An evening pause: Performed by the Orchestre National de Lyon, Jun Märkl, conductor.
And no, it wasn’t written for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was simply a good choice for the score.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Link here. The article provides a detailed overview of the situation at Boca Chica following the static fire explosion of a Starship on June 18, 2025, which badly damaged the Masseys test stand used by Starship prior to launches.
The problem facing the company is that it wants to fly the last few version-two Starships (called Block 2) before it is ready to switch to the upgraded Block 3, and these two versions apparently require a different set up on the test stand. The article outlines three options, with the first two the simplest and most straightforward, but require the most delays.
Option three, which is the most SpaceX-like of them all, would involve the repair Masseys for Block 3 and, in parallel, attempt to come up with a plan to static fire Ships on Orbital Launch Pad 1 (A). This would allow SpaceX to continue testing and flying the remaining Block 2 Ships while preparing for Block 3 of Starship. This is what SpaceX is planning.
In other words, do Block 2 Starship prelaunch static fire tests on the launchpad itself while Masseys is being rebuilt for Block 3.
The article outlines in detail the technical difficulties this plan requires, because the launch mount is also used for prelaunch static fire tests of Superheavy. The two rockets require different mount clamping and fueling systems.
If this is the plan that SpaceX is following, it will likely mean that the next test flight, the tenth, will occur in about two months, maybe sooner. We will get a better idea of the company’s plans in the coming weeks.
My heart be still. Blue Origin yesterday successfully flew another New Shepard suborbital tourist flight, sending six passengers on a ten minute flight to the edge of space.
This was the company’s thirteenth suborbital flight, and the third in the past three months. Though it is gratifying that operations of New Shepard are becoming somewhat routine, it would be much more exciting if the company to do the same for its New Glenn orbital rocket. The suborbital flights are essentially a dead end. The real money and future is found in orbital operations, something Blue Origin has still not yet mastered.
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea
The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.
Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.
Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).
Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.
Two more launches occurred this morning, one in Japan and one in the U.S.
First, Japan completed the last launch of its H2A rocket, lifting off from its Tanegashima spaceport in south Japan, placing a Japanese climate satellite into orbit. This was the 50th launch for the H2A, which has now been replaced by the as expensive H3 rocket.
Next, SpaceX continued its unrelenting launch pace, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying 26 more Starlink satellites into orbit. The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.
As Japan’s launch was only its second in 2025, it does not make the leader board of the 2025 launch race:
82 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 82 to 61.
This evening two different American companies completed successful commercial launches, doing so from opposites sides of the globe.
First, SpaceX launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with the first stage completing its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This launch was on the evening of June 27th.
Then, a few hours later Rocket Lab completed the first of two quickly scheduled launches for an unnamed commercial customer, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This launch, on June 28th in New Zealand, was the company’s second launch in less than two days, its fastest turn around yet. As of posting the payload was not yet deployed.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
81 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 81 to 60.
An evening pause: Performed live 2024. A great song to herald in the weekend. May all my readers find themselves dancing in the dark with their perfect lover.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
The European Union (EU) has now released its proposed Space Act that would impose European-wide regulations on the space industries of all its partnering nations, superseding their own regulations and policies.
The press release claims, at the start, that this space act would “cut red tape, protect space assets, and create a fair, predictable playing field for businesses,” but in reading the act itself [pdf], it appears to do the exact opposite. It imposes new environmental, safety, and cybersecurity regulations on the design of satellites and spacecraft in a manner that will likely slow development and competition in Europe significantly. And it applies these regulations not only to European companies but to the rest of the world’s space industry, should it do any operations at all in Europe.
This European Union space law was initially supposed to be released last year, but was delayed because it appeared there was strong opposition to it from many of the union’s member nations.
The proposed law appears to have been reshaped to limit the areas the EU can regulate space, but my appraisal of these regulations is that they are designed to quickly expand to cover everything, while adding an unneeded layer of red tape across Europe’s space industry that will only cause it to founder.
It must also be noted once again that there is no one in the bureaucracy of the EU qualified to impose these regulations on the space industry. The EU launches nothing. Its bureaucracy knows nothing about space technology. All it can do is say no to anyone that wants to achieve anything, just because it thinks it knows better.
It will be interesting to see if this space law passes. It still must be approved by European Parliament and the European Commission. I expect there to be significant opposition from several different member states, most especially Germany, Spain, and Italy, each of which have a newly emerging space industry. We should also expect opposition from the member nations formerly part of the Soviet bloc, as their past totalitarian experience makes them very skeptical of this kind of bureaucratic power play.
At the same time, the political structure of the European Union is designed to encourage the passage of such laws, which is one reason there is a rising movement in many member nations to leave the union. If the law passes, expect it to cause more fragmentation within Europe, rather than unifying the continent as it claims it will do.
OSHA has now opened an investigation into the collapse of a crane at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility on June 24, 2025, captured by one of the commercial live streams that track activities there continually for the general public.
I have embedded the video of that collapse below.
A SpaceX crane collapse at the company’s Starbase, Texas facility on Tuesday has prompted an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency told CNBC in an email.
The crane collapse was captured in a livestream by Lab Padre on YouTube, a SpaceX-focused channel. Clips from Lab Padre were widely shared on social media, including on X, which is owned by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether any SpaceX workers were injured as a result of the incident. Musk and other company executives didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The article at the link provides no additional information, instead focusing on what appears to be an anti-SpaceX screed. It never mentions that cranes such as this are almost certainly not owned by SpaceX, and are likely rented and operated for SpaceX by other independent crane companies. Thus, this failure is likely a failure of that crane company, not SpaceX directly.
» Read more
Rocket Lab today successfully launched four radio surveillance satellites for the company Hawkeye 360, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads at its New Zealand spaceport.
This was Rocket Lab’s second of three launches under a Hawkeye 360 three-launch contract.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
80 SpaceX
35 China
9 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 80 to 59.
During a static fire test of a new upgraded strap-on solid-fueled booster to be used on the second version of NASA’s SLS rocket, it appears the nozzle broke off near the end of the test.
I have embedded the video below.
This failure is not good for getting the upgraded version of SLS built, dubbed Block 2. Block 1 has flown once unmanned, and is planned for the next two manned missions. Block 2 would be for further manned missions beyond that. The Trump administration has proposed cancelling it, ending SLS after those two Block 1 flights. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has instead introduced a bill that would save it in order to fly two Block 2 SLS manned missions.
This failure is definitely going to delay and add cost to Block 2 development, a program that is already over budget many times over and a decade-plus behind schedule. These additional delays and cost overruns are not going to help it politically. It justifies the Trump administration’s desire to cancel it.
Moreover, this nozzle failure suggests a very fundamental design problem. Northrop Grumman, which built and was testing this booster, also builds the solid-fueled strap-on boosters used on ULA’s Vulcan rocket, which had a similar nozzle failure during Vulcan’s second launch in October last year. Both Northrop Grumman and ULA have said they had identified and fixed the cause of that failure, and the military has certified it for operational launches, but nonetheless Vulcan still remains sidelined, more than eight months later.
I suspect ULA is going to have to do more testing of the Northrop Grumman Vulcan side boosters before its next Vulcan launch, delaying that rocket further.
» Read more
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad.)
The French rocket startup Latitude has announced it will spend $9.3 million to build its own launchpad at the spaceport in French Guiana, where hopes to launch its Zephyr rocket in 2026.
In a 23 June update, Latitude confirmed the Guiana Space Centre as the launch site for the inaugural flight of its 19-metre-tall, two-stage Zephyr rocket, which is designed to deliver payloads of up to 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The site was one of two under consideration, with the company also having committed to developing launch infrastructure at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland. When that partnership was announced in March 2022, Latitude, then known as Venture Orbital Systems, aimed to carry out its first launch from SaxaVord in 2024.
Construction of the ELM-Diamant shared launch facility began in 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2026. According to Latitude’s 23 June update, the company will work with CNES and the European Space Agency in the coming months to implement its dedicated launch infrastructure at the site. This will be followed by the inaugural launch of its Zephyr rocket in 2026.
It is not clear exactly how that ELM-Diamant launch site will be shared. France’s space agency CNES (which operates French Guiana) had previously said it wanted all the new European rocket startups that wanted to launch from there to use a common launch infrastructure, thus requiring them to share technology as well as redesign their rockets to fit CNES’s requirements. The rocket startups objected, but it now appears two startups, Latitude and PLD, and come to an agreement of some sort.
This deal also suggests that Latitude is shifting away from using the Saxavord spaceport in the United Kingdom, possibly because it has seen the difficult regulatory hurdles required there and has decided French Guiana is a better option.
The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, yesterday indicated that her government was considering taking legal action against SpaceX because of the debris from its Superheavy rocket that was found washed up on its beaches after a test launch.
Mexico’s government was studying which international laws were being violated in order to file “the necessary lawsuits” because “there is indeed contamination”, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference on Wednesday.
…Mexican officials are carrying out a “comprehensive review” of the environmental impacts of the rocket launches for the neighboring state of Tamaulipas, Sheinbaum said.
Other than this one quote, the article at the link is largely junk, focusing on the test stand explosion last week of Starship, an event that has nothing to do with the material found on Mexico’s beaches. Moreover, that debris was apparently so harmless Mexicans were able to quickly gather it for souvenirs, with some immediately making money from it by selling it on social media.
In other words, this “investigation” and this “reporting” is nothing more than anti-Musk rhetoric because Musk has aligned himself with Trump.
SpaceX’s newest manned Dragon capsule, dubbed Grace, this morning successfully brought Axiom’s fourth commercial passenger mission to ISS, docking with the space station after launching yesterday on a Falcon 9 rocket.
The spacecraft docked at 6:31 a.m. to the space-facing port of the space station’s Harmony module. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary now are aboard the space station after launching at 2:31 a.m. on June 25, on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4.
The plan is for them to stay on ISS for two weeks.
SpaceX today successfully launched 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
80 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 80 to 58.
The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace announced today that it has obtained $174 million in new financing from a Miami-based investment firm.
This news report adds these details:
On 25 July 2025, Isar Aerospace announced that it had signed a €150 million convertible-bond agreement with Eldridge Industries. The instrument provides the company with funding in the short term, and the debt can later be converted into equity in the form of shares, typically at a pre-agreed valuation during a future financing round or an IPO.
That Isar needed to go to an American investment firm suggests there was a lack of interest in Europe to invest in this European rocket startup. The nature of the deal also suggests the possibility that some ownership rights will shift to Eldridge over time.
In March Isar first launch attempt of its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport failed 30 seconds after lift-off. It is building two more rockets, and will use this new capital to expand its production and launch facilities.
The American rocket company Rocket Lab announced today that it has been awarded a launch contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to place two European-built GPS-type test satellites into orbit.
Rocket Lab will launch two “Pathfinder A” spacecraft for ESA, provided by European satellite prime contractors Thales Alenia Space and GMV, from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 no earlier than December 2025. The spacecraft will be deployed to a 510km low Earth orbit as part of a mission to test a new approach of providing location, direction, and timing services from satellites in low orbit – otherwise called LEO-PNT (Low Earth Orbit Positioning, Navigation, and Timing). ESA’s LEO-PNT demonstration mission will assess how a low Earth orbit fleet of satellites can work in combination with the Galileo and EGNOS constellations in higher orbits that provide Europe’s own global navigation system.
That ESA gave Rocket Lab this contract illustrates the failure of this government agency’s own commercial rocket division, Arianespace, as well as the slowly emerging new commercial rocket startups in Europe. ESA likely rejected Arianespace’s Ariane-6 and Vega-C rockets as too expensive. These rockets were also likely unable to meet the required launch time table. It also could not pick any independent private European companies, because none have yet to successfully launch.
And ESA did this even as top government officials in Europe have been loudly demanding that Europe only launch its satellites on European rockets. That demand might make a nice sound bite, but reality trumps nice sound bites every time.
SpaceX last night successfully launched Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon capsule, the newest and fifth ship in SpaceX’s fleet of manned capsule, was dubbed “Grace,” as announced by Axiom mission commander and former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. The three paying passengers are government astronauts from India, Hungary, and Poland.
The capsule will dock with ISS tomorrow (Thursday) at 7 am (Eastern), where it and its crew will spend about one to two weeks before returning to Earth.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
79 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 79 to 58.
The overall lack of excitement about this manned space mission speaks directly to how successful SpaceX has become as a private commercial rocket company. Its rockets and capsules work routinely well, with almost no problems, making these manned space missions seem as boring as an airline trip from New York to Washington.
NASA today announced a new launch date of June 25, 2025 for Axiom’s Ax-4 commercial manned mission to ISS carrying a three passengers from India, Poland, and Hungary respectively and commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (now working for Axiom).
As with previous announcements, the information provided was sparse:
NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are targeting 2:31 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, June 25, for launch of the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, Axiom Mission 4.
The mission will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will travel to the orbiting laboratory on a new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after launching on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. The targeted docking time is approximately 7 a.m. Thursday, June 26. NASA will provide more details and its coverage information shortly.
The launch had previously been delayed several times because NASA and Russia wanted to first assess the repair work on the leaks in the Russian Zvezda module before allowing another docking at the station. No information however has been released so far detailing that assessment. Though there have been indications that the loss of air in ISS was stopped by the repair, neither NASA nor Roscosmos have provided any specific data.
According to an update today from the French cargo capsule startup The Exploration Company, its Mission Possible capsule prototype launched yesterday on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 had a “partial success (partial failure)” during its return to Earth.
The capsule was launched successfully, powered the payloads nominally in-orbit, stabilized itself after separation with the launcher, re-entered and re-established communication after black out. But it encountered an issue afterwards, based on our current best knowledge, and we lost communication a few minutes before splash down. We are still investigating the root causes and will share more information soon.
This was the second prototype test flown by the company, the first launched on the inaugural flight of the Ariane-6 rocket. That test was unable to complete its mission because of a problem with the rocket’s upper stage, which prevented it from completing its de-orbit burn, which would have then permitted the prototype to be released and return to Earth for flight testing. Instead, no test was done.
The company had initially only planned two test flights of these smaller prototypes before moving on to test flights of its full scale Nyx cargo capsule, designed to garner commercial cargo business to and from the space stations presently under development. The update today suggests it might now do another test flight with a smaller prototype.
In a press conference today, officials of the Japanese startup Ispace explained that the failure of its second lunar lander, Resilience, to land softly on the Moon on June 5, 2025 was due to a hardware issue in its laser range finder that prevented it from providing correct altitude data.
At the same time, they have not yet been able to pin down precisely what caused the failure. It could have been because of unexpected degradation during flight, or possibly a technical fault with the range finder in gathering data at the speeds and altitudes experienced.
The company is forming a task force in partnership with Japan’s space agency JAXA as well as NASA to try to figure out the issue. It is also going to add lidar instrumentation to future missions to provide a backup to the laser range finder. These actions will add about $11 million in additional costs, an amount Ispace says it can absorb.
Ispace is building two more lunar landers, one for NASA in partnership with the American company Draper, and the second for JAXA. It appears both missions are still moving forward.
An evening pause: Music by Disturbed.
Hat tip to Wamphyr, who adds, “It’s fun to watch a grandmother rock out like this.”
SpaceX today successfully placed 70 payloads, including 66 separate deployments, into orbit as part of its Transporter program for smallsats, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its 26th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. It also completed this flight only 22 days after its last flight. As of posting the deployment of these payloads and satellites was on going.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
78 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 78 to 58.
France’s space agency CNES this week awarded ArianeGroup, the rocket partnership between Airbus and Safran that builds the Ariane-6 rocket a contract to develop a more powerful methane-fueled rocket engine.
Aiming to reach between 200 and 300 tons of thrust, the new engine will be twice as powerful as the current Vulcain 2.1 main stage engine that propels Ariane 6.
No details about cost or time schedule were released.
The significance of this deal isn’t the engine, but that it was issued directly to ArianeGroup by France’s space agency, instead of through the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Arianespace commercial arm, as has been routine for the past three decades. The deal illustrates how the ESA is essentially beginning to break up. Rather than go through it, its individual nations are now going it alone, each providing support and funding to their own commercial private space startups. Germany began this process, encouraging the development of three new rocket companies (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, and Hyimpulse). Spain and Italy soon followed with their own new rocket companies, (PLD and Avio respectively). France, which until recently lobbied to keep the old government model alive in ESA, has in the past year shifted strongly to the capitalism model.
This contract only underscores this shift.
In receiving an award from a space advocacy group on June 21, 2025, billionaire Jared Isaacman hinted that his future space-related plans could include working with science organizations to finance scientific probes.
[Had he become NASA administrator he had wanted] NASA to partner with academic organizations on missions where such organizations would have had a bigger role in funding. “My priorities would have been leadership in space and the orbital economy,” he said, “and trying to introduce a concept where NASA could help enable others to conduct interesting scientific missions, getting academic organizations to contribute.”
That was something he said he might be interested in pursuing outside the agency. “I wouldn’t mind maybe trying to put that to a test and see if you could fund an interesting robotic mission, just to show that it can be done, and try and get some of the top tier academic institutions who want to perform. So that’s on my mind.”
He also indicated that he generally has no problem with the Trump administration’s proposed NASA cuts, noting that such academic organizations need to figure out how to work with less money.
Despite this statement, it appears he is still unsure of what he will do next in space. He has not restarted his Polaris Dawn manned program — suspended when he was nominated to become NASA administrator — and has said that right now he is more focused taking advantage of this unexpected break from work to spend more time with his family.
A rocketry team form Boy Scout Troop 74 in New Jersey has garnered first prize in the International Rocketry Challenge held this week at the Paris Air Show in France.
The team competed against top student rocketeers from across the globe. This year, the United Kingdom placed second, followed by France in third, and Japan in fourth.
The “Troop 74 Rocketeers” won the opportunity to represent the United States by securing the title of National Champion at the 23rd annual American Rocketry Challenge National Finals in May. The team bested a record-breaking 1,001 middle and high school teams who participated in the design, build, and launch competition.
This year marked the first time teammates Chase, Makayo (Mak), and Thomas qualified for the National Finals. Their precision in designing, building, and launching a model rocket was unmatched by any other team in the country.
This contest, which has been growing steadily in recent years, suggests a robust next generation of rocket engineers is on the way. And it also appears they will have plenty of job opportunities for their talent.
ULA this morning successfully placed 27 Kuiper satellites into orbit, its Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
This was the second set of Kuiper satellites launched for Amazon. It now has 54 satellites in orbit, with a requirement to launch about 1,600 by July of 2026.
As this was only the second launch in 2025 for ULA, both Atlas-5 launches of Kuiper satellites, the leader board in the 2025 launch race remains unchanged.
77 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 77 to 58.
ULA had predicted it would do 20 launches in 2025. It appears the company will not only not reach that goal, it will not do so by a lot.
