Tag: engineering

NASA admits mismanagement and human errors caused 2025 Goldstone antenna damage

4:53 pm

NASA today released its completed investigation into the November 2025 incident that severely damaged its Goldstone antenna in California when workers allowed the antenna to “over rotate” beyond its acceptable limits, putting it out of commission.

In its final report, the board found the mishap primarily stemmed from software weaknesses, human error, and an undetected failure in the antenna’s hydraulic limit system. Investigators determined an electrical issue at the antenna the previous day caused the control system to misreport the antenna’s rotation state, an issue that went unnoticed and triggered multiple limit-stops during the Juno track on Sept. 16. While working to identify the limit-stop problem, operators performed several troubleshooting steps that inadvertently bypassed software and hardware safeguards, which ultimately led to the over-rotation incident. After flooding in the antenna base was observed, operators attempted to stow the antenna as a safety precaution, however, because the system had already passed the rotation limits, this action drove the antenna further into over‑rotation, causing additional damage.

Additionally, the investigation found the antenna’s hydraulic limit system, its final mechanical safeguard, was inoperable on Sept. 16 after being damaged in an undocumented prior incident. The system also had not been adequately tested for an undetermined period of time.

Investigators also concluded workplace culture pressured operators to work as expeditiously as possible, often stretching beyond their usual roles, expertise, and training, to keep the antenna operating. The board states the cultural conditions observed at Goldstone were not present at the network’s other sites, where roles and responsibilities are followed more consistently. Other contributing factors outlined in the report include inadequate procedures, reliance on undocumented practices and tacit knowledge, and gaps in the antenna’s control logic. [emphasis mine]

You can read that report here [pdf], but be warned that large sections are redacted, apparently in an effort to protect the identities of those responsible.

Nonetheless, it is very clear from the highlighted text above that the management and work situation at Goldstone was a mess, and that the mishap was caused not by faulty engineering but by faulty work practices and bad management. Unfortunately, nowhere in the report is it said that there will be any management changes. This fact might have been redacted, but I suspect not. It is typical of government agencies like NASA after incidents like this to whitewash the investigation, concluding simply that “we should have done better and we now we will!”

The repairs will cost NASA about $4.6 million, and will likely not be completed until 2028.

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Musk’s answer when asked, “Why SpaceX going public now?”

11:02 am

In a JP Morgan public interview today about SpaceX’s upcoming initial public offering (IPO), Elon Musk was asked why the company was going public now, and gave a somewhat long-winded answer that included talking about the Sun as a major source of energy in the future, and then concluded very simply, to laughter: “We are embarking on a massive new growth phase and we need capital for that.”

I have embedded his response below. It is worthwhile watching because he does indicate much of what SpaceX wants to do, which not only involves an additional 100,000 communications satellites as well as a constellation of data satellites, it might also include possible solar power generation for use back on Earth. He also notes the company has been self-funding now for almost a decade.
» Read more

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China completes two more launches

9:55 am

Since yesterday China has successfully completed two launches from two different spaceports using two different types of rockets, with both launches placing more satellites in orbit for its Qiafan (SpaceSail) internet constellation.

First China yesterday placed 18 Qianfan satellites in a polar orbit, its Long March 6B rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. The state-run press provided no information as to where the rocket’s lower stages (using very toxic hypergolic fuels) crashed.

Next, China today placed another batch Qianfan satellites into orbit, its Long March 8 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Though the state-run press did not specify the number of satellites on this launch, based on past launches the total was likely 18 also.

The constellation presently has roughly 200 Qianfan satellites in orbit, out of a planned constellation of as many as 12,000. The first phase of the constellation however only requires 648, which China hopes to reach before the end of the year.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

66 SpaceX
34 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 66 to 59.

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Russia will charge about $27 million for future tourist flights

9:26 am

According to Dmitry Bakanov, head of Roscosmos, it will likely charge about two billion rubles, about $27 million, to fly tourists in space in the future.

The cost of a space tourist trip will be approximately 2 billion rubles, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov said in an interview with VK Video on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “It’s still an expensive project. The costs include the rocket divided by the number of participants. There must be two professionals, because they can guide it, so it’s about two billion rubles,” Bakanov noted.

The report of his remarks in Russia’s state-run press is not entirely clear as to whether this number is the price per tourist, the price for the entire flight, or Roscosmos’ cost for the flight, excluding its mark-up. Assuming it is the price for the entire flight, it is about a quarter of what Russia was charging NASA during the last few ferrying trips to ISS before SpaceX’s Dragon capsules became operational. This makes sense, since Russia was milking NASA for as much as it could get during those last flights. Future private tourists won’t have as much money as a spend-thrift government, so Roscosmos is now forced to charge a realistic price.

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Astronomers measure weight of supermassive black hole 10 billion light years away

9:13 am

In a new record for the farthest measurement yet achieved (10 billion light years away), astronomers have now used the Webb Space Telescope obtain a reasonably accurate measurement of the mass of supermassive black hole in the early universe, estimated to be six billion times the mass of our Sun.

The stars orbiting Sag A*
The stars orbiting Sag A* at the center of our own
galaxy, the Milky Way. Click for original image.

The black hole’s mass is about 6 billion times that of the sun, and is being observed at a time when the universe was only about 3 billion years old, about a quarter of its current age, offering unprecedented details into black holes in the early universe.

To find this, the team used data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to track the motion of stars orbiting around the otherwise invisible black hole to measure its mass. Though the technique – known as stellar dynamics – has been used to measure dormant black holes in galaxies much closer to Earth, this is the first time it has been used to weigh one located such a great (cosmological) distance away.

For comparison, the Milky Way’s central super-massive black hole, Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”), has been estimated at four million solar masses, using this same technique. The graphic to the right shows the various stars orbiting Sagittarius A* that have been tracked now for several decades in the infrared. As their orbits are refined, astronomers can use those orbits to determine the mass of the central object.

The scientists have now been able to do the same with this galaxy ten billion light years away. These observations however are certainly preliminary, and will be refined in the coming decades as more data is obtained.

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NASA astronauts ordered to shelter in Dragon while Russians repair air leak

8:53 am

For somewhat unclear reasons that seem at first glance to be an over-reaction, NASA officials today ordered all five non-Russian astronauts on ISS to shelter in the Dragon capsule docked there while the two Russian astronauts did repair work on the new air leak in the Zvezda module on the Russian half of the station.

Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5. Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has directed all four of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-12 members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture in the Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway.

As it turned out, the Russians only did “measurements” today, no actual repairs, and so NASA then canceled its “shelter in place” order.

This new air leak, first detected in May, has been estimated to be equivalent to the loss of about one pound of air per day, which is relative low compared to the loss rates seen from 2019 through 2025, as shown in the lower right corner of the graphic below, taken from a 2024 inspector general report. In late 2025 the Russians were able to stop those leaks, only to have this new one return last month.
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time.

Unless the Russians planned some radical repair plan (unlikely), sheltering in Dragon seems overkill. For several years NASA’s policy has been to simply close the hatch between the American and Russian sections of ISS during dockings to Zvezda. It likely also did this during earlier repair work. For the agency to now escalate its safety precautions suggests either the repair work was more risky, or NASA administrator Jared Isaacman wanted to make a political and engineering point that would be noticed by the mainsteam press.

If the latter, Isaacman got what he wanted, as there have been numerous stories today from many mainstream outlets, with some misreporting the story as if the leak was suddenly new and required an emergency evacution (see here, here, here, and here).

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Martian glacier flowing around a recent small crater impact

12:37 pm

A Martian glacier flowing arond a recent crater impact
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 3, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this a “crater on debris covered glacier.” The crater, the dark spot in the upper center, is only about 450 feet across. The impact apparently took place onto this glacial slope, and since then the glacier has continued to flow downhill (as indicated by the arrows), flowing around the denser material pounded down by the impact.

The elevation loss within this image is about 300 feet, along a distance of just under two miles. How long it took this glacial material to flow this much however is unknown. Nor is it known when this happened. The orbital data so far of all Martian glaciers suggests they are at this time inactive, neither growing or shrinking.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

11:07 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The first stage completed its 12th flight (78 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

66 SpaceX
32 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 66 to 57.

China has two launches scheduled for today, with one supposedly having already taken place. When both are confirmed I will post a new launch update.

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SpaceX’s full IPO, aimed at raising $86 billion

10:30 am

SpaceX logo

SpaceX yesterday filed the full prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its planned initial public offering (IPO) of stock, revealing a plan to sell 555.6K shares at $135 per share, resulting in a total cash acquisition of just over $75 billion. Additionally, the company’s earlier investors will have separate options to buy other shares, raising about $11 billion more, for a total of $86 billion in capital raised.

The stock offering would set SpaceX’s value at about $1.77 trillion, and would make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. This would also be the largest IPO in history. The full prospectus at the link above has a lot of details, which this CNN article distills nicely:

SpaceX plans to sell 555.6 million shares at an initial price of $135 a share, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The decision to dictate one price target, as opposed to offering a range, is a unique move that reflects the hot IPO market around the AI craze and Musk’s own tendency for mega-scale goals.

Musk, who currently owns half of SpaceX, would still control nearly half of the company’s total shares after the offering. However, some of those are special shares with greater voting power, and Musk will control 82.4% of the voting power after the IPO, according to the filing.

The date of this IPO, when stocks will go on sale, is presently set for June 12, 2026. The stock will be traded on Nasdaq, under the label SPCX.

In addition to this $86 billion, SpaceX already earns about $12 billion per year from its more than 10 million Starlink subscribers, and has previously raised more then $12 billion from those initial private investors. All told, the company will have more than $110 billion in cash on hand after this IPO. That is more than four times NASA’s annual budget.

As I have said repeatedly in the past two years, SpaceX is the real American space program. NASA is begin carried along by it.

One detail of interest revealed in some viewgraphs that SpaceX is showing to potential investors is its intention to begin launching commercial payloads on Starship before the end of this year. In other words, expect much more frequent flights in the coming months, moving quickly to orbital tests, placing operational version 3 Starlink satellites in orbit as well as testing refueling in orbit involving two week missions and two Starships.

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AST SpaceMobile: Blue Origin’s launch failures delays our commercial operations until 2027

9:58 am

The satellite company AST SpaceMobile revealed yesterday that it no longer expects to begin commercial operations of its cell-to-satellite constellation by the end of this year, that the recent launch failures by Blue Origin will delay the initiation of that commercial service until the first half of 2027.

William Blair said Scott Wisniewski, AST SpaceMobile’s chief strategy officer, made the estimate June 2 during the bank’s annual growth stock conference in Chicago.

Before the loss of a New Glenn rocket in a static-fire test May 28, AST SpaceMobile had aimed to start early services at the end of 2026 with at least 45 satellites in low Earth orbit, helping anchor customers such as AT&T and Verizon in the United States plug terrestrial service gaps. The Texas-based venture had retained that goal even after the loss of its seventh BlueBird satellite on a New Glenn launch April 19.

The April 19th New Glenn launch failure was the first blow. After this the company said it still hoped to get enough of its Bluebird satellites launched to start service in 2026, as it was negotiating with other rocket companies. The May 28th New Glenn launchpad explosion was the final blow. AST now realizes that even with new launch providers, it can’t get enough satellites in orbit this year.

Blue Origin’s failures here are significant to the entire satellite industry. That industry needs more launch capacity from more providers. Right now, there is a dearth, with only SpaceX capable of launching large payloads frequently. Not only is Blue Origin’s New Glenn grounded, ULA’s new Vulcan rocket is grounded as well. And Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket is operational, it is not yet able to launch more than once every two months, and its manifest is already completely filled.

New large rockets by Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, and Relativity are expected to launch before the end of the year, but it will be a while before they will be ready to pick up the slack. And though Blue Origin says it will fly again before the end of 2026, there is great doubt in the industry about this claim. At the moment its recovery operations following the launchpad explosion are slowed as the Space Force assesses the damage to the range.

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First parachute drop test for The Exploration Company’s Nyx capsule a success

9:11 am

Nyx drop test

The French capsule startup The Exploration Company on May 19, 2026 successfully completed the first parachute drop test for its Nyx capsule in the Mojave desert in California.

I have embedded the company’s video of the test below. The screen capture to the right shows the capsule descending on its four main parachutes.

This test focused on one of the most critical phases of spacecraft recovery – the transition from drogue parachutes to the main parachutes that bring the vehicle safely to the ground. For this campaign, TEC used a dedicated drop test vehicle, or DTV, built specifically to evaluate parachute deployment, handover timing and vehicle dynamics during this phase of descent. The DTV was not designed to be a full spacecraft. It was designed to answer a precise engineering question: does the recovery system deploy in the right sequence, at the right time, with the expected behavior? This distinction matters. It allows us to focus effort and investment where it has the most impact – on the recovery system itself.

For this campaign, the DTV replicated the relevant mass properties, aerodynamic profile and key structural interfaces of the Nyx capsule, while using a robust internal structure and sacrificial outer panels to support ground impact, hardware recovery and future test campaigns.

The drop occurred when the helicopter carrying the DTV reached about 1.7 miles altitude. As the DTV dropped it appeared the parachute system worked perfectly, with the drogue chutes followed by the four parachutes releases as planned.

The company is targeting 2028 for the first orbital demo flight of Nyx itself. Its relatively fast-paced development in a sense puts to shame the American space industry, which except of SpaceX has not been able to develop such large orbital capsules. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule might be flying, but much of its development occurred not in the U.S. but in Europe. Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser both remain grounded and unused after more than a decade of development.
» Read more

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German rocket startup HyImpulse signs deal to consider launching from Oman

8:49 am

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

The German rocket startup HyImpulse has signed an agreement with Oman to study the possibility of launching its rockets from Oman’s proposed Etlaq spaceport located near the town of Duqm.

Under the proposed collaboration, HyImpulse will evaluate both near-term mission opportunities and the feasibility of establishing a longer-term operational presence at Etlaq Spaceport. Beyond offering an alternative launch base outside northern Europe, the arrangement is expected to capitalize on Oman’s advantageous geographic latitude, enabling access to a broader range of orbital inclinations and enhancing mission flexibility for customers across the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], Asia and, potentially, emerging African markets.

The two sides also plan to assess the possibility of supporting future launch campaigns involving HyImpulse’s SR75 and SL1 launch vehicles from Oman. Etlaq would provide access to launch infrastructure, operational facilities and mission-support capabilities as the European company studies deployment opportunities in the Sultanate.

HyImpulse is now the second European rocket startup to sign such a deal. In 2025 the Spanish company PLD agreed to use Duqm as well.

At the same time, Oman had previously said the spaceport would see a number of suborbital test flights in 2025, none of which happened.

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Gigantic slumping Martian cliffs

11:14 am

Gigantic slumping Martian cliffs
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 5, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this an “alluvial fan.” What we are looking at is the top 5,700 feet of a 9,400-foot-high cliff which is slumping downward. As it does so, its outer layers have been falling downward into the canyon below almost like liquid, producing the slope’s streaked look.

According to this definition, alluvial fans…

are mounds of coarse grained sediments formed when a confined stream disgorges into an unconfined area. They typically occur along the margins of mountain ranges where bedrock incised channels draining uplands spill out on to broad open valley floors. Alluvial fans occur in areas with significant topographic relief caused by rapid subsidence or uplift (rift basins, foreland basins, fold-and-thrust belts, etc.).

While the definition implies these fans only form from the flow of liquid water, that does not have to be the case. Many fans form from the long term downward motion of material from mountainsides into lower valleys or canyons, though water — either by rain, a freeze-thaw cycle, or streamflow — is usually a factor in causing this erosion.

At this location something has made that cliff slump, and in doing so produced the flow patterns on that slope
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

9:03 am

SpaceX this morning 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 16th flight (37 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

65 SpaceX
32 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 65 to 57.

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Venturi Space expands investment in new French factory for building Astrolab’s rover

8:59 am

Venturi Space, the European half of the partnership with the rover startup Astrolab, is increasing its investment in a new French factory from 100 million to 250 million euros.

On 1 June, Venturi Space announced that it had increased its expected investment in the new facility to €250 million. The announcement indicated that it would no longer begin with the initial smaller facility and would instead move directly to the full 16,000-square-metre planned “technology centre.” This likely accounts for the additional €150 million in funding.

According to the company’s 1 June press release, the facility will be used for the “design and manufacture of critical technologies for lunar and Martian mobility, as well as [for] the assembly of the rovers developed by the company.” …Venturi Space is providing wheels, batteries, and battery management systems to US-based Venturi Astrolab for use aboard its rovers. During a 26 May event, NASA announced that Venturi Astrolab was one of two companies selected to build rovers for the agency’s Artemis programme.

The partnership is an unusual one. Venturi Space and Astrolab are separate companies, working together to build Astrolab’s rovers for NASA. Venturi however is also developing its own rover for the European Space Agency.

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NASA officially ends its MAVEN Mars orbiter mission

8:42 am

High altitude wind patterns on Mars
Mars’ global high altitude wind patterns,
found by MAVEN.

More than six months after engineers lost contact with the Mars orbiter MAVEN, NASA today officially ended the mission, determining the spacecraft is “not recoverable.”

The agency convened an anomaly review board in February to evaluate recovery efforts and assess the spacecraft’s probable current state. The review board has determined that the MAVEN spacecraft is not recoverable, and it is no longer capable of performing its science and data relay mission, which is consistent with the mission team’s findings.

Telemetry from MAVEN prior to the spacecraft’s passage behind Mars in December showed all subsystems working normally. After the spacecraft emerged, NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) did not observe a signal. A brief fragment of telemetry data from analysis of radio signals recorded by the DSN’s open-loop receivers indicated the spacecraft was in safe mode and rotating at an unusually high rate when it emerged from behind Mars, indicating a disruption in MAVEN’s orbit trajectory. The review board concluded that due to this rotation, the batteries on the spacecraft had drained, causing the communications system to lose power and rendering MAVEN in an unrecoverable state.

The actual cause of the rotation remains uncertain.

MAVEN’s mission was to study the atmosphere and surrounding environment of Mar. It gave scientists their first data on how Mars could have lost both its atmosphere as well as a significant amount of its initial supply of water. It also produced the first map of the red planet’s high altitude winds, finding that even at high altitude the winds shift around the Tharsis Bulge where Mars’s biggest volcanoes are located.

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Axiom’s CEO provides update on corrosion and the timetable for its space station

8:01 am

Axiom's module assembly sequence
Axiom’s module assembly sequence

Jonathan Cirtain, the CEO of the space station startup Axiom, this week gave an interview where he provided a short update on the status of their station’s construction, including the present launch timetable as well as the corrosion issue known to exist on the two module hulls that Thales-Alenia is presently building for the company.

It [the corrosion] was actually observed during ISS using a similar manufacturing technique. They mitigated it.

Now it’s come back. … We’re going to fix it the same way they fixed it for the International Space Station, the Columbus module, which has been operational now for eighteen, nineteen years. Had that same challenge. So we’re working our way through that. That should get resolved by the end of the month of June.

Because this interview took place just prior to NASA’s announcement yesterday that it has abandoned its core module concept proposed last month, Cirtain describes how the company was considering some design and construction changes to deal with it. That issue however has now vanished.

Cirtain added that the module’s hulls will next be shipped from the Thales-Alenia factory in Europe to the U.S., where Axiom will then begin installing the interior and exterior components of each, with a planned launch of the first, dubbed the PPTM, by 2028, the same target date the company announced in January 2026. That the date has not changed six months later suggests either the corrosion issue did not delay things, or it was the cause of that delay.

As I noted in January, 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 extremely tight. It cannot afford any further delays.

In other Axiom news, the company announced yesterday that it has established a a wholly owned subsidiary based in Switzerland, dubbed Axiom Switzerland, thus establishing itself within the Europe to facilitate future contracts with the European Space Agency, the European Union, and the member nations of both.

Below are my updated rankings of the five American space stations presently under development:
» Read more

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Sunspot update: May sunspot activity jumps

1:06 pm

It is the beginning of the month, so it is time for my monthly sunspot update. According to NOAA’s June update of its monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere, the amount of sunspots in May surprised us once again by increasing upward, though the totals continue to be below prediction.

That graph is below, annotated with extra information by me to illustrate the larger scientific context.
» Read more

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Spanish rocket startup PLD raises the budget for its launch facilities in French Guiana to €35 million

11:18 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The ELM-Diamant launch site
is labeled “B.” Click for full resolution image. (Note: The
Ariane-5 pad is now the Ariane-6 pad, and the now destroyed
Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup MaiaSpace.)

The Spanish rocket startup PLD, preparing for the first orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket before the end of this year, has significantly raised its investment in its leased launch facilities in France’s spaceport in French Guiana, from about €11 to €16 million to €35 million, with much of the planned construction aimed at shared facilities that other European rocket startups can use.

PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has announced a €35 million investment in the development and deployment of its Launch Complex at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in Kourou (French Guiana) over the 2025-2026 period. This investment positions PLD Space as the first private operator to deploy capital expenditure at this scale at the ELM-Diamant site, contributing to the diversification and strengthening of Europe’s historic spaceport.

Of the total investment, €22 million is being executed within the French industrial ecosystem, with €13 million directly allocated to more than 20 companies based in French Guiana, including a significant number of SMEs. This approach reinforces PLD Space’s commitment to embedding its industrial activity within the local territory and strengthening the regional space ecosystem beyond established players.

France, which owns French Guiana, decided in 2024 to refurbish the long-abandoned ELM-Diamant launch site as a common pad for the many small European rocket startups. It appears it has strong-armed PLD to pay for much of that joint infrastructure. “You want to launch first? Then pay for this work that others will use.” It is possible PLD will be able to recover this investment from those other companies, but its press release does not say so.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space raises $500 million in private investment capital

11:01 am

Impulse's tug and proposed lunar lander
Impulse’s Helios tug, transporting its proposed
lunar lander to the Moon. Click for original image.

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced today that it has successfully raised $500 million in private investment capital.

The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, bringing the company’s total capital raised to over $1 billion. The funding will support hiring and manufacturing growth as the company scales its effort to build in-space mobility infrastructure: the vehicles, propulsion systems, and operational architecture that determine where and how spacecraft move after launch.

The company was founded by Tom Mueller, who was one of SpaceX’s first employees and helped develop the Merlin engine used on the Falcon 9. It has a fleet of tugs, with its Mira tug having already completed a number of missions. Its larger Helios tug is scheduled for its first mission next year.

Hat tip reader Nate P.

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