Tag: European Space Agency

Japan’s lunar lander startup Ispace wins $74 million contract from Europe

8:36 am

Artist rendering of Ispace's Ultra lunar lander
Artist rendering of Ispace’s Ultra lunar lander

Only a little more than a week after NASA canceled a major lunar lander contract with the Japan’s lunar lander startup Ispace, the company’s European division has won a $74 million lunar lander contract from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The agreement represents ESA’s commitment to funding MAGPIE, Europe’s first lunar polar ice exploration rover and its flight. MAGPIE will investigate the Moon’s south polar region, advancing scientific understanding of lunar volatiles, water ice stability and regolith properties while supporting future resource prospecting to enable lunar exploration.

The contract, valued at €65 million, funds the full remaining delivery of the MAGPIE mission, including rover and payload development, manufacture, testing, transportation to the lunar surface and lunar surface operations.

MAGPIE will fly on Ispace’s planned fourth mission, scheduled for a 2029 launch and already under construction. That lander, dubbed Ultra, is being funded by Japan’s Space Strategy Fund (designed to encourage Japanese private enterprise). This new contract apparently provides it a European payload.

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BepiColumbo’s team prepares for arrival at Mercury in the fall

12:36 pm

The arrival plan for BepiColombo
Click for original graphic.

After eight years of travel through the inner solar system to get to Mercury, the European/Japanese dual orbiter mission BepiColombo is finally getting close to arrival at Mercury in the fall, and the science team has been doing rehearsals to prepare for that orbital insertion.

Teams must align timelines, verify readiness criteria and maintain a common understanding of what constitutes a ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ decision. During one recent simulation, controllers were confronted with an anomaly that forced them to abort and re-schedule a planned separation scenario. “It generates continuous discussions and iterations between the different teams,” Nacho adds.

The exercise highlighted an essential aspect of Mercury arrival: success depends not only on operating the spacecraft, but on ESA and JAXA working together as one team.

That arrival is made more complicated in that BepiColombo is not a single orbiter. It is made up of the following parts:

  • The Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which provided the service module and ion engines for the journey, including six fly-bys of Earth, two ofVenus, and six of Mercury
  • The Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) from the European Space Agency (ESA)
  • The Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) from Japan’s space agency JAXA
  • The Mio Sunshield and Interface Structure (MOSIF), which protected everything during its journey in the inner solar system close to the Sun

The graphic to the right outlines the arrival plan. First the MTM must separate. Then the two orbiters enter Mercury orbit. Next Japan’s Mio separates and is deployed in its own orbit. Then the sunshield is ejected from Europe’s orbiter and it moves into its planned orbit.

As the spacecraft uses ion engines, with low but continuous thrust, these maneuvers can take weeks.

Both orbiters have complementary orbits to study different aspects of the planet. Europe’s orbiter will orbit closer to get a better look at the planet, while Japan’s Mio’s orbit is highly elliptical, to study the planet’s magnetic field.

During the journey to Mercury BepiColombo overcome several problems. First, the Covid panic threatened operations by limiting staffing and preventing normal behavior. Next the solar panels failed to produce the expected power, a problem that appears to still exist but which has not prevented operations. Finally, its thrusters produced less thrust than expected during a mid-course correction in 2024, causing an eleven month delay in arrival.

It is now however about to arrive. Let us hope that arrival proceeds as planned.

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French startup The Exploration Company opens U.S. subsidiary

10:51 am

Nyx drop test
June 2026 successful drop test of Nyx prototype

The French startup The Exploration Company (TEC), which is building the Nyx reusable cargo capsule for supplying future space stations, has now established a U.S. office in Houston, with the clear intention of competing for NASA and Space Force contracts.

Located in Houston near NASA Johnson Space Center, the TEC Rapid Innovation Lab brings together engineers, designers, and operators in a space built for efficient, rapid innovation. At its center is a full-scale mockup of the future Nyx crew capsule, enabling teams to prototype, test, and refine crew interfaces in close collaboration with partners, astronauts, and NASA personnel.

…The company also established TEC Federal, a dedicated U.S. entity designed to serve government customers. Operating as a U.S.-controlled organization, TEC Federal enables participation in U.S. government programs and contracts, while ensuring compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.

Since its inception in 2021 the company has styled itself as a European company providing cargo and manned-space-related services for the European Space Agency (ESA). The problem is that ESA is not building any space stations. It is thus a very limited market. This new action tells us the company has recognized that the customers for Nyx — the five American space stations presently under development — are really in America, and so it is now beginning to shift operations here.

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ESA finalizes contract for privately built cubesat lander as part of its Ramses mission to Apophis

9:36 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced it has issued the full contract with private startup EMXYS to build its Don Quijote cubesat lander for ESA’s Ramses mission to go to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it flies by the Earth in April 2029.

EMXYS, a Spanish company, previously built a gravity-measuring instrument for the cubesat Juventas, which is flying on ESA’S Hera mission presently on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos.

Francesca Ingiosi, overseeing Ramses’ CubeSats, notes: “There won’t be time for sustained human oversight: Don Quijote is going to take itself down on a completely autonomous basis, relying on feature tracking to find a safe place to land. It will be running its gravimeter and magnetometer when it flies, but we have high expectations for its scientific work on the surface.

“It will come down quite slowly, but in the ultra-low gravity of Apophis some bouncing along the surface is possible. The CubeSat is therefore designed to operate from any orientation, although the precise nature of the surface remains a question mark: there is even a small possibility that Don Quijote sinks into the ground, which would not be good!

The launch window for Ramses is in the spring 2028, so the schedule to get this cubesat built is very tight.

Below is a list of the missions going to Apophis in 2029:
» Read more

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ESA to expand its program designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry

9:10 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced it is expanding its “European Flight Ticket” program, designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry, by offering more rocket startups the opportunity to join.

The European Space Agency and the European Commission are inviting launch service providers across Europe to apply to join the European Flight Ticket Initiative. The objective of the Flight Ticket Initiative is to strengthen Europe’s access to space. European launch service providers compete to deliver missions for In-orbit Demonstration and Validation satellite (IOD/IOV) which test new space technologies in orbit. To support this, ESA launched a new two-part call for proposals.

To participate in the Flight Ticket Initiative, a launch service operator must first be awarded a framework contract. This allows them to compete for future missions under the Initiative. Avio, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg hold such contracts with ESA, following a first selection in 2024.

ESA and the European Commission are now expanding this pool by inviting additional European providers to apply. Companies that expect to be ready to launch before 2028 are encouraged to take part.

The program is also requesting bids for a new round of launch contracts. All bids are due by July 17, 2026.

The five European companies listed above are all either already operational (Avio), or hope to complete their first launch this year. There are several other European startups (Maiaspace, Latitude, HyImpulse) that are not far behind, and will likely bid.

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

8:59 am

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

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

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

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

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

8:01 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I noted in January, Axiom’s schedule margins for getting its station launched, docked to ISS, loaded with ISS equipment, and then separated before ISS retires in 2030 are extremely tight. It cannot afford any further delays.

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

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

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Redwire completes testing on robot arm prototype for ESA

9:45 am

The European division of the American space manufacturing company Redwire last week delivered to the European Space Agency (ESA) a full developed and tested robot arm prototype, as per a 2024 contract.

The project is being led by Redwire’s Luxembourg team, which recently completed several project milestones including preliminary design and performance assessment.

Before successful delivery, the MANUS Breadboard Model underwent a comprehensive test campaign to verify the functionality and performance of the manipulator and tool-changer subsystems, and to demonstrate operational scenarios aligned with system requirements. All planned operations, including payload handling, end-effector actuation with wireless data and power transfer, range extender manipulation, and automatic deployment, were executed successfully, confirming overall system readiness. Functional testing validated safe and reliable mechanical performance, demonstrating strong joint-space accuracy and stable interaction among subsystems.

The arm is intended for ESA’s Argonaut lunar lander, allowing it to unload cargo from the lander to the lunar surface. ESA’s 2024 development contract was issued to both Redwire and the Polish company PIAP. PIAP however has not even built the actual prototype. It appears ESA is now moving forward on the full contract phase for the entire rover, and it appears Redwire’s Luxembourg division is in the best position to win the robot arm contract portion.

Not surprisingly, Redwire’s stock surged by 24% following this announcement.

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France’s space agency CNES gives ESA 5-year extension at French Guiana spaceport

8:14 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 space agency CNES and the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced a new five year agreement extending ESA’s operations at France’s French Guiana spaceport.

The contract covers all activities required to operate Europe’s Spaceport that is on French territory and so falls under the responsibility of the French government represented by CNES. The contract includes both daily operations and running of the facilities and continuous upgrades to adapt the Spaceport to changes taking place in the space sector, including the arrival of new rockets and launch services.

The signature covers three years of operations, renewable for a further two years, including a total investment of over €1 billion with €635 million funded by the European Space Agency – showing the agency’s central role in supporting the operation of Europe’s Spaceport. In support of the transformation of the space sector, the contract takes new launch operators into account as well as sharpening safety requirements even more – ensuring launches from Europe’s Spaceport are reliable, safe and competitive.

While the deal is not surprising — neither ESA nor CNES have any reason to end this arrangement — there is one aspect of the deal that is significant: Nowhere in the press release or agreement is there any mention of Arianespace, ESA’s commercial division. For decades Arianespace ran French Guiana for ESA and France. It is now gone, eliminated as an unnecessary middle-man as Europe shifts to the capitalism model.

At the moment, ESA has reduced Arianespace’s role to just one task, marketing and launching the Ariane-6 rocket. At the same time numerous European nations are doing whatever they can to encourage the development of competing independent rocket companies, all aimed at replacing Ariane-6 eventually, and as soon as possible. While that effort will take at least a decade, it is definitely happening.

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Avio completes its first Vega-C launch for ESA

10:25 pm

The Italian rocket company Avio today successfully completed its first Vega-C launch for the European Space Agency (ESA), placing into orbit ESA’s SMILE telescope, designed to study the Sun’s solar wind and its interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field.

The significance of this launch is that it is the first time the Vega-C was launched under the management of Avio, which manufactures it, rather than ESA’s commercial division Arianespace. Arianespace is being cut out of the picture. At the moment I think it only has one more Vega-C launch on its manifest. All other future Vega-C launches will be sold and managed by Avio directly.

As this was Avio’s first official launch in 2026 (or ever), the leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged.

57 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 57 to 50.

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ESA announces new round of funding for new rocket companies

9:28 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced a new round in its Boost! program to provide new startup rocket companies funding.

The new round will accept new submissions through 2028. The program is designed to encourage the development of private and independent rocket companies, competing for market share, with the added ability to provide ESA its needed launch services. What makes this ESA program different than all its previous rocket programs is that ESA does not own or control the rockets. It is helping to get these companies started, and will simply then be a customer buying the product from them once operation. Ownership will belong to the companies, not ESA.

To emphasize the ownership point, to get funding under this program “requires private co-funding. For every euro invested by ESA in commercial space businesses, often more than five euros are leveraged from private investors.”

So far ESA has provided funding to eleven different European startups, including Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and PLD, all three of which hope to make their first orbital launch this year. This new round is being offered to these companies and any new ones that might come forward. Of the 110 million euros so far allocated 20 million euros remains available for distribution.

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Avio makes more from its Vega-C rocket now that Arianespace is out of the picture

9:07 am

According to a report today at Europeanspaceflight.com, the European Space Agency (ESA) paid Arianespace €51.65 million ($60.6 million) for a December 2024 launch using the Vega-C rocket that the Italian company Avio produces.

That flight was one of the last ones managed by Arianespace. In November 2025 ESA completed the transfer of ownership back to Avio, so that the company now manages and sells its own rocket, rather than have a middle-man government agency run things and take a cut.

Since then Avio has won three separate launch contracts, one from Taiwan for $81 million, another from Brazil for $35.6 million, and a third from Airbus for $84.4 million (see here).

Based on these numbers, it appears that Avio is doing much better selling this rocket directly to the market than having Arianespace and ESA run things for it. It is not only generally getting slightly more revenue per launch (about $67 million average compared to $60.6 million under Arianespace), but it is keeping all the profits, rather than having the Arianespace government bureaucracy take a percentage.

These numbers however won’t hold in the coming years. In the U.S. in the next year at least two reusable rockets — Rocket Lab’s Neutron and Stoke Space’s Nova — are coming on line, and will drive these launch prices down. Furthermore, new smallsat rockets being developed in Germany (two), Spain, India (two), South Korea, and Australia should do the same.

At the moment however Avio is benefiting from the present state of the market, though even that advantage is threatened because it has had to delay the next Vega-C launch due to a technical issue.

Regardless, these numbers give us a strong sense of the present competitive launch costs in today’s market, averaging about $60 million per launch. Before SpaceX came along, that price generally exceeded more than $100 million, and often as high as $200 to $500 million. No more. SpaceX has forced competition on the industry, and the result has been a notable drop in price, with more to come.

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ESA: Full-sized model of its Space Rider reusable capsule is ready for landing drop tests

10:08 am

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

My heart be still! The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced that a full-sized model of its Space Rider reusable capsule is now ready for landing drop tests from a helicopter.

The avionics – Space Rider’s ‘brain’ – were installed in the second week of March. This computer hosts the Guidance, Navigation and Control algorithms that will steer the parafoil, adapting to the wind – including any gusts– to guide Space Rider to a soft landing.

Roughly the size of a mini-van, the drop-test model is a full-size stand-in for the 4.6-m long reentry module, Space Rider lands on skis with the landing gear permanently open on this model as the mechanism is not part of the drop test.

To get an idea how unserious ESA is, we need to review this project’s overall schedule. This reusable capsule concept — which appears to be a variation of either Varda’s returnable capsule or Boeing’s X-37B — 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.

And the development pace now is glacial. Last summer ESA did helicopter drop tests of just the “brain” and parafoil. It is now going to do those drop tests again, a year later, with this full scale model. Expect another year to pass — at a minimum — before it tries another set of helicopter drop tests, this time with the first actual Space Rider capsule.

At this pace, Space Rider might fly by 2030, maybe. In the meantime, expect at least a half dozen private capsules to fly commercially, for profit. Following Varda’s success investment capital has poured into this industry. All will go from a blank sheet of paper to a flight model in less than five years.

And even if ESA finally gets Space Rider operational, it has established some very complex rules about who can use it commercially, rules so complex I predict few will be interested.

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The space agencies of Canada and Europe agree to exchange classified information

1:51 pm

Canada:
Canada: “We let our government do it all!”

In what appears to be the increasing policy of the Canadian Liberal government to align its space program with Europe, the Canadian Space Agency this week signed an agreement with the European Space Agency that will make it possible for them to freely exchange classified information.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Canada have signed a General Security of Information Agreement (GSOIA), which will establish a legally binding framework for the exchange of classified information. The agreement was signed on 14 April at the 41st Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, USA, by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and President of the Canadian Space Agency Lisa Campbell, on behalf of the Government of Canada.

The GSOIA will ensure that both parties uphold the highest standards of security while enabling the secure exchange of sensitive information entrusted to authorised institutions and industrial partners. It provides a robust foundation for cooperation in areas where the protection of classified information is essential. In particular, the agreement will facilitate closer collaboration in strategic domains such as space-based surveillance, disaster response and security-related technologies. It will also support the development of dual-use capabilities, including advanced sensing systems, secure communications and emerging space technologies.

Canada is the only country not in Europe that is a partner in ESA. This deal, plus Canada’s recent commitment to provide a half billion dollars of funding to ESA projects, illustrates the Liberal government’s policy to look to Europe more for its space effort, rather than the United States.

This appears also to be part of the Liberal government’s shift away from capitalism and towards a government-based space effort, a decision that is certain to produce few results while wasting a lot of money.

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Scientists: First data from Europe’s Proba-3 satellites suggest the Sun’s slow solar wind is faster and more chaotic than expected

3:20 pm

Figure 4 showing variable speeds of slow solar wind
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: According to the first published paper [pdf] from Europe’s two Proba-3 satellites, scientists have found the slow solar wind that comes from the Sun is sometimes far faster than expected, and is also far more chaotic. From the second link above:

Just like wind on Earth, solar wind can be fast or slow, smooth or gusty. Fast solar wind usually flows in a smooth current from magnetic structures called coronal holes. In contrast, slow solar wind is variable and gusty, making understanding how it works more difficult.

Scientists think that slow solar wind is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field lines changing how they are connected, merging and separating again. This process pushes out blobs of plasma (electrically charged gas) in so-called ‘streamers’: large, bright rays in the corona.

…Previously, scientists found that close to the Sun’s surface, slow solar wind should have speeds around 100 km/s. Instead, Andrei’s team tracked some blobs of plasma moving at 250–500 km/s.

The graph to the right, Figure 4 in the paper, shows Proba-3’s tracking of a variety of these blobs. Not only did some move faster than expected (the arrows above the gray line marking earlier data), their speeds changed with time, with some actually speeding up.

The reason the Sun’s fast wind is relatively stable is that it emanates from magnetic structures dubbed coronal holes because the magnetic field lines there are is somewhat calm and stable. The slow wind meanwhile comes out through much more active and unstable regions of the magnetic field, with its field lines jumping about as well as connecting and unconnecting from the field’s structure in a chaotic manner.

This research suggests that the slow wind is chaotic and thus unpredictable, almost like the weather on Earth.

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ESA paid Arianespace about $96 million for an Ariane-6 launch

9:24 am

According to a story today on European Spaceflight, the European Space Agency (ESA) paid its commercial division Arianespace €82 million [about $96 million] for its Ariane-6 launch in November 2025 of ESA’s Earth observation Sentinel-1D satellite.

The European Space Agency has disclosed that launching the Sentinel-1D Earth observation satellite aboard an Ariane 62 rocket in November 2025 cost €82,070,773. As part of its involvement in the development of the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation satellite constellation, ESA is responsible for placing contracts with European industry for the development, launch, and operation of satellites. As part of this responsibility, the agency publishes an annual list of all contracts awarded with a value of more than €15,000. In 2025, this included the disclosure of the cost of launching Sentinel-1D aboard an Ariane 6 rocket in its two-booster variant [dubbed Ariane-62].

This is the first time ESA or Arianespace have revealed any price figures for using Ariane-6, and shows that Arianespace is attempting to price Ariane-6 competitively with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The article notes that SpaceX charged ESA about $90 million for an earlier Sentinel launch.

Because Falcon 9 is mostly reusable, SpaceX’s profit margin is far higher than Arianespace’s. Ariane-6 is expendable, and thus costs more. Thus, if necessary SpaceX could significantly lower its price, but hasn’t because it hasn’t yet felt any competitive pressure to do so. When the new reusable rockets from Stoke Space and Rocket Lab begin launching sometime this year, then launch prices will drop considerably, and Ariane-6 will find itself very over-priced, with no way to lower its cost enough to compete.

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Avio delays next Vega-C launch due to “technical issue”

8:40 am

The Italian rocket company Avio announced yesterday that is has postponed the May 9, 2026 launch of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Smile solar wind spacecraft due to “a technical issue” discovered by a subcontractor in a component used by the Vega-C rocket.

The press release provided little information:

The launch of the Smile satellite has been postponed, due to a technical issue occurred on a subsystem component production line after VV29 launcher integration. Additional investigations are needed to exclude any relation between such issue and the VV29 launcher in order to safeguard flightworthiness. The new launch date will be announced following the completion of these activities, as agreed with the supplier.

This launch will be the first entirely managed by Avio since it regained control of its rockets from ESA’s Arianespace division. The rocket itself was grounded for two years in 2023 and 2024 due to nozzle issues. It has since flown four times successfully.

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Rocket Lab launches GPS-type demo satellite for Europe

9:05 am

Rocket Lab this morning successfully placed a European Space Agency (ESA) smallsat into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The smallsat, dubbed Celeste, is the first of two such demo satellites that ESA has contracted Rocket Lab to launch. They are designed to test a low Earth orbit constellation for providing global navigation and location information to users on the ground, similar to the U.S.’s GPS constellation. Celeste will work from low orbit with Europe’s medium orbit Galileo constellation, but being smaller will be cheaper and faster to build and launch.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

38 SpaceX
15 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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ESA to rent SpaceX Dragon capsule to do a European manned mission to ISS

9:15 am

ESA logo

Capitalism in space: At a European Space Agency (ESA) this week in Switzerland, agency officials announced that it is purchasing use of a Dragon capsule from SpaceX in order to do an extended manned mission to ISS in 2028.

Member states endorsed the concept of EPIC — short for ESA Provided Institutional Crew — a proposed mission intended to provide a medium-duration stay for ESA astronauts aboard the ISS.

The plan foresees acquiring a Crew Dragon mission in the first quarter of 2028 in collaboration with “interested international partners.” Crew Dragon is the crew spacecraft built by US company SpaceX.

According to those officials, this mission will be for at least one month, and include astronauts from ESA and some as yet undetermined international partner astronauts.

This contract illustrates the fundamental shift in power and control in manned space in the past decade. Until 2011, all manned missions were flown on government-built rockets and spacecraft. The agencies controlled everything, and actually acted to stymie competition from the private sector.

Now, those agencies are dependent on that private sector for their manned missions. They are instead merely customers, buying services from competing commercial companies that own the rockets and spacecraft, and rent them out for profit. That SpaceX at present is the only one capable of doing these manned missions for hire makes no different. Soon others will enter the fray.

Moreover, this capitalism model actually gives these agencies more flexibility. Beforehand, ESA had to go through NASA to do such a manned mission, and that would involve a lot of negotiations. Now it simply buys the mission from SpaceX, and flies it when ready.

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