 rocket. It now has only nine Atlas-5 rocket left in stock, with three reserved for Leo launches and six for Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule (though there is a good chance some if not all of the Starliner launches will be switched to other payloads).

This was also ULA’s second launch in 2026, which means the leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged:

41 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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