Tag: NASA

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

8:59 am

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

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

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

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

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NASA abandons core module idea for its commercial space station program

8:56 am

The American space stations under development

Bowing to the unanimous opposition by the three most advanced commercial space station startups, NASA official Bethany Stevens yesterday announced that it is abandoning its proposed core module space station concept and returning its commercial space station program to its original plan, whereby the private stations all compete independently.

Industry has provided extensive feedback making the case for a sustainable commercial market in which NASA is one customer among many, along with assurances regarding available transportation capabilities. The industry position will now shape the path forward as NASA proceeds with the original commercial strategy.

Over the coming weeks, NASA will work with stakeholders and industry to refine flexible requirements and acquisition plans, with a draft RFP expected later this month.

The original plan was for the private sector to compete for one or two major construction contracts from NASA. The core module approach, put forth under NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s leadership in March, instead made them all part of a government space station, like ISS, at least initially. Under that plan the new commercial space stations would attach their first modules to a government-built core module that NASA would first build and own. Isaacman proposed this because he and NASA believed it didn’t have the budget to finance more than one commercial station, and that the agency didn’t think there was sufficient market to make up the difference.

Officials from Vast, Starlab, Axiom and elsewhere all expressed opposition to the core module plan, insisting there was sufficient market to finance their stations, even without NASA. They also opposed the core module plan because it would require major changes in their present designs, and they had great doubt NASA could build that core module quickly enough for their financial purposes.

Isaacman and NASA apparently listened to these objections, and were convinced their idea was a mistake and the industry was right. It is now reviewing its budget and will decide whether it can do what it originally hoped, award two stations a major contract.

Either way, the recent news from all these three stations suggests they are increasingly in a strong position, whether or not they win that NASA contract.

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A call to my readers: Find the location of NASA’s lunar base!

8:46 am

Moon base map from NASA's May 26, 2026 presentation

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated
Click for interactive LRO map.

During yesterday’s NASA press conference outlining the first unmanned missions to the agency’s planned moon base near the Moon’s south pole, Carlos García-Galán, Moon Base program executive, included the graphic above of that base in his presentation.

Though García-Galán said this lunar base map is in the south pole region, the map provided no crater names nor any longitude or latitude information. Nor did it provide a scale to determine the size of these craters. Because of this lack of information, I was unable to identify the map’s precise location near the Moon’s south pole, even after searching extensively at the QuickMap site for Lunar Reconnaissance Rover (LRO) images, now managed by Intuitive Machines images and found here. The map to the right was created from that QuickMap site, annotated by me later with the planned landing locations for Chang’e-7 and Griffin, plus the sites where Nova-C and Vikram landed previously.

I am now asking you, my readers, to do some detective work. See if you can pinpoint the location of the map above with the LRO south pole imagery at the link. The crater patterns should provide the first clue. Remember also that the orientation of the map might require significant rotation to match the LRO data. Remember too that the scale of the map above could require you to zoom in a great deal.

If you think you have a match, post it in the comments below.

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NASA outlines new program of unmanned missions to Moon

2:15 pm

NASA's Moon base plans as of May 2026
NASA’s Moon base plans as of May 2026.

NASA officials today outlined its new reshaped program of unmanned missions to Moon, designed it says to lay the first groundwork for the manned lunar base to follow.

You can watch the press conference here. The map to the right comes from one viewgraph during that conference, and apparently shows the planned lunar base area, which officials said could cover about 100 square miles. Though officials said this is in the south pole region, I have not been able to identify the precise location, using the global map produced by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The large crater northeast of the base does not appear to be Shackleton Crater.

The schedule includes four already planned missions, two new missions awarded to Blue Origin in a $188 million contract to deliver two new rovers, and a new hopper mission mission to be delivered by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. The schedule is as follows:
» Read more

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NASA approves lunar habitation module design from Italy’s space agency

10:06 am

While the American company Redwire appears in the lead to win a European contract to build its lunar lander’s robot arm, it appears the Italian Space Agency (ASI) has gotten NASA’s preliminary approval to begin work on its Multi-purpose Habitation module (MPH) for the lunar base.

The Italian Space Agency [ASI] announced on 22 May that its Multi-Purpose Habitation (MPH) module had been cleared by a NASA review board to progress toward a Preliminary Design Review in 2027. The first MPH module is expected to launch in 2033.

…With the successful completion of the SDR [System Definition Review] and SRR [System Requirements Review], ASI and Thales Alenia Space can now prepare for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), which will assess whether the module’s preliminary design is mature enough to meet NASA’s requirements before the programme advances into detailed design and hardware development.

It should be noted that the MPH appears to be a revision of the habitable module that ESA and Thales Alenia were building for the now dead Lunar Gateway station. This new deal is likely NASA’s effort to give ESA comparable work to make up for the loss of its Gateway contribution.

At the same time, ASI will face heavy competition from American companies for this work, as it isn’t the only one proposing habitable modules for the American lunar base. In March 2026 Voyager Technologies and Max Space announced a partnership to build their own inflatable habitable lunar modules. Just as ESA can only make rare exceptions when it gives work to American companies, NASA is obliged to do the same with its European contracts.

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NASA practically eliminates any Starliner flights before ISS retires

10:11 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS in 2024.

In a procurement announcement on May 18, 2026, NASA added another three to six crewed flights to ISS to its contract with SpaceX, covering all missions possible through 2030, which in turn practically eliminates the possibility it will buy any manned flights on Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

In a May 18 procurement filing, NASA announced its intent to add six post-certification missions, or PCMs, to SpaceX’s commercial crew contract on a sole-source basis. The agency would order up to three of those missions at the time it added them, formally starting preparations for them.

…Adding six missions to the contract would cover three years of ISS operations, at a rate of one mission every six months. With the currently contracted missions, running through Crew-14, flying through the fall of 2027, the extension would provide coverage through late 2030, when the ISS is slated for retirement. NASA has previously stated the last crewed mission would likely spend a year at the station.

Though it is not stated yet exactly how much SpaceX will earn with these additional missions, based on previous contracts the revenue will likely range from $1 to $2 billion. Overall, SpaceX has probably received somewhere between $4 to $6 billion additional earnings that was supposed to go to Boeing.

Instead, Boeing is now out of the picture entirely, though NASA is being very coy about saying so. It will earn nothing from Starliner, at least in connection with hauling crews or cargo to ISS. And because its contract with NASA was fixed price and the company could not meet its final milestones to get the bulk of its payments, it will have cost the company about $2 billion beyond what NASA had paid it.

It remains unknown whether Boeing wishes to continue the project. NASA officials had suggested earlier this year that it would buy an unmanned cargo mission to ISS to give the company a chance to prove the capsule and get it certified for manned missions. They have since backed off from that plan, scheduling no Boeing missions through the rest of this year.

Though things could still change, it appears Starliner is dead. In history books this Boeing project I think will become the poster boy for the failures of the older big space companies that used to dominate America’s aerospace industry. By the 21st century they didn’t know how to budget, had poor quality control resulting in unreliable products, and designed things that were badly conceived. The result was a bankrupt space industry that was only saved when new companies appeared willing to fill a need these older companies could not.

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Isaacman rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic of NASA

12:50 pm

NASA logo

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman today announced major bureaucratic changes at NASA designed to make the agency’s work more “mission centric”, to use his words.

To improve our operational efficiency, we must evolve the organization to be more ‘mission centric’, with specialized centers properly resourced to support current and future requirements. To do this, we will separate lines of authority between preparing and supporting the workforce and executing the mission.

Center Directors will continue reporting to the Associate Administrator, focused on empowering the workforce and maintaining the facilities and critical capabilities at their Centers. Mission Directorates will now report to the Administrator with the primary focus on leveraging Center resources, industry, and international contributions to execute on the mission as urgently and efficiently as possible. We will also take this opportunity, where appropriate, to consolidate departments, flatten org structure and enhance HQ by rotating operational expertise into critical functions.

Isaacman’s memo is long, and involves a lot of reshaping, including an attempt to give specific research focus to each of NASA’s existing centers, while consolidating several departments at NASA headquarters to make operations more efficient. A good summary can also be found here.

Overall, Isaacman’s changes seem logical and smart. At the same time, I’ve seen new NASA administrators do the same time after time, without actually accomplishing any real change. In a sense this is no different than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks. You aren’t really fixing the problem, you are making believe you are doing so.

To really fix NASA will require major cuts, with whole centers and bureaucracies eliminated. If NASA is going to depend on the private sector to get things done — which is very clearly doing at this point — it doesn’t need its present large labor force. All it needs is a trim small bureaucracy in Washington to manage the contracts it hands out as it lets the commercial industry develop and build the rockets, spacecraft, and interplanetary bases the U.S. requires.

Isaacman is not willing or able to do this, however. He might want to (though nothing he has said suggests he does) but even if he did Congress will not let him. It wants NASA funded to keep those pork-laden unproductive jobs alive in their numerous congressional districts.

And so, the deck chairs get rearranged.

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Zvezda module on ISS is leaking once again

8:51 am

According to a report today at Ars Technica, the Zvezda module on ISS is once again leaking station air, despite recent repairs to the stress fractures in its hull that had appeared in recent months to halt the air loss.

After a couple of sources reported this to Ars, NASA confirmed the issue on Thursday. On May 1, after Russian cosmonauts unloaded cargo from the Progress 95 cargo spacecraft, Roscosmos noted a “slow pressure drop” in the PrK module.

“Teams performed data analysis, which indicated a loss of about one pound per day,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars. “Roscosmos allowed the pressure in the transfer tunnel to gradually decrease while monitoring the rate. The area now is being maintained at a lower pressure, with small repressurizations as needed. There are no impacts to station operations, and NASA and Roscosmos are coordinating on next steps.”

A loss of one pound of air per day is comparable to the leak rate back in 2019, as shown in the lower right corner of the graphic below. It is also one third the loss rate seen for much of the following five years, which is I suppose good news.

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time.

At the same time, it suggests once again that every docking to Zvezda puts stress on its hull, and apparently causes either new cracks or the reopening of old ones. In such a situation, a catastrophic failure of the module remains a possibility that cannot be dismissed. NASA closes the hatch between the Russian and American halves of the station whenever there is a docking, but that is only band-aid covering a much more serious problem.

Without question ISS’s life span is impacted by this issue. The sooner the U.S. can replace it with at least one or two of the private commercial stations under development, the better.

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Astrolab’s Flip lunar rover will carry 4 NASA payloads

8:37 am

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated

When NASA cancelled in 2024 its Viper rover, removing it as the main payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander, the company quickly made a deal in 2025 with the rover startup Astrolab to put its s FLIP prototype lunar rover on board instead.

Astrolab yesterday announced that NASA has agreed to purchase payload space on FLIP, placing four different science instruments on the rover, each from a different NASA center.

The map to the right indicates the location where Griffin is supposed to land, about 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole. Nova-C, Intuitive Machines first attempt to soft land on the Moon, landed at the green dot, but failed when it fell over at landing. Its second lunar lander, Athena, also fell over when it landed in the same region that is now Griffin’s target landing zone.

Griffin’s launch itself has been delayed repeatedly. Astrobotic was originally issued its NASA contract for Griffin in 2020, with a launch planned for November 2023, carrying NASA’s Viper rover. In July 2022 however it was delayed one year to November 2024 because Astrobotic said it needed more time. This date was then delayed to 2025 when Viper was canceled, and then in October 2025 the launch was pushed back again to July 2026.

According to the press release at the link above, that July 2026 launch date is now invalid, with the new launch date set for before the end of 2026. I strongly suspect that date will slip again.

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SpaceX launches cargo Dragon to ISS

3:11 pm

SpaceX today launched an unmanned Dragon freighter to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage completed its 6th flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The capsule is also making its sixth flight to ISS, and will dock with the station at 7 am (Eastern) on May 17, 2026.

57 SpaceX
27 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 57 to 48.

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Malta signs Artemis Accords

8:33 am

On the same day (May 4th) Ireland officially signed the Artemis Accords (as announced on May 1st), Malta also signed the accords, becoming the 66th nation to join this American space alliance.

The Republic of Malta became the 65th signatory to the Artemis Accords on Monday during a ceremony in the town of Kalkara with NASA and U.S. Department of State officials present. … Malta’s Minister for Education, Youth, Sports, Research and Innovation Clifton Grima signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of the country. … U.S. Ambassador to Malta Somers W. Farkas and NASA Europe Representative Gregory Mann witnessed the signing together with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tourism Ian Borg.

As I predicted on April 30th, the success of the Artemis-2 mission has caused a lot of third world smaller nations to quickly jump on the bandwagon, with Latvia, Jordan, Morocco, Ireland, and now Malta all signing in just the past week.

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

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, 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, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, 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.

Expect more nations to sign on in the coming weeks.

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