Tag: engineering

Astronomers discover an asymmetrical radio galaxy distorted wildly as it plows into the surrounding galactic medium

9:49 am

Distorted radio galaxy
Figure 1 from the paper. Click for original.

Using ground-based radio telescopes, astronomers have now discovered a very strange asymmetrical radio galaxy squashed into a gigantic arc almost two million light years across as the galaxy pushes its way into the surrounding material of an even more gigantic galactic cluster.

In RAD-BAARG [the name they have given the galaxy], the researchers say one of the jets appears to interact with a large bow shock-like structure formed as the host galaxy falls through the surrounding hot gas toward a nearby cluster of galaxies. Similar to the shockwave formed ahead of a supersonic aircraft, a galaxy moving faster than the speed of sound in the surrounding intracluster medium can compress the ambient gas and generate a large-scale shock front.

The radio-emitting plasma from RAD-BAARG appears to illuminate this otherwise extremely faint structure, making it visible in low-frequency radio images, according to the team. The western side of the source contains a narrow jet feeding a sector-shaped emission region and a giant arc-like feature extending over nearly 560 kiloparsecs (1.8 million light years).

On the opposite side, the jet develops a distorted S-shaped morphology followed by a faint offset tail extending to almost 600 kiloparsecs. The overall structure suggests strong interaction between the radio plasma and the surrounding large-scale environment.

You can read their published paper here. The images to the right are figure 1 from that paper. The top image is just the radio data. The bottom image shows the contours of that radio data over the optical view. The cross marks the location of object’s host galaxy, as seen in the optical.

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Canada’s second proposed spaceport opens first rocket factory

9:03 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace, which also hopes to operate the Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland, last week announced the opening of a new headquarters where it hopes to begin building its smallsat Tundra rockets.

The 60,000 square foot advanced manufacturing campus is dedicated to the production of the company’s light and medium-lift orbital launch vehicles alongside its space systems division, and represents a 10x expansion over NordSpace’s previous headquarters.

In reading between the lines of the press release, it appears this facility is mostly the company’s administrative and operations headquarters, though it is large enough to assembly two Tundra smallsat rockets at the same time, designed to put about three times more payload into orbit than Rocket Lab’s very successful Electron rocket.

Unlike Spaceport Nova Scotia, which was first proposed more than a decade ago and after years of struggle was leased in March by the Canadian government for $200 million, Nordspace has only been around since 2024 and has received a relatively small grant from the government, some portion of a $8.3 million program to support three Canadian rocket startups.

With both spaceports, there has been a lot of blarney spouted. Thus, separating the sizzle from the steak is difficult. No launch dates for Tundra have been provided, though the company says it has purchased the land for an even larger manufacturing facility, though once again it provides no timetables.

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Rocket Lab and SpaceX complete launches

9:49 am

In the past two days both Rocket Lab and SpaceX successfully completed launches.

I am reporting the Rocket Lab launch two days late because it was unannounced and remains officially unconfirmed by the company two days after lift-off. According to two different launch tracking websites (here and here), the company’s Electron rocket lifted off successfully from one of its two New Zealand launchpads on June 19, 2026, placing a Rocket Lab payload into orbit dubbed Puma, a Space Force satellite designed to rendezvous with a target spacecraft dubbed Jackel that was built by the company True Anomaly and launched on an earlier SpaceX launch.

The mission secrecy was also for a second purpose, as outlined by Rocket Lab:

The $32 million contract includes a Rocket Lab spacecraft, configured for the unique requirements of the VICTUS HAZE mission, that will launch on Electron within just 24 hours’ notice. The mission is designed to improve Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) processes and timelines to demonstrate the SSC’s ability to respond to on-orbit threats on very short timelines.

SpaceX then followed up today with a launch of 24 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 33rd flight (70 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight this booster moved into a tie with the space shuttle Atlantis for fourth place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

74 SpaceX
40 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 74 to 69.

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Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite goes airborne in advance of launch

9:26 am

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

Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite — that will attempt to grab the Gehrels-Swift space telescope and raise its orbit — began its journey to its launch area over the south Pacific on June 18, 2026 when Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket that will launch it was taken airborne by company’s Stargazer L-1011 airplane.

Stargazer, a modified L-1011 operated by Northrop Grumman, took off for Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Attached to the belly of the aircraft was one of the company’s Pegasus XL rockets with LINK inside.

…Stargazer will carry Pegasus and LINK to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean with stopovers in California and Hawai’i.

Sometime later this month Stargazer will go to its launch area, climb to 40,000 feet, and release the Pegasus rocket, which will then ignite its engines to carry Link into orbit. Link will then attempt to rendezvous with Gehrels-Swift, using its robot arms to catch it (the telescope has no grapple attachment). If successful, it will then raise the telescope’s orbit so that it can resume observations for years to come.

The mission is daring in more ways than just described. Katalyst has never done this before. It is a startup that reconfigured its first demo mission into this rescue mission.

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Problems during first drop tests of Europe’s Space Rider prototype

8:23 am

Artist rendering of Space Rider in orbit
Artist rendering of Space Rider in orbit. Click for original.

It appears that there was an undisclosed problem in May that prevented the first drop tests from a helicopter of a prototype of Europe’s Space Rider mini-reusable shuttle.

During a June 17 press briefing following the 347th ESA Council meeting, weeks after the aborted attempt occurred, ESA’s head of strategy and institutional launches for space transportation, Lucía Linares, explained that the agency could not provide a concrete date for the final drop test, stating only that it would take place after the summer and before the end of the year.

When asked what had prompted the several-month-long delay, an ESA spokesperson confirmed that the previously unannounced test campaign had taken place. According to the agency, the two-week campaign had concluded on 8 May, when the anomaly forced teams to abort the final test sequence. According to the spokesperson, the anomaly occurred during the captive ascent phase. During this phase, the mock-up was raised to drop height by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. The agency did not, however, provide details about the nature of the anomaly.

This reusable capsule concept by the European Space Agency (ESA) is essentially a variation of either Varda’s returnable capsule or Boeing’s X-37B, but its development has been ridiculously slow. It was first tested by ESA in 2015. By 2017 the agency was promising it would be flying commercially by 2025. A decade later and they have not yet begun testing a full scale spacecraft.

Last summer ESA did helicopter drop tests of just the “brain” and parafoil. Now the drop tests this year of a full scale model — not the real thing — has been delayed until the end of this year because of an undisclosed “anomaly.”

When ESA finally does helicopter drop tests of the actual flight model remains completely unknown. Based on its pace of development, this reusable capsule won’t fly for another five to ten years. By then, a dozen companies will be flying their own private reusable capsules and spacecraft, as well as offering similar services on private space stations.

At that point ESA will likely cancel the program, after wasting two decades and more than a $100 million.

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SpaceX launches classified payload for National Reconnaissance Office

8:09 am

SpaceX in the early morning today successfully launched a classified payload for National Reconnaissance Office, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The number of satellites in the payload was not disclosed. The rocket’s two fairings completed their 3rd and 35th flights. The first stage completed its 3rd flight (29 days after its previous flight), landing back at Vandenberg.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

73 SpaceX
40 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 73 to 68.

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Final results from Lucy’s 2025 fly-by of asteroid Donaldjohanson: A tumbling peanut!

8:00 am

Lucy's gravitational field
Click for movie.

The science team for the asteroid probe Lucy yesterday published their final results from the spacecraft’s fly-by of the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson in April 2025, outlining their present hypothesis based on the data as to the asteroid’s origins and evolution that has left it today a tumbling peanut.

The image to the right comes from a short animation showing the asteroid’s computed tumbling. The colors indicate the strength of its gravitational field, depending on slope. “Higher values (warmer colors) indicate steeper terrain relative to the local gravitational pull.” From the conclusion of their published paper:

We propose the following scenario for the formation and evolution of DJ [Donaldjohanson]. The parent body of the Erigone family was ≈80 km in diameter and was destroyed by a ≈20-km impactor at ≈155 [million years ago]. DJ’s bilobed shape probably arose from the accretion of fragments from this break-up event. This left DJ with an initial spin period of ≪10 hours.

The YORP effect [the pressure of sunlight] then slowed DJ’s rotation and shifted its spin axis toward low obliquity. After 20 to 60 [million years], DJ’s spin period reached ≈10 hours, causing slopes in the neck region to fail. The resulting widespread mass movement toward both lobes produced the ridge and smoothed the neck region.

Sometime later (<40 [million years ago), craters smaller than 0.4 km were globally erased, possibly owing to seismic shaking by an impact. Localized mass wasting on the neck continued, degrading the morphology of many craters without altering the small crater SFD. From 80 to 120 [million years] after formation, DJ’s rotation entered its current NPA [non–principal axis] state, with a spin period of 100 to 200 hours.

A more prosaic way of describing “non–principal axis state” is to say the asteroid is tumbling.

Lucy is presently on its way to the Trojan asteroids that orbit with Jupiter 60 degrees fore and aft of the gas giant. It will fly past ten Trojans during its mission, with the first the asteroid Eurybates on Aug. 12, 2027.

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A “thermal anomaly” in young Martian lava

12:08 pm

A
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 1, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this picture “Thermal Anomaly in Young Lava Flows”. The anomaly, indicated by the arrow, is the distinctly blue floor of the unnamed small 300-foot-wide crater about a third of a mile east of that 30-foot-high mesa. According to MRO guidelines [pdf] for interpreting the colors the camera produces:

Frost and ice are also relatively blue, but bright, and often concentrated at the poles or on pole-facing slopes. Some bedrock is also relatively bright and blue, but not as much as frost or ice, and it has distinctive morphologies.

The guidelines say more, but based on this information it suggests the floor of that crater is unusually cold, able to hold frost and ice. The picture was taken during the Martian winter, so seeing frost inside this crater at this time is possible, though its location, deep inside the dry equatorial regions of Mars where no near surface ice is generally found, tells us that if this is frost, it is truly unusual, deserving the description of “an anomaly.”
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Update on rocket startup Relativity and its Terran-R rocket

9:38 am

Link here. With NASA awarding it a major contract yesterday to launch and operate a Mars orbiter by 2028, this detailed report today on the status of the company’s Terran-R rocket and its launchpad at Cape Canaveral is very well timed.

The report provides details on the testing status of the rocket’s first and second stages. It also describes the construction at the launchpad, with the horizontal assembly building just about finished. The key paragraph in the report however is the last:

With the second stage on its way to Stennis for testing, the first-stage qualification article preparing for structural load testing, and LC-16 rapidly approaching its final configuration, Relativity Space is entering the pivotal final phase of Terran R development. If this pace holds, the company will remain on track for a maiden flight by the end of 2026 — introducing a new heavy-lift launch system with a payload capacity significantly higher than SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

In addition to Relativity, there are a lot of companies that hope to do the first launch of a new rocket this year, including the American companies Rocket Lab and Stoke Space, the German companies Isar and Rocket Factory Augsburg, the Spanish company PLD, the South Korean company Innospace, the Australia company Gilmour, and the India company Skyroot. It is also possible I have missed one or two, there are so many.

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The suborbital spaceplane company Dawn Aerospace raises $25 million in private capital

9:19 am

The crew and Mk-II Aurora
The crew and Mk-II Aurora

According to a press release issued June 16, 2026, the suborbital spaceplane company Dawn Aerospace has now raised an additional $25 million in private investment capital, more than doubling the amount of money raised by the company.

Dawn Aerospace today announced the close of its Series B funding round, raising $25 million at a $195 million post-money valuation. The round was led by US-based VC, Balerion Space Ventures.

Since its Series A in 2022, Dawn Aerospace has become the leading provider of non-toxic chemical propulsion worldwide with 200 thrusters in space on more than 50 satellites. Dawn has also flown supersonic with the Aurora suborbital spaceplane, making it the first privately developed aircraft to fly supersonic since the Concorde, and one of only two supersonic UAVs operating globally today.

…Commercially, revenue has grown from less than $3 million in FY22 to well over $15 million with growth of over 90% in the last 12 months and cash-flow positive operations.

The company has not only been flying its supersonic small MK-II Aurora spaceplane numerous times successfully, including doing so at least once twice in one day, it has been successfully selling space on those flights.

None of those flights however have been to space. The company says it launch a bigger version of Aurora within the next 12 months with the capability of reaching suborbital space, and plans to begin regular suborbital spaceplane flights from Oklahoma in 2027. It also hopes to demonstrate in orbit a refueling system for satellites by 2028.

If it succeeds, it will likely grab the market share that Blue Origin’s has abandoned when it shut down its New Shepard suborbital capsule, and that Virgin Galactic has lost by not flying for the past few years. Moreover, even if these companies resume suborbital operations, because Dawn’s spaceplanes are not designed for human flight, they are likely much cheaper to fly, and will grab more business.

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France changes the companies to use its old Diamant shared launchpad

9:00 am

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

France’s CNES space agency, which manages the French Guiana spaceport France owns, has now made some major changes in the rocket startups it will let share use of its old long unused Diamant launchpad.

In 2021, CNES opened a call for interest in a new commercial launch facility that it would build on the grounds of the old Diamant launch site at the Guiana Space Centre. On 25 July 2025, the agency announced seven companies that had been shortlisted: HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Latitude, MaiaSpace, and Avio.

Since that announcement, Avio and HyImpulse have been removed from the list, with CNES offering no explanation. MaiaSpace voluntarily gave up its space after CNES, in September 2024, selected the company to assume control of the former Soyuz launch facility, now renamed ELM2.

The story today is that another new European rocket startup, Sirius Space, has been selected as a user of this pad. Thus, this shared launchpad will now be used by five companies, PLD, Isar, Rocket Factory, Latitude, and Sirius.

Of those five, the first three appear closest to launch, though only PLD intends to use this pad at present. Isar hopes to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport on June 20th (after numerous scrubs). Rocket Factory has requested a launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to launch its RFA-1 rocket in July from the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, but that remains to be seen, considering the CAA’s past slow behavior.

Meanwhile, PLD has committed €35 million to the Diamant site to prepare it for its own first launch of its Miura-5 rocket, presently expected before the end of 2026. How it will get reimbursed when those other companies begin using the launchpad facilities it built and paid for is not clear.

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One more launch yesterday for China

9:00 pm

UPDATE: China finally confirmed the launch today (June 18, 2026).

Original post:
————————–
Though China has still not issued any official update, it appears the Chinese pseudo-company Expace successfully placed seven satellites into orbit yesterday, its Kuaizhou-11 solid-fueled rocket lifting off from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

The launch itself was observed by locals, and later spent stages were found in “established hazard zones” in China. No announcement of any kind however has been released by China. There were rumors of a failure of the upper stages or the payloads, but according to Space Force tracking data, the launch itself appears to have been a success.

Tracking data from the U.S. Space Force suggests that Kuaizhou-11 achieved orbit and deployed seven satellites, then performed a deorbit burn. Based on the orbital inclination, 55 degrees, and source chatter, those satellites likely belong to Future Navigation’s positioning service, being its third deployment of them.

The lack of any announcement so far from China suggests some or all of the satellites had issues.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

72 SpaceX
40 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 72 to 68.

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NASA awards Relativity the launch and management contract for new Mars orbiter

4:31 pm

NASA today awarded the rocket startup Relativity the contract to provide the service module, rocket, and operations for the launch of its proposed four instrument Aeolus Mars orbiter, focused on studying the Martian atmosphere.

NASA will provide the Aeolus atmospheric‑science instrument payload suite, while Relativity Space supplies the spacecraft, rocket, and cruise operations necessary to deliver the instruments to Mars.

…Aeolus, scheduled to launch in 2028, is a NASA‑developed suite of four complementary instruments designed to provide the first integrated, daily, global view of Martian winds, temperatures, dust, and clouds. By improving models for dust, winds, temperature, and seasonal atmospheric behavior, Aeolus will generate the detailed environmental knowledge required to reduce risk for future crewed and uncrewed landings. These measurements will directly inform entry, descent, and landing systems and support safer, more predictable mission planning for astronauts.

…NASA will support operations of science instruments for at least one Martian year, while Relativity Space maintains the spacecraft.

The announcement made no mention of contract price. Relativity meanwhile has only launched once, a failure of its small Terran-1 rocket in 2023, after which the company abandoned that 3D-printed design to focus on its larger Terran-R rocket, which it hopes to launch for the first time before the end of this year.

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Gwynne Shotwell: Starship flight 13 in about a month, flights monthly thereafter

3:26 pm

According to a short clip from an interview with SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell earlier this week, she stated the company expects to fly the next Superheavy/Starship mission, #13, in about a month, and will then begin monthly test flight thereafter.

Full orbital flights should begin with #14, “and then from there on out.”

She also expressed certainty about an operational Starship in orbit before the end of the year. That likely includes a deployment of Starlink satellites, as well as a likely refueling test mission involving two Starships. In an October 2025 Starship update SpaceX described this mission, noting it was targeting a late 2026 launch:

It will start with a Starship launched from Starbase to spend an extended time on orbit, gathering data on vehicle propulsion and thermal behavior on an extended duration mission, including long duration propellant storage and boil-off characterization. A second Starship will then launch to rendezvous with the first to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer in Earth orbit.

All the evidence continues to suggest the company is going to meet this schedule, or only miss it by a few months at most.

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Spotting dozens of Martian dust devils in one observation

10:50 am

Overview map

Dozens of active dust devils in one image
Click for source.

Using Europe’s Mars Express orbiter, scientists have found it is possible to identify multiple active dust devils at a time on the surface of Mars.

The circles on the image to the right shows dozens of such dust devils, at the outlet region of a valley on Mars dubbed Mamers Valles, located at the western end of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country (as shown on the overview map above), because practically every image of this region shows glacial features. This location is where Mamer Valles drains into the northern lowland plains.

Mars Express is uniquely equipped to spot these mini whirlwinds. To form a single image using its High Resolution Stereo Camera – the instrument responsible for these new snapshots – the spacecraft combines sequential views from up to nine separate camera channels (which look at Mars in a different colour, from a different direction, or a mix of the two). If nothing changes on the martian surface while these are being taken, the multiple perspectives align – but if something is moving about, it stands out clearly from its surroundings.

In this new set of images, Mars Express captures not one but dozens of active dust devils.

The image to the right covers about a hundred miles from top to bottom. It is part of a long term project using Mars Express to map the dust devil activity on the entire Martian surface. Not surprisingly, dust devils do not occur everywhere in equal amounts. It appears they favor certain locations, with more generally found in the high latitudes of the cratered southern hemisphere.

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Tianwen-2 appears to be correctly approaching its target asteroid Kamo-oalewa

9:41 am

Though China has made no official update on the status of Tianwen-2, its first asteroid sample return mission, the spacecraft’s maneuvers that amateurs have been tracking suggest it is approaching its target asteroid Kamoʻoalewa as planned, with a rendezvous set for July.

Despite the lack of official updates, the observed maneuvers fit the approach sequence described in Tianwen-2’s mission design. According to a paper by Zhang Rongqiao and colleagues published in SCIENTIA SINICA Physica, Mechanica & Astronomica, the spacecraft’s approach to Kamo’oalewa follows a planned sequence of phases, including the June 7 rendezvous, concluding when the probe has closed to within 20 kilometers of the asteroid’s surface, marking the starting point for close-proximity science operations. This will include global mapping and surveying and sample site selection.

A mission engineer, delivering a presentation on behalf of Zhang He at the 35th Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) June 11, confirmed Tianwen-2 is scheduled to arrive at Kamo’oalewa in July, without providing details on current distance from the asteroid.

The mission is somewhat similar in concept to NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex and Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid missions, both of which rendezvoused with an asteroid and grabbed samples to return to Earth. China however has posted little information about Tianwen-2, including few pictures. One can’t help wondering if this reticence is because the spacecraft’s design its stolen, and China doesn’t want to make this obvious. It is known that China hacked into the computer systems of JPL, NASA, and Japan’s space agency JAXA.

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The satellite repair startup Katalyst raises $12 million in private investment capital

9:23 am

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

The startup Katalyst, which aims to become a major robotic satellite servicing company and is about to launch its first mission to rescue NASA’s Gehrels-Swift space telescope, has just completed a funding round where it raised $12 million in private investment capital.

Katalyst Space raised $12 million to develop Katalyst’s Nexus robotic spacecraft and expand satellite servicing to multi-orbit, multi-mission operations. … It’s a space robot that will reposition, repair, refuel, refit satellites post-launch, and build the next generation of space infrastructure.

The funding round was led by Geodesic Capital, with significant participation from Fortitude Ventures and other investors.

Nexus’ first mission in 2027 will be to geosynchronous orbit, though it is not yet determined what satellite the spacecraft will service. The company appears to be in negotiation with both the government and commercial satellite operators.

Meanwhile, Katalyst’s Link spacecraft is now integrated within Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket, awaiting a planned launch later this month. That rescue mission, only awarded to Katalyst by NASA in November 2025, will attempt to capture Gehrels-Swift, which has no capture mechanism, and raise its orbit.

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Cargo Dragon splashes down in Pacific after spending a month at ISS

9:04 am

ISS today, after undocking of cargo Dragon
ISS today, after undocking of cargo Dragon.
Click for original.

SpaceX today successfully recovered a cargo Dragon from ISS, the capsule undocking and splashing down in the Pacific, bringing back a variety of experimental samples and hardware.

Research returning includes bioprinted organ and cartilage tissue, data on improving cryogenic fuel storage for future space missions, and DNA‑inspired materials to develop new cancer treatments. The returning hardware includes an ocular imaging device used to monitor crew members’ eye health, an absorbent bed that filters trace contaminants from cabin air, and a separator pump from the waste and hygiene compartment.

The Dragon had spent a month at ISS, just long enough for astronauts to unload its cargo from Earth and place this ISS material aboard.

The graphic to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, shows the present spacecraft docked to ISS. It also shows the location of Russia’s leaking Zvezda module, with a Progress docked to its aft port. Note that a Progress and the permanent modulc are also docked to its bow docking hub. Zvezda is an essential part of the Russian half of ISS. Replacing it is impossible.

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Four launches, two by China, one by SpaceX, and one by Arianespace

8:01 am

The beat goes on. Since yesterday the global rocket industry completed four separate launches on three separate continents.

First, China’s Long March 3B rocket placed “an experimental satellite” into orbit, lifting off yesterday from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China. The state-run press provided no information as to where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

China followed up with the launch of another nine satellites in the Guowang (Satnet) internet constellation, its Long March 12 rocket lifting off today from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. This was the 22nd launch for this constellation, bringing the total number of operational satellites in orbit to 175, according to the report at the link, which also added this:

This year, it is planned that 310 satellites will be deployed, followed by 900 in 2027, and 3,600 every year beginning in 2028 to sustain and grow the constellation. In the 2030s, up to 13,000 satellites could be in operational orbit.

Though launched over the ocean, the rocket’s lower stages fell within the territorial waters of the Philippines, requiring its space agency to issue a warning to local residents and boat owners.

Next SpaceX in the early morning hours successfully launched three Bluebird satellites for AST SpaceMobile’s cell-to-satellite constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. AST now has 10 satellites in orbit. It needs to launch 45 to become operational, something it now hopes to achieve by early 2027.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 16th and 33rd flights respectively. The first stage (B1077) completed its 29th flight (27 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight the stage moved past the space shuttle Columbia, putting it in seventh place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

Finally, several hours later Arianespace launched 36 Leo satellites for Amazon, its Ariane-6 rocket lifting off from French Guiana. This launch was the most powerful configuration of Ariane-6 yet launched and the third in Arianespace’s 18-launch Amazon contract. With this launch, Amazon now has 367 satellites in orbit. It needs to get 3,232 in orbit by July 30, 2029 to meet its FCC license requirements.

This was Arianespace’s third launch this year. The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

72 SpaceX
39 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 72 to 67.

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SpaceX demolishes SLC-6 launchpad at Vandenberg

3:16 pm

The SLC-6 launchpad during my 2015 tour of Vandenberg
The SLC-6 launchpad during my 2015 tour of Vandenberg

As part of its plan to launch both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, SpaceX today demolished the SLC-6 launchpad there that had been built in the 1980s for space shuttle launches (but never used) and then leased to ULA for its Delta rocket (now retired).

Below the fold is a video showing the controlled demolition. The quality is very poor, as it was taken on a smart phone looking at a live stream of the demolition, broadcast inside a nearby auditorium. Vandenberg officials did not allow anyone access to any nearby location to watch live.

SpaceX will now rebuild the pad for its own Falcon rockets. Once completed, it will have two launchpads at Vandenberg, allowing it to up its launch rate there to as much as 100 launches per year.

To get a sense of the size and scale of SLC-6 prior to today, see the photos from my 2015 tour of Vandenberg. The picture to the right attempts to capture it, with its mobile launch tower on left and larger assembly building on the right. As I wrote then when taken inside the rocket assembly building:

I can sum up the experience however in one word: Big! The interior space was incredibly large, so large they have repeated problems chasing birds and raccoons from within it. When we took the elevator to the 20th level, almost the highest point inside, the room echoed with the sounds of birds whistling away. I wonder how they react when a rocket takes off.

It is now gone. It will however be replaced by something better. The history of SLC-6 was that of a largely expensive and under-used facility. SpaceX intends to change that.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
» Read more

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