Tag: freedom

Update on the launch status for three new rockets from Relativity, Rocket Lab, and PLD

11:32 am

Link here. The article describes in detail the present state of development for the three rockets, Relativity’s Terran-R, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, and PLD’s Miura-5.

In the case of Relativity and PLD, it appears both are still on schedule for their first launch before the end of the year.

In the case of Rocket Lab, the company is still targeting a launch before the end of the year, but that date is more questionable because “the program has experienced some hardware setbacks earlier in the year, including the loss of components originally intended for flight use.” In January 2026 the company lost a tank intended for flight during a pressure test. Though the company said it would provide an update in February, no such update has so far been issued.

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The United Kingdom’s leftist government issues press release, touting how much it is spending on space

10:04 am

The leftist Labor Party that is presently in power in the United Kingdom today issued a press release extolling the “more than £62 million [$83 million] in government funding” it is spending to encourage its home-grown space industry.

The funding – unveiled on Monday 20 July at Farnborough International Airshow by Space Minister Liz Lloyd – will support new satellite communications systems and space innovation projects, helping turn early-stage ideas into commercial products, strengthen the UK’s ability to monitor and protect assets in orbit, and build a more resilient domestic space sector.

$56 million of this fund will go to “UK businesses, universities and research organisations,” while the remaining $27 million will go “to support the development of space technologies across UK industry, universities and research organisations.” Not only is this funding small potatoes, insufficient to do more that fund small design studies, much of it is likely going to pie-in-the-sky research not grounded in profit or reality.

This press release contrasts nicely with the statement issued today by the leftist Labor government in Australia. In Australia the government recognized regulation is a problem and vowed to stream line it. In the United Kingdom the Labor government said nothing about this at all, even though the red tape in the UK is far worse than in Australia, having bankrupted two rocket startups and one spaceport.

Based on this UK statement, do not expect much to change in the UK. The Labor government is pouring money into the industry as subsidies, but doing little to fix the country’s more fundamental bureaucratic problems. If anything, these subsidies will worsen things, as a good percentage are going to the very entities in leftist academia that are the source of the problem.

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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites

9:15 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage (B1082) completed its 23rd flight (51 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

87 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 87 to 80.

SpaceX plans a second launch later today, to place Northrop Grumman’s Mission Robotic Vehicle-1 (MRV) into orbit. The MRV-1 is the first of that company’s next generation of robotic servicing spacecraft. It carries three pods that the company has contracts to deploy to dock with three different geosynchronous satellites and extend their life.

A launch later today by a Chinese pseudo-company is also expected, though this schedule is not as certain.

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Another bad indicator relating to the UK’s space effort

2:30 pm

A space junk removal demo mission first proposed in 2024 by the United Kingdom’s space agency has apparently missed a deadline for issuing the final contract award to one of two startups to fly the mission.

The UK Space Agency has missed a deadline to award a £75.6 million contract for the country’s first mission to capture and remove dead satellites from low Earth orbit.

A call for Phase 3 of the mission’s development was published in July 2025, with the contract initially expected to be awarded by 30 March 2026. However, in its final annual report as an independent entity, published on 14 July, UKSA admitted that the contract award had been delayed. The agency is now targeting summer 2026 but has not explained the reason for the delay or provided a more precise timetable.

The two companies are Astroscale (based in Japan with a UK division) and Clearspace, which has been attempting to launch a junk removal mission for the European Space Agency now for almost a decade, with nothing getting off the ground.

This delay should not be a surprise. The Labor government that is presently in power has been in the process of shutting down the space agency, even as it has allocated a half billion dollars for space-related government projects. It has also done nothing to eliminate the red tape that is squelching its private space industry.

It thus makes great sense that this contract hasn’t been issued. For one, the bureaucracy involved is probably in chaos as the Labor government rearranges deck chairs. For another, there is probably little interest by the private sector to do any work in the UK, because the red tape there is stifling, and has already bankrupted two rocket startups and one spaceport. It is very possible both companies declined to bid. Or if they did, the confusion in the government made any decisions impossible.

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India’s government invests approximately $7 million in home-grown satellite company

9:21 am

In a complicated arrangement involving the Indian government and an Indian venture capital firm, the Indian satellite company Dhruva announced last week that it obtained approximately $7 million in private investment.

The money comes out of a government investment fund of just under $200 million — dubbed the Antariksh Venture Capital Fund — established by the agency IN-SPACe but administered by the venture capital company SIDBI Venture Capital Limited. Unlike India’s space agency ISRO — which has for decades run India’s entire space program — IN-SPACe is focused on encouraging a competitive and independent private space sector.

This was the first investment in that government investment fund, coming just before the first successful launch this past weekend by a private Indian rocket company, Skyroot. Besides building satellites, Dhruva appears to also act as a satellite aggregator, obtaining launch services from rocket companies for other satellite companies and then serving to integrate and deploy their satellites. With this investment the company now has $330 million in capital in hand.

It is a bit puzzling why this first investment went to a satellite company, rather than a rocket startup, of which India has several. For India’s space sector to really grow, it needs home-grown commercial rockets. Satellites can’t reach orbit without rockets.

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Watching the 13th orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy

1:20 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T-4:00 minutes on July 13th
Starship/Superheavy at T-4:00 minutes on July 16th.
Click for source.

Now that SpaceX has confirmed the launch date for the 13th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy for July 20, 2026 July 23, 2026, with a 90-minute launch window beginning at 5:45 pm (Central), it is time to provide my readers with the many ways they can watch the launch. I have embedded several live streams below. When SpaceX makes its own live stream available I will add it here as well.

The flight plan remains the same as last week, a low orbit that will bring the ship down in the Indian Ocean. The main goals are to test the Raptor-3 engines, bring Superheavy back as planned, relight a Raptor-3 engine in orbit, and test the ship’ thermal tile system during re-entry. In addition, the company will attempt to deploy 20 actual Starlink satellites rather than dummies.
» Read more

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SpaceX: 13th Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch now set for July 23, 2026

9:09 am

UPDATE: Less than a few hours after I posted this announcement, SpaceX changed the launch date from July 20th to July 23rd. The post below now reflects that change.

SpaceX today issued an update confirming the company’s intention to launch Starship/Superheavy on its 13th test orbital launch July 23, 2026, one week after the rocket had a launch abort at T-0 seconds.

The 90-minute launch window opens at 5:45 pm (Central).

The update describes the mission, which remains unchanged from last week, but provides no details as to what the company has done to correct the issue that caused four Raptor-3 engines in Superheavy to misfire. Previously Musk had indicated they would replace two engines, but no further information has as yet been released.

Regardless, it is clear the company is pushing hard to complete this launch, as it wishes to go to full orbital test flights on the next mission.

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NASA cancels Draper/Ispace unmanned lunar lander contract

12:45 pm

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

According to a press release from the Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace, NASA last week canceled its contract with Draper for a lunar lander mission in 2030, a mission that Ispace was the main subcontractor.

Ispace technologies U.S., (Ispace-U.S.) an American lunar exploration company and subsidiary of Ispace, inc. (ispace), and Draper, a non-profit research, development and manufacturing company, today announced that Draper has mutually agreed with NASA to end the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order CP-12.

Since July 2022, Ispace-U.S. served as a subcontractor to Draper to provide a lunar lander transportation service for NASA’s CLPS task order CP-12. Following the agreement with NASA on the primary contract, Draper and ispace-U.S. expects the mutual termination of the subcontract between the two companies.

For that 2030 mission Ispace was really the main contractor — having already built and launched two failred lunar landers — but as a Japanese company (even with a U.S. division), it needed an American company to act as lead in order to win the NASA contract. Draper fulfilled that purpose.

Draper however has little experience building lunar landers. Ispace was really doing the job. The problem was that Ispace discovered with its two failures that its original lander design was insufficient. The development of a new larger lander, dubbed Ultra, has caused significant delays.

It appears NASA and Draper decided this arrangement was not acceptable. Both were probably uncomfortable with its faux lead position. Ispace’s delays also were likely a factor.

It is certainly possible for Ispace alone to win later contracts. It has said it intends to bid. Moreover, as Japan is both a partner in the Artemis program and a signatory to the Artemis Accords, there really is little reason for NASA or Ispace to play these games. NASA can issue a contract directly to it. It simply has to make sure it issues contracts to American companies first.

Below is the present rough schedule of missions in NASA’s Artemis program, as revised under NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s leadership, and adjusted to include this cancellation.

NASA’s Artemis mission schedule:
» Read more

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Indian’s private rocket startup Skyroot completes a perfect first launch

9:31 am

Vikram-1's perfect flight path
Click for source.

In a spectacular success, the Indian private rocket startup Skyroot today completed the first launch of its smallsat rocket Vikram-1, placing several payloads into orbit.

The graphic to the right shows the rocket’s flight path from the ground to orbit, overlaid over its nominal planned flight path. The match is precise. During the launch everything worked exactly as intended, an achievement on a first launch almost no rocket company has ever accomplished, including SpaceX.

During the broadcast there were several things I noticed that were of interest. First, Skyroot launched from India’s government spaceport at Sriharikota, operated by the country’s space agency ISRO. During normal ISRO launches the control room is filled with more than a hundred controllers, packed tightly in several rows. For this private launch, however, that control room appeared to have less than third of those numbers, many of which I suspect were ISRO employees tasked with monitoring the launch to protect the agency’s assets. Those controllers who appeared part of Skyroot’s team, in the front row, were few.

Second, in the viewing gallery at the back were several important ISRO managers, including the head of the agency. While everyone else around them cheered the success enthusiastically, they sat quiet, with some having very dour expressions. This could have simply been an effort at professionalism, but I suspect it also had an element of resentment and fear. Skyroot’s launch today of a smallsat private rocket is something ISRO has not been able to do for almost two years. The agency’s PSLV rocket has failed at launch twice in a row, and remains grounded.

In fact, right now Skyroot’s one launch is the only Indian launch of the year.

Moreover, Skyroot represents the future, and ISRO the past. The Modi government has been pushing hard to transition from the present government model, where ISRO owns, runs, and controls the entire Indian space program, to the capitalism model, where the private sector does it, and the government is merely the customer. ISRO has been somewhat resistant to this change, slow-walking many Modi directives.

This success signals the beginning of a new era in India, one in which private enterprise, competition, and freedom fuel innovation and success. It also signals an era where ISRO will become less powerful and important. Those ISRO managers know this, and some clearly didn’t like the prospect.

The leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged.

86 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 79.

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DC government workforce slashed by almost 20% since Trump took office

12:34 pm

The drop in the DC federal workforce under Trump
Click for source.

According to recent data, the number of federal workers in the Washington, D.C. area has now reached a 30 year low, reduced by 60,000, from nearly 376,000 at the start of Trump’s second term to 312,500 in May.

The graph to the right shows how Trump’s arrival instigated the drop.

The Department of Education took the heaviest blow, with nearly 40 percent of its workforce slashed in 2025 as Trump made clear his goal: to dismantle the agency outright. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Treasury weren’t far behind, each shedding roughly a quarter of their staff, with the IRS bearing the brunt as the administration moved to gut tax enforcement.

Beyond those, USAID, Agriculture, HHS, the VA, and the Department of Labor all saw double-digit percentage losses in their workforce, with USAID and the USDA especially targeted.

What must also be noted is the lack of any significant consequences resulting from these reductions. It has had no impact on life in general. In fact, all economic indicators — which say the U.S. economy is generally doing well — suggest its only impact has been free up Americans and let them get on with their lives.

This however is only a start. A lot more non-workers in DC should get their walking papers. They contribute little or nothing, while squelching the freedom of the rest of us.

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Mauritius signs Artemis Accords

8:52 am

On the same day Serbia officially signed the Artemis Accords, the island nation of Mauritius (located in the Indian Ocean) also joined, becoming the 70th nation within this American space alliance.

Serbia’s decision to join had been announced earlier this week, with the official signing today.

As Mauritius lies about thousand miles east of Africa, we could say it is part of that continent, thus raising the number of nations in that continent to have signed the accords to seven. Angola, Botswana, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Senegal are the others. For a variety of reasons, not many African nations have signed on.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

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Starship/Superheavy launch aborted at T-0; launch scrubbed

3:56 pm

Starship/Superheavy today, just after engine abort
Starship/Superheavy today, just after engine abort

While all looked perfect right up until engine ignition at T-0 second in today’s attempt to fly the 13th test orbital flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, the rocket then shut down, aborting the launch.

At T-0 the engines did ignite for a second, after the water deluge system had activated as planned. The company almost immediately announced they were scrubbing for the day. As many have noted below in the comments, once that deluge system runs, they can’t launch again that day. It takes too long to refill the tanks.

Subsequently we have learned that 4 Raptor engines in the inner ring of Superheavy did not light. Musk has since said that at least two will be replaced. I suspect after they inspect the engines they might replace all four. They will likely then do another full static fire test before attempting a launch. Expect a delay of about a week.

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SpaceX completes 3rd of 10 launches for Space Force’s Tranche constellation

1:42 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed another 21 satellites into orbit, the 3rd of a 10-launch contract for the Space Force’s Tranche-1 communications constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The 1st stage (B1103) completed its 4th flight (27 days after its last mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 5th and 6th flights respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

86 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 78.

As my readers are well aware, SpaceX has another launch later today, the 13th orbital test flight of its gigantic Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica in Texas. That 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 pm (Eastern). You can watch that here.

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Watching today’s 13th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

10:48 am

The thirteenth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket is presently scheduled for 6:45 pm (Eastern) tonight, with a 90 minute launch window.

UPDATE: I have now embedded the SpaceX its live stream on X. Below I have embedded the live streams being provided from others.


» Read more

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Private capital investment in space soared in ’26

10:01 am

Investment in space since 2023
Investment in space since 2023

According to a new report by the investment company Space Capital, private capital investment in space has soared this year, with the money invested in the past three quarters exceeding by several times all past quarters.

The graph to the right, taken from the company’s report, illustrates this burst of investment. According to Space Capital, the total private investment capital raised in just the last 36 months has exceeded $70 billion, with investment in North America dominating. It attributes this rise to three factors:

The [second] quarter opened with four astronauts returning from the Moon and closed with the largest IPO in history. In between, investors ran out of reasons to ignore the space economy. Three things defined Q2: SpaceX went public as an AI company, Rocket Lab showed where access to orbit leads, and the public markets finally opened for the space economy at scale.

First, Space Capital sees SpaceX’s combination of AI, data centers, and space as an example of two plus two equals six, that is being applied across the entire industry. Second, it sees Rocket Lab’s successfully diversification beyond just being a launch company as demonstrating to investors there’s more to space than rockets. Third, SpaceX’s IPO put space investment on the map, bringing capital in from new sources previously untapped.

Will this rush to invest in space continue? Maybe, maybe not. For the moment it really doesn’t matter, as the burst of capital in the past three months is already in the hands of the commercial space industry. They will use that money to build rockets, satellite constellations, and a host of other related technologies. From this will grow competition and innovation, lowering costs and thus fueling profits for all.

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Blue Origin’s new employee stock options are better, though still inferior to SpaceX’s

9:26 am

Because its old stock options were essentially worthless and a scam that did nothing to retain good employees, Blue Origin is now offering its employees a new stock option plan that while significantly improved, is still apparently inferior to SpaceX’s.

Under the old plan, the options only became real if Blue Origin went public within ten years. As the company never had plans to do so, those options were rubbish. The new plan changes this, but carries other restrictions.

Blue Origin’s new stock options plan, adopted in May, offers more opportunities for employees to cash out, including certain external funding rounds. In addition, it includes several restrictions on how employees can cash in their equity.

Jeff Bezos, still treating employees like serfs
Jeff Bezos, apparently still treating employees like serfs

Under the agreement, Blue Origin employees would never actually own any of the company’s stock. Instead, once their options have vested and are exercised to buy shares during a “liquidity event”— either an IPO, a sale of the company, or certain external funding rounds — those shares are “immediately and mandatorily” repurchased by Blue Origin. Employees get paid for their options at a “fair market value,” which, if Blue Origin hasn’t gone public, is determined by the company.

Most importantly, the plan has one major caveat: If an employee leaves Blue Origin and takes a job elsewhere in the space industry, they will forfeit their options entirely.

The change is certainly an improvement, but it does suggest Blue Origin (and Jeff Bezos) is still unwilling to treat its workers with the same kind of respect as SpaceX, which includes no such rules.

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India restricts the ability of space agency employees to leave due to recent exodus

9:08 am

The effort of India's government to defeat private enterprise
The effort of India’s government to defeat private enterprise

Turf war! In what will eventually be a useless and counter-productive dictatorial action, the Indian government has issued a directive restricting the ability of employees of its space agency ISRO from retiring or resigning, an action taken due to a recent exodus of between 100 and 120 engineers, scientists, and managers, many of whom left to take jobs in India’s nascent but growing private space sector.

In a memorandum issued on July 14, the Department of Space (DoS) directed major ISRO centres, including the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), not to routinely approve resignation or voluntary retirement requests from Group ‘A’ scientific and technical personnel associated with the Gaganyaan mission and other “important missions/projects”. Instead, such requests will require scrutiny by the Department of Space before a final decision is taken.

…Under the new directive, all resignation and voluntary retirement requests from scientific and technical personnel, including those at and below the rank of scientist and engineer, must be forwarded to the Department of Space along with “clear recommendations” from the respective centre directors, who will no longer have the authority to routinely clear such requests.

Multiple news reports from India today cite a recent spate of resignations and retirements, with many of those exiting employees getting jobs in private industry, with the most notable that of former ISRO chairman S Somanath, who has taken a position on the board of directors of the rocket startup Agnikul, which hopes to launch its own reusable rocket at some point in the future.

The government claims it has taken this action to make sure it doesn’t lose critical ISRO employees needed for its Gaganyaan and space station government projects, both of which are facing delays and technical challenges.

This directive will likely fail, however, for two reasons, both of which might in the long run be beneficial to India. First, young people just out of college will see it and decide it is better to get jobs in the private sector right off the bat. Why work for someone who will try to turn you into a serf who can’t leave? Second, it will guarantee an even greater exodus over time, as ISRO employees who want to leave will now take aggressive action to get out, as soon as they can. In both cases, the directive will encourage people to work for private industry, not the government.

At the same time, this directive suggests the government and ISRO is now taking action to squelch that new private sector. This order will limit the commercial industry’s ability to hire experienced ISRO people, thus slowing its development.

Similar actions were taken by NASA in the 2000s and 2010s when the agency began its transition to the capitalism model. There was great resistance within the government to ceding power to the private sector, resistance that still exists and showed itself again during the Biden administration. That government effort in the U.S. however has largely failed, because the public has elected a government (Trump and the Republicans in Congress) that favors the private sector, and because the private sector is getting the job done.

How things will play out in India remains unknown. Its administrative state is much more powerful, and its cultural traditions are not grounded as much in private enterprise, as is the U.S.

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Katalyst engineers overcome some issues in commissioning its Link rescue spacecraft

8:23 am

Image of Link firing one of its engines during check-out
Image of Link firing one of its ion engines during check-out.
Click for original.

It appears there were some communications and attitude control issues soon after Katalyst’s Link spacecraft was launched by Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket, issues that the company’s engineers have now resolved as they prepare Link for its rescue mission to the Gehrels-Swift space telescope.

LINK launched July 3, completed its initial postlaunch sequence, and began system checkouts. After completing solar array deployment and establishing communications, Katalyst now has commissioned LINK’s power systems and avionics, as well as conducted propulsion system checkouts. This has involved firing the spacecraft’s xenon-fueled thrusters, which will be used to travel to Swift and slowly raise its orbital altitude over the course of several months.

The Katalyst team also quickly addressed early communications and attitude control issues seen during flight operations, including an issue with one of the spacecraft’s three reaction wheels. After identifying the cause, they implemented flight software patches and operational updates that restored reliable communications and stable attitude control.

The spacecraft’s check-out will continue for another two weeks or so, and then engineers will use its ion-engines to slowly raise its orbit to match Gehrels-Swift’s.

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NASA outlines the mission plan for Artemis-3

8:01 am

Artist's rendering of Orion docked to Starship
Artist’s rendering of Orion docked to Starship.

In a press release late yesterday, NASA detailed at length its present plans for the Artemis-3 mission next year, in which a crewed Orion capsule will conduct docking maneuvers first with a Blue Origin test version of its Blue Moon manned lunar lander and next with a SpaceX refitted Version-3 Starship.

For the Artemis III mission, the Blue Moon test lander will be based on Blue Origin’s current architecture for its Mark 2 crew lander, incorporating all the major avionics and flight software and control systems to ensure flight operations from this demonstration mission can directly translate to crewed lunar flights. Up to two crew members, donning orange Orion crew survival system suits, will open the hatch to enter the Blue Origin test lander. The production hardware must incorporate many of the same systems and subsystems, including an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), a crew cabin, and avionics. The Blue Origin lander also will fly with an instrumented lunar surface spacesuit mass simulator. Like the suited “Moonikin” manikin that flew aboard Orion during the uncrewed Artemis I test flight, the low-fidelity spacesuit mass simulator will provide real-time feedback about the environment within the Blue Moon crew cabin.

SpaceX’s Starship lander test article will use a Starship Version 3, currently in production and testing, with an added docking system installed on the nose of the 171-foot spacecraft, enabling NASA and SpaceX to evaluate how the entire integrated stack of Orion and the Starship test lander interact. NASA and SpaceX are identifying controllability and communications tests for the Artemis III mission. Astronauts will not enter the Starship test lander during Artemis III.

The launch sequence will have Blue Origin use its New Glenn rocket to launch its Blue Moon test vehicle first, with a maximum orbital mission of 30 days. During that time period SLS will launch Orion, which will then conduct its rendezvous and docking with Blue Moon. Once this is completed SpaceX will then launch Starship on Superheavy. Once in orbit Orion will rendezvous and dock with it.

That’s the plan at this point, though much remains uncertain. New Glenn remains grounded after the May 28, 2026 launchpad explosion. Starship has not yet flown a full orbital mission. No version of Blue Moon, either manned or unmanned has flown at all. Whether all three will be ready for this mission, presently scheduled tentatively for late ’27, is a question we cannot answer at this moment.

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Serbia to sign Artemis Accords

10:24 am

European members of Artemis Accords

NASA today announced that Serbia tomorrow will become the 69th nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

With this signing, almost every European nation has now joined this American alliance, as shown in blue on the map to the right. Russia is indicated by red, illustrating also how its former Soviet bloc has almost completed joined this American space alliance. The only remaining exceptions are Belarus, Moldova, and several nations formed out of Yugoslavia. The signing of Serbia tomorrow, which joins Slovenia as two former Yugoslavia regions now part of the accords, suggests those other regions will soon sign on as well.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

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