Tag: competition

China launches classified satellite

10:02 am

China today successfully launched a classified Earth observation satellite to do “national land surveys, environmental management and other fields,” its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
32 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 51.

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South Korea rocket startup launches small prototype rocket

9:45 am

Unastella rocket at launch
Unastella rocket at launch

A South Korea rocket startup dubbed Unastella on May 28, 2025 successfully launched a small prototype suborbital rocket from its own launch site near the country’s southern coast.

UNA EXPRESS-I is 9.45 meters long and has a total weight of 2 tons. It is a small launch vehicle that uses kerosene (jet fuel) and liquid oxygen as fuel, with a thrust of 5 tons. The vehicle successfully completed its flight to the target distance of 10 kilometers and fell into the maritime safety zone set by Goheung County, the company stated. Park Jae-hong, the CEO of Unastella, noted, “For the first launch, we lowered the altitude for safety and extended the reach.”

This is South Korea’s second rocket startup that has launched a small test prototype, the first being Innospace which launched its test rocket from Brazil in 2023 and hopes to do an orbital launch before the end of the year.

It appears that South Korea is shifting successfully to the capitalism model. Back in 2023 it was trying to develop its government-built Nuri rocket, but that development seems to have stalled. Since then its newly formed space agency has established policies encouraging private space commercialization, which has apparently resulted in these two new rocket companies.

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China launches its first asteroid sample return mission

12:28 pm

China today successfully launched Tianwen-2, its first mission attempting to return a sample from a near Earth asteroid, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

Video of the launch can be found here. The probe will take about a year to reach asteroid Kamo’oalewa, where it will fly in formation studying it for another year, during which time it will attempt to grab samples by two methods. One method is a copy of the touch-and-go technique used by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. The second method, dubbed “anchor and attach,” is untried, and involves using four robot arms, each with their own drill.

Some data suggests Kamo’oalewa is possibly a fragment from the Moon, but that is not confirmed.

After a year studying Kamo-oalewa, Tienwen-2 will then return past the Earth where it will release its sample capsule. The spacecraft will then travel to Comet 311P/PANSTARRS, reaching it in 2034. This comet is puzzling because it has an asteroid-like orbit but exhibits activity similar to a comet.

As for the launch, there is no word where the Long March 3B’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. It should be noted that the video I link to above was taken by an ordinary citizen watching from a hill nearby, bringing with him a group of children as well. Considering the nature of the rocket’s fuel (which can dissolve your skin if it touches you), China’s attitude is remarkably sanguine to not only drop these stages on its people, but to allow tourists to get so close to launches.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
31 China (with one more launch scheduled later today)
6 Rocket Lab (with one launch scheduled for today SCRUBBED)
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 50.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

8:51 am

The beat goes on! SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 27 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
30 China (with two launches scheduled later today)
6 Rocket Lab (with one launch scheduled for today SCRUBBED)
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 49.

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SpaceX launches Starship/Superheavy on ninth test flight, but experiences issues in orbit

5:40 pm

Starship in orbit before losing its attitude control
Starship in orbit before losing its attitude control

SpaceX today was able to successfully launch Starship and Superheavy on its ninth test flight, lifting off from SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport at Boca Chica.

The Superheavy booster completed its second flight, with one of its Raptor engines actually flying for the third time. Rather than recapture it with the launchpad chopsticks, engineers instead decided to push its re-entry capabilities to their limit. The booster operated successfully until it was to make its landing burn over the Gulf of Mexico, but when the engines ignited all telemetry was lost. Apparently that hard re-entry path was finally too much for the booster.

Starship reached orbit and functioned successfully for the first twenty minutes or so. When engineers attempted a test deployment of some dummy Starlink satellites, the payload door would not open properly. The engineers then closed the door and canceled the deployment.

Subsequently leaks inside the spacecraft with its attitude thrusters caused the attitude system to shut down and Starship started to spin in orbit. At that point the engineers cancelled the Raptor engine relight burn. The spacecraft then descended over the Indian Ocean as planned, but in an uncontrolled manner. Mission control then vented its fuel to reduce its weight and explosive condition. It essentially broke up over the ocean, with data was gathered on the thermal system until all telemetry was lost.

Though overall this was a much more successful flight than the previous two, both of which failed just before or as Starship reached orbit, the test flight once again was unable to do any of its objectives in orbit. It did no deployment test, no orbital Raptor engine burn test, and no the re-entry tests of Starship’s thermal protection system. Obviously the engineers gathered a great deal of data during the flight, but far less than hoped for.

SpaceX has a lot of Superheavy and Starship prototypes sitting in the wings. I expect it will attempt its next flight test, the tenth, relatively quickly, by July at the very latest. I also do not expect the FAA to stand in the way. It will once again accept SpaceX’s investigative conclusions instantly and issue a launch license, when SpaceX stays it is ready to launch.

As Starship reached orbit as planned, I am counting this as a successfully launch. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

64 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 64 to 49.

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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites

10:07 am

SpaceX today successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force base in California.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. At least, it appeared so, though there were problems this time with the live stream, which cut off just before touchdown.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

63 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 63 to 49.

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Live stream of Elon Musk’s speech to SpaceX employees today

9:16 am

FINAL UPDATE: It appears his talk has been called off, for the present. I suspect he wants a better idea what happened on today’s flight before speaking.

UPDATE: It appears Musk has rescheduled his speech for 6 pm (Central) tonight, after the launch of the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy. The embedded live stream below is for this rescheduled broadcast.

I have embedded below the Space Affairs live stream of Elon Musk’s speech that he plans to give to his SpaceX employees today at 10 am (Pacific) today. Musk has entitled it “The road to making life interplanetary.” He has already indicated that he will outline in more detail SpaceX’s program for getting Starship/Superheavy operational, including the likelihood of test flights to Mars in the near future.
» Read more

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Cargo Dragon splashes down and is recovered successfully

2:29 pm

A SpaceX cargo Dragon capsule was recovered successfully earlier today after it splashed down off the coast of California.

The spacecraft carried back to Earth about 6,700 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments designed to take advantage of the space station’s microgravity environment after undocking at 12:05 p.m., May 23, from the zenith port of the space station’s Harmony module.

Some of the scientific hardware and samples Dragon will return to Earth include MISSE-20 (Multipurpose International Space Station Experiment), which exposed various materials to space, including radiation shielding and detection materials, solar sails and reflective coatings, ceramic composites for reentry spacecraft studies, and resins for potential use in heat shields. Samples were retrieved on the exterior of the station and can improve knowledge of how these materials respond to ultraviolet radiation, atomic oxygen, charged particles, thermal cycling, and other factors.

Other cargo returned included a robot hand that tested its grasping and handling capabilities in weightlessness, as well as other experiments.

The capsule itself spent three months in orbit after launching at the end of April.

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SpaceX launches more Starlinks

10:05 pm

Earlier today SpaceX successfully placed another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capability), its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 24th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

62 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 62 to 49. The company also has another Starlink launch planned for tomorrow morning. The launch was scrubbed, rescheduled for May 27th.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space wins contract with satellite company SES

3:15 pm

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space has won a contract to use its Helios tug to transport the satellites of the long established Luxembourg company SES to their correct orbit after launch.

The companies announced May 22 that they signed a multi-launch agreement that starts with a mission in 2027 where Impulse’s Helios kick stage, placed into low Earth orbit by a medium-class rocket, will send a four-ton SES satellite from LEO to GEO within eight hours. The announcement did not disclose the vehicle that will launch Helios and the satellite, or the specific SES satellite.

The agreement, the companies said, includes an “opportunity” for additional missions to transport SES satellites to GEO or medium Earth orbits.

This the first satellite tug contract for Impulse’s Helios tug, which is the larger of the company’s two tugs, the smaller version dubbed Mira. While Mira has completed an orbital demo mission, Helios has not yet flown, though it has three planned launches beginning in 2026.

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Axiom signs deals with Egypt and the Czech Republic

2:39 pm

Axiom sent out two press releases yesterday touting separate agreements it has reached with two different countries that will either involve research or a future tourist flight to ISS or to its own station.

First the company announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with the Egyptian Space Agency to partner on a range of space-related research. The language describing this work was typically vague, and is so likely because it depends on the time table for the development and launch of Axiom’s station.

Second Axiom announced that the Czech Republic has signed a letter of intent to fly one of its own astronauts on a future Axiom manned flight. Like the Egyptian press release, view specifics were given, likely for the same reasons.

What both deals signal is that there is an international market for the commercial space stations under development and Axiom is aggressively working to garner that business. Its fourth commercial manned mission, set to launch in early June, carries paid government astronauts from Poland, Hungary, and India. The two new announcements add Egypt and the Czech Republic to the company’s international customers.

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Cargo Dragon undocks from ISS

2:55 pm

That this story is not news anymore is really the story. A cargo Dragon capsule that has been docked to ISS since April 22, 2025 today undocked successfully and is scheduled to splashdown off the coast of California on Sunday, May 25, 2025 in the early morning hours.

SpaceX’s Dragon missions to ISS have become so routine that NASA is not even planning to live stream the splashdown, posting updates instead online. This is not actually a surprise, since NASA has practically nothing to do with the splashdown. Once the capsule undocked from ISS, its operation and recovery is entirely in the hands of SpaceX, a private American company.

For NASA, SpaceX is acting as its UPS delivery truck, bringing back to several tons of experiments. And like all UPS delivery trucks, making a delivery is not considered news.

And yet, this is a private commercial spacecraft returning from space, after completing a profitable flight for its owners! That this is now considered so routine that it doesn’t merit much press coverage tells us that the industry of space is beginning to mature into something truly real and sustainable, irrelevant to government.

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Dawn Aerospace begins offering its suborbital spaceplane to customers

12:15 pm

Though the company has only so far flown a small prototype on low altitude supersonic test flights, the spaceplane startup Dawn Aerospace is now taking orders for those who wish to put payloads on its proposed Aurora suborbital spaceplane, targeting a first flight in late 2026.

Dawn Aerospace is taking orders now for the Aurora spaceplane for deliveries starting in 2027. The company has not disclosed pricing for the vehicle, and [CEA Stefan] Powell suggested the company would tailor pricing to each customer. He said that the company estimates, based on market research, that a per-flight price of $100,000 is “absolutely tenable,” and the price could go higher for missions with more customized flight needs. He projects Aurora could fly 100 times a year and has a design life of 1,000 flights, with a total revenue per vehicle of about $100 million.

Though the company had originally touted itself as developing an orbital spaceplane, it recently shifted its goals, at least for the present, to building a very powerful jet comparable in some ways to the X-15, capable of reaching altitudes exceeding 50 miles for short periods and short periods of weightlessness. This capability has some value, and Dawn Aerospace has decided to market it for profit, rather than wait for the orbital version that might be years away.

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Pentagon official blasts ULA’s slow Vulcan launch pace to Congress

10:00 am

In written testimony to Congress submitted on May 14, 2025, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, Major General Stephen Purdy, blasted ULA’s very slow effort to get its new Vulcan rocket operational, causing launch delays for four different military payloads.

“The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date. “Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions,” Purdy wrote. “Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives.”

The full written testimony [pdf] is worth reading, because Purdy outlines in great detail the Pentagon’s now full acceptance of the capitalism model. It appears to be trying in all cases to streamline and simplify its contracting system so as to more quickly issue contracts to startups, which were not interested previously in working with the military because they could not afford the long delays between proposal acceptance and the first payments.

In the last decade it appears this process is having some success, resulting for example in the space field the launch of multiple hypersonic tests by a variety of rocket startups. Purdy’s written testimony outlines numerous other examples.

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Russia launches classified satellite

9:42 am

Russia today successfully placed a classified military satellite into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

The Russians provided extensive information about the places where the rocket’s lower stages and strap-on boosters would crash, issuing “warnings for the planned rocket boosters impacts between Yar Sale and Ports Yakha settlements, as well as in Panaevsk and Khadyta-Yakha sites.” These crash zones have been used previously. Though unlike China Russia routinely warns its people about such things, like China it has never had a problem dumping these stages on their head.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

60 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 49.

It is entertaining to see that the private American rocket company Rocket Lab is matching Russia launch for launch this year. Once Russia launched dozens of times per year. Now it will do well to achieve one launch per month. Rocket Lab meanwhile is trying to top twenty launches in 2025. It might not meet that number, but it is quite likely to top Russia when the year ends.

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SpaceX confirms 9th test flight of Starship/Superheavy now scheduled for May 27, 2025

9:19 am

Starship/Superheavy on March 6, 2025 at T-41 seconds
Starship/Superheavy on March 6, 2025 at T-41 seconds

SpaceX has now confirmed May 27, 2025 as the launch date for the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy out of its Starbase spaceport at Boca Chica.

The launch window opens at 6:30 pm (Central), with the live stream beginning 30 minutes earlier. The flight will attempt to refly the Superheavy booster used on flight seven. To push the booster’s limits, it will test “off-nominal scenarios” upon return, requiring for safety that it land in the Gulf of Mexico and not be recaptured by the chopsticks. (Just as I don’t change names or my language willy-nilly because leftists demand it, I won’t play Trump’s name-changing game here. The Gulf of Mexico was given that name more than two centuries ago, most likely by the early Spanish explorers, and that name has been good enough since.)

Starship meanwhile attempt the same test profile planned for the previous two flights but stymied by the failure of the spacecraft before reaching orbit. It will test a Starlink satellite deployment system, do a relight of one of its Raptor engines, and test its thermal ability to survive re-entry.

The company also released a report describing the results of its investigation into the previous launch failure on March 6, 2025.
» Read more

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South Africa courts Starlink; Musk says no

9:33 am

The South African government appears to be offering Starlink some concessions in order to get it approved in that country, but it also appears that Elon Musk is not interested in the deal, because it would still require the company to impose racial quotas on hiring and ownership that he not only considers immoral, but are illegal by U.S. law.

In an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk did not confirm whether a deal had been made with South Africa, as suggested in the reports. However, he maintains that Starlink’s failure to secure a license is attributed to his not being black.

“First of all, you should be questioning why there are racist laws in South Africa; that’s the problem. That’s the issue you should be attacking. The whole idea with Nelson Mandela, he was a great man, was that all races should be on equal footing in South Africa, that’s the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws.”

“I was born in South Africa but can’t get a licence to operate in Starlink because I’m not black,” Musk said.

The first link notes that South Africa requires a 30% ownership by “historically disadvantaged groups, primarily Black South Africans,” a racist quota that Musk is likely to reject whole-heartedly.

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China launches six satellites

9:25 am

China yesterday placed six satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

China claims this was a commercial launch, taking place from the launch facility at Jiuquan dedicated to commercial launches, but the rocket was built by CAS Space, a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is also solid-fueled, which means it is likely derived from missile technology, something that the Chinese government will supervise quite closely.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

60 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 48.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

8:28 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully placed another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its first flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This was the third new booster SpaceX has launched since February. In previous years the company would about this number per year. This new crop so early this year suggests it is finding some of its older boosters might need retirement and its fleet therefore needs replenishment.

More likely the company is anticipating the planned major increases in its launch rate in both Florida and Vandenberg, and is increasing that fleet to meet the demand.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

60 SpaceX
29 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 47.

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Space station startup Voyager Technologies about to go public

10:52 am

Starlab design in 2025
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.

The space station startup Voyager Technologies (formerly Voyager Space) has filed its paperwork for its expected initial public offering (IPO) of stock as it competes for a major contract from NASA to build its Starlab space station.

Voyager filed a preliminary prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission May 16. The company previously confidentially filed plans for its IPO with the SEC. The draft prospectus does not yet disclose how many shares the company plans to sell or the amount the company expects to raise in the IPO. It does, though, offer financial details about Voyager.

The company reported $144.2 million in revenue in 2024 and a net loss of $65.6 million, versus $136.1 million in revenue and a net loss of $25.2 million in 2023. The company also reported revenue of $34.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and a net loss of $27.9 million.

This story actually made me less confident about this company’s plans, with this quote the most revealing:

The company received a funded Space Act Agreement from NASA to support initial design work on the station, currently worth $217.5 million with $70.3 million yet to be paid. … The NASA award covers only initial work on Starlab, and the company will have to compete for a second phase of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program that will offer additional funding for station development. Voyager revealed in the prospectus that it projects Starlab to cost $2.8 billion to $3.3 billion to develop.

So far it appears Voyager has built nothing. Instead it has used NASA’s preliminary money to do and redo its on-paper design of Starlab (compare the more recent design concept in the image on the right with this older image from 2022), which as a concept is intended to be launched whole on a single Starship launch. No metal has been cut. The company appears to be following the old big space company approach of investing nothing of its own in development.

This does not mean its station will be a failure, but I expect it will not launch as scheduled in 2029 if it wins that major NASA contract. The company will have to build it all in less than three years, something that I doubt it will be able to do.

My present rankings for the four proposed commercial stations:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for early June, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing, and appears unwilling to cut any metal until it wins NASA’s full contract.
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Air Force issues draft approval of second SpaceX launchpad at Vandenberg

9:44 am

Air Force last week issued a draft environmental impact statement approving SpaceX’s plans to rebuild the old Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, pronounced “slick-six”) at Vandenberg that was first built for the space shuttle (but never used) and later adapted for ULA’s Delta family of rockets, now retired.

The plan involves rebuilding SLC-6 to accommodate both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, including the addition of two landing pads. With its already operational launchpad at Vandenberg, SLC-4E, the company hopes to increase its annual launch rate from 50 (approved by the FAA earlier this month) to as much as 100.

The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing West Coast pad at … SLC-4E and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026 with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028 with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years.

The draft assessment is now open to public comment through July 7, 2025, with a final version expected to be approved in the fall. It appears the Air Force wants it approved, as it needs this capacity for its own launch requirements. It also appears it no longer cares what the California Coastal Commission thinks about such things, as it has no authority and its members appear motivated not by environmental concerns but a simple hatred of Elon Musk.

An annual launch rate of 100 however exceeds what the FAA approved in May, doubling it. In order to move forward either the FAA will have to issue a new reassessment of its own, or some legislative or executive action will be needed to reduce this red tape. Since Vandenberg is a military base, the military in the end makes all the final decisions. The FAA simply rubber-stamps those decisions.

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China launches communications satellite

9:17 am

China today successfully placed a communications satellite into orbit, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from this coastal Wenchang spaceport.

SpaceX was supposed to have launched a set of Starlink satellites last night as well, but scrubbed the launch about two and a half minutes before launch. It plans to try again tonight.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

59 SpaceX
29 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 47.

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Ispace borrows $35 million

9:01 am

Ispace landing map
Resilience’s landing zone in Mare Frigoris

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace announced last week that it has obtained a new bank loan totaling $35 million from the Japanese bank Mizuho to help pay its ongoing expenses as its Resilience lunar lander attempts the company’s second try at soft landing on the Moon.

The loan is intended to secure working capital for development of mission and other related expenses. Through this financing, ispace intends to strengthen the company’s liquidity position and stabilize its financial foundation, thereby enabling agile management decisions.

In other words, the company had started to run short of cash, and needed this loan to keep operating. It had previously gotten a government loan of almost $6 million, but that did not have to be paid back for ten years. Back in 2018 it raised $90 million in investment capital, followed by an additional $53 million in 2024.

This loan suggests that Ispace might be in serious financial trouble if Resilience fails to soft land on June 5, 2025, as presently planned. The company already has two future lander contracts, one with NASA and one with Japan’s space agency JAXA, but a second failure now might cause those agencies to have second thoughts.

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Chinese pseudo-company completes another launch from sea platform

8:42 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today successfully placed four communications satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from a sea platform off the eastern coast of China.

To prove how pseudo this company is, China’s state run press did not even mention its existence in the report at the link. The solid fuel of the rocket tells us that it was derived from missile technology, and there isn’t a chance in hell that a private independent company in China could do so without the strict supervision and control from that country’s government.

Nonetheless, this was its 19th successful launch, and its fifth from a sea platform. The rocket has only failed once since since its first launch in 2020.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

59 SpaceX
28 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 46.

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Third stage of India’s PSLV rocket fails during launch

9:36 pm

India’s PSLV rocket today (May 18 in India) experienced a launch failure in attempting to place an Earth observation satellite into orbit, with the failure occurring during the engine firing of the rocket’s third stage.

The link is cued to just before the tracking screen began showing the third stage drop from its planned trajectory. The suddenness of the loss of data as well as the drop in the trajectory suggests the engine exploded during firing, but that is pure speculation. Regardless, the launch, only the second India has attempted in 2025, was a failure.

Moreover, the first launch this year was a failure also, though the GSLV rocket in that launch performed as expected and deployed the satellite in its planned transfer orbit. At that point however the Indian-built satellite’s thrusters failed to operate, stranding the satellite in the wrong orbit , which soon decayed. UPDATE: According to a more recent report, it has remained in orbit but provides little service.

Thus 2025, which ISRO had predicted to be India’s most active year ever, is so far not turning out so well. ISRO hopes to begin launching its first unmanned test flights of its Gaganyaan capsule later this year, using its Heavy Lift Vehicle Mark 3 rocket (HLV-M3), an upgraded version of its GSLV rocket. One wonders if these issues will impact that schedule.

These failures by the space agency could however help the Modi government shift the balance of power away from ISRO and to its emerging private rocket sector. If the agency can’t get it done, maybe the private sector should be given the chance to do it. For example, the government has been pushing to have the ownership and management of the PSLV rocket transferred from ISRO to a private rocket company since in 2016. In the nine year since, there however has been little sign of this shift happening.

Part of the problem has been that none of India’s private rocket startups are really ready to take over these operations. The transfer is further made less likely by the strong resistance to change within ISRO’s bureaucracy. These failures provide political ammunition to push back against that resistance.

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Two launches last night, by China and Rocket Lab

10:23 am

The high pace of rocket launches this year continued last night, but in a rare exception this time it had nothing to do with SpaceX.

First, the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace successfully placed six radar satellites into orbit, its upgraded version of its Zhuque-2 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China. Unlike its larger Zhuque-3 rocket, which has not yet flown but is being designed as a copy of a Falcon 9 with its first stage able to return to Earth vertically, the Zhuque-2 has no such ability.

Next, Rocket Lab successfully placed a commercial radar satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the company’s two launchpads in New Zealand. This launch was the third by Rocket Lab for the satellite company iQPS, and is the second in an eight-satellite launch contract with the company.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

59 SpaceX
27 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 45.

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What satellite did the Varda capsule fly past during its return last week?

10:01 am

Other satellite passing under Varda's capsule
Click for video cued to this point.

Regular reader Rex Ridenoure emailed me today to note that there appears to be another satellite relatively nearby and visible in the video posted in yesterday’s quick links, taken from inside Varda’s capsule during its return to Earth.

The image to the right is a screen capture taken at 7:56 of the video. At that point the object is visible from 7:50 to 8:01 to the west and below. You can clearly see it moving from left to right (east to west). The two solar panels can also be discerned on either side of the satellite’s main body.

It later reappears for only two seconds in the lower right of the view window at 9:18, then is visible again at 10:30 to 10:33, now beginning to pass below but considerably to the north (?).

If anyone has the resources to identify this satellite, as well as its exact distance during this close approach, please comment below. It raises an interesting question on whether its existence was considered when the re-entry time was decided.

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FAA issues revised launch window and flight restrictions for future Starship test flights

11:00 am

Flight path for Starship's ninth test flight

Due to the breakup of Starship over the Atlantic during its last two test flights, the FAA today issued [pdf] revised launch window and flight plan restrictions for future flights, in an attempt to placate somewhat the concerns of the United Kingdom.

The map to the right, taken from the FAA assessment, shows in red the area where air traffic is impacted by the next Starship/Superheavy launch, now tentatively planned for next week. Note how the path threads a line avoiding almost all land masses, thus limiting the worst impact to just the Bahamas, the Turks & Caicos Islands. Though the launch will effect 175 flights and require one airport on these islands to close during the launch window, to minimize the impact the FAA has required that the launch window be scheduled outside peak travel periods.

At the same time, the FAA after discussions with the governments on these islands has approved this flight plan, noting that “no significant impacts would occur” due to the ninth flight.

The agency has not yet actually issued the launch license, but it will almost certainly do so in time for SpaceX’s planned launch date. Since the advent of the Trump administration the FAA has no longer been slow walking these approvals in order to retype the results of SpaceX’s investigation. Instead, as soon as SpaceX states it has satisfactorily completed its investigation, the FAA has accepted that declaration and issued a launch license. Expect the same this time as well.

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Kazakhstan denies rumors that Russia plans to abandon Baikonur

10:01 am

In response to reports in its local press that Russia was going to pull out of the Baikonur spaceport in the next three years, two decades before its lease expires in 2050, the Kazakhstan government yesterday issued a denial.

Local media in Kazakhstan have reported that Russia could exit the lease between 2026 and 2028 as it pulls back from international space cooperation, including a planned withdrawal from the International Space Station (ISS) as early as 2028.

“The question of early termination of the lease, or transfer of the city of Baikonur to the full control of the Kazakh side, is not being considered at this time,” Kazakhstan’s Aerospace Committee told AFP.

There rumors however could have real merit. Once ISS is retired, the Russians will have little reason to use Baikonur. It is almost certain it will not have launched its own replacement station by then, and Baikonur’s high latitude location will make its use with any other station difficult if not impossible. Moreover, the effort to switch to its Angara rocket favors launches from the Vostochny and Plesetsk spaceports, both of which have launchpads built for that rocket.

Finally, Russia has not had the cash to upgrade the launchpads at Baikonur, so much so that it has often been late paying Kazakhstan its annual $115 million rental fee, delays which at one point caused Kazakhstan to seize the launchpad Russia was upgrading for its proposed new Soyuz-5 rocket.

In fact, Russia might not be able to afford Baikonur at all, based on its present finances and the cost of its stupid war in the Ukraine.

We shall not get clarity on this story for at least a year or so, but stay tuned. Nothing is certain.

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