Tag: capitalism

SpaceX launches first stage for record 34th time, passing shuttle Atlantis

2:25 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage (B1067) completed its 34th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 32 days after its previous launch. With this flight, this stage passed the space shuttle Atlantis to hold second 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
31 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.

SpaceX continues to recycle its first stages in a month or less, so expect this booster to pass Discovery before the end of the year. We should also expect all the boosters in the list above to do the same by the end of next year, though it is possible some will be retired as SpaceX begins to transition from its Falcon 9 high launch rate to using Starship/Superheavy instead.

Leave a comment

Brownsville’s mayor: SpaceX has brought billions of dollars to the region

12:04 pm

According to Brownsville’s mayor, John Cowen, SpaceX has brought billions of dollars to the region as well as created tens of thousands of jobs, and should be unanimously hailed by everyone there.

“The aerospace giant has infused $13 billion into into the economy across Brownsville and South Texas. It has created 24,000 direct and indirect jobs across the region, with approximately 4,000 jobs on site today. It is projected that 4,000 more jobs are coming,” Cowen said.

Cowen made his remarks about SpaceX at his 2026 State of the City Address, held March 25 at Texas Southmost College’s Performing Arts Center.

“SpaceX has generated more than $305 million in tax revenue. It has managed business relationships with more than 350 suppliers, putting $147 million into the regional supply chain,” Cowen said.

None of this is a surprise, except to some local and national news outlets that like to act as PR departments for the fringe activist groups — Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and the fake Indian tribe dubbed the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas — that have opposed SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations from day one, and have repeatedly gone to court to try to shut it down. Those news outlets always give these activists a big bullhorn to tout their position, even though they represent practically no one in the region and likely get their funding from leftist sources outside of Texas.

Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

One comment

Two launches from China and SpaceX early today

9:42 am

Early this morning both SpaceX and China successfully launched rockets. First, SpaceX completed its sixteenth Transporter mission placing 119 payloads in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 12th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. A detailed description of the 119 payloads can be found here.

Next, China successfully completed the maiden launch of its Kinetica-2 rocket, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China and placing three demonstration satellites into orbit. The rocket is built by the pseudo-company CAS Space, which is entirely owned by one of China’s government space agencies.

According to the developers, the rocket stands 53 meters tall, with a core stage diameter of 3.35 meters and a fairing 4.2 meters wide. At liftoff, it weighs 625 tons and produces 753 tons of thrust. It can deliver up to 12 tons to a 200 kilometers low Earth orbit or 8 tons to a 500 kilometers sun-synchronous orbit.

On this launch, the liquid-fueled core stage and two side boosters were expendable, and crashed somewhere in China. China will use this rocket to partly replace its older expendable Long March 2 and Long March 3 rockets that use very toxic hypergolic fuels, thus reducing the risk to its citizens somewhat from crashing lower stages. Eventually the plan is to make the core stage and boosters reusable, so that they no longer crash uncontrolled inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

39 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

SpaceX has another Starlink launch scheduled for later today, using a first stage on a record 34th flight.

Leave a comment

Another rocket startup in India hopes to launch from its own spaceport

9:17 am

India's spaceports, active, under construction, or proposed
India’s spaceports, active, under construction, or proposed

A new rocket startup in India, dubbed Bharath Space Vehicle (BSV), is not only building a commercial rocket to launch smallsats, it hopes to establish its own private spaceport near the town of Kodinar in western India.

BSV has proposed a launch complex near Kodinar in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district. Gujarat’s Science and Technology Minister Arjun Modhwadia told the state assembly that IN-SPACe has identified a suitable location between Diu and Kodinar for a satellite launch facility, comparable to Sriharikota.

The coastal location offers open sea access and favourable launch corridors for specialised satellite trajectories. Isro had earlier evaluated a Gujarat site for its SSLV launch complex before Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu was selected.

Sriharikota has been operated for decades by India’s space agency ISRO. Kulasekarapattinam is a new ISRO spaceport set to begin operations next year, focused on launching its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) for commercial missions. Hope Island is a proposed private and commercial spaceport, under study.

BSV’s rocket is called Agasthya-1 and will use liquid-fueled engines. It appears to be similar in design to SpaceX’s first rocket, the Falcon-1.

Though the company’s founders are all ISRO veterans who helped develop its rockets, its website makes no mention of a launch schedule. At present, India has two rocket startups, Skyroot and Agnikul, that appear close to their first orbital launch.

Leave a comment

Rocket Lab launches GPS-type demo satellite for Europe

9:05 am

Rocket Lab this morning successfully placed a European Space Agency (ESA) smallsat into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The smallsat, dubbed Celeste, is the first of two such demo satellites that ESA has contracted Rocket Lab to launch. They are designed to test a low Earth orbit constellation for providing global navigation and location information to users on the ground, similar to the U.S.’s GPS constellation. Celeste will work from low orbit with Europe’s medium orbit Galileo constellation, but being smaller will be cheaper and faster to build and launch.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

38 SpaceX
15 China
5 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

4 comments

Ispace to replace engine on its lunar lander, delaying its NASA mission to 2030

9:09 am

Ispace's old and new landers

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace has been forced to institute a major shake-up of its upgraded lunar lander design because a subcontractor’s engine did not meet the required specifications.

The engine, called Voidrunner and built by Agile Space Industries, was about to be installed in the lander for a 2027 launch of NASA lunar lander mission when a review found its performance to be unsatisfactory.

After closely monitoring the engine’s status and conducting careful review, Ispace has determined that a change in the development plan to incorporate a new alternative engine is necessary to ensure the successful execution of the lunar landing mission. The new engine, which will replace VoidRunner, has already been developed by the alternative supplier and has a proven track record of operation in past lunar missions.

The company has also decided to standardize its two lunar lander designs, one developed in Japan and the second in parallel by its American division. The new lander, dubbed Ultra, will use this new engine and fly all of Ispace’s subsequent missions. The image above shows the company’s original lander Hakuto-R on the left, compared to its new Ultra lander on the right.

This change will delay its planned NASA mission by three years, to 2030, though the company hopes it will not impact the schedule of two other lunar lander missions for Japan. Its new updated schedule, all using Ultra:

  • 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

Ispace has also created a new lunar satellite program, to provide communications, location data, and satellite tracking from lunar orbit, with a goal of launching its first lunar orbiter by next year, and five by 2030.

As a lunar lander company Ispace has had a very mixed record. It has successfully flown two landers to lunar orbit and then down to the surface. Each however crashed, failing just prior to landing due to software issues. This new delay of its NASA mission is not going to please NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, who instead wants to speed up the agency’s lunar lander program, flying almost monthly beginning in 2030. It likely means Ispace is going to have problems winning any new NASA lander contracts, until it proves its new Ultra lander design.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches another 25 Starlink satellites

10:02 pm

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

The first stage completed its 23rd flight 39 days after its previous flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

38 SpaceX
14 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

One comment

The space station part of Isaacman’s new program is facing push back, from industry and Congress

10:37 am

The American space stations under construction
Four of the American space stations under development.
The fifth, Max Space, is a late comer and not shown.

At a hearing yesterday before the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, both the trade organization representing the five commercial space station projects as well as some members of Congress expressed strong reservations about NASA’s new plan to build a core module as a basis for helping these companies develop their space stations.

Dave Cavossa, President of the Commercial Space Federation (CSF) that represents these companies, outlined in his statement [pdf] to the committee the industry’s dissatisfaction, not so much because of the specifics of NASA’s plan but because it follows other sudden changes last year by the previous NASA administrator Sean Duffy, and is still uncertain in its outline.

Given the delays and possible shifts in strategy, industry has been left to continue spending resources to develop private space stations without a full understanding of what NASA will require from a private station, how the agency will structure the rest of the procurement and program, and when industry may see a return on investment. This uncertainty challenges the public-private partnership business model and puts the agency at risk of deorbiting ISS before private stations are operational.

The trade group proposed that NASA stick with its previous plan to fund two or more station projects, dropping Isaacman’s core module proposal. It also wanted Congress give the agency the funds to do so.

Cavossa also strongly disputed NASA’s claim that the market at present doesn’t support these commercial stations.
» Read more

17 comments

All space stocks soar in anticipation of SpaceX’s impending IPO

9:51 am

It appears SpaceX’s upcoming initial public offering (IPO) of publicly-traded stocks, now anticipated to raise as much as $75 billion for the company, has caused stock investors to also pour their money into a whole range of space stocks, causing them all to soar in value.

Initially, it was expected that the IPO could raise $50 billion for the company, but the latest report indicates it could raise as much as $75 billion, with a valuation as high as $1.75 trillion. The colossal figures being thrown around on Wednesday have garnered excitement among investors for other space stocks that are already publicly traded.

Here were the top gainers in the session:

  • Firefly Aerospace: +19%
  • Intuitive Machines: +11%
  • AST SpaceMobile: +9%
  • EchoStar Corporation: 9%
  • Rocket Lab Corporation: +8%

The most recent indications suggest SpaceX will file the offering’s prospectus in the next week or so. If the predictions about it are correct, and SpaceX does raise $75 billion, it would then have on hand more than three times the cash that Congress normally budgets annually to NASA, with an ability to use that money far more effectively.

As I have been saying now for more than a year, the real space program for the United States is being run by SpaceX, not NASA. Expect SpaceX to outpace NASA in their parallel and complementary efforts to build a moonbase.

7 comments

Isar’s second launch attempt scrubbed due to abort at T-0 seconds

1:35 pm

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

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace was today forced to scrub its second attempt to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport when the rocket aborted the launch at T-0 seconds.

The launch was then scrubbed for the day because the launch window was only 15 minutes long. An earlier hold due to a boat violating the range had used up most of the window, leaving no time to recycle the rocket to try again.

No word yet on when the company will try again. At the moment Isar is in the lead to be the first new European startup to get off the ground, though Rocket Factory Augsburg from Germany and PLD from Spain are not far behind. Isar’s first launch attempt in March 2025 had failed seconds after lift-off due to a loss of attitude control.

Andoya is also in the lead to be the first European spaceport to complete an orbital launch, though SaxaVord on the Shetland Islands hopes to see that Rocket Factory launch in the coming months.

3 comments

Intuitive Machines wins $180.4 million new NASA lunar lander contract

8:46 am

Intuitive Machines' Nova-D lunar lander
Click for original.

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that it has won its fifth contract from NASA, a $180.4 million deal to place its larger upgraded Nova-D lander near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-5 mission will target Mons Malapert, a ridge near the Lunar South Pole that offers continuous Earth visibility, stable illumination conditions, and access to permanently shadowed regions. These characteristics make the site a compelling location for future communications, navigation, and surface infrastructure.

The artist’s rendering to the right shows this Nova-D lander. What stands out immediately is its low-slung appearance. Intuitive Machines’ smaller Nova-C lander was tall (see this image), with a high center of gravity. In its only two landing attempts on the Moon it tipped over both times after touchdown. It appears the company has finally recognized the issue and reworked this new lander to make it more stable after touchdown.

This contract award appears to be part of the accelerated program by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to land 30 unmanned rovers on the moon in three years, beginning in 2027. Mons Malapert is a plateau that Intuitive Machines second lander tipped over on. It is also the landing site for Astrobotics’ Griffin lander, as well as a candidate landing site for the first Artemis manned missions.

Note the small rover on the right in the graphic. While the mission will carry seven NASA science instrument payloads, it will also carry this commercial rover, built by Honeybee Robotics, a subsidiary of Blue Origin. As the company states above, the lander on this mission also has additional available payload capacity for more commercial customers.

2 comments

Lunar Gateway dead as NASA announces major changes to its future space station, lunar, and Mars plans

1:07 pm

Capitalism in space As part of the reshaping of NASA being pushed by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the agency today announced major changes to its future programs in low Earth orbit, on the Moon, and in exploring Mars. Video of these changes can be viewed here and here.

The Moon

NASA will now focus all work in its lunar program on getting to the surface of the Moon. Lunar Gateway is “paused,” though the language of NASA’s press release suggests more strongly that it is dead, with the agency already trying to figure out ways to “repurpose” its already built components. NASA will instead ask for proposals from private industry and its international Artemis partners to ramp up as soon as possible a phased program to establish the infrastructure on the Moon needed for the lunar base. This new focus begins with “up to 30 robotic landings in three years, starting in 2027,” and at least two manned landings per year beginning in 2028.

The graph below, presented during today’s announcement, shows the basic plan for the next few Artemis missions, which will act as the manned foundation for this entire surface-focused program. The overall program will build out the lunar base in three phases, first to test some basic infrastructure using these smaller lunar landers, second to begin establishing the base’s foundational components with intermittent manned missions, and third to begin long-term human occupancy.
» Read more

35 comments

Satellite repair startup Katalyst awards Arianespace and its Ariane-6 rocket a launch contract

9:02 am

The satellite repair startup Katalyst has chosen Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket to launch its first Nexus servicing satellite to geosynchronous orbit in late 2027, where it will demonstrate its capabilities by servicing a Space Force satellite.

The choice of Ariane-6 is intriguing, as it is much more expensive that a Falcon-9. Either the satellite is too heavy for the Falcon-9 (unlikely), or the Space Force for political reasons pressured Katalyst to use Europe’s rocket. It is also possible Katalyst choose Arianespace to stimulate interest in its robotic repair satellites within Europe, thus increasing its chances of winning contracts from there.

Either way, this is one of the few contracts outside of Amazon’s Leo constellation and European government launches that Ariane-6 has gotten. As I already mentioned, it costs more to use than other rockets, as it is entirely expendable. I think it is only surviving at this point because there are not a lot of options available. This is going to change, however, in the next decade as new rocket companies gear up to meet the demand.

Leave a comment

SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to build large-scale computer chip factory in Texas

8:42 am

At an event this weekend in Austin Elon Musk announced that SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla will a build large-scale computer chip factory in Texas, dubbed Terafab, designed to produce the chips needed by all three companies.

The “TERAFAB” project is a joint effort involving Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. Musk said the chips will be used in vehicles, Tesla’s humanoid AI robots and for projects in space, including solar-powered AI satellites.

…In a Sunday post on X, Musk clarified that the Austin-area facility is one part of the larger project and will focus on chip design. The main TERAFAB facility, he said, would require thousands of acres, and multiple locations are being considered. Musk said the chip production was necessary to fuel his companies’ growth. On Saturday, he shared an ambitious vision for the future powered by TERAFAB, including billions of robots and interplanetary travel. “We want to be a civilization that expands to the galaxy with spaceships, that anyone can go anywhere they want at any time,” he said. “And have a city on the moon, cities on Mars, populate the solar system and send spaceships to other star systems.”

Essentially, Musk has realized that to build his data centers in orbit and on the Moon, he will a lot of computer chips. Early in the history of SpaceX Musk learned that being dependent on outside contractors was crippling. Too often those contractors saw SpaceX has a competitor and acted to sabotage it. He soon decided his companies must be vertically integrated, doing as much work as possible in-house.

He is now applying that policy in chip production as well.

11 comments

Three launches today from three continents and three nations

2:59 pm

The global launch pace continues, with three launches today. First, Russia launched a new Progress cargo capsule to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its repaired launchpad at Baikonur. That launchpad had experienced serious damage to an access platform during the previous launch in November 2025, and since it was the only pad that Roscosmos could launch payloads and crews to ISS, Russia committed heavy resources to get it fixed quickly.

Once Progress reached orbit, however, one of the antennas used by its Kurs automatic docking system failed to deploy. If engineers can’t get it opened by the time of docking, scheduled for March 24, 2026, the Russian astronauts on ISS will use the back-up TORU system, whereby they control the spacecraft manually from inside ISS.

Next, SpaceX placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida. The first stage (B1078) completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 20 days after its previous flight. This flight also moved the booster up to just behind the space shuttle Columbia in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles, tying it with SpaceX booster B1077:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1067
32 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 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.

At the pace SpaceX is reusing its fleet of Falcon 9 boosters, expect Columbia to drop off this list in about two months.

Finally, China launched 10 smallsats, according to China’s state-run press, for a planned 160-satellite GPS-type constellation, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket (also called Jielong-3) lifting off from an ocean platform off the northeast coast of China. Video here of launch.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

2 comments

Private mission to Apophis gets another customer, two student-built landers

1:43 pm

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

The orbital tug startup Exlabs has signed up a second payload customer to fly on its private ApophisExL mission to rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it makes its April 13, 2029 close fly-by of the Earth.

ExLabs has announced its partnership with Japan’s Chiba Institute of Technology (ChibaTech) and its Planetary Exploration Research Center (PERC) to send university-led payloads to the surface of asteroid Apophis during its rare near-Earth flyby in 2029. ApophisExL is the world’s first commercial deep-space rideshare and is supported by mission design and operations collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) operated by Caltech.

Under the leadership of planetary scientist and PERC Director, Dr. Tomoko Arai, ChibaTech students and researchers are developing two landing payloads to be deployed on the asteroid’s surface.

An Australian satellite startup, Fleet Space Technologies, had already signed on to fly a mapping instrument on ApophisExL.

Though the press release at the link calls this private mission “a new model,” using private enterprise rather than relying on the government for doing planetary missions, it actually harks back to the way things were done in the U.S. before World War II, when the private sector did most of this pure research. In fact, as late as the 1960s there was at least one company, American Science and Engineering, doing the first X-ray astronomical observations flying suborbital rockets. It later won contracts from NASA and other agencies to help build several later orbiting X-ray telescopes.

Over time the government space agencies became dominant, so that most of this design work was either done by them or by universities, with private companies relegated to the roles of minor subcontractors.

This new model is simply an extension of the capitalism model that is taking over the entire space industry, shifting power and ownership from big, expensive, and inefficient government programs to small, cheap, and economical private missions. Those space agencies can still do missions, but they do it by buying payload space on these private missions.

Below is a list of the missions going to Apophis in 2029:
» Read more

2 comments

Sweden’s Esrange spaceport signs launch deal with Swedish military

12:55 pm

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

Sweden’s Esrange spaceport, used for decades for suborbital test launches but now trying to become an orbital spaceport, this past week signed a launch agreement worth about $22 million with Sweden’s military.

The contract covers systems and infrastructure that ensure protection, availability, and execution of satellite launches for the Swedish Armed Forces, as well as for partners and allies. The capability is scheduled to be operational by 2028.

…The initiative is part of a government decision from 2023 to allocate approximately [$100 million] to the Swedish Armed Forces through 2032 to develop Sweden’s space capabilities. The decision includes, among other things, improved space situational awareness, expansion of infrastructure at Esrange in cooperation with SSC Space, and the ability for the Swedish Armed Forces to carry out multiple satellite launches.

It seems unlikely Sweden’s military will be able to produce its own rockets for this amount of money. More likely they will buy the services from others. The American rocket company Firefly in 2024 signed a deal to launch its Alpha rocket from Esrange, but it appears there might be regulatory issues blocking any launches, some of which might stem from opposition by Norway. Esrange has an interior location, so any orbital launch has to fly over territory belonging to other countries. It appears Sweden is having problems getting permission to do so.

My guess is that this deal is mostly aimed at keeping Esrange open. Or to put it more bluntly, use the earnings of Swedish taxpayers to support a government-controlled spaceport with little financial promise.

One comment

Two launches today by Rocket Lab and SpaceX

1:12 am

The launch pace continued today with two American commercial launches.

First Rocket Lab placed a Synspective radar satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This was the company’s eighth launch for Synspective, out of a 27-launch contract.

Next, SpaceX placed 25 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

36 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

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

5 comments

Space Force shifts another ULA Vulcan launch to SpaceX

3:19 pm

Unexpected debris falling from rocket at about T-1:00
Nozzle failure during February 12, 2026 Vulcan launch

As expected, the Space Force has taken its next GPS satellite launch from ULA’s Vulcan rocket and given it to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The reason for the change is the repeated problems with the solid-fueled side boosters used on Vulcan and built by Northrop Grumman. The nozzles on two different launches failed. Though the rocket’s core stage in both cases was able compensate and get the payload into the proper orbit, the Space Force decided in late February to suspend further launches on Vulcan until ULA gets the problem fixed and proves it by launching other commercial payloads.

The Space Force however is not yet reducing the number of launches it has purchased from ULA, merely delaying them.

If all goes to plan, the satellite — the 10th and final one in the GPS III line — will lift off no earlier than late April from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida [on a Falcon 9].

Vulcan Centaur, in return, will launch USSF-70, a national security mission that had been manifested on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. USSF-70 will fly no earlier than summer 2028, according to Space Force officials.

Nonetheless, the situation is not good for ULA. This is the third such ULA launch the Space Force has shifted to SpaceX. At some point, if ULA doesn’t get the problem fixed the military it will be forced to reduce its reliance on Vulcan.

16 comments

The FCC’s agenda at its next meeting includes an item for “Weird Space Stuff”

2:49 pm

FCC logo

In releasing its agenda for its upcoming March 26, 2026 open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) included one very intriguing item entitled “Spectrum Abundance for Weird Space Stuff.”

In reviewing the fact sheet [pdf] for this particular agenda item, it appears the commission is focused on finding ways to maximize the use of some communications spectrum for more than one purpose. The commission wants to do this because it is anticipating a lot of new demand coming from what it calls “emergent space activities or emergent space operations.” As the fact sheet then notes:

In the geopolitical race to commercialize and dominate the Final Frontier, historic levels of private investment have paved the way for the engineering marvels and daring endeavors that now take place in outer space. Once the province of science fiction, American companies are now upgrading, relocating, and servicing satellites; 1. manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space; 2. building private inhabitable spacecraft; 3. and conducting private robotic missions to the surface of the Moon. 4. Emergent space operations like these depend on the use of radiocommunications for their spacecraft, but they are not the type of communications satellites that have traditionally commanded much of the Commission’s regulatory attention.

Spectrum is a critical component of all space operations. Even for spacecraft that do not provide radiocommunications services to the public, reliable spectrum access is mandatory for safety functions like telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) to control spacecraft in orbit. American innovators, however, currently face an acute shortage of usable and readily accessible spectrum for TT&C, and that spectrum crunch threatens to delay — or even prevent — the growth of domestic space technologies and jeopardize U.S. leadership in the booming global space economy. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the FCC is trying to find other spectrum, allocated for other purposes but available at other times, that can be provided to these new in-space operations for this telemetry, tracking, and command functions. To do this it appears it will need to rewrite some of its regulations, and this agenda item raises the issues involved in doing so.

And most interestingly, it is even considering allowing the marketplace solve the problem, by allowing licensees to lease their allocated spectrum to others. The FCC would limit such actions to the spectrum the FCC determines best for these multiple uses, but it is considering setting up rules to allow such freedom.

What an idea! Let free enterprise find a way to use the electromagnetic spectrum in the most efficient way possible.

No decision has been made, and we should expect the Democrats on the commission to oppose this, simply because. Nonetheless, it is a refreshing policy proposal.

Hat tip to reader Steve Golson, who notes quite correctly, “It’s good to see FCC trying to help rather than hinder.” Amen to that.

5 comments

Ursa Major test flies a new liquid-fueled missile engine for Air Force

10:51 am

Ursa Major's Draper engine being tested in flight

The rocket engine startup Ursa Major last week announced it had successfully completed for the Air Force a test missile launch of its new Draper liquid-fueled rocket engine.

As shown on the right, the Air Force’s Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator (ARMD) suborbital rocket was used to fly the engine. More information here.

On January 27, 2026, AFRL and Ursa Major launched the Draper liquid rocket engine on a demonstrator flight. While many details remain classified, the company says the test vehicle reached supersonic speeds during its flight. The test marked a transition from ground-based validation to in-flight evaluation, allowing engineers to study propellant stability, engine throttling performance, and how the system behaves under real flight conditions.

The Draper engine is designed to address key limitations of current hypersonic systems by making them cheaper, more scalable, and easier to operate. It runs on hydrogen peroxide and kerosene, fuels that are safer to store and handle compared to traditional alternatives.

The War Department’s hypersonic testing program has certainly heated up since the military switched to the capitalism model in the past five years. Beforehand, when the military tried to do its own testing, it took it years to get little done, while spending a fortune. Now it is flying suborbital rocket tests with Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and Firefly. It is testing new engines on flights such as Ursa’s above. And it testing hypersonic avionics on Varda’s orbiting capsules upon their return to Earth. Based on this commercial activity, it appears the U.S. military might get some real hypersonic capabilities in the very near future.

Leave a comment

Kratos wins $446 million contract to build/operate ground system for Space Force satellite constellation

10:13 am

The military contractor Kratos Defense & Security Solutions was yesterday awarded a $446 million contract by the Space Force to build and operate the ground systems used to control the military’s missile warning satellite constellation.

The contract covers ground management and integration for the service’s Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking program, according to a March 19 statement from Space Systems Command. Kratos will provide the systems used to operate the satellites after launch, including sending commands, receiving sensor data and processing that information for delivery to military operators.

The work supports a constellation being deployed in phases. The first 12 satellites, known as Epoch 1, are being built by Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary. A second set of 10 satellites, called Epoch 2, is under contract to BAE Systems. Launches are expected over the next several years.

The method in which this entire constellation is being built and operated once again highlights the profound transformation that has occurred in how the Pentagon works in space since the formation of the Space Force. Beforehand, when the Air Force ran the military’s space operations, it would attempt to design and build everything, and the satellites built would be big and expensive, and take years to complete. Generally, little got built for a lot of money. Moreover, the upper management of the Air Force was in general not interested in space projects, and often gave these projects lower priority.

The Space Force was created during Trump’s first term to change this, giving the military an agency focused on its space needs. It was also designed to put those in charge who had been advocating going from these big gold-plated satellites that were few in number to many small satellites built quickly and cheaply by the private sector.

This new missile warning and tracking constellation demonstrates that this transition is largely complete. It is being built quickly by two different satellite companies, and will be maintained on the ground by a third.

Note: Kratos also builds the hypersonic test vehicles that Rocket Lab launches on its HASTE suborbital rocket. It will soon also fly those vehicles on a Firefly rocket.

One comment

India’s second spaceport to be completed next year

9:26 am

The existing and proposed spaceports in India
The existing and proposed spaceports in India

According to officials in India, the nation’s second spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam is on schedule to be completed by next year, when it will become available for polar launches of the SSLV rocket as well as other commercial rocket launches.

India is moving ahead with plans to operationalise a new launch facility at Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu. It is expected to be commissioned during the 2026–27 financial year, according to information shared in the Lok Sabha by Jitendra Singh.

The new facility, officially called the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) Launch Complex, is being developed as the country’s second space launch site. The Kulasekarapattinam complex will primarily handle launches of SSLV missions to Sun-synchronous Polar Orbit, a trajectory widely used for Earth observation satellites.

The SSLV rocket is at present controlled by India’s space agency ISRO, though there has been an effort by the Modi government to transfer it to the private sector. It is not clear whether that effort has been successful. ISRO and India’s large space bureaucracy has been resistant. There have also been indications that this new spaceport will be made available to the handful of Indian rocket startups that are developing their own rockets.

The Sriharikota spaceport is ISRO’s main launch site. The Hope Island site is a proposed commercial and private spaceport, whose future remains very uncertain.

Leave a comment

ESA to rent SpaceX Dragon capsule to do a European manned mission to ISS

9:15 am

ESA logo

Capitalism in space: At a European Space Agency (ESA) this week in Switzerland, agency officials announced that it is purchasing use of a Dragon capsule from SpaceX in order to do an extended manned mission to ISS in 2028.

Member states endorsed the concept of EPIC — short for ESA Provided Institutional Crew — a proposed mission intended to provide a medium-duration stay for ESA astronauts aboard the ISS.

The plan foresees acquiring a Crew Dragon mission in the first quarter of 2028 in collaboration with “interested international partners.” Crew Dragon is the crew spacecraft built by US company SpaceX.

According to those officials, this mission will be for at least one month, and include astronauts from ESA and some as yet undetermined international partner astronauts.

This contract illustrates the fundamental shift in power and control in manned space in the past decade. Until 2011, all manned missions were flown on government-built rockets and spacecraft. The agencies controlled everything, and actually acted to stymie competition from the private sector.

Now, those agencies are dependent on that private sector for their manned missions. They are instead merely customers, buying services from competing commercial companies that own the rockets and spacecraft, and rent them out for profit. That SpaceX at present is the only one capable of doing these manned missions for hire makes no different. Soon others will enter the fray.

Moreover, this capitalism model actually gives these agencies more flexibility. Beforehand, ESA had to go through NASA to do such a manned mission, and that would involve a lot of negotiations. Now it simply buys the mission from SpaceX, and flies it when ready.

7 comments

Blue Origin files FCC application for its own 51,600 data center satellite constellation

8:01 am

Blue Origin yesterday filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) an application to launch 51,600 satellites, dubbed Project Sunrise, aimed at creating its own data center constellation in orbit.

The proposed constellation includes up to 51,600 satellites operating in sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes ranging from 500 to 1,800 kilometers. To manage data traffic, the system will primarily use optical links and mesh backhaul networks, supplemented by Ka-band spectrum for telemetry, tracking, and command operations. The spacecraft will utilize multiple antenna variations to maintain efficient coverage across various orbital planes.

You can read the full application here [pdf].

Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, maybe the world’s leader in chutzpah.

Blue Origin also requests several waivers from the FCC’s normal new satellite license requirements, including what I think is a request to waive the FCC’s normal requirement that the applicant launch half its constellation within six years of license approval and complete the constellation three years later. Failure to do so results in financial penalties. The rules were created to prevent companies from getting licenses to grab spectrum from competitors with no intent to launch.

That this Jeff Bezos company is requesting this waiver is what in Yiddish is called chutzpah! Bezos’ other company, Amazon, is clearly going to fail to meet its own license timetable in launching its Leo internet constellation, and was recently lambasted by FCC chairman Brenden Carr for doing so. For Blue Origin to now request this waiver truly is an example of unbelievable gall. I can’t imagine the FCC will do so.

Either way, the competition to put up a lot of satellites continues to grow, with SpaceX and Blue Origin in the best position to make their constellations profitable, because both have their own launch vehicles.

Leave a comment

SpaceX completes a Starlink launch

2:14 pm

UPDATE: It appears The Russian launch described below did not occur as indicated by the story I linked to. There is no confirmation anywhere on the web that the launch occurred. If it had, the nature of the payload would have guaranteed some story in Russia’s state-run press. See also this X post, which suggests the lack of information about the scrub is related to Russian concerns about Ukrainian drone attacks.

Original post
———————-
There were two launches today, both of which sent up a cluster of satellites for broadband internet constellations.

First, Russia launched the first 16 satellites in its proposed 700+ satellite Russvet internet constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia. The satellites are built by the Russian company Bureau-1440, which hopes to have the entire constellation in orbit by 2035. Considering that this constellation is designed to compete with Starlink, its pace of launch is ridiculously low. SpaceX can generally launch 700 Starlink satellites in about a month, not ten years. By the time Russia gets this constellation in orbit it will be woefully obsolete.

SpaceX meanwhile proved this point today by continuing its brisk pace in Starlink launches. It successfully placed 29 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage (B1077) completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 26 days after its previous flight. This flight also moved the booster up to just behind the space shuttle Columbia in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

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

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

35 SpaceX
12 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia (corrected)

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

5 comments

German rocket startup signs deal to launch from SaxaVord spaceport in Scotland

9:56 am

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

The German rocket startup HyImpulse yesterday signed a contract with the SaxaVord spaceport on the Shetland Islands in Scotland to do a suborbital test launch at SaxaVord later this year.

HyImpulse has agreed a launch deal with the Unst spaceport, with the aim of a suborbital launch in quarter three of 2026. It will be the second launch of the company’s SR75 suborbital launch vehicle following a successful lift-off in Australia in 2024, which used a hybrid propulsion system involving paraffin “candle wax” and liquid oxygen. HyImpulse said that initial launch, from Koonibba, showed the vehicle could demonstrate “stable flight validating system performance under operational conditions”.

Under the agreement, SaxaVord will provide launch infrastructure and operational support for the launch of the SR75.

HyImpulse is the second German rocket startup to sign a deal to launch from SaxaVord. Rocket Factory Augsburg plans its second attempt to do an orbital launch from there later this year. In 2024 it was gearing up to do that launch but an explosion during a full static fire test of the rocket’s first stage killed that plan.

Considering the red tape the United Kingdom has imposed on rocket companies, bankrupting two and delaying all launches for years from both SaxaVord and the other proposed spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland, I am surprised these two rocket companies have signed these deals. Maybe the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has been reformed and eased that red tape.

Or maybe HyImpulse will find its plans blocked by the CAA as that agency once again ponders at glacial pace the issuing of a new launch license. Stay tuned.

2 comments

OHB wins $285 million contract to build weather satellite constellation for ESA

9:36 am

ESA logo

Capitalism in space The Swedish subsidiary of the European aerospace company OHB yesterday announced it has won a $285 million contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to build and maintain a six satellite weather satellite constellation.

The company had already successfully launched and tested a single demo satellite, proving a small satellite could do the job.

The foundation for this is the Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS), which OHB Sweden successfully placed in orbit as a demonstrator more than a year ago. The OHB SE subsidiary developed the small satellite on behalf of the European Space Agency ESA in record time, using a deliberately chosen New Space approach. Only three years passed between contract award and launch.

This new constellation is dubbed EUMETSAT Polar System – Sterna (EPS-Sterna), and will supplement and eventually replace the expensive government-built Eumetsat weather constellation presently in orbit.

OHB Sweden is the prime contractor for the delivery of the satellites for the EPS Sterna constellation. The consortium also includes Omnisys in Sweden as the supplier of the microwave instruments, which constitute the primary meteorological payload. A total of 20 satellites will be delivered under the contract. The industrial team includes approximately 30 companies. Germany is also strongly represented by SMEs that will contribute key hardware for the instrument and the satellite platform. The satellites will be procured by EUMETSAT through ESA. EUMETSAT itself will develop the ground segment, procure and provide the launch services, operate the satellites, manage the constellation and distribute the data through its data distribution mechanisms, which has a planned operational lifetime of 13 years.

This contract is another example of Europe’s fast shift in the past three years from the government model to the capitalism model. It took ESA almost a decade to finally decide to make that shift, but once it did it seems to be moving far faster than NASA did to implement it.

Leave a comment

Update on SpaceX’s preparations for the 12th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

9:22 am

Link here. The testing has apparently verified the fueling system of Superheavy at the new launchpad.

Starship Flight 12 took another step toward launch, with Booster 19 completing an initial test campaign on the newly commissioned Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. Culminating in a short Static Fire test, the series of tests was a first for Pad 2, the Block 3/V3 Super Heavy Booster, and for the upgraded Raptor 3 outside of single engine testing.

As the inaugural vehicle to undergo operations on this pad, B19’s campaign served as both a booster qualification test and a commissioning milestone for the expanded launch infrastructure, paving the way for a long-awaited static fire test of its Raptor 3 engines.

Lots of details worth reading. Ground testing will now shift to Starship. All in all, it does appear that an early April launch is likely.

4 comments

Why are commercial space startups shifting their focus to the military? $185 billion is the answer

9:21 am

War Department logo

In the past two years a number of space startups as well as established companies have shifted their work focus from getting NASA or commercial contracts to pursuing projects from the War Department.

The best example of this has been Sierra Space, which until three years ago was entirely focused on building a Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle to bring cargo to and from ISS, as well as partnering with Blue Origin to build their proposed Orbital Reef space station.

Then, in late 2023 the company underwent a major management and staffing shake-up aimed at winning military and national security contracts. At the same time work on its LIFE inflatable module — intended for Orbital Reef — practically ceased, while the effort to get Dream Chaser finished seemed to slow to a crawl, eventually causing NASA to drop it as an ISS cargo vehicle.

Sierra Space however is only one example. During this time Rocket Lab shifted its focus somewhat to the military in developing HASTE, its suborbital test version of its Electron rocket, in order to win substantial hypersonic test contracts from the Pentagon. And then there’s Tory Bruno, who quit his job as CEO of the rocket company ULA to take a job at Blue Origin heading a national security team aimed at winning that company military contracts.

So what has caused this shift? Has investment in the civil space industry dried up?

Hardly. The number of rocket startups continues to grow, fueled by the many new and established satellite companies planning constellations of tens of thousands to millions of satellites as well as the orbiting manufacturing possibilities presented by the five space stations under development. There is a lot of investment capital pouring into these efforts

The reason for this shift — which really isn’t so much a shift but a new focus that many companies are adding to their portfolio — is provided by an article today in Air & Space Forces Magazine, describing the War Department’s recent decision to add $10 billion to the budget of its Golden Dome project, raising it to $185 billion, while noting this:
» Read more

7 comments
1 2 3 … 266