An evening pause: Performed live 2023 as part of a concert dubbed, “Viking.” From the comments on the webpage:
Trøllabundin means spellbound. In the viking age, ‘Galder’ was a kind of magic song that was used in seiðr (magic/witchcraft) practiced by mainly women, and to ‘galdra’ was to affect something by magic singing.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
The three European aerospace companies Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales today confirmed previous rumors and announced they are merging their satellite divisions into a new company, dubbed Project Bromo, in order to better compete with the giant satellite constellations in the U.S. and China.
The preliminary deal wraps up months of three-way talks and clears the path to create a single company with annual revenue of about €6.5 billion ($7.5 billion). Airbus will own 35% of the group, with the other two partners each holding 32.5% stakes, according to a joint release.
The alliance, dubbed Project Bromo, is seen as a key litmus test for Europe to consolidate its fragmented defense and space industries to better compete with US and Chinese competitors. It aims to unify Europe’s satellite efforts and provide more autonomy in a segment that has become commercially and geopolitically vital.
These companies are coming to this competition very late in the game. SpaceX already has more than 8,000 satellites in orbit, and new constellations by Amazon and several Chinese pseudo-companies have already begun launching satellites. Moreover, this smacks more of a consolidation resulting from these three companies inability to compete, rather than an effort to establish a new company capable of doing so.
The venture capital division at Lockheed Martin, which has previously invested in a number of aerospace startups, has now invested in the rocket engine startup Venus Aerospace, which is developing a new radical design called a rotating detonation rocket.
Venus Aerospace, based in Houston, Texas, has developed a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) — a propulsion system that uses a continuously rotating detonation shockwave to generate thrust, promising more efficiency than conventional rocket engines. The company completed the first U.S. flight test of a 2,000-pound-thrust RDRE in May, launching the engine on a small rocket at Spaceport America in New Mexico. This engine could be used to replace solid rocket motors to power munitions and rockets, Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and chief executive of Venus Aerospace, said at Axios “Future of Defense” conference.
The amount of Lockheed Martin Ventures’ investment was not disclosed. Duggleby said the funding will “advance our capabilities to deliver at scale and deploy the engine.”
Venus Aerospace has already raised more than $100 million in private investment capital. This new influx from an established big space player will certainly strengthen its financial position.
Lockheed Martin has previously invested in rocket startups Rocket Lab, ABL, Orbex, and X-Bow. It has also invested in the orbital tug startup Orbit Fab, the orbital capsule company Inversion Space, and the satellite startup Terran Orbital, which it ended up buying entirely.
<An evening paus: A very nice cover.
Hat tip Cotour, who adds “These old guys have this piece nailed down!”
SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 21st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
136 SpaceX
63 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 136 to 104.
An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1977.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Sean Duffy: “Look at the shiny object!”
During a press interview yesterday, interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy revealed almost as an aside that NASA’s mid-2027 launch for the first Artemis manned lunar landing is no longer realistic, and that NASA is now targeting a 2028 launch date instead.
Duffy managed to hide this revelation by also announcing that he is re-opening the bidding for the manned lunar lander NASA will use on that third Artemis mission. To quote Duffy:
Now, SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III. By the way, I love SpaceX and it’s an amazing company, but the problem is, they are behind. They pushed their timelines out and we are in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term. So, I’m going to open up the contract and I’m going let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin. Whatever one gets us there first to the moon, we are going to take. If SpaceX is behind and Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin.
By the way we might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028.
The propaganda press of course is going wild about this SpaceX announcement, making believe it signifies something of importance. “SpaceX is behind! Elon Musk can’t do it! Duffy is giving Jeff Bezos the job!” And as I think Duffy intended, everyone is ignoring the fact that NASA has now admitted it won’t meet that 2027 launch target.
The irony is that Duffy’s decision to re-open bidding on that manned mission is utterly meaningless. » Read more
Engineering prototype of Hanbit-Nano testing portable
launchpad. Click for original image.
The South Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) today issued its first launch license for a private South Korean rocket company, clearing the way for the first launch Innospace’s Hanbit-Nano rocket in the next few weeks from Brazil’s Alcantera spaceport.
For the launch, Innospace has set a launch window from Oct. 28 to Nov. 28. The launch window refers to the period during which the actual launch can take place. Initially, it was set for Oct. 28 to Nov. 7, but was extended to Nov. 28 after coordinating launch inspection procedures, mission stability and joint operation schedules with the Brazilian Air Force.
Innospace said the upcoming launch will also mark the first commercial vehicle launch from a Brazilian space center, adding that Brazilian authorities have provided active support to ensure optimal conditions and a stable launch. While the launch site is operated by the Brazilian Air Force, Innospace will use its own independently built launch platform for the mission.
The rocket will carry five smallsats and three other payloads, one of which is from a South Korean beer company.
If successful, Innospace will become the first commercial rocket startup outside the U.S. to get to orbit, excluding the pseudo-companies in China. The launch will also re-open Brazil’s long abandoned Alcantera spaceport, off of its northeast coast. Used only a few times in the 1990s and then shut down when the Brazilian government abandoned its rocket program, Brazil has been trying to get commercial rocket companies to come there now for about five years, with little success.
The beat goes on: There were three launches globally today, repeating a pattern we’ve seen several times in the past few weeks, with China completing one launch and SpaceX completing two.
First, China’s solid-fueled Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1) rocket placed three Pakistani satellites into orbit, one of which is what Pakistan’s state-run press claimed was its first multi-spectral environmental satellite. China’s press also provided no information about where Kinetica-1’s lower stages crashed inside China, having launched from its Jiuquan spaceport in the country’s northwest. The rocket itself is supposedly commercial, but it is built by a government agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the government state-run press illustrated this by making no mention of this agency in reporting the launch.
Next, SpaceX set a new record for the reuse of a Falcon 9 first stage in placing 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, the rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage, B1067, completed its 31st flight, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The updated rankings for the most reflights of a rocket:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
29 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069
Finally, less than two hours later, SpaceX launched another 28 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 11th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
With these two launches, SpaceX has now placed more than 10,000 Starlink satellites into orbit, though a large percentage have been de-orbited over the years as the company has upgraded the satellites. Nonetheless, the number of Starlink satellites presently in orbit far exceeds all the satellites now in orbit for every other planned constellation, combined.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
135 SpaceX
63 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 135 to 104.
In the coming days the global rocket industry will also achieve a number of additional milestones. SpaceX is just two launches short of its record of 137 launches achieved last year, while the U.S. is just three launches short of its own record of 157 launches, also set last year. Similarly, China is just three launches short of its own record of 66 set in 2023.
Globally, the world has presently completed 239 successful launches in 2025, a number only exceeded by the 2024 record of 256. Expect this record also to fall before the end of the year.
An evening pause: Performed live 1993.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Another new sport that harnesses technology for fun. The music Bonsaye by Mirages.
Hat tip Cotour.
