An evening pause: Performed live 2006.
Hat tip Alec Gimarc, who adds these details: “Chris Rea passed away last week. About our age. Over 30 studio albums. British. Very much an acquired taste. Been listening to him for nearly 40 years. Smooth, smoky voice. He specialized in slide guitar. Road to Hell is probably his greatest hit.”
Lockheed Martin and General Electric announced this week that they have successfully tested a rotating-detonation engine using complimentary technology developed by each company.
GE Aerospace and Lockheed Martin completed a series of engine tests demonstrating the viability of a liquid-fueled rotating detonation ramjet for use in hypersonic missiles, the first initiative between the companies under a broader joint technology development arrangement.
This fuel-efficient rotating detonation ramjet promises to fly missiles faster—including at hypersonic speeds—and farther while decreasing costs compared to other ramjet options. … The rotating detonation ramjet combusts fuel and air through detonation waves instead of the traditional combustion methods used in ramjet engines today. This propulsion system generates high thrust for super- and hypersonic speeds to engage high-value, time-sensitive targets, with a smaller engine size and weight that boosts range.
In October Lockheed Martin’s venture capital division announced it was investing in a startup, Venus Aerospace, that was developing its own rotating detonation engines. One now wonders, based on today’s story, if that investment might have been a purchase of the technology itself.
Either way, the Pentagon’s program to develop hypersonic missile capability has blossomed in the past two years, since it stopped trying to build the technology itself and has instead been hiring private aerospace companies to do the research for it. Ain’t capitalism wonderful?
An Indian startup, Aule Space, has now raised $2 million in seed money to begin development of a robot servicing spacecraft it intends to call “jetpacks”, designed to attach to satellites and provide them fuel and power.
The seed funding will allow Aule Space to being work on a demonstration mission planned for launch next year to test its docking capabilities. That will involve two satellites, each weighing about 30 kilograms, but Panchal said one option is to instead use an orbital transfer vehicle as the client for the docking demonstration.
The 11-person company, which plans to grow to 20 people by the end of the quarter, is working on ground tests of its rendezvous and docking technology. It has access to facilities used by the Indian space agency ISRO for testing SPADEX, a docking demonstration mission flown a year ago.
This “jetpack” concept is very similar to Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicles (MEV), several of which have already flown and extended the life of several satellites.
Aule is exactly the type of Indian satellite startup that India’s rocket startups, Agnikul and Skyroot, are being built to serve. The problem is that all of these startups, both satellite and rocket, are literally all startups. None has flown. India’s private space sector won’t really take off until its private rocket companies get off the ground, as its government space agency, ISRO, has done a very poor job launching its PSLV and SSLV rockets (both designed for smallsats). The PSLV has failed on its last two launches, and the SSLV has been in limbo now for years.
SpaceX’s Endeavour Dragon capsule undocked from ISS late this afternoon, carrying its four Expedition-11 crew who are coming home a few weeks early because of a medical issue with one crew person.
Live return coverage will resume at 2:15 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 15 on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel until Dragon splashes down at approximately 3:41 a.m. off the coast of California and crew members are safely recovered.
It has been speculated by several sources, based on several NASA updates, that the crewman with the medical issues is Mike Finke, 58, who had flown in space three times previously.
Note that the only reason most major news sources are covering this crew return is because of the medical emergency. Normally, SpaceX has made this process so routine few pay attention any longer.
A evening pause: Performed live c2018.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Click for NTSB report.
Despite previously identifying stress fractures in a part that held the engines to the wing on three different MD-11 airplanes, Boeing did nothing to replace the part, and so fifteen people died when the engine fell off a UPS cargo plane at take-off in November 2025.
The sequence of images to the right, which I have annotated to show the engine breaking free from the wing, comes from the NTSB preliminary investigation report [pdf]. From the article at the link above:
In an update to its ongoing investigation into the crash of UPS Flight 2976, the National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] said its team found fatigue cracking and overstress failure across much of the bearing race inside the area that attached the plane’s left engine to its wing. NTSB investigators then went back into Boeing service data and confirmed the design of the bearing assembly was consistent with the original design of that part.
[A] Boeing Service Letter dated Feb. 7, 2011 [and found by the NTSB], told operators the company was aware of four previous bearing race failures on three different airplanes. Boeing had seen the fractures of the bearing race, with the parts splitting in two and moving out of place. However, Boeing told operators its review of the bearing failure “would not result in a safety of flight condition.”
Boeing said further regular inspection of MD-11 airplanes would include a look at this bearing assembly, something scheduled for 60-month service intervals. And while Boeing used that service letter to discuss a new bearing assembly configuration, the installation of the original parts “was not prohibited.”
The plane itself had been built by McDonnell-Douglas, prior to its merger with Boeing. Nonetheless, Boeing engineers and managers were aware of this issue and did nothing to inform the owners of this plane so they could take action. In fact, Boeing apparently continued to ship out the original parts to airlines as replacement spares.
This is another example of a serious quality control problem at Boeing, where engineers no longer view serious engineering failures as serious engineering failures.
Axiom’s module assembly sequence
When Axiom announced in September 2025 that Redwire would be building the solar panels for the first module of its space station, dubbed the PPTM, it also said that module would launch in late 2027, which was a delay of one year from the original launch date of 2026.
That schedule has now apparently been delayed again. In an interview yesterday, the company’s vice president of human spaceflight, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, indicated the launch was now targeting 2028.
Plans call for the initial Axiom Station to be comprised of two modules, the PPTM — short for Payload Power Thermal Module — and a habitat module. The PPTM, which is to be shipped shortly to Houston for final assembly and integration, is slated to be launched in early 2028, with the second module following just months later. From there, Axiom aims to swiftly begin welcoming crew, Peggy Whitson, the company’s vice president of human spaceflight, told me in an interview.
This schedule almost guarantees that the Axiom station will not detach from ISS as quickly as originally intended. PPTM has a large hatch opening connecting it to ISS, allowing for the easy transfer of much of the research racks held on ISS. Before Axiom can become a free-flying station that ISS equipment must be moved, a process that will take time, likely months. To get it done the company will probably have to also attach its second habitation module so that crews can arrive and begin this transfer process.
In other words, 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 shrinking. It can ill afford further delays.
Below are my rankings of the five American space stations presently under development. Note that I now consider Axiom and Starlab tied for second.
» Read more
SpaceX today successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its 13th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The 2026 launch race:
6 SpaceX
2 China
Link here. First, it appears construction of a second launch tower in Florida is about to begin. Second, the launchpad needed for the next orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy is nearing completion.
Not only does this suggest the next test flight is only a matter of weeks away, the first launch out of Florida is not far in the future.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Luxembourg startup ClearSpace yesterday announced a new demo mission to test autonomous rendezvous and proximity maneuvers, scheduled to launch in 2027.
PRELUDE aims to validate autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations in real flight conditions. The mission will test high-accuracy tracking, navigation and maneuvering using a combination of vision-based and complementary sensors feeding onboard algorithms and autonomous, fault-tolerant guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software. The goal is to demonstrate full freedom of movement and safe, repeatable maneuvers around another spacecraft.
Sounds good, eh? Not so fast. ClearSpace has had a bunch of these missions proposed, and none has yet flown. In 2019 ClearSpace won an ESA contract to de-orbit an old piece of space junk by 2025. In 2023 however that mission was stymied when that space junk, a payload adapter from a 2013 launch of Vega rocket launch, was hit by another piece of space junk.
Both ESA and ClearSpace apparently had difficulties re-designing the mission. In 2024, the ESA forced a major shake-up in ClearSpace’s management and missions, with the established company OHB taking over the startup. Subsequently the mission was redesigned to de-orbit a different defunct satellite, but delayed until 2029.
In 2024 the United Kingdom gave ClearSpace and Japan’s Astroscale a contract to de-orbit two satellites in ’26. It is however not clear at this time whether that mission will launch as planned.
This new PRECLUDE mission is interesting in that it will test the rendezvous and proximity technology that ClearSpace must have for all the other de-orbit missions. In other words, those other missions were never possible, because ClearSpace didn’t have the capability to do them. This new mission appears designed to develop that capability.
I ask: Why wasn’t PRECLUDE scheduled first, in the first place? That it wasn’t reflects very badly on both ClearSpace and the ESA.
A small prototype re-entry demonstration capsule, built by the Spanish startup Orbital Paradigm and dubbed the Kestrel Initial Demonstrator (KID), apparently survived for a short period the failure of the third stage of India’s PSLV rocket early this week.
According to an Orbital Paradigm press release, the survival of its little demonstrator came as a surprise. “When we understood that the launch was non-nominal it was a bit of a hit for us,” explained Orbital Paradigm CEO Francesco Cacciatore. … “I think the launch livestream was still ongoing when the team saw that we had 190 seconds of flight data transmitted and received. We needed a few minutes to realize it was real data and not a glitch.”
…“KID was tested beyond its design envelope, and it worked. Separation, power-on, and data transmission, even after reentry, all performed well despite degraded conditions,” explained the company in a 13 January update. “Based on initial analysis, it seems that we achieved 4 out of 5 launch milestones, albeit through an off-nominal profile. The failure to deliver customers’ data prevents us from declaring the mission a success.”
The company considers the mission a failure because it did not get the re-entry data back that it really needed. It says however it is moving forward on a more advanced demonstrator it hopes to launch in 2027. I suspect it will not hire India’s space agency ISRO to launch it.
The Space Force yesterday announced it has switched rocket companies for its next GPS satellite launch, taking the launch away from ULA and its Vulcan rocket and giving it to SpaceX.
SpaceX could launch the GPS III Space Vehicle 09 (SV09) within the next few weeks, as the satellite was entering the final stages of pre-flight preparations. As part of the swap, United Launch Alliance (ULA) will instead launch the third of the next generation of Global Positioning System satellites. The GPS III Follow-on (GPS IIIF) SV13 satellite was originally scheduled to launch on a Falcon Heavy, but will now fly on Vulcan.
“SV09 and SV13 were traded between ULA and SpaceX to get capability to orbit as soon as possible, for the same reason as the prior swap, which resulted in the last GPS launch in May 2025,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The trade results in an overall net cost savings to the government and again demonstrates our sustained commitment to moving at speed to deliver combat-credible capabilities on orbit to meet warfighter needs.”
While at first glance it appears ULA has lost nothing, the military’s decision here bodes ill for the company. First, it indicates ULA has been unable to get Vulcan ready on time, forcing the Space Force to look to someone who could.
Second, this is the second time the Pentagon has taken a launch from ULA for these reasons. Increasingly it appears the military is losing patience with ULA’s inability to launch on time. For example, in awarding its most recent set of nine launches, it gave them all to SpaceX, bypassing ULA entirely.
In the past the Space Force tolerated ULA’s delays and high launch cost in order to guarantee the military had more than one launch provider. It now appears it is placing more importance on reliability and cost savings. And as I say, this bodes ill for ULA, which has not done a good job of providing either.
