Tag: engineering

Chinese scientists pinpoint a prime landing site for its manned lunar mission

9:21 am

Potential landing site for China's manned lunar landing

Though no final decision has apparently been made, a just published research paper suggests that China is considering a location almost dead center on the Moon’s near side, on the edge of a mare region dubbed Sinus Aestruum, for its first manned lunar landing, presently targeting a 2030 launch date. From the abstract:

We propose four prospective landing sites in the traversable areas, which provide a range of diverse geological samples, including volcanic debris, mare basalts, Copernicus crater ejecta and high-Th materials. Such a collection may provide insights into the geological evolution of the region and enhance our understanding of the lunar mantle composition and volcanic processes.

The red star on global lunar map to the right, taken from figure 1 of the paper, shows the location of this region. The lower map zooms into the region, with the four stars indicating the four prospective landing sites. The region has several rilles, long meandering channels thought to have formed from lava flow, that could be reached during an EVA.

Though it appears the scientists of this paper are lobbying for this landing region and no final decision has been reached, its location and wide variety of geology strongly suggests this will be the final choice. If so, of the four landing sites outlined two are in the smoother mare regions, and two are off the edge, in rougher terrain. For safety considerations, it is likely the final landing site will be in one of the former.

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SpaceX launches EchoStar communications satellite

8:37 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched an EchoStar communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 14th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The rocket’s two fairings completed their 8th and 27th flights respectively.

The 2026 launch race:

30 SpaceX
8 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

Not only is SpaceX this year leading the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — at the moment its pace is twice that as the rest of the globe.

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Voyager to make “a multi-million-dollar strategic investment” in Max Space’s inflatable habitats

3:16 pm

Voyager-Max lunar habitat
Click for original image.

In an expansion of a partnership announced last month, Voyager Technologies — the lead company in the consortium building the Starlab space station — today announced it is now making “a multi-million-dollar strategic investment” in Max Space’s inflatable habitats, aiming at winning contracts both for NASA’s proposed Moon base as well as any other “future deep space missions.”

The actual dollar amount has not yet been released, but my sources say it is in “the low eight figures,” or more than $10 million but probably less than $25 million.

This partnership appears aimed not at NASA’s space station program nor enhancing Starlab. Instead, it is focused on providing NASA (and other commercial operations) inflatable habitats that can be launched and quickly established on the Moon and elsewhere, as shown by the artist’s rendering to the right. It appears Voyager will build the foundation, base, and airlock, while Max will provide the inflatable module above. From the press release:

This initiative directly supports NASA’s historical Artemis Program and aligns precisely with Administrator Isaacman’s announcement to be on the Moon to stay by 2028. Max Space delivers critical enabling infrastructure, maximizing livable volume, enhancing crew safety, and reducing the cost and complexity of surface deployment. It complements Voyager’s broader lunar roadmap, including cislunar mission management, surface logistics, propulsion, power systems, and future surface infrastructure, reinforcing a shared vision of the Moon as an operational domain, not a temporary destination.

In other words, the two companies are aiming to become major suppliers for NASA’s Artemis lunar base, and to do that by offering a way to get it quickly built and operational, at a reasonable cost.

I suspect it will be a few years before NASA issues any such contracts. It will first want to see both companies demonstrate success, both with Voyager’s Starlab and Max Space’s own demo station module scheduled for launch in ’27. Nonetheless, this announcement puts them on the map in the race to get those contracts, and begins to put some commercial reality to the American colonization of the solar system.

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Webb takes a look at a strange planetary nebula

9:49 am

Nebula PMR-1
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The two false-color pictures to the right, reduced to post here, were taken by two different infrared cameras on the Webb Space Telescope.

The object, PMR-1, is about 5,000 light years away and has apparently not been studied very much in the past. In 2013 astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to get a first look in the infrared, at a much lower resolution. They also gave this object a nickname, the “Exposed Cranium” nebula. From the Webb press release:

The nebula appears to have distinct regions that capture different phases of its evolution — an outer shell of gas that was blown off first and consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure that contains a mix of different gases. Both Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) show a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the middle of the nebula that defines its brain-like look of left and right hemispheres. Webb’s resolution shows that this lane could be related to an outburst or outflow from the central star, which typically occurs as twin jets burst out in opposite directions. Evidence for this is particularly notable at the top of the nebula in Webb’s MIRI image, where it looks like the inner gas is being ejected outward.

While there is still much to be understood about this nebula, it’s clear that it is being created by a star near the end of its fuel-burning “life.” In their end stages, stars expel their outer layers. It’s a dynamic and fairly fast process, in cosmic terms. Webb has captured a moment in this star’s decline. What ultimately happens will depend on the mass of the star, which is yet to be determined. If it’s massive enough, it will explode in a supernova. A less massive Sun-like star will continue to shed layers until only its core remains as a dense white dwarf, which will cool off over eons.

The dark lane suggests we are looking at the star’s equator, with the two lobes on either side the material being flung out ward from the poles. It is also possible this is wrong, because the lobes on either side do not have a clear distinct jet-like appearance.

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Italian rocket company Avio wins $65 million War department contract

9:25 am

The Italian rocket company Avio announced last week that it has won a $65 million contract to build a solid-fueled motor for the U.S. Department of War.

Defense Systems and Solutions (DSS), a joint venture between Yulista Integrated Solutions, LLC (YIS) and Science and Engineering Services, LLC (SES), acting as a prime contractor for the US Department of War, selects Avio Group for the development, qualification and initial production of a solid rocket motor for air defense applications.

The contract, amounting approximately to $65 million and covering a three-year period, paves the way for a broader cooperation between the Parties, to exploit respective competences to provide US Government and NATO Allies with critical Defense Systems.

This contract award is significant in several ways. First, it signals the success of Avio’s policy in the past two years to establish itself as a U.S. military contractor, despite being a long-time Italian company. To do this it created a U.S. division, begun construction of a U.S-based manufacturing facility, and committed $500 million to its construction.

Second, Avio’s quick success also illustrates a general weakness in the American solid-rocket industry. It appears the American company that previously dominated this field of military solid-fueled rockets is Northrop Grumman, and its work in recent years has been problematic. Others might also do this work, but it appears no U.S. company has been doing it well enough to satisfy the War Department. The result has been an opportunity for Avio, and it appears it is taking advantage of it.

Finally, this success proves the rightness of the capitalism model. For almost two decades Avio built solid-fueled rockets for the European Space Agency’s commercial division, Arianespace, which controlled the marketing and sale of the rockets. That government control not only created a government middle-man that eat into the profits, it discouraged competition and innovation. Last year ESA completed transfer back to Avio, and the result has been new contracts from many new sources for the company.

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The Senate cries “Uncle!” on SLS and big goverment with its latest NASA authorization bill

8:01 am

I usually pay relatively little attention to the NASA authorization bills that Congress passes periodically, because these bills are generally nothing more than opportunities for the loudmouths in Congress to use them as a bullhorn to puff themselves up to the public and press. Almost never do such bills really have any real impact on the future, or if they do, that impact is often unintended and negative, as Congress is by and large ignorant about these matters and has priorities counter-productive to getting anything substantive accomplished.

I pay even less attention to authorization bills that have only been approved by a committee, and have not yet been voted on by either house. Such bills are ephemeral and the stuff of fantasy. It is nice to know what’s in them, but until such bills are actually approved by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, their language is even more unworthy of serious attention.

Have the pigs in the Senate learned to stop gorging themselves?
Have the pigs in the Senate learned to stop gorging themselves?

Nonetheless, the NASA authorization bill that was just approved by the Senate Commerce committee is worth reviewing, but not for the reasons that has interested the rest of the mainstream and even the aerospace press.

True, the bill extends ISS until 2032. True, it fully supports the commercial private space stations being built to replace it. True, it endorses NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s restructuring of the Artemis program. True, it rejects all of Trump’s proposed cuts to NASA’s science programs. And true, it strongly endorses a Moon base as a first step to colonizing Mars.

All of these facts are significant, but to focus on each specifically — as it appears the entire press has done — is to miss the forest for the trees.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites

10:02 am

SpaceX early today successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 7th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The 2026 launch race:

29 SpaceX
8 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

Not only is SpaceX this year leading the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — at the moment its pace is about twice that as the rest of the globe.

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NASA awards ULA’s Centaur-5 upper stage for future SLS launches

4:30 pm

NASA yesterday awarded ULA the contract for providing SLS its upper stage after the Artemis-3 mission using the Centaur-5 upper stage that was developed for the company’s Vulcan rocket.

In its procurement statement, NASA said its intention is to issue a sole source contract to ULA, meaning it’s the only upper stage being considered for this new iteration of the SLS rocket. An eight-page supporting document from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, was published to document the reasoning for its decision.

Among the stated reasons are the decades-long heritage of the RL10 engine, which has matured over time; the ability of the Centaur 5 to use the interfaces available on the Mobile Launcher 1 (ML1) along with the propulsion commodities of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen; and the experience of ULA’s teams working with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) at the Kennedy Space Center and elsewhere in the country.

They also noted that with the Centaur 3 upper stage achieving certification to launch humans as part of the Commercial Crew Program, there are a lot of common features with the Centaur 5.

The decision relieves NASA from wasting more money on the Mobile Launcher-2, which has been a disaster. The contractor Bechtel has gone over budget — from $383 million to $2.7 billion — and is so behind schedule it is still unclear now whether it will be ready by 2029, a decade after the contract was awarded.

It also relieves NASA of spending more money on its own upper stage, which has been as much a disaster, from Boeing.

Instead, this deal is an example of Isaacman doing the right thing. Rather than have NASA design and build its own upper stage, he is buying the product — almost literally off-the-shelf — from a commercial rocket company. He should expand this effort, and consider other private rockets, such as Falcon Heavy, to replace SLS itself.

Now Isaacman should consider suing Bechtel for fraud and incompetence, to try to get back some of the money it wasted.

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Dart changed the orbit of the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroids around the Sun

2:54 pm

Dimorphos just after impact

When the Dart spacecraft impacted the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, it not only shortened Dimophos’ orbit around its companion asteroid Didymos by about 33 minutes while reshaping the asteroid, a new study has found that it also changed very slightly the orbit of both asteroids around the Sun.

The image to the right, annotated to post here, was taken by the Italian LICIACube spacecraft moments after the September 26, 2022 impact.

The research paper describing this research can be found here. From the press release:

The new study shows the impact ejected so much material from the binary system that it also changed the binary’s orbital period around the Sun by 0.15 seconds. “The change in the binary system’s orbital speed was about 11.7 microns per second, or 1.7 inches per hour,” said Rahil Makadia, the study’s lead author at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “Over time, such a small change in an asteroid’s motion can make the difference between a hazardous object hitting or missing our planet.”

To be precise, the orbital speed was slowed 1.7 inches per hour, which while tiny would mean its solar orbit is now slightly shortened.

The result proves that a similar impact could be used on some asteroids to deflect them from hitting the Earth, though we would need to know a lot about that asteroid prior to launching the mission to accurately predict the orbital change. Otherwise, any impact could be a dangerous crap shoot that could do more harm than good.

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Curiosity looks uphill at its upcoming travels

12:41 pm

Panorama looking up Mount Sharp
Click for original.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Since May 2025 Curiosity has been exploring in great detail the boxwork formations located on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. It is now about to complete those investigations, with the Curiosity science team beginning their planning for moving onward and upward.

The panorama above, enhanced to post here, was taken on March 2, 2026 by the rover’s right navigation camera. It looks uphill along the valley that Curiosity is in toward the mountainous region the rover is targeting. Note that the peak of Mount Sharp is not visible, being more than 25 miles away beyond the horizon and about 15,000 feet higher up.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right mark Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area this panorama covers. The red dotted line marks the rover’s approximate planned route, while the white dotted line indicates Curiosity’s actual travels.

Right now Curiosity is traveling through a geological layer the scientists have dubbed the sulfate unit. The lighter colored hills seen on the horizon have also been identified as sulfate, but believed to be much more pure. The geology there should be very different. Instead of rough and rocky it could be like traveling over soft porous sand. This however is merely a guess on my part, based on imagery of those light-colored hills.

The actual route through those hills however remains unknown. Either the science team has not yet released it, or is still trying to figure out the best way through.

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South Korean rocket startup Perigee signs deal to launch from the Philippines

10:03 am

The Philippines

The South Korean rocket startup Perigee yesterday signed an agreement with the government of the Philippines, allowing it to launch its proposed suborbital and orbital Blue Whale rockets from a sea platform within that country’s territorial waters.

The Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA), together with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA), Ascend International Gateway, Inc., and … Perigee Aerospace, Inc. signed a Memorandum of Understanding … to collaborate on a framework for rocket development training and experimental rocket launches in the Philippines. These initiatives will demonstrate the viability of the establishment and operation of a Philippine spaceport, with the goal of positioning the country as a gateway to space in the region.

…The agreement builds on the rocket technology know-how transfer and training program undertaken by PhilSA engineers in the Republic of Korea from October to November 2025, in collaboration with Perigee Aerospace. The program equipped the engineers with foundational and applied knowledge in launch vehicle systems through lectures and hands-on experience in rocket assembly and testing. These initiatives lay the groundwork for future activities, including possible localized assembly, testing, and launch operations in the Philippines.

The first four entities listed above are all government agencies in the Philippines. Apparently Perigee is providing training and aid to the Philippines in exchange for the right to launch from within that country. It website states the suborbital version of Blue Whale will launch from a sea platform, but the launch site for the orbital version is unclear.

This deal however sets the stage for possibly developing a land-based spaceport in the Philippines. As shown by the map to the right, the country is well situated for such purposes, with a lot of eastern coastline facing the vast Pacific ocean. A spaceport located on its southernmost island of Mindanao would be especially well placed.

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ESA loses contact with the coronagraph satellite of its duel-satellite Proba-3 mission

9:24 am

The Proba-3 mission
The Proba-3 mission. Click for original.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that engineers have lost contact with the Coronagraph satellite of its duel-satellite Proba-3 mission, and are working now to recover contact.

During the weekend of 14–15 February 2026, an anomaly onboard Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft triggered a chain reaction that led to the progressive loss of attitude (spacecraft orientation) and prevented the entry into safe mode.

Because the spacecraft’s solar panel was no longer facing the Sun, the onboard battery started to discharge quickly. This caused the spacecraft to enter survival mode, when minimum electronics are active and data transmission to the ground is interrupted.

The exact root cause of the anomaly is under investigation, and mission teams and operators have joined forces to attempt to re-establish contact with the spacecraft to recover the situation.

The Coronograph satellite is the heart of this mission. It records the data, available because the Occulter blocks the Sun from view so that the corona, the Sun’s atmosphere, can be seen. Based on this report, it does not look good that the spacecraft can be recovered.

At the same time, the mission has apparently achieved all of its initial goals, and was now on an extended mission.

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Sierra Space raises $550 million in private investment capital

9:01 am

Due to its aggressive shift in the past year away from NASA-based civilian contracts to defense work, Sierra Space announced yesterday that it has successfully raised another $550 million in private investment capital.

That shift occurred because of its failure to deliver its Dream Chaser vehicle to NASA as planned, as well as the apparently lack of progress in its partnership with Blue Origin on the Orbital Reef space station. From the press release:

Sierra Space Corporation, an industry-leading defense-tech space company delivering solutions for the nation’s critical missions, announced today a $550 million equity investment led by LuminArx Capital Management (“LuminArx Capital”), a global alternative investment manager, with participation from existing investors. The financing values the company at $8 billion post-money.

With this new capital, Sierra Space will be able to further focus on its national security space efforts through ongoing expansion of production capacity and continued development of differentiated solutions for its customers. The investment better positions Sierra Space to secure additional contracts, leverage existing technologies, and pursue growth opportunities beyond its current satellite and spacecraft mission programs.

Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of April 2025
Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of April 2025,
the best we can likely ever expect from this dead project.
Click for original image.

The release also mentioned General Atlantic, Coatue, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Andalusian Private Capital as investors.

Though this money should help fuel its work on Dream Chaser and Orbital Reef, I suspect little will go to those two projects. The company is now clearly targeting military and national security work as its prime source of income. There are also indications that there are some technical issues with Dream Chaser that Sierra has not yet revealed.

Meanwhile, the lack of effort from Blue Origin on Orbital Reef likely convinced Sierra it was better to turn its eyes elsewhere. While Sierra spent considerable effort testing its LIFE inflatable module, Blue Origin did practically nothing, and continues to do little. It is unlikely this partnership will win any funding from NASA when the agency awards new space station contracts, expected sometime in six months.

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Rocket Lab completes another launch yesterday

8:40 am

Rocket Lab yesterday successfully placed a satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The company did not reveal the name of its customer, though according to this source the satellite was a Blacksky Earth imaging satellite, the fourth launch of a four-launch contract with that satellite company.

The 2026 launch race:

28 SpaceX
8 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

Not only is SpaceX this year leading the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — at the moment its pace is about twice as much as the rest of the globe.

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Vast raises $500 million in new private investment capital

1:47 pm

Haven-2
Vast’s full Haven-2 station once completed

The space station startup Vast today announced it has raised another $500 million in new private investment capital, bringing the total so far invested in the company’s space station project to more than one billion.

The financing round was led by Balerion Space Ventures with participation from IQT, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Mitsui & Co., Ltd, MUFG, Nikon Corporation (Nikon), Stellar Ventures, Space Capital, and Earthrise Ventures. Jed McCaleb, founder and first investor, also participated in the round. As part of the transaction, Balerion Advisor A.C. Charania, former Chief Technologist for NASA, will join the Vast board.

…To date, more than $1 billion has been invested in Vast’s space stations technologies and facilities—resources that NASA and government partners can leverage to ensure readiness to replace the ISS in 2030. The latest financing includes $300 million in Series A equity and $200 million in debt to support the continued development of Vast’s Haven space stations. The funds will be used to expand facilities, grow the team, and advance the company’s proposed successor to the ISS, Haven-2, designed to ensure continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit for the United States and its allies.

Hat tip to reader Richard M for letting me know about this announcement.

In my rankings below of the five American commercial space stations presently in development, I rank Vast #1. This new investment helps solidify its first place standing.
» Read more

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The auroras of Jupiter and Ganymede

11:13 am

According to two different university press releases in the past month, new details have been discovered about the auroras found on Jupiter as well as its largest moon, Ganymede, caused by the interaction of Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field not only with Ganymede’s weak one but with the motion of all four Galilean moons as they orbit the gas giant.

The first study used data from Juno when it made a close fly-by of Ganymede in 2021. It not only showed how the aurora was caused by interaction between the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Ganymede, it found that Ganymede’s auroras were similar to those on Earth.

Similar structures, known as ‘beads’, have been observed in the auroras of Earth and Jupiter, where they are linked to sub-storms and dawn storms, large-scale rearrangements of the magnetosphere that release enormous amounts of energy and produce intense auroral activity,” explains Alessandro Moirano, post-doctoral researcher at LPAP.

Ganymede interacts with Jupiter’s space environment in a similar way to how Earth interacts with the solar wind; therefore, the discovery of auroral patches on Ganymede similar to those on Earth suggests that the fundamental physical process(es) could be generally induced in the coupling between any celestial body, its magnetosphere, and external forces.

The aurora's on Jupiter
The auroral footprints of Io and Europa
on Jupiter

The second study, released yesterday, used the Webb Space Telescope to a get a more detailed look at Jupiter’s auroras, caused as the four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — travel through Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field, causing energetic particles to following Jupiter’s magnetic field lines down to its poles, there creating the auroras.

Webb’s data found that the auroral footprints on Jupiter caused by each moon were different from Jupiter’s own aurora.

However, the footprints created by Io and Europa, did not have the characteristics expected from Jupiter’s main aurora, which contains a lot of hot material. Instead, in one snapshot, they discovered a cold spot within Io’s auroral footprint that registered temperatures much lower than expected, with extraordinarily high densities.

As the data was limited to a single 22-hour window, the results are very uncertain. More observations are planned, covering a longer time period, to see if this phenomenon can be captured again.

All of these results are very tantalizing, but to really get a handle on what is going on will require continuous observations over years, from many spacecraft devoted exclusively to Jupiter. And that isn’t going to happen for quite some time.

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Does weightlessness cause blood clots?

9:44 am

The uncertainty of science: A new study on Earth using an “dry immersion tank” now suggests that weightlessness could increase the chances that female astronauts could get blood clots during long space missions.

First reported in 2020, an International Space Station mission detected an unexpected blood clot in a female astronaut’s jugular vein. To date, space-health research has had more male participants but with the number of female astronauts on the rise, a new SFU–European Space Agency study examined how microgravity affects blood clotting specifically in women. Key findings

  • 18 female participants experienced five days of continuous simulated microgravity in a European Space Agency (ESA)-sponsored VIVALDI I dry immersion study.
  • Coagulation time (the time it took for blood clots to start forming) was longer.
  • Once started, clots formed faster.
  • Once formed, the strength and stability of the clots was greater

The dry immersion tank is “a specially designed water bath with a waterproof sheet to keep participants dry while floating, and simulating weightlessness.”

The researchers admit these results are very uncertain. For one, none of the clots that occurred during the study were “clinically concerning,” which means they were the kind of clots that the body deals with normally without threat. The researchers also noted in their paper’s abstract that “current published research on this topic is male-centered,” which explains the female focus of this particular research.

This research suggests that blood clots could be an issue on long missions in weightlessness, but the data is sparse and very incomplete. Moreover, based on more than a quarter century of missions longer than six months in space, it appears the one blood clot cited above might have been the only incident so far recorded. And any results using immersion tanks on Earth is questionable, as they are a poor substitute for actual weightlessness in space.

Nonetheless, these results add weight to the need for developing interplanetary spaceships with some sort of artificial gravity. Without it, the health of any passengers going on long missions to other planets like Mars is certainly at risk, not simply from blood clots but from bone loss, vision damage, spinal deformities, and overall loss of cardio-vascular and muscular strength, all issues that have been documented well in space.

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Third launch attempt by Japanese rocket startup Space One fails

8:17 pm

Kairos rocket just after failure

In another attempt to do the maiden launch its orbital Kairos rocket today, the Japanese rocket startup Space One experienced its third launch failure, with the rocket breaking up about a minute after launch.

The screen capture to the right shows the rocket just after failure. The cloud arc in the upper left is the moment some burst occurred. Within seconds it was clear that the rocket was now in several pieces.

The launch attempt, which took place from the company’s own spaceport, Spaceport Kii, on the southern coast of the main island of Japan, was the third failure in a row, all involving failures of the first stage. The first launch in March 2024 blew up mere seconds after launch. The second attempt in December 2024 failed about 90 seconds after launch when the rocket began to spiral out of control.

This third launch appeared more controlled, but it also occurred only a minute after launch.

Whether the company can survive a third straight failure, none of which got even close to main engine cutoff and stage separation, is unknown. The company has some major investors, including Canon, several major Japanese banks, and the government-owned Development Bank of Japan. While they might stick with the company, it would not be surprising if there was a major shake-up in management.

Japan at the moment has no operational launch capability. Space One is its only private rocket startup, while the two rockets belonging to its space agency JAXA, H3 and Epsilon, are both grounded due to launch failures.

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The mysterious spokes in Saturn’s rings

11:59 am

A bent spoke in Saturn's rings
Click for original.

Cool image time! When Voyager-1 did its fly-by of Saturn in December 1980, its cameras captured something in the gas giant’s rings that no one had predicted or expected, spokes of brightness pointing outward along the surface of the rings at right angles to the planet. Even more puzzling, these spokes actually appeared to rotate around Saturn, always pointing away from it.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on March 7, 2007 by the Saturn orbiter Cassini. It shows a close-up of one such spoke, though in this case it is bent. From the press release:

A bright spoke extends across the unilluminated side of Saturn’s B ring about the same distance as that from London to Cairo. The background ring material displays some azimuthal (i.e., left to right) asymmetry. The radial (outward from Saturn) direction is up in this view. A noticeable kink in the spoke occurs very close to the radius where ring particles orbit the planet at the speed of Saturn’s magnetic field. Such a connection is most intriguing to scientists studying these ghostly ring phenomena.

If gravity alone were affecting the spoke material, there would be no kink and the entire spoke would be angled toward right, like the bottom portion. That it bends to the left above the kink indicates that some other force, possibly related to the magnetic field, is acting on the spoke material. The shape might also indicate that the spoke did not form in a radial orientation, thus challenging scientists’ assumptions about these features.

In other words, the spokes exist because of multiple factors, some still unknown, that cause these streaks of brightness in the rings. For some reason, the millions of tiny ice particles that comprise the rings are brightened along these spokes, and it isn’t just gravity that is causing it.

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South Korean rocket startup Innospace signs another spaceport launch deal

10:18 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace, which has attempted one launch of its Hanbit-Nano rocket (a failure), has now signed a launch deal with the proposed Spaceport Nova Scotia, run by Maritime Launch Services.

Maritime Launch Services announced a strategic partnership with South Korean rocket developer Innospace. Under a new Letter of Intent (LOI), the two companies will evaluate hosting the HANBIT launch system at Spaceport Nova Scotia, potentially transforming the Atlantic coast into a primary North American hub for the South Korean firm.

Innospace’s first launch was from Brazil’s long unused Alcantera spaceport on its northeast coast. The company has also signed deals with Portugal’s proposed Santa Maria spaceport, two spaceports in Australia (Southern Launch and Equatorial Launch), and Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

This new deal in Nova Scotia is still preliminary, with the two companies having until the end of the year to finalize the specifics. For Innospace, it appears the company its trying to give itself as many spaceport options as possible. It can also launch from the government spaceport in South Korea, but that provides much more limited orbital flight paths, and presents scheduling difficulties.

For Maritime, this deal might finally get this spaceport off the ground. It was first proposed in 2016, offering satellite companies both a launch site and a Ukrainian-built rocket. That plan fell through when Russia invaded the Ukraine and the rocket became unavailable. Since then Maritime has struggled to convince rocket companies to use the spaceport, all to no avail. It signed some deals, but none has gone anywhere. This deal is its first with a rocket startup that has actually attempted a launch, though that launch was a failure.

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The first orbiting private space telescope releases “first light” image

9:55 am

Mauve's first light image and data
Click for original image.

The first orbiting private space telescope, owned by Blue Skies Space and dubbed Mauve, has successfully taken its first image and data, a 5 second long exposure of a single star.

That image is to the right, with the spectroscopic data shown by the magenta line. The Hubble Space Telescope’s spectroscopic data is shown in blue and while for comparison.

As part of early commissioning, Mauve was pointed at its first calibration target, eta Ursae Majoris (eta UMa), a bright star in the constellation Ursa Major, approximately 104 light-years from Earth, for a 5-second observation. Eta UMa is a hot, blue-white star, much hotter than our Sun. Eta UMa shines brightly in ultraviolet light, making it an ideal calibration target for a UV observatory like Mauve.

The telescope has a 5-inch mirror, so its resolution is far lower than Hubble’s 94-inch mirror, but because it is above the atmosphere its view is far better than larger ground-based telescopes. Mauve is intended as a three-year-long demonstration project, during which it will study flares from nearby stars that are thought to have exoplanets, as well as binary star systems and variable stars. It is also making this data available to scientists, for a subscription fee. It already has almost a dozen universities signed up.

Blue Skies hopes Mauve’s success will help it raise the capital to build Twinkle, a space telescope with an 18-inch primary mirror. If that succeeds, the company plans to scale up to even bigger orbiting telescopes.

This private sector astronomy model is how the U.S. did things routinely prior to World War II. Then, for many reasons, the government took over for the next three-quarters of a century. It now appears the pendulum is shifting back to the private sector.

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ESA asks for proposals on building its own space station

9:33 am

ESA logo

The European Space Agency (ESA) last week issued an open call for proposals outlining the construction of its own space station, independent of the five American stations presently in development to replace ISS.

On 27 February, ESA published an intended call for tenders for two Pre-Phase A studies under Scenario 3. According to the call, the studies will consolidate the “feasibility, architecture, utilisation, and technology requirements of a European-led LEO outpost” and propose cooperation with the Canadian Space Agency, Japan’s national space agency JAXA, and “additional partners.” The results of the two parallel studies will be used to enable ESA decision-making for its post-ISS transition by the end of 2026.

Do not expect these “studies” to produce a European-led space station any time soon. It is the ESA way to do lots of studies, and then after reading these to do more detailed follow-up studies outlining what they will do. Then, after years of review, it might finally get started on construction, which always proceeds somewhat slowly.

In the meantime, ESA has signed agreements with three of the five American space station projects (Axiom, Starlab, Vast), with its deal with the Starlab station the most extensive. All three deals leave open the possibility that Europe will rent time at each station to fly experiments and astronauts there.

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Spanish rocket startup PLD raises $209 million in new investment capital

9:16 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD, which hopes to launch its orbital Miura-5 rocket this year, has now raised an additional $209 million in new investment capital, bringing the total capital it has raised to more than $400 million.

PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has closed a €180 million Series C equity funding round led by the renowned Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, alongside with other investors.

The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI) and its INNVIERTE fund, and the Spanish public funds management company COFIDES, through its FOCO investment fund, have co-invested in this round. Ultimately, the European renowned Spanish fund Nazca Capital, via Nazca Aeroespacial y Defensa INNIVERTE I FCR Fund, close the round.

The company hopes to ramp up its launch pace to as many as 30 launches per year by 2030, though these numbers are clearly aspirational. It has already won two launch contracts, and it is building its own launchpad in French Guiana, where that first launch will take place, and has also signed a deal with Oman to launch from its proposed spaceport in Duqm. PLD has also said it is in negotiations for a third launch site, not yet named.

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Varda rents new 200K-square-foot facility in California

8:57 am

Varda's W-5 capsule after landing today
Varda’s fifth capsule after landing on January 29, 2026

The startup Varda, which launches returnable capsules for manufacturing products in space, has now rented a large building in California to build those capsules.

In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls. The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.

Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E. Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said

The company will take control of the building in December, and will then need another four to eight months to install its production facilities.

Varda has launched and recovered five capsules so far. Some produced pharmaceuticals for sale on Earth, others other products, while two did hypersonic tests for the Pentagon during re-entry. It has a deal in Australia to land as many as 20 more capsules, and presently has ten more missions scheduled on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

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Engineers locate helium flow issue on SLS upper stage

8:01 am

NASA last evening posted an update on the status of its SLS rocket, noting that engineers had located the seal that had caused the helium flow issue in the upper stage during unfueling after the wet dress rehearsal two weeks ago.

Engineers determined a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from the ground systems to the rocket, was obstructing the pathway. The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved. Engineers are assessing what allowed the seal to become dislodged to prevent the issue from recurring.

Though this information is somewhat vague, it strongly suggests the seal with the problem was in the upper stage, not the umbilical line that is part of the ground systems.

Before they can return the rocket to the launchpad, they need to make sure they identified the exact issue that caused the seal to not work properly. They also are replacing the batteries in the rocket’s self-destruct system as well as flight batteries in the upper stage, core stage, and two strap-on solid-fueled boosters. It also appears they are replacing another seal the oxygen feed line for the core stage.

Once this work is finished and confirmed, they will still need to roll SLS back to the launchpad and likely do another wet dress rehearsal countdown, though that rehearsal might be condensed to focus on these issues specifically.

The present launch window closes on April 6th, so the timeline is very tight. NASA management is reviewing later windows in late April as well as May and June.

Despite the major reshaping of the later missions in the Artemis program that NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week, this upcoming Artemis-2 mission remains the same, a ten-mission carrying four astronauts around the Moon using an Orion capsule with a questionable heat shield and an untested life support system.

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Charon’s surface, completely unlike Pluto

1:09 pm

Panorama of part of Charon's surface
Click for full resolution. For original images go here, here, and here.

Charon

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from three images taken by New Horizons as it began its July 14, 2015 fly-by of the Pluto-Charon double planet system (found here, here, and here), show in close-up one specific swath of Charon cutting across its equatorial regions.

The true color global image of Charon to the right shows the approximate area covered by the panorama above. For scale, Charon has a diameter of about 750 miles, about half that of Pluto. For clarity I have rotated the panorama so that it more closely aligns with the rectangle of global image.

One of the most remarkable discoveries made during New Horizons’ fly-by was how completely different Pluto and Charon appeared, despite their likely formation together at the same time and in the same location of the early solar system. While Pluto had frozen nitrogen seas and water ice mountains floating at the shores, Charon more resembled Mercury, cratered with many large ridges and canyons criss-crossing its service. Both planets appear to be icy, but somehow Charon appears to lack the large differentiated variety of materials seen on Pluto.

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Japan to do vertical tests of its own Grasshopper-type demo stage this month

9:13 am

Japan’s space agency is about to attempt two test vertical take-off-and-landing test flights of of its own Grasshopper-type demo stage, dubbed RV-X later this month.

First flight of a small experimental version of a reusable launch vehicle has been scheduled for March 6 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The 24-ft.-tall vertical-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (VTVL) RV-X is planned to make a short hop at the agency’s Noshiro Rocket Testing Center on the Sea of Japan coast.

RV-X is the first of two flight experiments planned by JAXA on the path to development of a reusable first stage for a next-generation launch vehicle. A second vehicle is planned to fly in 2027 under the multinational Callisto program.

Callisto is being developed jointly with the European Space Agency. Both it and RV-X have been in development for about a decade. Both were initiated in response to SpaceX’s successful reuse of its Falcon 9 first stage. Both projects however appeared stalled until the last two years or so, with little happening.

The JAXA engine on RV-X is apparently the engine it is providing for Callisto. If the flight tests are successful this March, it will be the be transferred to French Guiana for Callisto tests planned no sooner than ’27.

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Russia completes repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur

8:47 am

According to Roscosmos, it has completed the repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur, and will do launch a Progress freighter to ISS on March 22, 2026.

According to the State Corporation, a total of 150 workers from four contractor organizations prepared and painted 2,350 square meters of structures, replaced all the attachment devices, replaced and tuned up electric equipment and inspected or serviced all the systems and mechanisms of the service platform. The team also made 250 welding lines.

The most complex task was the installation of the platform elements, some of which had a length of 19 meters and mass of 17 tons, which required a development of special methodic, Roskosmos said.

The State Corporation confirmed that the first mission departing from the repaired launch pad at Site 31 was scheduled for March 22, 2026, carrying the Progress MS-33 cargo ship to the ISS.

For Russia, this repair was completed remarkably fast. But then, the Russians generally get things done fast when it is absolutely essential to do so. Without that pad, Russia had no way to launch any astronauts in space. Nor could it send supplies to ISS. A delay would have been very public and embarrassing.

If there is no immediate need, however, its projects drag on endlessly.

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Two moons of Saturn against its majestic rings

12:25 pm

Mimas and second moon against Saturn's rings
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on December 23, 2005 by Cassini as it orbited Saturn.

The larger cratered moon is Mimas, known best for the single giant crater that dominates one hemisphere. I have not been able to identify the brighter but smaller moon.

Note the pattern within the largest bright central ring in the background. It is possible this is an optical illusion, but it is also possible this pattern is inherent in the ring itself. Other images show similar patterns that scientists have concluded were real.

This image was part of a set of eight images all taken in the space of less than two minutes, as the smaller moon moved from the lower left to the upper right and was eclipsed by Minas as it did so. Below are four of those pictures, showing the sequence.
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