Tag: commercial

Australia’s Southern Launch range gets another re-entry capsule customer

9:44 am

Proposed Australian spaceports
Australian spaceports: operating (red dot) and proposed (red “X”)
Click for original image.

The Australlian spaceport Southern Launch, which also controls the Koonibba Test Range where a variety of government and commercial capsules have landed since 2020, has signed another American company building its own re-entry capsules.

Southern Launch has signed a new agreement with US-based SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc. to host multiple re-entry missions at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia.

The agreement enables SpaceWorks to advance its growing portfolio of atmospheric Re-Entry Devices (RED) and further demonstrates confidence in the Koonibba Test Range as the leading global location for the safe and reliable return of spacecraft and high-value payloads.

This is the third American re-entry capsule company to sign with Southern Launch. Varda has already landed I think five capsules at Koonibba, and has a deal to land up to 20 through 2028. In 2025 the American startup Lux Aeterna signed a deal as well.

Two take-aways from this story: First, SpaceWorks as a re-entry capsule company appears to be a new project, joining the host of other re-entry capsule companies that have obtained investment capital since Varda demonstrated its success, including three U.S. and five European startups. It really appears the financial community sees profits here, and are committing money to this effort.

Two, the red tape by multiple U.S. government agencies in 2023 that delayed the return of Varda’s first capsule to the Air Force’s test range in Utah for six months has driven all this business out of the U.S.

That red tape was part of the Biden administration’s general policy aimed at hindering private enterprise, but it also is systematic to the existing administrative state that dominates and impedes American industry across the board. The result here is the business went elsewhere.

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SpaceX launches 21 Starlink and 2 Starshield satellites

8:12 am

SpaceX last night successfully launched another 21 Starlink and two Starshield satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Starshield is SpaceX’s military version of Starlink. The first stage completed its 10th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

67 SpaceX
34 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 67 to 59.

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FCC grants waiver to Amazon Leo constellation, despite its failure to launch on time

8:07 am

Amazon Leo logo

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday granted [pdf] a license waiver to Amazon, allowing it to continue deploying its Leo constellation even though the company will fail to meet its license requirement to get half its constellation (1,616 satellites) into orbit by July 2026.

While granting the waiver, the FCC also made it clear Amazon still needs to meet the license’s deadline for full deployment of all 3,232 satellites by July 30, 2029.

In the event Amazon Leo fails to satisfy the final milestone on July 30, 2029, this will result in reduction of the total number of Amazon Leo’s authorized satellites to the total number of satellites that are operational on that date.

In other words, the Leo constellation will be truncated if Amazon fails to get the full constellation up on time.

To further encourage Amazon to meet future deadlines, the FCC also stated that the satellites of Amazon’s first-half constellation that are launched late — after the July 2026 deadline — will lose certain spectrum rights for the next 20 months, “or until 50% of the constellation is launched and operational, whichever occurs first.” This order is expressly designed to encourage the company to accelerate its launch pace.

Finally, the FCC declared that Amazon will forfeit its surety bond for not meeting its July 30, 2026 launch obligation.

Launching almost 3,000 satellites in the next three years is still going to be challenging. Right now Amazon is dependent mostly on two grounded and as yet unproven rockets (Vulcan and New Glenn) and a third (Ariane-6) that cannot launch at a very quick pace for at least another two years. And its additional a ten-launch contract with SpaceX won’t be sufficient to get the entire constellation in orbit on time.

In other words, unless Vulcan and New Glenn get fixed quickly and resume launches, Amazon is going to have trouble meeting the FCC’s final deadline.

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Charles Laughton – The Gettysburg Address

6:01 pm

An evening pause: A scene from the 1935 film, Ruggles of Red Gap. In the film he plays a British butler who has been won by a rich western family in a poker game. He comes to America, and is infected by its freedom.

I posted this back in 2011, on the anniversary of Lincoln’s first presentation. Time to play it again, since so many Americans today — like the cowboys in the movie — don’t have a clue what Lincoln said.

Enjoy your weekends!

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

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Musk’s answer when asked, “Why SpaceX going public now?”

11:02 am

In a JP Morgan public interview today about SpaceX’s upcoming initial public offering (IPO), Elon Musk was asked why the company was going public now, and gave a somewhat long-winded answer that included talking about the Sun as a major source of energy in the future, and then concluded very simply, to laughter: “We are embarking on a massive new growth phase and we need capital for that.”

I have embedded his response below. It is worthwhile watching because he does indicate much of what SpaceX wants to do, which not only involves an additional 100,000 communications satellites as well as a constellation of data satellites, it might also include possible solar power generation for use back on Earth. He also notes the company has been self-funding now for almost a decade.
» Read more

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Russia will charge about $27 million for future tourist flights

9:26 am

According to Dmitry Bakanov, head of Roscosmos, it will likely charge about two billion rubles, about $27 million, to fly tourists in space in the future.

The cost of a space tourist trip will be approximately 2 billion rubles, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov said in an interview with VK Video on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “It’s still an expensive project. The costs include the rocket divided by the number of participants. There must be two professionals, because they can guide it, so it’s about two billion rubles,” Bakanov noted.

The report of his remarks in Russia’s state-run press is not entirely clear as to whether this number is the price per tourist, the price for the entire flight, or Roscosmos’ cost for the flight, excluding its mark-up. Assuming it is the price for the entire flight, it is about a quarter of what Russia was charging NASA during the last few ferrying trips to ISS before SpaceX’s Dragon capsules became operational. This makes sense, since Russia was milking NASA for as much as it could get during those last flights. Future private tourists won’t have as much money as a spend-thrift government, so Roscosmos is now forced to charge a realistic price.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

11:07 am

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

The first stage completed its 12th flight (78 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

66 SpaceX
32 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 66 to 57.

China has two launches scheduled for today, with one supposedly having already taken place. When both are confirmed I will post a new launch update.

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SpaceX’s full IPO, aimed at raising $86 billion

10:30 am

SpaceX logo

SpaceX yesterday filed the full prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its planned initial public offering (IPO) of stock, revealing a plan to sell 555.6K shares at $135 per share, resulting in a total cash acquisition of just over $75 billion. Additionally, the company’s earlier investors will have separate options to buy other shares, raising about $11 billion more, for a total of $86 billion in capital raised.

The stock offering would set SpaceX’s value at about $1.77 trillion, and would make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. This would also be the largest IPO in history. The full prospectus at the link above has a lot of details, which this CNN article distills nicely:

SpaceX plans to sell 555.6 million shares at an initial price of $135 a share, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The decision to dictate one price target, as opposed to offering a range, is a unique move that reflects the hot IPO market around the AI craze and Musk’s own tendency for mega-scale goals.

Musk, who currently owns half of SpaceX, would still control nearly half of the company’s total shares after the offering. However, some of those are special shares with greater voting power, and Musk will control 82.4% of the voting power after the IPO, according to the filing.

The date of this IPO, when stocks will go on sale, is presently set for June 12, 2026. The stock will be traded on Nasdaq, under the label SPCX.

In addition to this $86 billion, SpaceX already earns about $12 billion per year from its more than 10 million Starlink subscribers, and has previously raised more then $12 billion from those initial private investors. All told, the company will have more than $110 billion in cash on hand after this IPO. That is more than four times NASA’s annual budget.

As I have said repeatedly in the past two years, SpaceX is the real American space program. NASA is begin carried along by it.

One detail of interest revealed in some viewgraphs that SpaceX is showing to potential investors is its intention to begin launching commercial payloads on Starship before the end of this year. In other words, expect much more frequent flights in the coming months, moving quickly to orbital tests, placing operational version 3 Starlink satellites in orbit as well as testing refueling in orbit involving two week missions and two Starships.

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AST SpaceMobile: Blue Origin’s launch failures delays our commercial operations until 2027

9:58 am

The satellite company AST SpaceMobile revealed yesterday that it no longer expects to begin commercial operations of its cell-to-satellite constellation by the end of this year, that the recent launch failures by Blue Origin will delay the initiation of that commercial service until the first half of 2027.

William Blair said Scott Wisniewski, AST SpaceMobile’s chief strategy officer, made the estimate June 2 during the bank’s annual growth stock conference in Chicago.

Before the loss of a New Glenn rocket in a static-fire test May 28, AST SpaceMobile had aimed to start early services at the end of 2026 with at least 45 satellites in low Earth orbit, helping anchor customers such as AT&T and Verizon in the United States plug terrestrial service gaps. The Texas-based venture had retained that goal even after the loss of its seventh BlueBird satellite on a New Glenn launch April 19.

The April 19th New Glenn launch failure was the first blow. After this the company said it still hoped to get enough of its Bluebird satellites launched to start service in 2026, as it was negotiating with other rocket companies. The May 28th New Glenn launchpad explosion was the final blow. AST now realizes that even with new launch providers, it can’t get enough satellites in orbit this year.

Blue Origin’s failures here are significant to the entire satellite industry. That industry needs more launch capacity from more providers. Right now, there is a dearth, with only SpaceX capable of launching large payloads frequently. Not only is Blue Origin’s New Glenn grounded, ULA’s new Vulcan rocket is grounded as well. And Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket is operational, it is not yet able to launch more than once every two months, and its manifest is already completely filled.

New large rockets by Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, and Relativity are expected to launch before the end of the year, but it will be a while before they will be ready to pick up the slack. And though Blue Origin says it will fly again before the end of 2026, there is great doubt in the industry about this claim. At the moment its recovery operations following the launchpad explosion are slowed as the Space Force assesses the damage to the range.

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First parachute drop test for The Exploration Company’s Nyx capsule a success

9:11 am

Nyx drop test

The French capsule startup The Exploration Company on May 19, 2026 successfully completed the first parachute drop test for its Nyx capsule in the Mojave desert in California.

I have embedded the company’s video of the test below. The screen capture to the right shows the capsule descending on its four main parachutes.

This test focused on one of the most critical phases of spacecraft recovery – the transition from drogue parachutes to the main parachutes that bring the vehicle safely to the ground. For this campaign, TEC used a dedicated drop test vehicle, or DTV, built specifically to evaluate parachute deployment, handover timing and vehicle dynamics during this phase of descent. The DTV was not designed to be a full spacecraft. It was designed to answer a precise engineering question: does the recovery system deploy in the right sequence, at the right time, with the expected behavior? This distinction matters. It allows us to focus effort and investment where it has the most impact – on the recovery system itself.

For this campaign, the DTV replicated the relevant mass properties, aerodynamic profile and key structural interfaces of the Nyx capsule, while using a robust internal structure and sacrificial outer panels to support ground impact, hardware recovery and future test campaigns.

The drop occurred when the helicopter carrying the DTV reached about 1.7 miles altitude. As the DTV dropped it appeared the parachute system worked perfectly, with the drogue chutes followed by the four parachutes releases as planned.

The company is targeting 2028 for the first orbital demo flight of Nyx itself. Its relatively fast-paced development in a sense puts to shame the American space industry, which except of SpaceX has not been able to develop such large orbital capsules. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule might be flying, but much of its development occurred not in the U.S. but in Europe. Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser both remain grounded and unused after more than a decade of development.
» Read more

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German rocket startup HyImpulse signs deal to consider launching from Oman

8:49 am

Active and proposed Middle East spaceports
Active and proposed Middle East spaceports

The German rocket startup HyImpulse has signed an agreement with Oman to study the possibility of launching its rockets from Oman’s proposed Etlaq spaceport located near the town of Duqm.

Under the proposed collaboration, HyImpulse will evaluate both near-term mission opportunities and the feasibility of establishing a longer-term operational presence at Etlaq Spaceport. Beyond offering an alternative launch base outside northern Europe, the arrangement is expected to capitalize on Oman’s advantageous geographic latitude, enabling access to a broader range of orbital inclinations and enhancing mission flexibility for customers across the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], Asia and, potentially, emerging African markets.

The two sides also plan to assess the possibility of supporting future launch campaigns involving HyImpulse’s SR75 and SL1 launch vehicles from Oman. Etlaq would provide access to launch infrastructure, operational facilities and mission-support capabilities as the European company studies deployment opportunities in the Sultanate.

HyImpulse is now the second European rocket startup to sign such a deal. In 2025 the Spanish company PLD agreed to use Duqm as well.

At the same time, Oman had previously said the spaceport would see a number of suborbital test flights in 2025, none of which happened.

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

9:03 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 16th flight (37 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

65 SpaceX
32 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 65 to 57.

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Venturi Space expands investment in new French factory for building Astrolab’s rover

8:59 am

Venturi Space, the European half of the partnership with the rover startup Astrolab, is increasing its investment in a new French factory from 100 million to 250 million euros.

On 1 June, Venturi Space announced that it had increased its expected investment in the new facility to €250 million. The announcement indicated that it would no longer begin with the initial smaller facility and would instead move directly to the full 16,000-square-metre planned “technology centre.” This likely accounts for the additional €150 million in funding.

According to the company’s 1 June press release, the facility will be used for the “design and manufacture of critical technologies for lunar and Martian mobility, as well as [for] the assembly of the rovers developed by the company.” …Venturi Space is providing wheels, batteries, and battery management systems to US-based Venturi Astrolab for use aboard its rovers. During a 26 May event, NASA announced that Venturi Astrolab was one of two companies selected to build rovers for the agency’s Artemis programme.

The partnership is an unusual one. Venturi Space and Astrolab are separate companies, working together to build Astrolab’s rovers for NASA. Venturi however is also developing its own rover for the European Space Agency.

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Axiom’s CEO provides update on corrosion and the timetable for its space station

8:01 am

Axiom's module assembly sequence
Axiom’s module assembly sequence

Jonathan Cirtain, the CEO of the space station startup Axiom, this week gave an interview where he provided a short update on the status of their station’s construction, including the present launch timetable as well as the corrosion issue known to exist on the two module hulls that Thales-Alenia is presently building for the company.

It [the corrosion] was actually observed during ISS using a similar manufacturing technique. They mitigated it.

Now it’s come back. … We’re going to fix it the same way they fixed it for the International Space Station, the Columbus module, which has been operational now for eighteen, nineteen years. Had that same challenge. So we’re working our way through that. That should get resolved by the end of the month of June.

Because this interview took place just prior to NASA’s announcement yesterday that it has abandoned its core module concept proposed last month, Cirtain describes how the company was considering some design and construction changes to deal with it. That issue however has now vanished.

Cirtain added that the module’s hulls will next be shipped from the Thales-Alenia factory in Europe to the U.S., where Axiom will then begin installing the interior and exterior components of each, with a planned launch of the first, dubbed the PPTM, by 2028, the same target date the company announced in January 2026. That the date has not changed six months later suggests either the corrosion issue did not delay things, or it was the cause of that delay.

As I noted in January, Axiom’s schedule margins for getting its station launched, docked to ISS, loaded with ISS equipment, and then separated before ISS retires in 2030 are extremely tight. It cannot afford any further delays.

In other Axiom news, the company announced yesterday that it has established a a wholly owned subsidiary based in Switzerland, dubbed Axiom Switzerland, thus establishing itself within the Europe to facilitate future contracts with the European Space Agency, the European Union, and the member nations of both.

Below are my updated rankings of the five American space stations presently under development:
» Read more

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Spanish rocket startup PLD raises the budget for its launch facilities in French Guiana to €35 million

11:18 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The ELM-Diamant launch site
is labeled “B.” Click for full resolution image. (Note: The
Ariane-5 pad is now the Ariane-6 pad, and the now destroyed
Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup MaiaSpace.)

The Spanish rocket startup PLD, preparing for the first orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket before the end of this year, has significantly raised its investment in its leased launch facilities in France’s spaceport in French Guiana, from about €11 to €16 million to €35 million, with much of the planned construction aimed at shared facilities that other European rocket startups can use.

PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has announced a €35 million investment in the development and deployment of its Launch Complex at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in Kourou (French Guiana) over the 2025-2026 period. This investment positions PLD Space as the first private operator to deploy capital expenditure at this scale at the ELM-Diamant site, contributing to the diversification and strengthening of Europe’s historic spaceport.

Of the total investment, €22 million is being executed within the French industrial ecosystem, with €13 million directly allocated to more than 20 companies based in French Guiana, including a significant number of SMEs. This approach reinforces PLD Space’s commitment to embedding its industrial activity within the local territory and strengthening the regional space ecosystem beyond established players.

France, which owns French Guiana, decided in 2024 to refurbish the long-abandoned ELM-Diamant launch site as a common pad for the many small European rocket startups. It appears it has strong-armed PLD to pay for much of that joint infrastructure. “You want to launch first? Then pay for this work that others will use.” It is possible PLD will be able to recover this investment from those other companies, but its press release does not say so.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space raises $500 million in private investment capital

11:01 am

Impulse's tug and proposed lunar lander
Impulse’s Helios tug, transporting its proposed
lunar lander to the Moon. Click for original image.

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced today that it has successfully raised $500 million in private investment capital.

The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, bringing the company’s total capital raised to over $1 billion. The funding will support hiring and manufacturing growth as the company scales its effort to build in-space mobility infrastructure: the vehicles, propulsion systems, and operational architecture that determine where and how spacecraft move after launch.

The company was founded by Tom Mueller, who was one of SpaceX’s first employees and helped develop the Merlin engine used on the Falcon 9. It has a fleet of tugs, with its Mira tug having already completed a number of missions. Its larger Helios tug is scheduled for its first mission next year.

Hat tip reader Nate P.

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Space station startup Voyager Technologies acquires lunar lander startup Astrobotic

10:43 am

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated
Mission’s to the Moon’s south pole.

The space station startup Voyager Technologies, the lead company in the consortium building the Starlab space station, announced today that is its acquiring the lunar lander startup Astrobotic Technology.

The acquisition directly supports NASA’s Artemis program and Administrator Jared Isaacman’s commitment to a permanent American presence on the Moon by 2028. Voyager intends to accelerate investment to scale Astrobotic’s lunar and reusable rocket programs in support of America’s Moon Base plans.

Following Voyager’s strategic investment in Max Space’s expandable habitat architecture, the company’s capabilities will span the full arc of lunar operation. This includes lunar mission management, communications and propulsion; surface delivery via Astrobotic’s Peregrine and Griffin landers; surface power through Astrobotic’s LunaGrid solar distribution system; long-duration habitation through Max Space; dust mitigation with Voyager’s clear-dust repellent coating; and in-situ resource production.

After three years of delays, Griffin is scheduled to launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket before the end of this year, landing near the south pole with four NASA payloads and Astrolab’s Flip demo rover, as indicated on the map to the right. Astrobotic has launched one previous lander in 2024, but was unable to attempt a landing because of a fuel leak that occurred shortly after launch.

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