Tag: engineering

Commercial changes at France’s French Guiana spaceport

9:41 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.)

Once France’s space agency CNES regained control of its spaceport in French Guiana several years ago from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial pseudo-company Arianespace, it has moved aggressively to make that spaceport attractive to the new European rocket startups.

Beginning in 2022, it began to sign deals with every one of those rocket startups to allow them to establish launch facilities at the spaceport using several long abandoned pads, including the French Diamant rocket site not used for decades as well as the Soyuz launch site unused due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

CNES decided to standardize Diamant for multiple rocket companies, while leasing the Soyuz site to one.

In a news story today, it appears the startup MaiaSpace, a wholly owned subsidiary of the much larger aerospace company ArianeGroupk, has shifted its launch plans at French Guiana. Initially it was going to launch its rocket from the Diamant pad. In 2024 however it won the contract to use the Soyuz pad, and it has now withdrawn its plans to use Diamant entirely.

CNES has therefore put out a call to the European rocket industry to fill this slot at Diamant. At present Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude have agreements to use Diamant, though only Latitude and PLD had done any development work on their facilities there.

As far as I know, these companies comprise the entire cadre of new European rocket startups, so I don’t know what other users CNES hopes to find. Furthermore, CNES had wanted to standardize the launch site for everyone, and the companies had balked at that idea. PLD got a deal to use its own pad at Diamant. I suspect the reason Isar and Rocket Factory have done little there is because they want their own facilities as well.

Either way, French Guiana is moving the direction of supporting competitive commercial operations, and that is a very good thing.

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Pluto and Charon come out of the dark

1:40 pm

Pluto and Charon come out of the dark
Click for original image.

Cool image time! I have decided to start delving into the archives of some of the older planetary missions, because there is value there that is often forgotten now years later, that should not be forgotten.

In looking through the archive of images from the main camera on New Horizons as it sped past Pluto in July 2015, I found the picture to the right, taken on July 10, 2015 when New Horizons was still about three million miles away.

This is the raw image from that camera, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. It is also the first time in human history we had a sharp look at these two planets that sit at the outer fringes of the solar system. The science team that day released a version that they enhanced to bring out the details, which I immediately posted. They then noted the following:

A high-contrast array of bright and dark features covers Pluto’s surface, while on Charon, only a dark polar region interrupts a generally more uniform light gray terrain. The reddish materials that color Pluto are absent on Charon. Pluto has a significant atmosphere; Charon does not. On Pluto, exotic ices like frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide have been found, while Charon’s surface is made of frozen water and ammonia compounds. The interior of Pluto is mostly rock, while Charon contains equal measures of rock and water ice. “These two objects have been together for billions of years, in the same orbit, but they are totally different,” said Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

This difference is quite clear in the raw image, with Charon markedly dimmer than Pluto even though they are getting the same amount of light from the Sun.

More than any other objects in the solar system, the double planet system of Pluto-Charon demonstrates how uniquely different every object in the solar system is from every other object. Even when formed together, as these two planets were, they formed in a manner that made them drastically different.

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India schedules next PSLV launch for June, claims it knows cause of January launch failure

9:10 am

India's space agency ISRO, as transparent as mud
India’s space agency ISRO,
as transparent as mud

According to a statement by a government minister yesterday, India’s space agency ISRO now knows what caused the January launch failure of its PSLV rocket, and has thus scheduled its next launch for June 2026.

This had been the second PSLV launch failure in a row, both of which occurred with the rocket’s third stage at almost the exact same time. With the first failure, ISRO never outlined publicly the cause, though it claimed it had solved the issue. According to the minister’s statement, the failure of the second launch was unrelated to the first.

The minister also said that the two PSLV missions that had failed—PSLV-C61 in May 2025 and PSLV-C62 in January this year—were unrelated. “It wasn’t the same problem. When the first mission failed, there was a detailed assessment, and the problem was fixed. Both the issues were different,” Singh said.

He also added that separate internal and external failure assessment committees have been set up to analyse what went wrong in each of the missions.

No word however as to the cause of the failure has yet been released. Though he also claimed the PSLV has not lost its customers due to these issues, ISRO’s lack of transparency says otherwise. If it claims the two failures came from different causes, it should provide the details in order to reassure potential customers.

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NASA makes right decision and delays Artemis-2 launch to do a 2nd dress rehearsal countdown

8:53 am

Artemis Program logo

NASA management announced today that it has decided to postpone the launch of the manned Artemis-2 mission around the Moon until March in order to give it time to do a second wet dress rehearsal countdown of the rocket and fix the hydrogen fuel leaks that occurred in yesterday’s rehearsal.

Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives. To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.

Moving off a February launch window also means the Artemis II astronauts will be released from quarantine, which they entered in Houston on Jan. 21. As a result, they will not travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday as tentatively planned. Crew will enter quarantine again about two weeks out from the next targeted launch opportunity.

It should be understood that these hydrogen leaks have been systemic to SLS’s core stage rocket engines, which come from the shuttle era. Shuttle launches were routinely delayed due to similar leaks. This was partly because hydrogen is extremely difficult to control, as its atom is so small and light, and partly because of the engine design. This was the first rocket system ever to use hydrogen as fuel, and was thus cutting edge, in the 1970s. We should not be surprised by such issues.

Newer hydrogen-fueled designs have apparently overcome the problem. For example, Blue Origin uses hydrogen as a fuel in the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket, and though it has only launched twice, it has not had such issues on either launch.

In its announcement NASA also noted a bunch of other issues that occurred during this first rehearsal, all of which suggest that a delay is called for. There was a valve issue in the Orion capsule, some audio communication channels kept dropping out, and the cold weather affected some equipment. Waiting until warmer weather will help alleviate some of this.

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Falcon 9 upper stage has issue preventing de-orbit burn; SpaceX pauses launches

8:34 am

According to a SpaceX tweet yesterday afternoon, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that successfully launched 25 Starlink satellites “experienced an off-nominal condition” when it was preparing to do its final de-orbit engine burn.

During today’s Falcon 9 launch of @Starlink satellites, the second stage experienced an off-nominal condition during preparation for the deorbit burn. The vehicle then performed as designed to successfully passivate the stage. The first two MVac burns were nominal and safely deployed all 25 Starlink satellites to their intended orbit.

Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight

It appears that SpaceX has temporarily paused its launch schedule while it reviews this incident, shifting a launch that was supposed to occur last night back three days to February 5th. While the launch itself was successful, the company likely wants to get a handle on what went wrong before resuming launches.

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Fuel leaks cause Artemis-2 dress rehearsal countdown to terminate at T-5:15, several minutes early

11:15 pm

Artemis Program logo

Two hydrogen fuel leaks during today’s Artemis-2 dress rehearsal countdown forced an early termination of the count as well as the cancellation of a second practice countdown.

The Artemis II wet dress rehearsal countdown was terminated at the T-5:15 minute mark due to a liquid hydrogen leak at the interface of the tail service mast umbilical, which had experienced high concentrations of liquid hydrogen earlier in the countdown, as well. The launch control team is working to ensure the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket is in a safe configuration and begin draining its tanks.

An earlier leak of hydrogen in the count forced a hold and a recycling of the count, though it did not stop the rehearsal.

The initial plan had been to do two terminal counts. First they would run the countdown down to T-33 seconds, hold for a few minutes, then recycle back to T-10 minutes and do it again. Because of that first leak delay the launch director canceled the second count. And because of the second leak they were unable to run that one count all the way to T-33 seconds.

The wise action would be for NASA to review their data, figure out what caused the leaks, correct it, and then do another dress rehearsal countdown. This being NASA, do not be surprised if they review the data, figure out what caused the leaks, and decide they can go ahead with the launch on February 8, 2026.

Why not? They are already launching this manned 10-day mission around the Moon with an untested life support system and a questionable heat shield. Might as well try a launch when you haven’t worked out all the fueling kinks.

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Musk: I have merged xAI with SpaceX

3:35 pm

Elon Musk today announced that he has merged the company xAI (which includes X) with SpaceX, because in his mind the needs of the two companies interlace perfectly.

The requirement to launch thousands of satellites to orbit became a forcing function for the Falcon program, driving recursive improvements to reach the unprecedented flight rates necessary to make space-based internet a reality. This year, Starship will begin delivering the much more powerful V3 Starlink satellites to orbit, with each launch adding more than 20 times the capacity to the constellation as the current Falcon launches of the V2 Starlink satellites. Starship will also launch the next generation of direct-to-mobile satellites, which will deliver full cellular coverage everywhere on Earth.

While the need to launch these satellites will act as a similar forcing function to drive Starship improvements and launch rates, the sheer number of satellites that will be needed for space-based data centers will push Starship to even greater heights. With launches every hour carrying 200 tons per flight, Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year, enabling an exciting future where humanity is out exploring amongst the stars.

The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.

My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space. This cost-efficiency alone will enable innovative companies to forge ahead in training their AI models and processing data at unprecedented speeds and scales, accelerating breakthroughs in our understanding of physics and invention of technologies to benefit humanity.

Many sources online are speculating that this new merged company will make the company’s initial public offering (IPO) now rumored for this summer even more sky high. I remain puzzled however why Musk would want to do it, and this merger today illustrates why. He controls both SpaceX and xAI completely, as both are privately owned. He didn’t need to convince government regulators of anything. Once the company is public, with publicly traded stock, that will change. He will no longer have such freedom of action.

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A galaxy’s swirling dust lanes

12:07 pm

A galaxy with swirling dust lanes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of follow-up observations of a now faded supernovae that occurred there two years earlier.

This was on purpose: the aim of the observations was to witness the aftereffects of the supernova and examine its surroundings, which can only be done once the intense light of the explosion is gone.

The galaxy itself, NGC 7722, is 187 million light years away, and is unusual in itself.

A “lenticular”, meaning “lens-shaped”, galaxy is a type that sits in between the more familiar spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies. It is also less common than these — partly because when a galaxy has an ambiguous appearance, it can be hard to determine if it is actually a spiral, actually an elliptical galaxy, or something in between. Many of the known lenticular galaxies sport features of both spiral and elliptical galaxies. In this case, NGC 7722 lacks the defined arms of a spiral galaxy, while it has an extended, glowing halo and a bright bulge in the center similar to an elliptical galaxy. Unlike elliptical galaxies, it has a visible disc — concentric rings swirl around its bright nucleus. Its most prominent feature, however, is undoubtedly the long lanes of dark red dust coiling around the outer disc and halo.

The streak in the lower left is a very distant background galaxy, seen on edge.

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Amazon buys ten more launches from SpaceX to place its Leo satellites in orbit

10:59 am

Amazon Leo logo

Hidden in Amazon’s submission last week to the FCC, requesting more time to launch its Leo internet constellation, was this tidbit:

Less than two years after the Commission granted its authorization, Amazon Leo announced the largest commercial launch procurements in history to deploy its initial constellation. It has since added to this launch capacity, and today has contracted for 102 launches across four providers: 18 launches on Arianespace’s Ariane 6, 24 launches on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 38 launches on ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, 9 launches on ULA’s Atlas V, and 13 launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrases indicate the significant changes. In my initial post last week I was focused solely on whether the FCC would grant Amazon the time extension to get its constellation in orbit. At the moment it has only 180 satellites operating in orbit, and to meet its license requirement it must have 1,616 launched by July.

Thus, I didn’t look closely at these launch contract numbers. While the number of launches for Arianespace (18) and ULA (47) appears to match Amazon’s contract numbers from its original 2022 announcement, Blue Origin’s total has dropped by three launches, 27 to 24.

SpaceX in turn has gained another ten launches, on top of its original already completed 2023 three-launch contract. (In 2023, faced with a stockholder lawsuit for ignoring SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the only operational rocket among all of these at the time and by far the cheapest, Amazon’s management quickly signed SpaceX to that three-launch contract.)

The submission last week tells us that sometime recently Amazon signed SpaceX to a new contract for ten more launches. The numbers also suggest that the company took three launches away from Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Apparently, Amazon is not happy with Blue Origin’s launch pace, and signed SpaceX to help get more satellites in orbit. Without question, SpaceX will get these ten additional launches off faster than ULA, Arianespace, or Blue Origin combined. In fact, I bet it gets all ten done before the middle of this year, assuming Amazon can deliver it the satellites.

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SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites; uses 1st stage for 31st time

9:28 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The 1st stage (B1071) completed its 31st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Though this number set no records, it moved that booster closer to catching the records for the most reused launch vehicle, presently held by the shuttle Discovery:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1067
31 Falcon 9 booster B1071
30 Falcon 9 booster B1063
29 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

The 2026 launch race:

14 SpaceX
6 China
2 Rocket Lab

This list is likely inaccurate, as Russia had a Soyuz-2 launch of a classified payload planned just prior to SpaceX’s launch, but as yet there been no confirmation of its success. SpaceX also has another launch schedule for this evening. I will include both when I update then.

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Sunspot update: Maybe solar maximum isn’t over?

9:15 am

The uncertainty of science! It is time for another sunspot update. It is also time to note that once again the Sun appears to be confounding the predictions of NOAA’s solar science panel. Below is NOAA’s monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere, updated by NOAA to include the activity in January but annotated with extra information by me to illustrate the larger scientific context.

Since April 2025 that science panel has been predicting that the solar maximum has passed and the Sun was beginning the ramp down to solar minimum, now expected to occur around 2031-32. And in the ten months since, sunspot activity has appeared to more or less track that prediction, as indicated by the purple/magenta curve line on the graph below.

It now appears that this prediction might very well have been premature.
» Read more

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SpaceX submits proposal to FCC for new constellation of one million satellites

3:03 pm

SpaceX yesterday submitted a proposal to Federal Communications Commission to build new satellite constellation made up of one million satellites designed as an orbiting data center.

In one 8-page document, SpaceX describes its proposed Orbital Data Center system. “To deliver the compute capacity required for large scale AI inference and data center applications serving billions of users globally, SpaceX aims to deploy a system of up to one million satellites to operate within narrow orbital shells spanning up to 50 km each (leaving sufficient room to deconflict against other systems with comparable ambitions),” the company says.

The same satellites would harness the sun’s energy, orbiting at “between 500 km and 2,000 km altitude and 30 degrees and sun-synchronous orbit inclinations,” the company adds. The orbiting data centers would also use “optical links,” or lasers, to connect with Starlink, using the existing satellite internet system to route traffic to users below.

“Orbital data centers are the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power,” the filing adds in bold, pointing to the growing energy costs of AI data centers on Earth. The company is also betting it can launch the space-based data centers at a rapid clip using SpaceX’s more powerful Starship vehicle, which is also crucial to upgrading Starlink with next-generation satellites.

The FCC is likely not going to okay this submission, as written. It is clearly very preliminary, but appears to be consistent with SpaceX’s way of doing business. It sees an opportunity, and jumps in with full force. While others are working up their plans, SpaceX submits its first license proposal outlining the plan in very broad terms, thus getting there first.

And SpaceX is very well positioned to launch this constellation as promised. It has the rockets, and has proven itself capable of running a satellite constellation of vast size.

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Axiom wins slot for next tourist mission to ISS

2:25 pm

NASA yesterday announced that it awarded the space station startup Axiom the next slot for a tourist mission to ISS.

NASA and Axiom Space have signed an order for the fifth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, targeted to launch no earlier than January 2027 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

…Axiom Mission 5 is expected to spend up to 14 days aboard the space station. A specific launch date will depend on overall spacecraft traffic at the orbital outpost and other planning considerations.

Both Axiom and the space station startup Vast had been bidding for the fifth and sixth tourist slots. That Axiom had already done this four times previously was probably NASA’s reasons for choosing it. The agency has not yet decided on who will get the sixth slot, targeting a mission likely in 2028. My bet is that it will give to Vast, because by then Vast’s own demo station Haven-1 will have launched and been visited, thus giving that company some of the experience Axiom already has.

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Russia in discussions with Malaysian province about potential spaceport

1:49 pm

Proposed spaceports in Malaysia
Proposed spaceports in Malaysia

Officials from Glavcosmos, the commercial division of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, have been holding meetings with officials from the Malaysian province of Sabah about building a spaceport there.

Glavkosmos said technical studies identify Sabah as the most suitable location in Southeast Asia for orbital launches, including low-earth and sun-synchronous orbits, due to its strategic geography and safe rocket stage drop zones. The proposed spaceport could create more than 2,000 high-income jobs and boost local supporting industries.

One year ago, in January 2025, the Sabah government announced it was holding similar discussions with the Ukraine. It seems either those talks fell through, or Russia decided to move in and block the Ukraine from making a deal.

A second Malaysian state, Pahang, is also planning a spaceport, working instead with China.

In all cases, it does appear for some reason Malaysia is not very interested in working with western nations.

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Blue Origin shuts down New Shepard suborbital tourist flights

1:22 pm

Blue Origin yesterday announced it is “pausing” the suborbital tourist flights of its New Shepard spacecraft for no less than two years.

Blue Origin today announced it will pause its New Shepard flights and shift resources to further accelerate development of the company’s human lunar capabilities. The decision reflects Blue Origin’s commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.

Those “lunar capabilites” not only include its lunar landers, both manned and unmanned, but its New Glenn rocket, which it wants to sell to NASA to use for these missions. Both need more attention. In addition, it could be the company’s CEO, David Limp, wants to allocate more resources to the company’s Orbital Reef space station proposal, which has been sitting dead in the water for the past year-plus. All these projects have been very slow to get out of the starting gate, partly because of the very leisurely culture that Blue Origin’s previous CEO installed, and partly because the company has put out too many projects it is not focusing well on finishing.

There is also likely a third reason: New Shepard was not making a profit. While the company has been flying it quite regularly in recent months, it does not appear it could ever recover its costs. Moreover, I suspect the demand for these short suborbital tourist flights has diminished with advent of orbital tourism and the soon-to-arrive multiple commercial space stations.

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Amazon asks FCC for time extension for launching its Leo constellation

11:22 am

Amazon yesterday submitted a request to the Federal Communications Commission to extend the July deadline on its license for its Leo internet satellite constellation, which presently requires it to have 1,616 satellites in orbit by that date.

At present Amazon has 181 satellites in orbit, all launched in the last ten months. At that pace there is no chance the company can meet its FCC requirement. From its FCC submission:

While Amazon Leo will meet the deadline for full deployment of its constellation established by its license and the Commission’s rules, launch delays will cause it to fall short of the interim milestone requirement to deploy half of its originally authorized constellation by July 30, 2026. The Commission’s rules provide for extension of such milestones where, as here, delay arises from unforeseeable circumstances beyond an operator’s control or overriding public interest considerations favor an extension.

Because it meets both criteria, Amazon Leo respectfully requests a 24-month extension of its 50% milestone to July 30, 2028, or alternatively, a waiver of this interim requirement.

In its submission Amazon claims the delay is entirely the fault of the rocket companies it was relying on to launch the satellites, but that is a bogus claim. It initially choose to depend almost entirely on three new rockets (Blue Origin’s New Glenn, ULA’s Vulcan, and Arianespace’s Ariane-6), all of which had not launched and were still under development. To expect these to launch on time was absurd.

Furthermore, its ULA contract also called for launches using company’s already operational Atlas-5 rocket, which Amazon claims were delayed because of “unexpected anomalies and delays caused by issues with its vehicle fairings and solid rocket boosters.” I don’t buy it, and suspect the real cause was that Amazon was unable to produce the satellites on time.

Faced with these delays and a stockholder lawsuit, Amazon subsequently signed SpaceX to do three launches, which that company did quickly, in less than four months. If Amazon had truly wanted to get its Leo satellites in orbit on time, it would have given SpaceX more launches and gotten it done.

Nonetheless, it is likely the FCC will agree to Amazon’s extension request. The company has now shown it is committed to the process and intends to get its constellation in orbit. It is not sitting on its license doing nothing. I would not be surprised however if the FCC imposes some new requirements in an effort to force Amazon to launch more satellites more quickly.

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China launches Algerian satellite

10:23 am

China today successfully placed an Algerian “remote sensing” satellite into orbit, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. China’s state-run press also said little about the satellite, other than claiming it would be used for “land planning and disaster prevention and mitigation.” This however doesn’t match what “remote sensing” satellites usually do, which is military surveillance.

The 2026 launch race:

13 SpaceX
6 China
2 Rocket Lab

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General Electric – Conquest of the Cascades

6:01 pm

An evening pause: According to this website, this documentary was “made by General Electric between 1928 and 1929 to commemorate the completion of this monumental [8-mile-long] tunnel which took 1800 workers and three years to construct.”

Three years! Today that’s how long it would take just to get the environmental assessment written and approved.

Hat tip Blair Ivey.

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Russian defunct military satellite breaks up in graveyard orbit

1:42 pm

A Russian defunct military geosynchronous satellite that was launched in 2014 and spent a decade spying on other geosynchronous satellites only to be moved to a graveyard orbit in 2025 when its fuel ran out apparently broke apart earlier today.

The Swiss company S2A systems, which specializes in tracking orbital objects, captured the moment the spacecraft began disintegrating. I have embedded that footage below, though it really is far less exciting than it sounds.

The debris poses a very small risk to other geosynchronous satellites, which orbit at about 22,000 miles elevation where there is too little atmosphere to decay orbits. The graveyard orbit is several hundred miles higher.
» Read more

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Russian official says Soyuz launchpad repair likely delayed

9:48 am

According to the Russian official in charge of ground infrastructure at Roscosmos, the repair of Russia’s only Soyuz launchpad for launching Progress and Soyuz capsules to ISS might not be completed by late March, as Roscosmos has previously promised.

It appears the winter weather at Baikonur is causing issues. In addition:

Barmin explained that the new service platform had to be assembled from components manufactured at different times and sometimes mismatching each other, requiring on-site modifications. For example, the core of the spare platform was manufactured in 1977 in accordance with a different set of blueprints for a planned-but-never-implemented refurbishment of another Soyuz pad, Barmin said. When it was shipped from an arsenal in the city of Tambov to Baikonur, the set of hardware was incomplete, requiring it to be complemented with parts from other sources and with newly manufactured elements.

It also appears the Russian government is going to make scapegoats of the workers who handled the launch platform during the November 2025 launch. It has placed them under criminal investigation. The managers, whom according to one report demanded the launch take place even though these workers could not get the platform properly fastened in place, appear to have been cleared of wrong-doing.

Until this pad is repaired, Russia has no way to launch any manned missions. Nor can it send cargo to ISS.

The decision to scapegoat the workers will further hinder work, as it will certainly damage morale. Such an approach also helps explain why there has been several cases of sabotage of Soyuz and Progress capsules while they are being prepped for launch.

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