Tag: competition

Saxavord spaceport suddenly wants to spend £120K for a security fence

8:53 am

Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

In what might cause another delay in the first launch from the United Kingdom’s Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, the spaceport’s management last week suddenly submitted a plan to spend £120K to build a security fence around the spaceport, even as the launch window for the German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg’s first launch had opened.

SaxaVord Spaceport has submitted a building warrant application detailing plans for a perimeter fence, which would be built at an estimated cost of around £120,000. The application was submitted last week, just ahead of the provisional launch window sought by German aerospace company Rocket Factory Augsburg, which took effect from 1st July.

It is part of wide ranging safety and security plans set out as part of SaxaVord’s range control licence, which was approved by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in 2024.

Since Rocket Factory announced in April its application to launch during this July launch window, there has been no word from Saxavord if that window was approved. Nor has Rocket Factory provided any updates on any specific launch dates. It has delivered both rocket stages to Saxavord, but beyond that there have been no other updates.

This new security fencing suggests that a launch approval was denied by the CAA, because that fencing was not in place as ordered in 2024. It appears Saxavord is now scrambling to get it done so Rocket Factory can launch.

The CAA has a bad track record. The delays caused by that government agency due to its regulatory burdens has resulted in two rocket companies going bankrupt (Virgin Orbit and Orbex) and one spaceport shutting down (Sutherland). It would not surprise me if Rocket Factory does not launch in July. In fact, I predicted this in April. Hopefully my pessimism about the CAA is wrong, but at present I am skeptical.

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Japan’s Hayabusa-2 successfully flies past asteroid Torifune

8:33 am

Torifune as seen by Hayabusa-2

Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe successfully flew past the asteroid Torifune yesterday, getting less than 2,000 feet from its surface as it zipped past at a relative speed of more than 10,000 miles per hour.

The picture to the right is the first image released by Japan’s space agency, JAXA. It shows that Torifune appears to be a contact binary, made up of two rubble-pile asteroids that gentle fused together in their dance in space. Contact binaries are presently thought to comprise about 15% of all asteroids, but that estimate might prove to be an understatement as we gather more information. This is the first seen close-up that appears made up of two rubble piles.

While Japan’s press and its space agency touted this fly-by success loudly, both failed to mention the technical problems facing Hayabusa-2, which made the fly-by even more impressive. The spacecraft, which was launched in 2014, rendezvoused and grabbed samples from the asteroid Ryugu from 2018 to 2019, and then returned those samples to Earth in 2020, has been flying somewhat crippled. It has four ion engines for maneuvering, three of which no longer work and a fourth that is showing signs of failure. Thus, it could not do much during this fly-by to control its path or orientation. That it could grab this image as it zipped by is a testament to its engineers.

Hayabusa-2 is on its way to asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031. Whether it will be capable of doing much when it gets there remains at this moment an unknown.

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Vast has apparently reconfigured and scaled down its proposed Haven-2 full space station

11:47 am

Vast's scaled down Haven-2 station
Click for original animation.

In a X tweet in early May that I only saw today, the space station startup Vast touts its series of orbital missions, beginning with its Haven demo test satellite that flew last year, followed by its Haven-1 single module station that will launch in 2027, and finally its proposed full multi-module Haven-2 station targeting a 2030 launch date.

The screen capture to the right shows Haven-1 (unmanned and manned with a docked Dragon capsule) and the Haven-2 station, comprising four Haven-1 modules attached in a single line.

What makes this newsworthy to me is that it is a major simplification and reduction in size for Haven-2. Until recently the company had planned to build Haven-2 with a central docking hub with eight modules attached in a cross, two for each arm (See the graphic here).

It appears the company has scaled down Haven-2 in anticipation of reduced funding from NASA. The original plan was to win a big contract allowing the company to build the full Haven-2 station. This smaller Haven-2 appears to recognize that even if Vast gets a contract from NASA, it won’t be enough to build the full station. This smaller design can serve NASA’s needs, while also serving the needs of Vast’s other private customers, which include foreign nations who want to send their astronauts to space and a number of companies that want to use Haven-2 to manufacture pharmaceuticals and other products for sale back on Earth.

This configuration also allows the company some flexibility. Because it uses those Haven-1 modules, it can always add that docking hub later, and add or shift modules to recreate the full original design.

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Two launches by SpaceX and China

9:51 am

Two more launches so far today, one by SpaceX in the early morning and a second by China in the evening.

First SpaceX placed 29 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage (B1090) completed its 13th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Next China placed another 20 Qianfan (Spacesail) satellites into orbit, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Video of the launch can be seen here. China’s state-run press provided no information about the number of satellites, but this site stated it was 20. Previous Long March 8A Qianfan launches had carried 18 however. Either way, this planned 12,000 satellite internet constellation now has approximately 239 satellites in space, with a goal to place 648 in orbit by the end of this year.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

80 SpaceX
44 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 80 to 76.

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True Anomaly’s Jackal successfully completes orbital proximity operations around Rocket Lab’s Puma

10:59 am

According to a statement earlier this week from the satellite company True Anomaly, its Jackal spacecraft has successfully completed its orbital proximity operations around Rocket Lab’s Puma spacecraft, integrated and launched in less than 17 hours in a planned military operation dubbed Victus Haze.

Tasked by the United States Space Force, Jackal performed multiple circumnavigations of Rocket Lab’s target spacecraft – Puma – capturing images and characterizing the spacecraft from multiple aspects. Mosaic – our multi-vehicle, multi-domain mission software – planned the sortie, commanded the maneuvers, and ran the imaging passes. The resulting images have been processed and disseminated.

We had eyes on Puma long before the mission began. Our sensors acquired the spacecraft within hours of its launch into a previously unknown orbit.

Jackal was launched by SpaceX in early May 2026 as part of one of its Bandwagon multi-satellites missions, after the entire Victus Haze mission was delayed because its original launch provider, Firefly, had problems with its Alpha rocket. Rocket Lab followed on June 21, 2026 with its fast launch of Puma. During the proximity operations, it appears Jackal got as close as 100 kilometers to Puma, which doesn’t seem very close but was likely sufficient for reconnaissance imaging.

The military’s goal of the Victus Haze mission was to prove that an orbital reconnaissance asset, in this case Jackal, could quickly approach and provide detailed imagery of another satellite that was launched suddenly and without notice. The mission also wanted to demonstrate the ability of an American rocket company to launch a satellite fast, in under 24 hours. with little notice. It appears it achieved all these goals.

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China launches more satellites for Qianfan internet constellation

9:36 am

China today successfully launched the 13th batch of Qianfan (Spacesail) satellites into orbit, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages (using very toxic hypergolic fuels) crashed within China. Nor did it state how many satellites were launched. Based on previous Qianfan launches using the Long March 6, the number was likely 18, which means this proposed 12,000 satellite constellation now has about 219 satellites in orbit. It hopes in its first phase to have 648 launched by the end of the year.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

79 SpaceX
43 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 79 to 75.

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ESA finalizes contract for privately built cubesat lander as part of its Ramses mission to Apophis

9:36 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced it has issued the full contract with private startup EMXYS to build its Don Quijote cubesat lander for ESA’s Ramses mission to go to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it flies by the Earth in April 2029.

EMXYS, a Spanish company, previously built a gravity-measuring instrument for the cubesat Juventas, which is flying on ESA’S Hera mission presently on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos.

Francesca Ingiosi, overseeing Ramses’ CubeSats, notes: “There won’t be time for sustained human oversight: Don Quijote is going to take itself down on a completely autonomous basis, relying on feature tracking to find a safe place to land. It will be running its gravimeter and magnetometer when it flies, but we have high expectations for its scientific work on the surface.

“It will come down quite slowly, but in the ultra-low gravity of Apophis some bouncing along the surface is possible. The CubeSat is therefore designed to operate from any orientation, although the precise nature of the surface remains a question mark: there is even a small possibility that Don Quijote sinks into the ground, which would not be good!

The launch window for Ramses is in the spring 2028, so the schedule to get this cubesat built is very tight.

Below is a list of the missions going to Apophis in 2029:
» Read more

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German rocket startup Isar wins another launch contract

9:03 am

Isar's first launch attempt fails
Spectrum falling seconds after its launch
in March 2025

Even though it has now spent six months repeatedly scrubbing the second launch attempt of its Spectrum rocket (the first was a failure), the German rocket startup Isar yesterday announced it has won another launch contract, this time from the German subsidiary of satellite imaging company Planet.

Under the agreement, Isar Aerospace will launch one of Planet’s next-generation high-resolution Pelican satellites, with additional satellites planned for future launches. The Pelican is scheduled to fly on Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum launch vehicle, currently scheduled as early as late 2026 from Isar Aerospace’s dedicated launch complex at Andøya Space. The Pelican will be assembled in Planet’s upcoming Berlin manufacturing facility. With both satellite and rocket being built in Germany, this launch will be a national first for the country, demonstrating rapid advancements in the nation’s sovereign space capabilities.

Isar already has contracts with the satellite repair companies Astroscale and D-Orbit, the satellite aggregators Exolaunch and SEOPS, the European Space Agency, and Norway.

As for the rocket itself, the launch is now tentatively scheduled for sometime in July. The company first attempted a launch in January, then in March, then in June. All were scrubbed due to technical issues.

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Katalyst’s Link rescue spacecraft launched successfully

8:41 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

UPDATE: Katalyst engineers have established communications with Link, so the commissioning process can now begin.

———————–
Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket this morning successfully launched the Link rescue spacecraft built by the startup Katalyst, aimed at rendezvousing and grabbing the Gehrels-Swift telescope and raising its orbit.

A mission to raise the altitude of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is underway after launching at 8:36 p.m. Marshall Islands Time (4:36 a.m. EDT), Friday, July 3, from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean.

LINK, a robotic servicing spacecraft built by Katalyst Space, launched into orbit on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, which was deployed by the company’s Stargazer, a modified L-1011 aircraft, at an altitude of about 40,000 feet.

The actual rescue won’t occur for several weeks, as the Katalyst team will spend several weeks checking out the spacecraft’s systems to make sure all is working as intended. Once this is assured, they will begin to slowly move towards Swift:

As it approaches, LINK will collect and send images of Swift to the ground, where teams at Katalyst and NASA will assess the planned grab points. This rendezvous and capture will be a slow and careful process that could take about a month.

Once its robotic arms are attached to Swift, LINK can begin to slowly push Swift upward. Over the course of a few months, LINK will attempt to return Swift close to its original launch altitude. Then, LINK will detach, leaving Swift in its new orbit.

The Gehrels-Swift team will then return the telescope to its operational status, following the same commissioning procedures used when the telescope was first placed in orbit in 2004.

As for the launch, this was Northrop Grumman’s second launch in 2026, and the last Pegasus launch ever. The air-launched rocket is now retired. It was created in the 1980s by the rocket startup Orbital Sciences with the intent to provide a low cost launch option. It launched a total of 46 times (with three failures in the early years), but in the past two decades it could not compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

79 SpaceX
42 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 79 to 74.

4 comments

Skyroot announces launch window for 1st launch of Vikram-1 rocket

8:01 am

Vikram-1 stacked on the launchpad
Vikram-1 stacked on the launchpad

India’s rocket startup Skyroot yesterday announced that its first Vikram-1 rocket is stacked on the launchpad and the company now has a launch window from July 12 through August 4, 2026.

It will attempt to reach a 450 kilometer orbit at a 60 degree inclination. The launch is mostly to test the rocket’s systems, including its guidance and navigation as well as its ability to complete a stage separation and ignition of its second stage. The company says it will also carry several small commercial payloads from both Indian and international customers, but it did not name them.

Few new rockets succeed on their first launch attempt, but it does happen. For India this launch and company are the equivalent of SpaceX in the U.S. in 2006. At that time NASA ran everything. The big space rocket companies (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) had no interest in innovation or competition, and in fact had formed a partnership holding a monopoly on all military launches, while acting almost like the rocket division for those government agencies.

In India now, its space agency ISRO runs everything, including building and flying the nation’s rockets. The Modi government has been trying to get the agency to transfer ownership and management of those rockets to private companies, but the results have been inconclusive. ISRO has transferred some operations and management to private companies for two of its rockets, but done so in a way that ownership and control still remains with the agency.

A success by Skyroot would for the first time create a real alternative to the government agency. But like SpaceX in 2006, the full transition to a private space industry will likely take an additional decade or more. But a success now would be a start.

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1776 – The 250th anniversary of the egg hatching

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Two hundred and fifty years ago today a small group of men gathered in Philadelphia to ratify a very radical document. They called it the Declaration of Independence, with its main purpose to declare to the world the reasons the thirteen North American British colonies wanted to break free from the rule of Great Britain. The job to write it had been given to a committee comprised of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman, but in the end the committee dumped the job on Thomas Jefferson.

He produced a document that will be read for many generations into the future, long after the United States falls into dust, because it outlines the basic fundamentals of freedom, government, and human existence. The full text and some background information can be found here, but all you really need to know is this line:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Americans were declaring to the world that their nation would be built on the idea that its people would be free, and its government’s sole function would be to let them pursue happiness. Think about how simple and almost silly that idea is. And yet, 250 years later, it still rings true, and produces a nation more prosperous and joyous than any nation on Earth.

The song below, called “Hatching an Egg,” is from the 1976 musical 1776. I have posted it many times before, because it is not only a great song, but it is remarkably accurate. It captures the personalities of these Founding Fathers perfectly. We are a nation of freedom-loving eccentrics, founded by individuals as eccentric and as freedom-loving.

Enjoy! And celebrate our anniversary this weekend, as John Adams proclaimed, with “pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.”

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Military contractor Anduril experiences engine explosion during static fire test

9:49 am

The military contractor Anduril, which builds a variety of space-based technologies mostly for the Pentagon, had a solid rocket motor explode during static fire test last week at its facility in Mississippi.

According to a statement by the company’s CEO, no one was hurt, and the company was assessing the damage and pinpointing the cause of the explosion.

A solid rocket motor exploded during a test fire at our factory in Mississippi. Most importantly, no one was hurt. The safety systems worked exactly as designed. The team responded exactly the way they’ve trained to, and damages to our test stand were minimal. By the end of the day everyone was already focused on understanding what went wrong and getting ready for the next test.

In 2023 Anduril had acquired the solid-fueled rocket motor company Adranos, and has since been developing these motors for missile use. The company has also partnered with Rocket Lab as part of that company’s 20-launch Pentagon deal for testing hypersonic technology with its HASTE suborbital version of its Election rocket.

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FAA eases supersonic flight restrictions over U.S., as per Trump order from 2025

9:36 am

In accordance with an executive order issued by President Trump in 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on June 30, 2026 announced new regulations on supersonic flights over the United States, easing the half-century-old restrictions that prevented such flights.

You can read the proposed regulations here [pdf]. It states the following:

As directed by [Trump’s Executive Order] 14304, FAA proposes to repeal the prohibition on civil supersonic flight in the U.S. contained in 14 CFR § 91.817 by revising the current regulatory text in § 91.817 to provide an interim noise-based operating certification standard. Further, the proposed revision would provide the conditions under which operators may engage in civil supersonic flight without the need for a special flight authorization (SFA) to exceed Mach 1, an operation-specific authorization that does not allow for civil supersonic flight outside of research and testing purposes in isolated test areas.

To enable supersonic flight operations in the U.S., this proposal would require (1) the aircraft be operated such that sonic boom overpressure at the surface does not exceed 0.11 pound per square foot (psf), (2) the Administrator finds that the operator has shown, through measurement, modeling, or other methods, that primary and secondary (direct and indirect) sonic boom overpressure at the surface does not exceed 0.11 psf during operations, and (3) the aircraft be operated in compliance with any conditions and limitations issued by the Administrator.

It is very likely this regulation was informed by the supersonic flight tests conducted by Boom Supersonic in 2025, where its plane broke the sound barrier three times during a flight with no significant sonic booms.

The FAA hopes to get this new regulation finalized by mid-2027.

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Three launches from SpaceX, ULA, and China

9:15 am

Since yesterday there have been three confirmed launches by SpaceX, ULA, and China, with a fourth by China not yet confirmed.

First, SpaceX launched 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1100) completed its 7th flight (37 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Next, ULA placed 29 more Amazon Leo satellites into orbit, its Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was ULA’S last Atlas-5 launch for Amazon, and its fifth launch in 2026. The rocket is being retired, and the remaining six Atlas-5s in stock are all presently reserved by Boeing for launching its Starliner capsule. Since that capsule has no present missions, it is very possible Boeing will sell these launches to Amazon, though this has not yet happened.

As for Amazon, these 29 satellites brings the total in orbit at this time to 396. According to its FCC license, it must place 3032 in orbit by July 30, 2029. Getting those satellite in orbit on time remains a challenge, as two of the rockets the company is relying on (ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn) are grounded, and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 has a somewhat slow launch cadence. It also has a ten-launch contract with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but that won’t be sufficient to meet its needs.

Finally, China today launched a new ocean observation satellites, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed.

China had another launch scheduled today, but as of posting no word of that launch has been released.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

79 SpaceX
42 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 79 to 73.

1 comment

Launch of Katalyst’s Swift rescue mission scrubbed

8:46 am

The launch early this morning of Katalyst’s Link rescue mission to raise the orbit of the Gehrels-Swift space telescope was scrubbed due to a “launch vehicle issue” with the Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket.

After takeoff of the L-1011 aircraft carrying the Pegasus XL, a launch vehicle issue temporarily prevented teams from deploying the rocket. The date of the next launch attempt for this mission to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will be determined after teams have reviewed data from today’s attempt.

NASA provided no further information. This is the last Pegasus rocket existing, as the company ceased its production several years ago, with its last launch in 2021. Overall it had only been launched five times in the past sixteen years, a cadence so slow it means launch crews now are likely inexperienced or very rusty.

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European rocket startup Latitude signs deal to launch from Oman’s Etlaq spaceport

9:38 am

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

The European rocket startup Latitude and the nation of Oman have now signed a letter of intent whereby Latitude will in late 2027 do the first experimental launch of a rocket from Oman’s Etlaq spaceport near the village of Duqm.

Under the agreement, Etlaq, Oman’s commercial spaceport operator, and Latitude, a French commercial launch service provider, will establish a framework for the first experimental launch of Latitude’s launch vehicle from Etlaq Spaceport. The launch is currently targeted for late 2027.

The two companies will also work together on developing the necessary ground infrastructure, operational planning and regulatory preparations required to support future launch operations.

The announcement was vague as to the nature of the rocket, making no mention of Latitude’s Zephyr rocket, suggesting that this first test launch would be not be orbital, but be a suborbital flight. At the same time, Latitude in January 2026 had said it would launch Zephyr for the first time in 2027, and that the launch would not be from French Guiana. Yesterday’s deal with Oman fits that early announcement.

Latitude is the third European rocket startup to sign a deal with Oman’s Duqm spaceport. PLD signed an agreement in 2025, and HyImpulse did the same one month ago.

Those earlier deals were only agreements to consider the idea. This new deal with Latitude seems more firm as to an actual launch. Note however that Oman announced an aggressive suborbital launch schedule of Middle Eastern rocket startups in 2025, none of which happened. We must therefore recognize that a strong element of blarney exists in all these announcements.

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Firefly now targeting a ’28 launch date from Sweden’s Esrange spaceport

9:20 am

Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

Firefly yesterday announced a new agreement with SSC Space, the Swedish company that manages that country’s Esrange spaceport, outlining the final steps towards a 2028 launch from that location by Firefly’s Alpha rocket.

The companies are now taking the next step towards orbital launch from SSC Space’s Esrange Space Center and undergoing final construction of the pad at Launch Complex 3C with the first launch targeted for 2028.

Key infrastructure development to date includes completing the launch control center, payload processing facility, launch vehicle integration building, tracking and control systems, and security and storage facilities at Launch Complex 3C. Built to support Firefly’s Alpha rocket, the orbital launch complex will expand critical access to space from mainland Europe.

The announcement also noted the signing of agreements between Sweden and the U.S. government, streamlining the licensing process as well as simplifying the State Department’s strict ITAR regulations so that U.S. technology can be transported to Sweden.

This plan carries one major caveat. As you can see from the map to the right, except for a due south flight path, orbital launches from Esrange must cross over territories controlled by other nations. Norway’s government has already expressed opposition to such crossings. We have no word from Finland or Russia. And a due south path doesn’t work because the rocket’s lower stages would then crash within Sweden and the European mainland. Alpha’s first stages are not reusable, which means those crashes would be uncontrolled.

At this point it is not clear how Sweden and Firefly are going to resolve this issue.

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Blue Origin provides update on pad repair and New Glenn explosion investigation

8:51 am

New Glenn explosion
New Glenn exploding on May 28th.

The CEO of Blue Origin, David Limp, yesterday posted an update on the company’s effort to get its New Glenn rocket back flying after the May 28, 2026 launchpad explosion, promising once again that they will resume launches before the end of 2026.

Most of his update described the work the company is doing cleaning up and rebuilding the launchpad. For one thing, they are taking advantage of the explosion by going directly to an upgrade whereby they no longer stack New Glenn entirely horizontally. Instead, some stacking will be horizontal, and some vertical. This change is to simplify operations and make the pad compatible for the present New Glenn — with its configuration of seven first stage engines and two upper stage engines (7×2) — and the more powerful 9×4 version, with nine first stage engines and four upper stage engines.

As for the investigation into the explosion itself, Limp was much more vague:

We continue to actively investigate the cause of the anomaly. The vehicle is highly instrumented with extensive data from multiple camera angles and sensors, giving us confidence in our ability to identify and correct the root cause. Early analysis points to the aft section of the first stage.

There is no doubt they can get the launchpad ready before the end of the year. Finding the cause of the explosion and fixing it by December however remains less certain. Limp’s reticence could be simply the company’s desire to restrict access to proprietary information. Or it could be they haven’t yet pinned down the cause. If the latter, the December date becomes far more doubtful.

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The present state of NASA’s Artemis program

12:00 pm

Artemis logo

The aggressive effort by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to rationalize and speed up the agency’s Artemis program to get back to the Moon and build a base there has resulted in a plethora of new missions, almost all of which are being built by the private sector.

Today Isaacman and his Moon Base program manager, Carlos García-Galán, held a press conference where they announced four more missions.

  • Astrobotic won a $297.9 million contract to build and fly two more of its smaller Peregrine lunar landers. This lander attempted a landing in 2024, but a fuel leak right after launch made that impossible.
  • Firefly won a $144.2 million contract to build and fly another Blue Ghost lander, the only commercial lander to successfully achieve a lunar soft landing, in 2025.
  • Intuitive Machines won a $148.3 million contract to build and fly another Nova-C lander. This lander attempted two landings, and in both cases it tipped over just after launch. The Nova-D design, under development, has a lower center of gravity, but for reasons not well explained by García-Galán NASA chose to go with the Nova-C design.

All are considered part of the first phase of the Artemis program and thus are targeting a launch by 2028.

In addition, NASA is considering using back-up equipment developed to build the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers to create quickly and relatively inexpensively a lunar rover that they have dubbed “Promise.”

In order to make some sense of this program and these many misssions, I have created below a chronological list of confirmed missions, with their present status indicated (including uncertainties), as well as some unconfirmed missions based on my own speculations. All dates are tentative at this point, even if NASA has provided us a specific target date.

Several things to note as you review this list. While there are handful of missions going elsewhere, Isaacman is attempting to focus the program toward landing at the planned lunar base near the south pole, and to do so as fast as possible in the most effective way. The cargo missions and rovers are to get there ahead of the manned missions, in order to provide the astronauts supplies and surface transportation once they arrive. Those same missions will also do some preliminary scouting, and likely carry power and excavation equpiment needed to build the base.

It is also important to note that this plan is still in its very early stages of development. Many of the rockets and spacecraft and landers needed for these missions are not yet operational. Many have not yet demonstrated the capability to do what is requested. Thus, the program will certainly not follow the plan as presently outlined by the agency. Moreover, there will be failures along the way.

The program however is designed to accelerate development, to accept those failures within the program’s larger scope. If one mission fails, others are on the table to fly quickly to overcome the loss. And since the program is relying on the entire aerospace industry, the agency will have great redundancy from many companies.

I welcome comments and suggested changes or corrections. I fully intend to publish this list repeatedly over the coming years as the Artemis program evolves. And as the private sector begins flying its own missions to the Moon, independent of NASA, I intend to include those as well.
» Read more

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NASA’s IG: Boeing must foot the bill to get Starliner certified for manned flights

10:02 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

The inspector general (IG) for NASA today released a new audit report [pdf] of the agency’s management of its manned commercial crew program, specifically looking at Boeing’s Starliner capsule and its failures. Though the IG made six recommendations, mostly about management procedures to better run the program, the first was the most important:

As the [Boeing] contract allows, defer payments, including partial or advanced payments, to Boeing for any Starliner-3 milestones until the human-rating certification of Starliner is complete.

In other words, the IG doesn’t want NASA to pay Boeing anything more. Boeing’s contract for Starliner was fixed price. It is Boeing’s responsibility to deliver the product, and until it does so NASA should lay out no more cash.

More significantly, NASA’s management immediately concurred with this recommendation.

This IG report now explains much of what happened in the past few months. » Read more

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