Tag: government

Orion completes small mid-course-correction engine burn as it prepares to swing around behind the Moon

9:41 am

The Moon as seen by Orion's astronauts
The Moon as seen by Orion’s astronauts on April 4th, cropped
and reduced to post here. Click for original image.

NASA’s manned Orion capsule last night completed small mid-course-correction engine burn to refine the spacecraft’s trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth.

Mission control teams in Houston and the Artemis II crew completed an outbound correction burn to refine the Orion spacecraft’s trajectory to the Moon. The burn began at 11:03 p.m. EDT and lasted 17.5 seconds. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, continue on a precise path to flyby the Moon on Monday, April 6.

The lunar fly-by is scheduled for this evening. As the capsule swings around behind the Moon, there will be a communications black-out from 6:44 pm (Eastern) to 7:25 pm (Eastern). NASA is making a concerted PR effort to compare this to the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon, but the differences are gigantic. Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. There was considerable risk it could get stuck there if its engine failed to fire properly when behind the Moon on its last orbit. Thus, that Apollo 8 blackout was quite tension-filled.

Orion’s fly-around is instead completely benign. They aren’t going into orbit, and they are already on their path back to Earth. There will be no extra element of risk as they fly behind the Moon. All they will be doing is coast along, as they have been doing since leaving Earth orbit. They will simply be out of touch for about 40 minutes.

I sadly remain personally bored by this mission. It is is testing relatively little new engineering for future use, and is mostly designed as a PR stunt to convince everyone that “NASA is back!” Hardly. The capabilities of SLS and Orion are extremely limited, and both are ungodly expensive. Neither will make possible any colonization of the solar system. All they do is act as a jobs program for government employees.

And there still remains this mission’s biggest moment of danger, re-entry and splashdown, using Orion’s questionable heat shield that did not behave properly on its only previous unmanned mission in 2022.

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Japan’s lunar lander startup Ispace wins contract with Korean rover startup

9:18 am

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

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace has won a new customer for its next attempt to soft-land on the Moon, with the South Korean startup Unmanned Exploration Laboratory (UEL) signing a contract to put its proposed two-wheeled rover on that mission.

Under the terms of the agreement, the UEL rover will be integrated as a commercial payload on ispace’s ULTRA lunar lander for Mission 3, currently scheduled to launch in 2028. The mission would mark the first Korean rover to explore the Moon’s surface and underscores the growing commercial collaboration between Japan and Korea in the aerospace industry.

Mission 3 will serve as the inaugural flight for ispace’s ULTRA lunar lander.

Ispace so far has a very mixed record. It has successfully gotten two landers to the Moon, but both failed just before landing. It has also recently had to delay its lander mission for NASA because it had to replace the lander’s engine, the previous engine found to be inadequate.

Ultra is Ispace’s new larger lander design, intended to fly on all future missions. It remains untested in flight. The company presently has lander contracts for the following missions:

  • 2028: a Japanese mission funded by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
  • 2029: a Japanese mission funded by Japan’s Space Strategy Fund (designed at encouraging the private space sector
  • 2030: NASA’s mission, being built in partnership with the American company Draper

At the moment, everything about Ispace remains tentative. It needs to finally land something on the Moon to truly establish itself.

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Japanese rocket startup Interstellar gets another $47 million grant from Japan

8:58 am

The Japanese rocket startup Interstellar last week announced it has been awarded a new $47 million grant from Japan’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, in addition to the $53 million awarded in earlier grants.

The SBIR is a 3-phased governmental program aimed to promote the implementation of advanced technologies developed by startups in Japan. Interstellar was selected in September 2023 under the space section focused on the “Development and Demonstration of Private Launch Vehicles”, a project spanning for 5 years, from September 2023 to March 2028. After being selected as one of the four participating companies, Interstellar became one of three companies to pass the Phase 1 review in September 2024.

In this latest round, Interstellar is one of only two companies to pass, moving into the 3rd and final phase, which includes flight demonstration. Including the funds of the previous phases the total amount has reached a maximum of 15.4 billion JPY ( 98.97 million USD).

The company has also raised a little under $130 million in private investment capital, and has also signed contracts placing seven satellites on the first launch of its proposed Zero rocket. That launch was originally supposed to occur in 2025, but did not. No new launch date has been set, though this new grant suggests the company is getting close, though I also doubt it will occur in 2026.

At the moment Japan has no launch capability, as the two rockets controlled by its space agency JAXA are both grounded due to launch failures. It has several startups trying to build their own rockets, but none has succeeded as yet. The only one to attempt a launch, Space One, has tried three times to reach orbit with its Kairos rocket, all failures.

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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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Voyager-2’s most detailed look at Neptune’s moon Triton

3:10 pm

Triton
Click for original image.

Today we conclude our tour of the Voyager-2 fly-bys of Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 with what is the most detailed look at the alien surface of Neptune’s moon Triton, taken on August 25, 1989 and shown to the right, cropped, rotated, reduced, and sharpened to post here.

Taken from a distance of only 25,000 miles, the frame is about 140 miles across and shows details as small as [a half mile in width]. Most of the area is covered by a peculiar landscape of roughly circular depressions separated by rugged ridges. This type of terrain, which covers large tracts of Triton’s northern hemisphere, is unlike anything seen elsewhere in the solar system. The depressions are probably not impact craters: They are too similar in size and too regularly spaced. Their origin is still unknown, but may involve local melting and collapse of the icy surface.

A conspicuous set of grooves and ridges cuts across the landscape, indicating fracturing and deformation of Triton’s surface. The rarity of impact craters suggests a young surface by solar system standards, probably less than a few billion years old.

What this photograph as well as the handful of other Voyager-2 images of Triton tell us is that we only have gotten a tiny taste of what’s there, only enough to tell us we don’t understand what we are seeing in the slightest. This is a truly alien world, cold, dark, and composed of materials far different then that found in the inner solar system. Its formation is a mystery, and its subsequent geological history a cypher. Scientists have made some guesses, but to get a real understanding we need to go back, and be there for a long time.

In fact, this is the final conclusion of all of the Voyager-2 images from both Uranus and Neptune. That probe gave humanity its first good close look at these distant worlds, but the look was still a quick and very superficial one. The images and data left us with far more questions than answers.

Unfortunately, there is at present no mission approved and under development to go to either Uranus or Neptune, though several have been proposed. Thus, it will likely be at least two decades before any mission gets there, if that soon.

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Russia launches classified military payload; China has a launch failure

9:11 am

There were two additional launch attempts yesterday by China and Russia, with mixed results.

First, the Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer attempted the first launch of its Tianlong-3 rocket, designed essentially as a Falcon 9 copy. China’s state-run press provided no details of the failure, but video of the launch appeared to show uneven engine thrust beginning at about 33 seconds after launch, and the rocket terminating its flight about two minutes later.

Next, Russia placed a classified military payload into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northwest Russia. It is believed this could be a military communications satellite, but this is also unconfirmed. The rocket dropped its lower stages and fairings at several different places inside Russia.

41 SpaceX
16 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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Amazon responds to SpaceX’s FCC complaint about its last Leo satellite launch

8:57 am

Amazon Leo logo

Amazon yesterday submitted a letter [pdf] to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) responding to SpaceX’s FCC complaint earlier this week that accused it of using Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket to place 32 Leo satellites in a 450 kilometer orbit — 50 kilometers more than its license allowed — causing SpaceX to maneuver 30 of its own Starlink satellites to avoid any collisions.

In its response, Amazon claimed the higher orbit was not a violation, that its original license allowed for orbits “at or above 400 kilometers”, and that the problem was really caused by SpaceX’s decision in the past few months to lower the orbits of its Starlink satellites to a 462 to 485 kilometers. It also accused SpaceX of refusing to compromise when Amazon proposed a solution. Instead, SpaceX demanded Amazon stop launching at this orbit height, a change that Amazon claimed would delay the next few Ariane-6 launches by months.

Despite these claims, Amazon then backed off:

Even so, Amazon Leo has made significant operational changes in response to SpaceX’s concerns. Working with Arianespace, Amazon Leo has committed to lowering its target insertion altitude, beginning with its fourth Ariane mission. Similarly, Amazon Leo is working with its other launch providers to determine if they can lower insertion altitudes without impacting Amazon Leo’s schedule.

In other words, Amazon will do as SpaceX requests, but only do so after it completes three more Ariane-6 launches at this higher orbit.

The FCC now has a choice. If it demands Amazon immediately concede SpaceX’s point, this will likely cause a delay in three Ariane-6 launches of approximately 100 Leo satellites. Amazon’s FCC license requires it to launch 1,616 Leo satellites by July 2026, and at present it only has a little more than 200 satellites in orbit. Because Amazon doesn’t expect to meet this goal, it has already asked the FCC for a time extension.

Thus, it appears this dispute with SpaceX might actually benefit Amazon. If the FCC denies Amazon’s request to launch the next three Ariane-6 missions at this higher orbit, it will also be agreeing to a delay in Leo satellite launches. It will thus be forced to grant Amazon’s request for that time extension. And even if it does allow Amazon to launch at the higher orbit, requiring the two companies to work out any orbital conflicts, that permission will confirm the FCC is going to grant Amazon’s time extension request as well.

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Orion fires engines and is now on its way around the Moon

4:55 pm

After reviewing the operation of Orion capsule during its first day in orbit, the NASA Artemis-2 management team approved sending the spacecraft to the Moon.

The burn occurred at 7:49 Eastern. The live stream of that burn is embedded below.

At this moment NASA and the crew are committed. No matter what happens, they cannot return to Earth any earlier than about nine days from now. And when they return, they will have to do a direct dive into the atmosphere, heading to splashdown. The Orion heat shield at that point must work.
» Read more

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SLS successfully puts Orion into orbit

3:46 pm

SLS less than a minute after launch
SLS less than a minute after launch

NASA’s SLS rocket today successfully launched the Orion capsule, carrying three Americans and Canadian on a planned ten-day mission swinging around the Moon and back to Earth.

During the countdown there were two minor issues, the second of which causes a slight ten-minute delay in the launch. Both were resolved very quickly, though one wonders if NASA can ever do a launch with this rocket without such issues during countdown.

The crew will remain in Earth orbit until tomorrow, checking out the capsule and its systems. Once they have confirmed these are working as expected, they will then fire their engines to head to the Moon.

The live stream can be viewed here.

As this was the first U.S. government launch this year (and the first since 2022), the leader board for the 2026 launch race remains unchanged:

40 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

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Watching the launch of the Artemis-2 mission

9:28 am

Artemis-2 mission flight path
The Artemis-2 flight path. Click for full animation.

The countdown for the launch of the 10-day Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon continues, with the launch scheduled for 6:24 pm (Eastern) today.

For updates from NASA, go here. So far all is proceeding as planned. A step-by-step outline of the countdown itself can be found here.

A day-by-day detailed description of the planned mission can be found here. For the first day the crew will remain in Earth orbit in order to test the operation of their Orion capsule. To reiterate, the capsule’s life support system has not been flown in space previously, so this first day is critical. If there are any issues, the astronauts are still close to Earth and can return relatively quickly.

If no problems are detected during that first day, on day two the crew will fire the spacecraft’s engines and head to the Moon. At that point everything must function as planned for nine days as they travel out to the Moon, swing around it without going into orbit, and head back to Earth.

The return to Earth remains the most dangerous moment for this flight. During the 2022 unmanned test flight around the Moon, the heat shield design on Orion did not work as planned, with chunks breaking off in a manner that was unexpected and very concerning. NASA spent two years contemplating the issue, and decided to live with the same heat shield design for this mission, since replacing the shield would have delayed the launch at minimum two years. It has adjusted the return flight path in a way it thinks will mitigate the problem. As its engineers are only guessing at what caused the issue and could be wrong — having done no real life tests — we will not know if they are right until Orion splashes down.

We must pray that they are right.

I have embedded NASA’s live stream below.
» Read more

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India’s space agency requests proposals for building landing legs for its next new rocket

8:59 am

NGLV as proposed in November 2025
NGLV (the two rockets in the middle) as proposed
in November 2025. Click for bigger image.

India’s space agency ISRO has issued a request for bids from the country’s commercial aerospace sector to build landing legs for its next new rocket, dubbed the Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV).

The tender, titled “Fabrication of Landing Leg Hardware with materials for Advanced Development Module for In-situ Reusable Technologies (Admire) VTVL (10 units)”, seeks industry participation in developing critical components for a vertical take-off, vertical landing (VTVL) test vehicle under the ADMIRE programme.

…According to ISRO’s tender documents, the selected vendor will be responsible for end-to-end development, including procurement of raw materials, manufacturing, quality control planning, and final delivery of landing leg hardware. The project has been structured into three distinct phases spanning approximately 12 months.

The NGLV rocket was first approved by the India government in September 2024. Since then ISRO has completed the preliminary design of its methane engine, but has also revised the rocket’s design twice, in October 2024 and again in November 2025. This new landing leg contract suggests the agency hopes to do some test hops of a first stage prototype a year from now.

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Countdown begins for the Artemis-2 mission around the Moon

11:57 pm

NASA this afternoon began the two-day long countdown leading up to the planned 6:24 pm (Eastern) launch of its Artemis-2 mission, sending three Americans and one Canadian around the Moon.

The onsite countdown clock started ticking down at 4:44 p.m. EDT to a targeted launch time of 6:24 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1. Artemis II is the first crewed launch of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft.

…NASA and weather officers with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 continue to pay close attention to weather conditions ahead of tanking operations. The weather forecast for launch day shows an 80% chance of favorable weather conditions with primary concerns being cloud coverage and the potential for high winds in the area. Teams will continue to monitor the weather in the coming days.

The ten-day mission will use the SLS rocket, which has only flown once previously, and has had repeated fueling issues prior to that 2022 launch as well as during dress rehearsal countdowns last month. It will also use an Orion capsule with a questionable heat shield and an untested life support system.

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Brownsville’s mayor: SpaceX has brought billions of dollars to the region

12:04 pm

According to Brownsville’s mayor, John Cowen, SpaceX has brought billions of dollars to the region as well as created tens of thousands of jobs, and should be unanimously hailed by everyone there.

“The aerospace giant has infused $13 billion into into the economy across Brownsville and South Texas. It has created 24,000 direct and indirect jobs across the region, with approximately 4,000 jobs on site today. It is projected that 4,000 more jobs are coming,” Cowen said.

Cowen made his remarks about SpaceX at his 2026 State of the City Address, held March 25 at Texas Southmost College’s Performing Arts Center.

“SpaceX has generated more than $305 million in tax revenue. It has managed business relationships with more than 350 suppliers, putting $147 million into the regional supply chain,” Cowen said.

None of this is a surprise, except to some local and national news outlets that like to act as PR departments for the fringe activist groups — Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and the fake Indian tribe dubbed the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas — that have opposed SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations from day one, and have repeatedly gone to court to try to shut it down. Those news outlets always give these activists a big bullhorn to tout their position, even though they represent practically no one in the region and likely get their funding from leftist sources outside of Texas.

Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

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China’s government strengthens its commitment to space

8:01 am

China's long term launch record
Taken from my 2025 year-end report on the state of
global launch industry.

In the Chinese government’s most recently announced five-year plan, it appears it has increased its commitment to its space program and its government-controlled commercial space sector.

Aviation and aerospace was elevated at the Two Sessions [conference earlier this month] to a ‘pillar industry’—a step up from its previous classification as an emerging sector. For the first time, the 15th 5-year plan (2026–30) explicitly sets the goal of building China into a space power by 2030.

The 5-year plan prioritizes reusable launch vehicles, large-scale satellite constellations, and the commercialization of space applications, with cost reduction cast as central to long-term viability. Satellite internet has been earmarked for rapid development as part of broader ambitions around integrated space-air-ground connectivity. A new ‘Space+’ framing suggests that satellite infrastructure is being treated as part of the broader industrial system, with growing interest in on-orbit computing rather than communications alone.

…But the sector still runs on patient state capital—a funding model that has enabled rapid scaling while deferring any serious test of commercial viability. No domestic launch provider has yet turned a profit, and closing the cost gap with SpaceX on reusable rockets remains the industry’s central challenge.

The report at the link is very detailed. Though it comes from a Chinese-based think tank that almost certainly gets funding and supervision from the Chinese communists, it is definitely worth reading. It notes the areas where China is doing well — its Beidou GPS-type constellation and its manned space program — as well as those areas it has come up short — re-usable rockets and its mega-satellite constellations.

Though the graph to the right illustrates the long-term growth of China as a space power, it has not yet been able to match the U.S. in these two areas, mostly because of SpaceX. Moreover, the inability of China’s pseudo-rocket companies to get its reusable rockets operational is hindering the ability of China’s pseudo-satellite companies to launch their satellites. In both cases this new five-year plan appears to be applying pressure on these pseudo-companies to get moving, or the government will take over.

I must repeat again that the Chinese government’s support for space is deep and widespread, strengthened by that government’s almost two-decade-long policy of using that program as a training ground for its political leaders. Many of its successful space industry managers have been promoted to higher political office, and thus wield great power in deciding policy. Their pro-space roots clearly influence that policy in favor of China’s space effort.

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China launches “test satellite”

9:23 am

China yesterday afternoon successfully placed what its state-run press merely described as “a test satellite”, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

That state-run press also provided no information as to where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

38 SpaceX
15 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

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War Department conducts classified suborbital missile test from Cape Canaveral

9:16 am

The War Department yesterday launched an unidentified suborbital missile test from its Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, providing no public information about the rocket, the purpose of the launch, or who built it.

An unidentified missile launched and zoomed across the Atlantic Ocean Thursday, March 26, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, leaving a slim white contrail against the afternoon blue sky. None of the Space Coast’s major rocket-launch providers had missions scheduled on Thursday. The mysterious unannounced launch occurred at roughly 12:30 p.m.

The Pentagon did not respond to media requests for information.

The missile was likely a suborbital hypersonic test, but that is pure speculation. What makes it unusual is the lack of any information about launch provider. In recent years the military has relied entirely on the private sector to build its hypersonic test program. This launch suggests the War Department has moved from testing hypersonic components on private rockets, airplanes, and capsules to building and testing its own final hypersonic missile prototype.

This is also pure speculation. We will have to wait for some clarification from the Pentagon.

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The space station part of Isaacman’s new program is facing push back, from industry and Congress

10:37 am

The American space stations under construction
Four of the American space stations under development.
The fifth, Max Space, is a late comer and not shown.

At a hearing yesterday before the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, both the trade organization representing the five commercial space station projects as well as some members of Congress expressed strong reservations about NASA’s new plan to build a core module as a basis for helping these companies develop their space stations.

Dave Cavossa, President of the Commercial Space Federation (CSF) that represents these companies, outlined in his statement [pdf] to the committee the industry’s dissatisfaction, not so much because of the specifics of NASA’s plan but because it follows other sudden changes last year by the previous NASA administrator Sean Duffy, and is still uncertain in its outline.

Given the delays and possible shifts in strategy, industry has been left to continue spending resources to develop private space stations without a full understanding of what NASA will require from a private station, how the agency will structure the rest of the procurement and program, and when industry may see a return on investment. This uncertainty challenges the public-private partnership business model and puts the agency at risk of deorbiting ISS before private stations are operational.

The trade group proposed that NASA stick with its previous plan to fund two or more station projects, dropping Isaacman’s core module proposal. It also wanted Congress give the agency the funds to do so.

Cavossa also strongly disputed NASA’s claim that the market at present doesn’t support these commercial stations.
» Read more

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China launches two radar satellites

9:18 am

China today successfully placed two radar satellites into orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in north China.

China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
14 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

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Intuitive Machines wins $180.4 million new NASA lunar lander contract

8:46 am

Intuitive Machines' Nova-D lunar lander
Click for original.

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that it has won its fifth contract from NASA, a $180.4 million deal to place its larger upgraded Nova-D lander near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-5 mission will target Mons Malapert, a ridge near the Lunar South Pole that offers continuous Earth visibility, stable illumination conditions, and access to permanently shadowed regions. These characteristics make the site a compelling location for future communications, navigation, and surface infrastructure.

The artist’s rendering to the right shows this Nova-D lander. What stands out immediately is its low-slung appearance. Intuitive Machines’ smaller Nova-C lander was tall (see this image), with a high center of gravity. In its only two landing attempts on the Moon it tipped over both times after touchdown. It appears the company has finally recognized the issue and reworked this new lander to make it more stable after touchdown.

This contract award appears to be part of the accelerated program by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to land 30 unmanned rovers on the moon in three years, beginning in 2027. Mons Malapert is a plateau that Intuitive Machines second lander tipped over on. It is also the landing site for Astrobotics’ Griffin lander, as well as a candidate landing site for the first Artemis manned missions.

Note the small rover on the right in the graphic. While the mission will carry seven NASA science instrument payloads, it will also carry this commercial rover, built by Honeybee Robotics, a subsidiary of Blue Origin. As the company states above, the lander on this mission also has additional available payload capacity for more commercial customers.

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Lunar Gateway dead as NASA announces major changes to its future space station, lunar, and Mars plans

1:07 pm

Capitalism in space As part of the reshaping of NASA being pushed by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the agency today announced major changes to its future programs in low Earth orbit, on the Moon, and in exploring Mars. Video of these changes can be viewed here and here.

The Moon

NASA will now focus all work in its lunar program on getting to the surface of the Moon. Lunar Gateway is “paused,” though the language of NASA’s press release suggests more strongly that it is dead, with the agency already trying to figure out ways to “repurpose” its already built components. NASA will instead ask for proposals from private industry and its international Artemis partners to ramp up as soon as possible a phased program to establish the infrastructure on the Moon needed for the lunar base. This new focus begins with “up to 30 robotic landings in three years, starting in 2027,” and at least two manned landings per year beginning in 2028.

The graph below, presented during today’s announcement, shows the basic plan for the next few Artemis missions, which will act as the manned foundation for this entire surface-focused program. The overall program will build out the lunar base in three phases, first to test some basic infrastructure using these smaller lunar landers, second to begin establishing the base’s foundational components with intermittent manned missions, and third to begin long-term human occupancy.
» Read more

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Russia launches the first 16 satellites in its own internet satellite constellation

8:46 am

In a rare unannounced launch, Russia yesterday placed the first 16 satellites in its proposed 700+ satellite Rassvet internet constellation into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia in a polar orbit that dumped the rocket’s lower stages in the Arctic ocean.

The satellites are built by the Russian pseudo-company Bureau-1440, which hopes to have the entire constellation in orbit by 2035. Considering that this constellation is designed to compete with Starlink, its pace of launch is ridiculously low. SpaceX can generally launch 700 Starlink satellites in about a month, not ten years. By the time Russia gets this constellation in orbit it will be woefully obsolete.

The launch was originally supposed to occur several days earlier, but for reasons that were never explained never took place. This was not a classified military launch, but one that Russia wants to publicize as it struggles to compete with SpaceX and China in launching new satellite constellations. That Russia provided no details beforehand suggests that the increasingly successful use of drones by the Ukraine on Russian assets forced that secrecy.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

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Progress docks with ISS

8:25 am

A Russian astronaut successfully docked a Progress cargo capsule with ISS early today, using the manual TORU joystick system inside the station.

Sergey Kud-Sverchkov manually piloted the spacecraft during docking using the TORU (Telerobotically Operated Rendezvous System) control panel inside the space station’s Zvezda Service Module after one of the spacecraft’s two KURS automated rendezvous antennas failed to deploy after launch.

Normally each Progress docks autonomously, using the Kurs radar antennas to determine distance and location. With one antenna out Kud-Sverchkoy controlled the capsule remotely. This back-up system has been used successfully a number of times previously, but when it was first being tested on Mir in the 1990s one of those earlier tests resulted in a collision that almost destroyed Mir. It did damage one module badly enough that it leaked from then on, requiring that module to be sealed off for the rest of Mir’s life.

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Three launches today from three continents and three nations

2:59 pm

The global launch pace continues, with three launches today. First, Russia launched a new Progress cargo capsule to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its repaired launchpad at Baikonur. That launchpad had experienced serious damage to an access platform during the previous launch in November 2025, and since it was the only pad that Roscosmos could launch payloads and crews to ISS, Russia committed heavy resources to get it fixed quickly.

Once Progress reached orbit, however, one of the antennas used by its Kurs automatic docking system failed to deploy. If engineers can’t get it opened by the time of docking, scheduled for March 24, 2026, the Russian astronauts on ISS will use the back-up TORU system, whereby they control the spacecraft manually from inside ISS.

Next, SpaceX placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida. The first stage (B1078) completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 20 days after its previous flight. This flight also moved the booster up to just behind the space shuttle Columbia in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles, tying it with SpaceX booster B1077:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1067
32 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
27 Falcon 9 booster B1077
27 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

At the pace SpaceX is reusing its fleet of Falcon 9 boosters, expect Columbia to drop off this list in about two months.

Finally, China launched 10 smallsats, according to China’s state-run press, for a planned 160-satellite GPS-type constellation, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket (also called Jielong-3) lifting off from an ocean platform off the northeast coast of China. Video here of launch.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

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Canada cancels small lunar rover that was to fly on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander in ’29

2:13 pm

Even as Canada has increased its government space spending in Europe and in Canada — mostly it appears to prop up bureaucracies or failing businesses — its space agency has at the same time cancelled its first lunar rover project, scheduled to brought to the south pole of the Moon by a Firefly Blue Ghost lander in 2029.

As part of its 2026-2027 departmental plan, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has cancelled its ambitious lunar rover mission. The lunar rover was announced in 2022. It would have been Canada’s first rover, built by Canadensys, and hitching a ride to the moon on a commercial launch vehicle built by a private U.S. company, Firefly Aerospace.

…The principal investigator of the mission, Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist from Western University, said that he found out about a month ago, and that he was “devastated” by the news.

Note that this rover was hardly “ambitious.” It was a small unmanned rover comparable to similar rovers deployed by India, Japan, and others, mostly aimed at testing the engineering for later larger rovers.

The real issue however is how this decision illustrates Canada’s leftist government misplaced priorities. Increasingly it appears it is canceling actual space research or planetary missions and shifting the money to other uses, either European projects or bureaucracies in Canada or failing Canadian businesses.

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Sweden’s Esrange spaceport signs launch deal with Swedish military

12:55 pm

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

Sweden’s Esrange spaceport, used for decades for suborbital test launches but now trying to become an orbital spaceport, this past week signed a launch agreement worth about $22 million with Sweden’s military.

The contract covers systems and infrastructure that ensure protection, availability, and execution of satellite launches for the Swedish Armed Forces, as well as for partners and allies. The capability is scheduled to be operational by 2028.

…The initiative is part of a government decision from 2023 to allocate approximately [$100 million] to the Swedish Armed Forces through 2032 to develop Sweden’s space capabilities. The decision includes, among other things, improved space situational awareness, expansion of infrastructure at Esrange in cooperation with SSC Space, and the ability for the Swedish Armed Forces to carry out multiple satellite launches.

It seems unlikely Sweden’s military will be able to produce its own rockets for this amount of money. More likely they will buy the services from others. The American rocket company Firefly in 2024 signed a deal to launch its Alpha rocket from Esrange, but it appears there might be regulatory issues blocking any launches, some of which might stem from opposition by Norway. Esrange has an interior location, so any orbital launch has to fly over territory belonging to other countries. It appears Sweden is having problems getting permission to do so.

My guess is that this deal is mostly aimed at keeping Esrange open. Or to put it more bluntly, use the earnings of Swedish taxpayers to support a government-controlled spaceport with little financial promise.

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Space Force shifts another ULA Vulcan launch to SpaceX

3:19 pm

Unexpected debris falling from rocket at about T-1:00
Nozzle failure during February 12, 2026 Vulcan launch

As expected, the Space Force has taken its next GPS satellite launch from ULA’s Vulcan rocket and given it to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The reason for the change is the repeated problems with the solid-fueled side boosters used on Vulcan and built by Northrop Grumman. The nozzles on two different launches failed. Though the rocket’s core stage in both cases was able compensate and get the payload into the proper orbit, the Space Force decided in late February to suspend further launches on Vulcan until ULA gets the problem fixed and proves it by launching other commercial payloads.

The Space Force however is not yet reducing the number of launches it has purchased from ULA, merely delaying them.

If all goes to plan, the satellite — the 10th and final one in the GPS III line — will lift off no earlier than late April from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida [on a Falcon 9].

Vulcan Centaur, in return, will launch USSF-70, a national security mission that had been manifested on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. USSF-70 will fly no earlier than summer 2028, according to Space Force officials.

Nonetheless, the situation is not good for ULA. This is the third such ULA launch the Space Force has shifted to SpaceX. At some point, if ULA doesn’t get the problem fixed the military it will be forced to reduce its reliance on Vulcan.

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The FCC’s agenda at its next meeting includes an item for “Weird Space Stuff”

2:49 pm

FCC logo

In releasing its agenda for its upcoming March 26, 2026 open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) included one very intriguing item entitled “Spectrum Abundance for Weird Space Stuff.”

In reviewing the fact sheet [pdf] for this particular agenda item, it appears the commission is focused on finding ways to maximize the use of some communications spectrum for more than one purpose. The commission wants to do this because it is anticipating a lot of new demand coming from what it calls “emergent space activities or emergent space operations.” As the fact sheet then notes:

In the geopolitical race to commercialize and dominate the Final Frontier, historic levels of private investment have paved the way for the engineering marvels and daring endeavors that now take place in outer space. Once the province of science fiction, American companies are now upgrading, relocating, and servicing satellites; 1. manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space; 2. building private inhabitable spacecraft; 3. and conducting private robotic missions to the surface of the Moon. 4. Emergent space operations like these depend on the use of radiocommunications for their spacecraft, but they are not the type of communications satellites that have traditionally commanded much of the Commission’s regulatory attention.

Spectrum is a critical component of all space operations. Even for spacecraft that do not provide radiocommunications services to the public, reliable spectrum access is mandatory for safety functions like telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) to control spacecraft in orbit. American innovators, however, currently face an acute shortage of usable and readily accessible spectrum for TT&C, and that spectrum crunch threatens to delay — or even prevent — the growth of domestic space technologies and jeopardize U.S. leadership in the booming global space economy. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the FCC is trying to find other spectrum, allocated for other purposes but available at other times, that can be provided to these new in-space operations for this telemetry, tracking, and command functions. To do this it appears it will need to rewrite some of its regulations, and this agenda item raises the issues involved in doing so.

And most interestingly, it is even considering allowing the marketplace solve the problem, by allowing licensees to lease their allocated spectrum to others. The FCC would limit such actions to the spectrum the FCC determines best for these multiple uses, but it is considering setting up rules to allow such freedom.

What an idea! Let free enterprise find a way to use the electromagnetic spectrum in the most efficient way possible.

No decision has been made, and we should expect the Democrats on the commission to oppose this, simply because. Nonetheless, it is a refreshing policy proposal.

Hat tip to reader Steve Golson, who notes quite correctly, “It’s good to see FCC trying to help rather than hinder.” Amen to that.

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Ursa Major test flies a new liquid-fueled missile engine for Air Force

10:51 am

Ursa Major's Draper engine being tested in flight

The rocket engine startup Ursa Major last week announced it had successfully completed for the Air Force a test missile launch of its new Draper liquid-fueled rocket engine.

As shown on the right, the Air Force’s Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator (ARMD) suborbital rocket was used to fly the engine. More information here.

On January 27, 2026, AFRL and Ursa Major launched the Draper liquid rocket engine on a demonstrator flight. While many details remain classified, the company says the test vehicle reached supersonic speeds during its flight. The test marked a transition from ground-based validation to in-flight evaluation, allowing engineers to study propellant stability, engine throttling performance, and how the system behaves under real flight conditions.

The Draper engine is designed to address key limitations of current hypersonic systems by making them cheaper, more scalable, and easier to operate. It runs on hydrogen peroxide and kerosene, fuels that are safer to store and handle compared to traditional alternatives.

The War Department’s hypersonic testing program has certainly heated up since the military switched to the capitalism model in the past five years. Beforehand, when the military tried to do its own testing, it took it years to get little done, while spending a fortune. Now it is flying suborbital rocket tests with Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and Firefly. It is testing new engines on flights such as Ursa’s above. And it testing hypersonic avionics on Varda’s orbiting capsules upon their return to Earth. Based on this commercial activity, it appears the U.S. military might get some real hypersonic capabilities in the very near future.

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Kratos wins $446 million contract to build/operate ground system for Space Force satellite constellation

10:13 am

The military contractor Kratos Defense & Security Solutions was yesterday awarded a $446 million contract by the Space Force to build and operate the ground systems used to control the military’s missile warning satellite constellation.

The contract covers ground management and integration for the service’s Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking program, according to a March 19 statement from Space Systems Command. Kratos will provide the systems used to operate the satellites after launch, including sending commands, receiving sensor data and processing that information for delivery to military operators.

The work supports a constellation being deployed in phases. The first 12 satellites, known as Epoch 1, are being built by Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary. A second set of 10 satellites, called Epoch 2, is under contract to BAE Systems. Launches are expected over the next several years.

The method in which this entire constellation is being built and operated once again highlights the profound transformation that has occurred in how the Pentagon works in space since the formation of the Space Force. Beforehand, when the Air Force ran the military’s space operations, it would attempt to design and build everything, and the satellites built would be big and expensive, and take years to complete. Generally, little got built for a lot of money. Moreover, the upper management of the Air Force was in general not interested in space projects, and often gave these projects lower priority.

The Space Force was created during Trump’s first term to change this, giving the military an agency focused on its space needs. It was also designed to put those in charge who had been advocating going from these big gold-plated satellites that were few in number to many small satellites built quickly and cheaply by the private sector.

This new missile warning and tracking constellation demonstrates that this transition is largely complete. It is being built quickly by two different satellite companies, and will be maintained on the ground by a third.

Note: Kratos also builds the hypersonic test vehicles that Rocket Lab launches on its HASTE suborbital rocket. It will soon also fly those vehicles on a Firefly rocket.

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India’s second spaceport to be completed next year

9:26 am

The existing and proposed spaceports in India
The existing and proposed spaceports in India

According to officials in India, the nation’s second spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam is on schedule to be completed by next year, when it will become available for polar launches of the SSLV rocket as well as other commercial rocket launches.

India is moving ahead with plans to operationalise a new launch facility at Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu. It is expected to be commissioned during the 2026–27 financial year, according to information shared in the Lok Sabha by Jitendra Singh.

The new facility, officially called the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) Launch Complex, is being developed as the country’s second space launch site. The Kulasekarapattinam complex will primarily handle launches of SSLV missions to Sun-synchronous Polar Orbit, a trajectory widely used for Earth observation satellites.

The SSLV rocket is at present controlled by India’s space agency ISRO, though there has been an effort by the Modi government to transfer it to the private sector. It is not clear whether that effort has been successful. ISRO and India’s large space bureaucracy has been resistant. There have also been indications that this new spaceport will be made available to the handful of Indian rocket startups that are developing their own rockets.

The Sriharikota spaceport is ISRO’s main launch site. The Hope Island site is a proposed commercial and private spaceport, whose future remains very uncertain.

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