Glen Campbell – Galveston
An evening pause: Performed live on television 1969.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Tag: commercial
Indian rocket startup Agnikul completes static fire test of three-engine cluster
The Indian rocket startup Agnikul has now released a video of a 40-second static fire test of three-engine cluster it hopes to use on its Agnibaan orbital rocket.
The engines, powered by electric motor-driven pumps, were designed and manufactured in-house at Agnikul’s Rocket Factory-1. All three were fully 3D-printed as single-piece hardware units, reflecting the startup’s focus on advanced manufacturing and indigenous engineering.
Co-founder and chief executive Srinath Ravichandran said that increasing the number of engines improves rocket performance and that a three-engine system is required for commercial missions. The clustered test involved calibrating six pumps and six motors and fine-tuning six independent speed control algorithms to function in synchronisation. The goal was to achieve uniform startup, steady-state operation and shutdown performance across all three engines, a technically complex process given the precision required in semi-cryogenic propulsion systems.
The company has completed one suborbital test launch in May 2024, and in September 2025 said its orbital rocket’s first stage will land vertically and be reused.
Agnikul however has not released any schedule for launch, and based on this static fire test appears years from a first launch. It is making progress, but slowly. At the same time, it says it has raised $500 million in private investment capital, giving it the resources to build the rocket.
Based on testing and published progress, Agnikul appears to be trailing India’s other rocket startup Skyroot, though this could change in the coming year.
Rocket Lab completes in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters
Built by Rocket Lab for NASA and launched in November 2025, the company has now completed the in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters and is about to hand operations over to the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UC-Berkeley).
With both spacecraft now fully commissioned and successfully operating at the Earth–Sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), Rocket Lab is preparing to hand over operational control to [UC-Berkeley], who will lead science operations at L2 and prepare the mission for its cruise to Mars.
Under contract from [UC-Berkeley], Rocket Lab was selected to design, build, and provide commissioning operations of the two high delta-V Explorer-class interplanetary spacecraft for ESCAPADE. Rocket Lab moved from concept to launch readiness in just over three years, proving commercial collaboration can deliver important science key to supporting future human and robotic exploration of Mars on ambitious schedules and for significantly smaller budgets than typical interplanetary missions. This speed was made possible through Rocket Lab’s vertically integrated spacecraft production, with key components including solar arrays, reaction wheels, propellant tanks, star trackers, radios, avionics, and flight software designed and built in-house.
Launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in November 2025, the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, completed spacecraft commissioning and executed two precise trajectory correction maneuvers, placing both spacecraft into their loiter trajectory near L2, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
Both spacecraft will be sent on their way to Mars in December 2026 when orbital mechanics between the Red Planet and Earth are right for the journey. Once in Mars orbit the two orbiters will allow for a three-dimensional study of the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere.
Though this is a NASA-funded mission, note that it was built a commercial company and operated not by NASA but by a university. For this reason, it was not only built fast and at a low cost, it uses an innovative flight path that allowed it to be launched anytime and wait in orbit for the right moment to go to Mars. This last innovation provides for a lot more flexibility.
SpaceX completes its second Starlink launch today; Firefly scrubs launch
SpaceX successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites in orbit this evening during its second launch today, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The first stage completed its 26th launch, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Firefly meanwhile scrubbed its launch of its Alpha rocket due to high winds. No new launch date as yet been scheduled. This would be Firefly’s first launch since it had a launch failure in April 2025, followed by a static fire test explosion in September 2025. According to the company, this Alpha launch will be the last of this version before it begins flying an upgraded rocket.
The 2026 launch race:
27 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)
As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.
SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The 2026 launch race:
26 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)
As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.
Both SpaceX and Firefly have launches scheduled for later today. The Japanese rocket startup Space One has now rescheduled the third launch attempt of its Kairos rocket for March 3, 2026.
Cargo Dragon successfully returns to Earth
A cargo Dragon capsule successfully splashed down in the Pacific late Thursday, February 26, 2026, bringing back several thousand pounds of hardware and experiments.
The ship had been docked at ISS for the past six months, during which it used its engines six different times to raise the station’s orbit. That capability has traditionally been done by Russian Progress freighters, but NASA has been testing other options as they are unsure Russia will remain with the station after 2028. Furthermore, there are risks using Progress to do these reboosts, as the burns take place when Progress is docked to its Zvezda module port, and the hull of the Zvezda module has been developing stress fractures in the past five years that could catastrophically fail.
Not only has Dragon now demonstrated this boost capability, so has Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule.
I strongly expect Russia to stick with ISS for as long as it can, mainly because its own proposed new space station is not likely to launch as presently scheduled later this decade. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Roscosmos has consistently been unable to complete almost any new proposed projects, and the few it has completed launched literally decades late.
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time. The leaks in Zvezda now appear to have been sealed, but there is no guarantee more stress fractures will not appear as dockings continue at its port.
Rocket Lab completes another HASTE suborbital mission
Rocket Lab late yesterday successfully completed its seventh HASTE suborbital mission, using the first stage of its Electron rocket to do a hypersonic test mission for the War Department.
In this case, the test vehicle was from the Australian company Hypersonix, and it lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Electron launchpad at Wallops Island in Virginia.
This was Rocket Lab’s second flight for this particular military agency in the past three months, and its eleventh overall launch from Wallops Island. The company’s quick reconfiguration of Electron for hypersonic suborbital testing made it possible for it to capture a bulk of the military’s suborbital hypersonic testing business that others, such as Stratolaunch, had hoped to win.
Family Tree Nuts – Annie Moore, Ellis Island’s first immigrant
An evening pause: A bit of history to usher in the weekend.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Japanese rocket startup Space One to attempt third orbital launch this weekend
Japanese spaceports indicated by red dots
UPDATE: Launch scrubbed due to weather. No new launch date as yet been announced.
The Japanese rocket startup Space One has now scheduled the third launch attempt of its Kairos rocket for this coming Sunday, March 1, 2026, lifting off from its private Spaceport Kii launchpad.
Space One said Friday that it would launch the No. 3 unit of its Kairos small rocket carrying artificial satellites on Sunday morning. The Tokyo-based space development startup canceled the initially scheduled launch on Wednesday, citing a forecast for unfavorable weather conditions.
According to Space One, the Kairos No. 3 unit is set to lift off from the company’s Spaceport Kii launch site in the town of Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, between around 11 a.m. and 11:20 a.m. on Sunday. The rocket will carry five satellites, including one developed by the Taiwan Space Agency.
The two previous launch attempts, in March and December 2024, both failed almost immediately after launch.
A success now by this private company is crucial for Japan, as its government-owned H3 and Epsilon rockets are both grounded due to launch failures.
SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites; another booster reaches thirty flights
SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The first stage (B1069) completed its 30th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight, B1069 becomes the fourth SpaceX first stage to fly thirty times:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1067
31 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
The 2026 launch race:
25 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)
As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.
Rocket Lab’s suborbital launch from two days ago had been scrubbed due to weather, and is now scheduled for later today, lifting off from Wallops Island in Virginia and carrying an Australian hypersonic test vehicle. This won’t count in the totals above, but I will report the results after launch.
Happy Childhood Dance Ensemble – Kalinka
An evening pause: MORE young talent. Performed live 2020.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
NASA’s corrupt Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel: NASA must be bigger and have more control!
Orion’s damaged heat shield after 2022 flight.
ASAP “Move along! Nothing to see here.”
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) today released its annual report, and once again it demonstrated why I have been calling it corrupt and a waste of money for years.
The report can be read here [pdf], but let me warn you that its findings have nothing to do with ASAP’s original purpose (created after the 1967 Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed three astronauts), to look at NASA projects to make sure the agency is not ignoring specific safety issues.
Instead, as it has done repeatedly in recent years, the panel focused on management goals and larger strategic issues, and as usual concluded that the best way to do things is to make NASA bigger with more control over the entire space industry.
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