SpaceX in the early morning hours today successfully launched 29 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
156 SpaceX (a new record)
74 China
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 156 to 125.
The South Korean rocket startup Innospace late last week announced that it has delayed the date for the first launch of its Hanbit-Nano rocket a few days in order to correct a “minor anomaly” during testing in Brazil.
During the avionics integration test, INNOSPACE performed a detailed analysis of a minor signal anomaly observed in a specific segment of the test and confirmed the tolerance range of the integration profile affected by flight-environment variations. To further validate the findings, the company carried out a second test using a Brazilian Air Force aircraft under conditions closely replicating the actual flight environment, allowing for a comprehensive review of response characteristics and signal stability across all integration items.
The launch was previously scheduled for a launch window from November 22nd to December 17th, taking place from Brazil’s long unused Alcantara spaceport on its northeast coast. The new window now runs from
December 16th to December 22nd. The launch itself is now scheduled for December 17th.
If this launch is successful, South Korea will have leapfrogged past India, Japan, and Australia to be the first Asian country to have a private company successfully launch a rocket.
Australian spaceports: operating (red dot) and proposed (red “X”)
Click for original image.
A new Australian rocket startup, AtSpace, announced earlier this week it had successfully launched a test suborbital rocket from the commercial spaceport Southern Launch on the south coast of Australia.
At 09:22 AM [on November 27th], the 12.2m tall vehicle rocketed from Southern Launch’s Koonibba Test Range, performed perfectly and flew close to the target altitude of 80km. The four-and-a-half-minute flight validated AtSpace’s hybrid propulsion technology before safely returning to Earth as planned.
According to the press release, the company was able to recover the rocket afterward.
The company’s website says it was founded in 2021, and plans an orbital rocket dubbed Kestral, using hybrid fuels. No target dates for a first launch however are provided.
AtSpace is Australia’s second rocket startup to launch, following Gilmour Space’s failed launch attempt from its own Bowen spaceport on the east coast of Australia. Gilmour hopes to try again next year.
SpaceX today successfully completed its fifteenth Transporter mission of smallsats, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The two major customers for this mission were Planet Lab, placing 36 satellites for its imagery constellation, and Exolaunch, which acts as a launch manager for smallsat companies. It placed 58 payloads in orbit for many various companies. Another launch manager company, SEOPS, launched 7 payloads, while the European aerospace company OHB launched 8. Among the other payloads was Varda’s fifth re-usable capsule.
The rocket’s two fairings completed their fourth and fifth flights respectively. The first stage (B1071) completed its 30th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this launch this booster become the second SpaceX first stage to achieve at least thirty flights. As the rankings for the most reused launch vehicles below show, SpaceX now has four boosters close to becoming the most reused rockets ever.
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
30 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
155 SpaceX (a new record)
73 China
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 155 to 124.
At the council meeting of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) member nations taking place this week in Bremen, Germany, the council approved a major 32% budget increase for the agency over the next three years.
The largest contributions in the history of the European Space Agency, €22.1 bn, have been approved at its Council meeting at Ministerial level in Bremen, Germany.
Ministers and high-level representatives from the 23 Member States, Associate Members and Cooperating States confirmed support for key science, exploration and technology programmes alongside a significant increase in the budget of space applications – Earth observation, navigation and telecommunications. These three elements are also fundamental to the European Resilience from Space initiative, a joint response to critical space needs in security and resilience.
“This is a great success for Europe, and a really important moment for our autonomy and leadership in science and innovation. I’m grateful for the hard work and careful thought that has gone into the delivery of the new subscriptions from the Member States, amounting to a 32% increase, or 17% increase if corrected for inflation, on ESA’s 2022 Ministerial Council,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
How ESA will use this money however remains somewhat unclear, based on a reading of the various resolutions released in connection with this announcement. As is typical for ESA, the language of every document is vague, byzantine, and jargon-filled, making it difficult to determine exactly what it plans to do. Overall it appears the agency will continue most of the various projects it has already started, and do them in the same manner it has always done them, taking years if not decades to bring them to fruition (if ever). It also appears the agency will devote a portion of this money to create new “centers” in Norway and Poland, which as far as I can tell are simply designed to provide pork jobs for those nations and ESA.
The resolutions also placed as the agency’s number one goal not space exploration but “protect[ing] our planet and climate” (see this pdf), a focus that seems off the mark at a very base level. While I could find nothing specifically approving the odious space law that attempted to impose European law globally (and has been vigorously opposed by the U.S.), the language in this document suggests the council still heartily wants to approve that law, and if it doesn’t do so in total it will do so incrementally, bit by bit, in the next few years.
The most hopeful item among these resolutions was the €4.4 billion the council reserved for space transportation, with the money to be used to pay for upgrades to both the Ariane-6 and Vega-C rockets and the facilities in French Guiana, as well as expand ESA’s program encouraging the new rocket startups from Germany, Spain, and France. If ESA uses this money wisely — mostly for the latter item — it will do much to create for itself a competitive launch industry, something it presently does not have.
It will take a bit of time to see how these decisions play out. It remains very unclear at this moment if Europe is choosing the Soviet or the capitalism model for its future in space.
Abraham Lincoln
As I wrote in 2023 for Thanksgiving, just six weeks after the horrible murderous massacre of innocent people by Hamas on October 7, 2023:
The date was October 3, 1863. The Civil War was at its height, with no end in sight and no clear sign yet of victory for the Union. For all anyone knew, the great American experiment in self-government, freedom, and constitutional law was about to end in failure, with one half of the nation committed to the idea that it was okay to enslave other human beings, based on their race.
In such a moment, President Abraham Lincoln did what all past leaders in America had done, call for a day of prayer to God for the future while giving thanks for the blessings still abounding. For this purpose he set aside the last Thursday of November of that year.
Since then, Americans have never stopped celebrating Thanksgiving on that day.
Though as always the world is filled with evil people and evil acts, there always remains much more to be thankful for. America still is that shining city on the hill, a beacon for freedom and the rule of law. Though many elites and their minions in our own country are no longer committed to these ideals, and are working daily to destroy them, they cannot succeed. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” based on “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” shall always be honored by ordinary people.
As I noted last year, Thanksgiving remains an utterly American holiday.
No other nation has anything like it. And it lives on, because deep down, all ordinary Americans — from all walks of life and political persuasions — are still hopeful and determined to build a life for themselves and their loved ones, with joy and justice and freedom at its heart.
Thus, the words of Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation still rings true to us all. Let us put aside our petty factional differences and, as Lincoln asked in his proclamation below, give thanks as “one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”
It appears that the European Space Agency (ESA) is now recognizing that two of its major partnership deals with NASA are likely going to fall apart, and it has therefore begun putting forth new proposals to repurpose those projects during a meeting in Germany this week of its member states.
The two projects are ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter intended to bring Perseverance’s Mars samples back to Earth, and its service module for NASA’s Orion capsule. In the former case, NASA’s decision to cancel the Mars Sample Return Mission leaves that orbiter in limbo. NASA might still fly a sample return mission, but it will almost certainly not do it as originally planned, involving numerous different components from many different sources in a complex Rube-Goldberg arrangement. ESA is now considering repurposing this orbiter as a research spacecraft studying the Martian atmosphere while also being a Mars communications satellite for other missions.
As for the Orion service module, ESA is now recognizing that it is unlikely NASA will continue funding Orion after it completes its presently scheduled missions, totaling at most four. ESA has contracted to build six service modules, and is now studying options for using the last few in other ways, such as a cargo tug in low Earth orbit.
ESA officials are also reviewing its entire future at the conference, considering how private enterprise has completely outrun it in all ways. Its expendable Ariane-6 rocket is a long term financial bust, being too expensive to compete in the modern launch market of reusable rockets. Its proposed IRIS2 satellite constellation will cost too much and launch far too late to compete with the private constellations already in service or being launched by SpaceX, AST-SpaceMobile, Amazon, and China.
To counter this trends, ESA has already made some major changes, shifting ownership and control of its rockets back to the private companies that build them. However, its bureaucracy has appeared resistant to this change, and is apparently lobbying for more funding and control at this week’s meeting, asking the member nations to increase their funding to the agency, giving it a total budget of 22.2 billion euros. There has also been lobbying by ESA supporters for a new Space Law that would supersede the individual space laws of its member states, and also attempt to impose its regulations on non-member nations, beyond its sovereign authority. That law is strongly opposed by the U.S., the private sector, and even some of ESA’s member nations.
The bottom line however is that the nature of the European Space Agency is undergoing major changes, with its work increasingly shifting to its member nations instead of being part of a cooperative effort. While ESA bureaucrats continue to push to protect and strengthen their turf, ESA’s member nations have been increasingly pushing back, and winning that battle.
The consortium that has been trying to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii for more than two decades but has been blocked by native Hawaiian DEI activists, announced on November 11, 2025 that it has finally decided to consider seriously the $740 million offer by the Spanish government is to move the telescope to the Canary Islands.
TMT International Observatory LLC (TIO LLC) announced today that in response to the generous offer from the Spanish Ministry of Science, it is exploring a promising avenue for a new observatory based in Spain.
While the Members of TIO LLC continue discussions regarding the TMT site, this represents a prospective opportunity to allow TIO LLC to proceed with the TMT project. For this reason, TIO LLC will jointly develop with the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities a detailed roadmap toward the potential realization of the TMT at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (La Palma, Spain).
TMT was about to start construction in 2015, with a completion date expected by 2020. Instead, its construction was blocked by native Hawaiian leftist activists, aided by the support of the Democrats who control Hawaii’s government. Meanwhile, the astronomers in charge of TMT, being modern DEI-trained academics themselves, were generally unwilling to fight hard for their project. It has thus sat in limbo for a decade. Last year it was hit with a final blow within the U.S. when the National Science Foundation announced it would only fund the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, leaving TMT short of funds.
All of this remains the stuff of buggy-whips and horse-drawn carriages. Rather than spend billions on this giant ground-based telescope that will be seriously hampered first by the Earth’s atmosphere and second by the half-dozen-plus satellite constellations presently being launched, astronomers would be far smarter to spend that money on a new bigger replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope.
They aren’t, however, because their careers are grounded (literally) on this obsolete technology, and won’t change.
Meanwhile, the end of TMT in Hawaii signals the long-term end of astronomy in Hawaii. Those leftist activists are now in control, and they are outright hostile — to the point of bigotry — to any Western technology or any non-Hawaiians on their islands. They have been pushing to reduce the telescopes on Mauna Kea on the Big Island, and have had some success. Expect them to push harder to remove more in the coming years.
Artist rendering of Haven-1 with docked
Dragon capsule
Continuing a string of international agreements during the past few weeks, the space station startup Vast yesterday announced it has signed what appears to be a preliminary deal with the Maldives to fly astronauts to its proposed Haven-1 space station.
The agreement outlines that Vast and the MSRO [Maldives Space Research Organisation] will commit to exploring ways to engage the Republic of Maldives space sector. Through the partnership, the organizations will pursue astronaut flight opportunities aboard Vast space stations for agency astronauts, such as Haven-1, the world’s first commercial space station or Vast-provided private astronaut missions to the International Space Station. Both organizations will also collaborate on the development of educational programs and outreach activities, including projects conducted by MSRO astronauts onboard the ISS or Haven-1. These programs are aimed at specifically engaging schools, universities, and other educational institutions in the Republic of Maldives. [emphasis mine]
Vast has similar agreements with Uzbeckistan, Colombia, and the Czech Republic, as well as the European Space Agency. In every case, the agreement hints at Vast providing a space station visit for each country’s or organization’s astronauts, but no firm commitments. I now suspect that these are all preliminary agreements, pending the successful launch of Haven-1 in the first half of next year. Vast plans to keep Haven-1 in orbit for three years, during which it wants to fly four 30-day manned missions, using a Dragon capsule as the ferryboat.
At the moment the company has not announced any passengers or crews for those manned missions. Once Haven-1 is in orbit and operating, however, we should expect astronaut flights to be announced from one or more of these countries.
In a sense, Vast is doing the same thing that Axiom did with India, Poland, and Hungary, signing up each to fly astronauts to ISS. Both space station startups are simply hunting for passengers. And both know that every single third world nation in the world wants to fly its own astronauts in space. Vast, like Axiom before it, is now offering them a cheap way to do it.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
According to different reports, it appears Poland successfully completed two different suborbital test launches since October, both launching from Poland’s Central Air Force Training Range in Ustka.
First, on October 24, 2025 a consortium of private and government entities successfully launched a three-stage suborbital rocket.
The project began in early 2020 and received roughly 18.6 million zł (€4.1 million) in EU funding through the European Regional Development Fund. The consortium is led by state-owned aerospace company WZL-1, and includes the Military Institute of Armament Technology (WITU) of the Ministry of Defence, and defence manufacturer ZPS Gamrat. While initially intended to carry payloads into space, WITU has stated that the technology could also be used for the development of anti-aircraft and tactical missiles.
According to a government official, the rocket reached a planned altitude of 40 miles, short of space.
Next, on November 22, 2025, the Perun rocket built by the Polish startup SpaceForest was launched (translated by Google):
On Saturday, just before 2 PM, the company SpaceForest successfully launched its Perun suborbital rocket from the Central Air Force Training Ground in Ustka, Poland. The rocket carried research payloads from across Poland. This was the third test flight of this rocket.
According to Marcin Sarnowski, a representative of SpaceForest, the flight went according to plan. The launch time was announced approximately 40 minutes before the countdown, in accordance with the company’s earlier announcements. The flight was visible from the beach. “During the flight, we managed to test many systems and experiments. We will know all the details soon,” said Sarnowski.
It increasingly appears Poland is developing its own rocket industry. SpaceForest for example has deals to launch its suborbital rocket from multiple spaceports in the Azores, on a ocean platform in the North Sea, and in Norway’s Andoya spaceport.
Click for original image.
The two twin Escapade Mars orbiters, built by Rocket Lab, that were launched last week by Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket have both successfully activated and tested their optical and infrared cameras.
The optical picture to the right, reduced to post here, shows the side of one solar panel on one of the orbiters.
The images prove the cameras are working well. The visible-light image also suggests that the spacecraft should have the sensitivity to image Martian aurora from orbit. The infrared camera will be used at Mars to better understand how materials on the surface heat up and cool down during Mars’ day-night cycle and over the planet’s seasons.
The second ESCAPADE spacecraft also successfully took its first photos, but it was targeted toward deep space, so the images were simply black.
The NASA press release did not explain why the second spacecraft’s camera was pointed in that manner. One would think the engineers would want it to look at the spacecraft in order to test its pointing and resolution. It could be it is placed in this manner and cannot be changed, or it could be there is a problem not mentioned by the release.
The two spacecraft are taking a different path to Mars than normal. Both will remain as Lagrange Point 2, a million miles from Earth until November 2026, when they will then be sent back towards Earth to slingshot past to arrive at Mars in September 2027. This plan allowed the spacecraft to be launched with greater flexibility, rather than be tied to the launch windows that occur every two years that all other Mars probes have used.
Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule
The space station startup Vast last week signed an agreement with the space agency of the South American country of Colombia to do cooperative research, linked to Vast’s planned space stations.
The agreement suggested it would be used mostly to encourage educational and research opportunities for Colombia’s universities and schools. However, the press release added this tidbit:
Both organizations intend to work together to identify joint initiatives that leverage Vast’s spacecraft, including Haven-1, scheduled to be the world’s first commercial space station, with AEC’s [Columbia’s space agency] growing ecosystem of data analytics, connectivity, and science education programs.
Vast already has similar agreements with Uzbeckistan, the Czech Republic, and the European Space Agency. Its Haven-1 single module station, set to launch next year for a three-year mission during which it will be occupied four different times for several weeks, still has no confirmed passengers or crews. One can’t help wondering if these international deals hint at the possibility that one or all of these international partners will fly astronauts there.
It is also possible Vast has been hunting for passengers, and as yet has not been able to convince anyone to buy a ticket. I expect everyone is waiting to see the condition of Haven-1, after it launches.
There is one problem that might make any final deal with Colombia difficult: Its Marxist president does not have a very good relationship with the Trump administration.
