Tag: capitalism

The causes behind the launch failure of Firefly’s Alpha rocket in April

9:20 am

In late August the FAA and Firefly completed the investigation into the launch failure of Firefly’s Alpha rocket in April, clearing the way for the company to resume launches.

At the time however this approval was reported here merely as a quick link on X. The company however also published its conclusions at that time which explained the cause of the failure. For completeness I post that now, describing what happened just after the first stage separated from the second stage.

Alpha’s first stage then experienced a rupture milliseconds after stage separation. The pressure wave hit Alpha’s second stage, leading to the loss of the engine’s nozzle extension and substantially reducing stage two thrust. The second stage was able to recover attitude control and continued to ascend to an altitude of 320 km until running out of propellant. The vehicle was three seconds short of achieving orbital velocity and five seconds short of the target payload deployment orbit.

The ground-based video, onboard telemetry, post-flight empirical testing and Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis corroborated excessive heat from Plume Induced Flow Separation as the most probable root cause of the mishap. Alpha Flight 6 flew a higher angle of attack than prior missions. Plume-induced flow separation intensified heat on the leeward side reducing structural margins, causing the booster to rupture from stage separation induced loads.

Fortunately, the corrective actions are straight forward: increase thermal protection system thickness on Stage 1 and reduce angle of attack during key phases of the flight. Corrective actions have already been implemented.

The company expects to resume flights in the very near future, probably before the end of 2025.

Leave a comment

Spanish rocket startup PLD completes test of prototype first stage

9:07 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD has successfully conducted a short “burst test” of a full scale prototype of the first stage of its proposed Miura-5 rocket as it prepares for a first launch.

The test subjected the stage to pressures beyond its intended operating limits to determine the point of structural failure. According to the PLD Space update, the test validated the structural performance of the tank under cryogenic temperatures and extreme pressure conditions. The company will now proceed with a fully integrated qualification model of the stage that includes all the elements required for flight.

The company had hoped to launch the rocket for the first time from its French Guiana launchpad before the end of this year, but that schedule has slipped to 2026. At the same time, it clearly is making real progress, having also tested the engines of the rocket’s second stage in August.

Leave a comment

Court throws out environmental lawsuit against SpaceX, FAA, and Starship/Superheavy

8:45 am

The federal district court judge for the District of Columbia yesterday dismissed entirely the environmental lawsuit that had been filed against SpaceX and the FAA by anti-Musk activists following the first orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy.

More details here. The lawsuit itself [pdf] was filed in 2023, claiming that the FAA’s environmental assessment of SpaceX’s activities at Boca Chica would do no harm to the environment were wrong.

SpaceX activities authorized in the FONSI/ROD [the environmental reassessment issued last year] have and will adversely affect the surrounding wildlife habitat and communities. In addition to harm from construction activities and increased vehicle traffic, rocket launches result in intense heat, noise, and light pollution. Furthermore, the rocket launches and testing result in explosions which spread debris across surrounding habitat and cause brush/forest fires — including one that recently burned 68 acres of adjacent National Wildlife Refuge. The FAA calls these explosions “anomalies,” but in fact they occur frequently, with at least 8 over the past 5 years. FAA acknowledged that many more such “anomalies” are expected over the next 5 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that prior SpaceX rocket explosions harmed protected wildlife and designated habitat in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

At the time I noted this:

In other words, rockets and launch sites should never be placed inside wildlife refuges, because such activity is detrimental to wildlife.

A more false statement cannot be made. Under this conclusion the launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, which have been operating in the middle of a wildlife refuge now for more than six decades, should be shut down immediately. All the wildlife there must certainly be dead!

We have almost three-quarters of a century of empirical data in both Florida and California that spaceports are clearly beneficial to wildlife, because they actually create the refuge by reserving large areas where development cannot occur. This court decision merely confirms reality, something it appears increasingly the left doesn’t have much grasp of.

4 comments

Starlink down for about an hour last night

8:53 am

According to several major news sources, Starlink was down for about an hour last night globally, impacting several tens of thousands in the U.S. alone.

More than 37,000 US users were reporting issues with the internet service Monday at 12:30 a.m. ET, according to the website Downdetector.com. By 1:30 a.m., that number had fallen into the hundreds. The internet service owned by Musk’s SpaceX stopped working on “the entire frontline in Ukraine” around 7:30 a.m. Kyiv time (12.30 a.m. ET), said Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems force, on Telegram. As of 8:00 a.m., service was gradually being restored, he said.

I link to CNN, but numerous other outlets thought this story significant enough to give it front page coverage. That this is considered news, however, illustrates perfectly how well Starlink functions normally. A brief outage lasting less than an hour makes the cover of every news outlet in the world, because normally Starlink works without problems for its more than six million subscribers.

SpaceX has not as yet provided any information about the cause of the outage. I suspect we are seeing the result of a hacker attack, possibly by Russia, but that is pure speculation. Even if not, it is in SpaceX’s interest to outline in detail what happened. This has been its policy in the past, but in the previous outage in July the company was not forthcoming. That lack of transparency has not served the company well.

Leave a comment

Space station startup Vast endorses NASA’s new strategy that no longer requires a continuous human presence in space

8:02 am

The American space stations under construction
The American space stations under development

Officials from the space station startup Vast revealed at a conference last week that they endorse NASA’s new strategy that, not only no longer requires the commercial stations to immediately establish a continuous human presence in space, will also award multiple development contracts to the commercial stations.

Speaking Sept. 11 at the Global Aerospace Summit, Max Haot [chief executive of Vast] endorsed NASA’s new strategy, announced more than a month ago, that calls for multiple Space Act Agreements to support development leading to a four-person, 30-day demonstration mission. “We think it’s really the right direction,” he said, noting it accelerates the award timeline. NASA said in a draft solicitation this month it expects to award multiple funded agreements by April 2026, months sooner than under earlier plans.

The original plan had been to choose at most two, but likely only one of the four consortiums/companies that are developing station proposals. The winner would have gotten a big contract that would have also required it to push hard for continuous full time occupation, from day one.

The new plan will instead award smaller development contracts to as many as three of the four station projects, aimed at getting them off the ground and operating, even if astronauts only fly in them intermittently. Eventually the hope is that their capabilities will expand quickly to permanent occupation, especially if they start earning revenue from the private sector, outside NASA. In fact, the smaller government contracts will force them to seek investment and profits elsewhere.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
» Read more

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter to ISS

8:13 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter with more than five tons of cargo, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The two fairing halves completed their 3rd and 6th flights respectively. Cygnus is expected to be berthed to ISS using the robot arm on September 24, 2025. This is also the first flight of the stretched version of Cygnus, capable of carrying more cargo.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

118 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 118 to 92. China also had its own launch scheduled for this evening, but no information about it has yet been released.

2 comments

Two launches in the past day

12:19 pm

The beat goes on. Since yesterday afternoon there have been two more global rocket launches, by Russia and SpaceX.

First, Russia launched the sixth GPS-type satellite as part of its next generation Glonass constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia. The rocket’s lower stage fell several different drop zones in Russia. No word if they landed near any habitable areas.

Next, SpaceX this morning launched another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

117 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 117 to 92.

As for the rankings for the most reuse by a rocket, this is the present leader board:

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

Sources here and here.

8 comments

Italian rocket company Avio commits $469 million to expand operations

8:59 am

The Italian rocket company Avio, which owns the Vega-C rocket, today announced that is has approved a $469 million fund to expand its manufacturing capabilities, including building a production facility in the United States.

Announced on 12 September, the capital raise is part of a new ten-year business plan targeting an average annual growth rate of about 10% in turnover and more than 15% in core profit (EBITDA). This growth will be driven by a higher Vega C launch cadence, the introduction of Vega E, continued participation in the Ariane 6 programme, and the construction of a new defence production facility in the United States, which is expected to be completed by 2028.

The management of Vega-C had previously been controlled by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial arm, Arianespace, which had owned and operated all of Europe’s rockets. ESA however is eliminating that commercial arm, shifting from the government-run model to the capitalism model, whereby it simply acts as a customer buying services from the private sector.

As part of that shift, Avio is in the process of taking back its Vega-C from Arianespace. Beginning next year it will be marketing the rocket directly to customers. This major investment reflects this change. The company is now free to pursue profits wherever it can find them, and it appears it wishes to market itself aggressively to American satellite companies as well as its defense industry.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches Indonesian commercial communications/broadband satellite

8:54 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched an Indonesian commercial communications/broadband satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 23rd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 16th and 24th flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

116 SpaceX
53 China
12 Rocket Lab
12 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 116 to 91.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches military payload for the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency

4:32 pm

SpaceX early today successfully launched a classified military payload for the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

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

I did not post this in the morning because there was a second SpaceX launch scheduled for the afternoon, and I planned on posting both launches in one post. That launch however was scrubbed and rescheduled for tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

115 SpaceX
53 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 115 to 90.

4 comments

Update on what SpaceX learned about Starship’s tiles during the 10th test flight

11:27 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after the October 2024 flight,
safely captured during the very first attempt

Link here. The update comes from a presentation given this week by Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s executive in charge of build and flight reliability, at the American Astronautical Society’s Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland.

Lots of new details. First, almost no tiles fell off during this flight. More significant, they found that the use of metal tiles won’t work. They tested three, and found that “The metal tiles… didn’t work so well.”

Gestenmaier also outlined how the flight provided the necessary data for sealing the gaps between the tiles better.

Gerstenmaier pointed to a patch of white near the top of Starship’s heat shield. This, he said, was caused by heat seeping between gaps in the tiles and eroding the underlying material, a thermal barrier derived from the heat shield on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Technicians also intentionally removed some tiles near Starship’s nose to test the vehicle’s response.

“It’s essentially a white material that sits on Dragon and it ablates away, and when it ablates, it creates this white residue,” Gerstenmaier said. “So, what that’s showing us is that we’re having heat essentially get into that region between the tiles, go underneath the tiles, and this ablative structure is then ablating underneath. So, we learned that we need to seal the tiles.”

They hope to do the 11th test flight in October, repeating the same suborbital configuration of previous flights, using the same version 2 of Starship. The plan will then be to follow up with a first suborbital flight of version 3 in 2026, followed quickly by orbital flights. During one of those orbital flights they will also try to do a chopstick catch of Starship. They also hope to do the first refueling tests next year.

All in all, it appears the test program is proceeding as hoped, and is about to accelerate significantly.

One comment

Croatian startup moves up the launch date for two subscale returnable capsules

9:44 am

The Croatian startup Genesis Space Flight Laboratories (Genesis SFL) has now accelerated the development of its orbital returnable capsule for manufacturing in space, moving up the launch date for its first two subscale demonstrator capsules from 2027 to 2026.

Initially planned for 2027, the missions were moved forward after Genesis SFL announced on 9 September that it had secured earlier slots with an as-yet-undisclosed launch provider.

Speaking to European Spaceflight, Genesis SFL CEO Bence Mátyás explained that the company’s GEN-1 and GEN-2 demonstrators will likely be the smallest reentry capsules ever flown, comparable in size to picosatellites. Despite their diminutive size, the capsules will be capable of remaining in orbit for approximately six months before performing reentry procedures, a capability made possible by the use of a host satellite [essentially the service module] also under development by the company. Once on a reentry trajectory, the capsule will separate from its host satellite and deploy a mini-parachute and antenna to enable recovery following a splashdown.

If these demonstrators succeed, the company plans to scale up later GEN capsules step-by-step, eventually matching and even exceeding those of companies like Varda.

The returnable capsule industry appears at the moment to be bursting with new companies. In the U.S. we have Varda, Inversion Space, Sierra Space, and even SpaceX using Starship. In Europe — in addition to Genesis in Croatia, we have The Exploration Company in France, Atmos in Germany, PLD in Spain, and Space Cargo in Luxembourg. And I am certain there are others that I am missing.

Very clearly the investment community sees big profits in using orbital capsules to manufacture products for later sale on Earth.

Leave a comment

Rather than streamline red tape, a UK government committee proposes it should fund its space industry directly

9:28 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

In a move that will do nothing to solve the red tape that has stymied the spaceports in Scotland as well as the launch industry in the United Kingdom, a Scottish government committee has concluded that the solution is for the UK government to become a direct investor in its space industry, increasing funding to both its spaceports and any launch companies that wish to use them.

The Scottish Affairs Committee heard from a number of experts and figures involved in the space industry. Professor Malcolm Macdonald, of Strathclyde University, said the UK had not always sustained its “first-mover” advantage in the space launch sector.

The report’s conclusion stated: “It is clear that the UK is falling behind its European counterparts in terms of public investment, leaving Scottish spaceports at a competitive disadvantage in a fast-moving global market. Without sustained backing from the Government – particularly in infrastructure – Scotland risks missing a generational opportunity to lead in space launch. To fully realise this potential, the UK Government needs to go further and faster.”

The MPs called for sustained Government investment in infrastructure.

The report also noted that despite a half-decade head start in establishing its spaceports in Scotland, the Andoya spaceport in Norway is now winning the race to become Europe’s prime spaceport.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The reason the UK’s spaceports have fallen behind is because its regulatory framework is impossible to navigate, taking years to get any approvals. But rather than fix this, this committee proposes throwing taxpayer money at the problem.

My prediction: It won’t work. Outside rocket companies will continue to move away from the UK, while any that get government investment to stay will find it difficult to get business, because it will still be impossible to get launch licenses when needed.

14 comments

India’s government finalizes deal to transfer operation of its SSLV rocket to a private company

9:13 am

India’s government and its various space agencies yesterday finalized its deal with the Indian company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to take over the manufacture and operation of its government-designed SSLV rocket (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) for the next decade.

Under the technology transfer contract that HAL signed with ISRO, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) and NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the aviation major will absorb the technology in the first two years, which will be followed by a 10-year production phase. The agreement grants HAL a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to the SSLV technology, which includes comprehensive design, manufacturing, quality control, integration, launch operations, and post-flight analysis documentation, as well as training and support. HAL will be responsible for the mass production of SSLV to meet Indian and global demands,” the company says in a statement.

Initially the Modi government had implied the transfer would involve ownership of the rocket by the private company, so that it could market the rocket for profit. The actual deal does not do this. Instead, it gives HAL the responsibility to manufacture and operate the rocket, but it appears sales and ownership will still be under the control of India’s space agency ISRO. If this is correct, the deal accomplishes less than nothing, and in fact simply adds another player in the game, making the SSLV rocket less competitive in the international market.

Then again, the Modi government might see this deal as just a first step in the transition from a government-run space program to a competitive independent space industry. It needs to wrest control from ISRO, and this can’t be done politically in one fell swoop.

To me however this deal for HAL is a bad one. It now has the responsibility for making and launching the rocket, but none of the benefits.

One comment

South Korea military begins project to develop a methane-fueled rocket engine

8:01 am

The South Korean defense department has awarded a consortium of Korean aerospace companies a contract to develop a methane-fueled engine that can be used in reusable rockets.

According to the space industry, a consortium led by Hyundai Rotem and Korean Air was selected on the 9th as the preferred negotiator for a 35-ton methane engine technology development project overseen by the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) under the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA). A formal agreement will be signed in November, initiating full-scale research and development (R&D). The project, budgeted at approximately 49.1 billion Korean won [$35 million], will run until 2030.

It appears there has been a turf war between the military and South Korea’s newly formed space agency, KASA. Originally KASA had planned to develop this engine, but apparently the military’s proposal won out. KASA now says it will collaborate with the ADD, but the project’s budget now goes to the military.

Leave a comment

EchoStar sells spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $17 billion while buying into Starlink

9:05 am

EchoStar today announced it has sold two of its spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $17 billion, in a deal that will also allow EchoStar’s customers to access Starlink.

EchoStar has entered into a definitive agreement with SpaceX to sell the company’s AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses for approximately $17 billion, consisting of up to $8.5 billion in cash and up to $8.5 billion in SpaceX stock valued as of the entry into the definitive agreement. Additionally, the definitive agreement provides for SpaceX to fund an aggregate of approximately $2 billion of cash interest payments payable on EchoStar debt through November of 2027.

In connection with the transaction, SpaceX and EchoStar will enter into a long-term commercial agreement, which will enable EchoStar’s Boost Mobile subscribers – through its cloud-native 5G core – to access SpaceX’s next generation Starlink Direct to Cell service.

Essentially, in exchange for the spectrum EchoStar is investing in SpaceX.

EchoStar also today canceled a contract it had signed in early August with the satellite company MDA to build its own 100 satellite constellation designed to provide direct-to-cellphone service, competing with Starlink and AST SpaceMobile. EchoStar will no longer build a rival constellation.

Wall Street apparently liked this deal, as EchoStar’s stock value quickly rose about 19%. It also appears the deal resolves questions the FCC had raised about EchoStar recent activities.

13 comments

Two more launches today

3:35 pm

As expected, SpaceX and China completed launches today.

First SpaceX launched another 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacitic.

Next, China placed an unspecified “group” of “remote sensing” satellites into orbit, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

114 SpaceX
51 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 114 to 88.

One comment

The Cracker Barrel kerfuffle proves the now powerful reach of the alternative/conservative press

3:40 pm

Cracker Barrel's logos

While much of the entire “controversy” over the decision by Cracker Barrel to change and then restore its old logo seemed to me to be a tempest in a teapot, the fact that the firestorm itself quickly forced Cracker Barrel to back down tells us something far more important: The alternative press (mostly conservative) is no longer confined to the fringes of culture, but now has real reach throughout society.

This cultural change can’t be underlined enough. For most of my long life, conservative news and cultural outlets had little impact on the general culture. They would make their points, often cogently and based on facts, and find themselves generally ignored. Only a decade ago, when conservatives complained about the leftward drift by major corporations or universities into racial quotas, bigotry, blacklists, censorship, and totalitarian Marxism, few noticed and more significantly, the companies or universities shrugged off the criticisms nonchalantly, as if the complaints were nothing more than a tiny gnat flying about in the air.

I speak from experience, because a decade ago I was posting regularly about this drift in both universities and corporations, was getting my posts picked up by many conservative news aggregates, and yet those posts had no impact at all. Nothing changed. If anything, the corporations and universities cited actually accelerated their racial quotas and their emphasis on bigotry, blacklists, censorship, and totalitarian Marxism.

No more. In the past four years the general culture and how it gets its information has fundamentally changed. That culture now listens to the right, and the result is fast and immediate change.

The Cracker Barrel kerfuffle proves this. Cracker Barrel proudly announced its logo change on August 19, 2025. In less than 24 hours numerous conservatives across the entire internet were lambasting the company about it, accusing the company of abandoning its past and going woke. This comment was quite typical:
» Read more

19 comments

Astrobotic signs launch deal with Norway’s Andoya spaceport

9:01 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The American lunar lander startup Astrobotic (which is now also a rocket startup) has signed a launch deal with Norway’s Andoya spaceport, where the company intends to launch its proposed reusable Xodiac rocket.

Astrobotic will perform their initial European Xodiac launch campaign operations from Andøya Space starting in 2026. Andøya Space will provide various services, including ground operations, flight preparation, and infrastructure support.

It will be wise to remain skeptical about Astrobotic’s rocket. The company owns the rights and technology of the vertical take-off-and-landing hopper developed and successfully tested by Masten Space System (which Astrobotic took over in 2022), but it also claimed in 2024 it would begin flying an upgraded suborbital version by 2025. No such flights appear on the horizon at this moment.

At the same time, developing a new rocket always involves delays. It will be quite exciting if Astrobotic succeeds in entering the launch market in the next year or so.

As for the Andoya spaceport, it continues to be in the lead among the four spaceports proposed surrounding the Norwegian Sea. Norway has made its licensing arrangement smooth and easy, the spaceport is well located, and it already has another launch contract with the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace, which attempted its first launch there earlier this year (albeit a failure). Moreover, Andoya has signed an agreement with the U.S. allowing American commercial companies to launch there, which is likely why Astrobotic made its deal.

Esrange’s location in the interior places it at a disadvantage, while red tape have badly stymied the two spaceports proposed in the United Kingdom.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

One comment

A simple phone device for kids

8:40 am

A British company is selling a very simple phone device for young children that allows them to stay in contact with their parents, including GPS location, without giving them a touchscreen and any access to the web.

The Messenger, from London-based outfit Karri, is meant to help kids aged 5-13 become more independent, while giving their parents peace of mind. It’s designed entirely around voice messaging, so you can chat with your child one-on-one, or connect them with other family members in a group conversation.

This is actually the company’s second-generation Messenger with an improved design over the first from 2023. It features a dot matrix display, a speaker, and most importantly, a “slide to talk” button in the center. Slide it down to listen to a voice message you’ve just received, slide up and hold to record a reply, and short slide up to send it off.

Considering the increasing evidence that smartphones do real damage to kids during their development ages, this kind of option makes sense. So does a simple flip phone, but this device provides a simpler and more limited alternative.

7 comments

Amazon gets first airline customer for its Kuiper constellation

8:05 am

Amazon yesterday signed up its first airline customer, JetBlue, the airline agreeing to provide in-flight WiFi to its passengers using the Kuiper constellation.

Amazon’s satellite internet service, Project Kuiper, will partner with JetBlue to provide in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2027. It’s Project Kuiper’s first deal with an airline as it aims to keep up with the SpaceX-owned Starlink, which has already snagged satellite internet agreements with United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Air France, and several others.

JetBlue must have gotten a truly great deal to go with Kuiper. It could start providing Starlink to passengers now if it wished, instead of waiting until 2027 with Kuiper. And even that date remains uncertain, considering how few satellites Amazon has so far launched (just over a hundred) when it needs at least 1,600 by next July to meet its FCC license requirements.

2 comments

SpaceX launches another 28 Starlink satellites

7:16 am

SpaceX in the wee hours last night successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Centery in Florida.

The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. SpaceX now has one booster with 30 flights and three with 27 flights, putting these stages in the same league with the three most flown space shuttles, Discovery (39), Atlantis (33), and Columbia (28). Expect these boosters to all pass Discovery in the near future, with several more Falcon 9 boosters about to enter this league as well.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

113 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 113 to 85.

4 comments

Yesterday’s Senate hearing on Artemis: It’s all a game!

1:08 pm

Ted Cruz, a typical
Ted Cruz, a typical Congressional porkmeister

The Senate hearing that was held yesterday, entitled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race”, was clearly organized by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to promote a continuation of the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway parts of NASA’s Artemis program. And he was able to do so because senators from both parties felt the same way. They all want to continue this pork, and don’t really care whether those expensive assets can really accomplish what they promise.

Furthermore, the hearing was also structured to allow these politicians to loudly proclaim their desire to beat China back to the Moon, using this pork. They want the U.S. first, but they are almost all want to do this through a government-run program.

As such, the choice of witnesses and the questions put to them were carefully orchestrated to push this narrative. To paraphrase: “We have to beat China to the Moon! And we have make sure a NASA program runs the effort! And above all, we mustn’t let Donald Trump cut any of NASA’s funding, anywhere!”

It was therefore not surprising that the most newsworthy quote from the hearing was the comments by former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine about Starship and how its choice as a manned lunar lander was a bad one, and that it was likely going to the prime reason China will put humans back on the Moon ahead of us.
» Read more

43 comments

Spanish startup signs three customers for first flight of its returnable capsule

9:30 am

The Spanish startup Orbital Paradigm today announced it has signed up three customers for the first flight of a subscale version of its Kestrel returnable capsule.

As it prepares for the inaugural flight of its return capsule, Orbital Paradigm has developed a subscale prototype to validate key technologies that will be used aboard Kestrel. According to the company, the prototype was built in less than a year for under €1 million.

In a 4 September announcement, Orbital Paradigm stated that its KID demonstrator will carry payloads for ALATYR (France), Leibniz University Hannover (Germany), and an undisclosed third customer. While the 4 September announcement did not include details about the Leibniz University Hannover payload or that of the undisclosed customer, ALATYR CEO Emeric Lhomme said his company’s payloads would demonstrate its robotic laboratory technology, which is designed to support microgravity research and production.

The company is also planning a second test flight with another subscale test spacecraft. Once operational in the 2030s, the company hopes to fly Kestrel monthly on three month missions.

The returnable capsule industry is certainly heating up. The American company Varda might have been first to do this in 2023-2024, but since then the field has gotten very crowded. In the U.S. we now have Inversion Space, Sierra Space, and even SpaceX using Starship.

In Europe we have The Exploration Company in France with its Nyx capsule, the German startup Atmos with its Phoenix capsule, the Spanish startup PLD with its Lince capsule, and the Luxembourg startup Space Cargo with its Bentobox capsule.

In addition, both China and Russia have recently flown returnable capsules, though it is not clear either has profit in mind.

This flood of startups strongly suggests there is great interest in the investment community for manufacturing products in space. While it is likely some of these startups will go belly-up, their number tells us that there is money to be made in this area, now that the cost of launch has dropped so significantly. With the expected advent of new rocket companies in the next two years, that cost will lower even further.

Leave a comment

SpaceX gets FAA approval to double its annual launches from Cape Canaveral

9:02 am

After several years of paperwork, the FAA yesterday approved SpaceX’s request to double its launch rate at the Space Force’s Cape Canaveral spaceport.

In addition to the annual launch increase from 50 launches to up to 120, the Federal Aviation Administration’s environmental review also approved a new on-site landing zone that could accommodate up to 34 booster landings per year. These boosters are the reusable first-stage portions of Falcon 9 rockets that SpaceX lands and refurbishes for future flights.

The review, finalized on Wednesday, found what’s known as a “Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact,” meaning the proposed changes “would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment” under federal law, with impacts reduced by specific protective measures. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the absurdity of these environmental reviews. We know without doubt and without any major review that rocket launches do no harm to the environment or wildlife. We have seven decades of data in Florida proving it.

According to the article both the FAA and the Space Force still need to issue further approvals before this request can go forward. Expect the Space Force to agree, without much bother. The FAA needs to amend SpaceX’s launch licenses, and this should also happen relatively quick, especially with Trump as president.

One comment

Cargo Dragon completes test burn to raise ISS’s orbit

8:51 am

The cargo Dragon that docked with ISS in late August successfully completed yesterday an engine burn lasting more than five minutes to see if it could raise ISS’s orbit.

On Wednesday, Sept. 3, SpaceX’s Dragon completed an initial burn to test the spacecraft’s new capability to help maintain the altitude of the International Space Station. Two Draco engines located in the trunk of Dragon, which contains an independent propellant system, were used to adjust the space station’s orbit through a maneuver lasting five minutes, three seconds. The initial test burn increased the station’s altitude by around one mile at perigee, or low point of station’s orbit, leaving the station in an orbit of 260.9 x 256.3 miles. The new boost kit in Dragon will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude through a series of longer burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025.

The Dragon will remain docked with ISS until December. It is expected it will do additional test burns during that time.

NASA wishes to get this capability from its own spacecraft so as to no longer have to rely entirely on the Russians, who have traditionally done these orbital adjustments using its Progress cargo freighters. SpaceX likely also wants to do these tests as an adjunct to its contract to build the de-orbit vehicle that will bring ISS down, after it is retired.

4 comments

France startup wins contract to build Starlink competitor

9:58 am

France’s space agency CNES has awarded a €31 million contract to France startup Univity to build a demo satellite to demonstrate internet and phone-to-satellite capabilities, as part a longer term plan to build a constellation that can compete with both SpaceX’s Starlink and AST SpaceMobile constellation, both already launched and in operation.

Founded in 2022 under the name Constellation Technologies & Operations, UNIVITY aims to develop a very low Earth orbit constellation to provide global high-speed, low-latency internet services. A prototype of the company’s regenerative 5G mmWave payload was part of a 23 June SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, hosted aboard the D-Orbit SpaceBound ION mission. The company expects to launch a pair of prototype satellites in 2027, followed by the deployment of its full constellation between 2028 and 2030.

This deal likely puts the final nail in the coffin of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) own government IRIS satellite constellation, which has been delayed, is expected to be very expensive and take a long time to get launched, and has already faced disinterest from many partners in ESA. That France is now going it alone likely ends any chance that IRIS will be funded.

Leave a comment

Two more launches in past 24 hours, by Israel and SpaceX

9:04 am

Both Israel and SpaceX completed new launches during the evening hours yesterday. First, Israel placed an Ofek radar surveillance satellite into orbit, its small solid-fueld Shavit-2 rocket lifting off from an undisclosed location within the country, likely its Palmachim Airbase on the Mediterranean coast south of Tel Aviv. The launch occurred about the same time as SpaceX’s Starlink launch from Vandenberg, already reported last night.

This was Israel’s first launch in 2025, and the first since 2023. Since 2008 the country has launched seven military surveillance satellites, one about every two to four years or so.

Several hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, SpaceX completed another launch, placing 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

112 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 112 to 85.

2 comments

SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

9:01 pm

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

The first stage was new, successfully completing its first flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

111 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 111 to 84.

Leave a comment
1 2 3 4 5 6 … 255