Tag: politics

Is Dragonfly’s power source less capable than planned?

8:30 am

Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring over Titan's surface
Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring
over Titan’s surface

According to a French source yesterday on X, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently informed NASA that the radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) that will be used to provide power and heat to the Dragonfly helicopter in its mission on Titan will produce less power than expected.

The source stated the following (translated by Google):

The DOE recently informed NASA that the MMRTG intended for Dragonfly will provide less thermal power than specified. This reduction will result in lower electricity production than initially anticipated.

Dragonfly operates using a large lithium-ion battery pack that is slowly recharged by the MMRTG. Flights and scientific experiments take place during the Titanian day, while the long nights are primarily dedicated to recharging. This reduction in power will extend recharge times between flights. It could reduce the number of trips, limit the distances traveled, or cut the time available for scientific observations at each site.

The heat produced by the MMRTG is also essential for maintaining equipment temperatures. Lower thermal power will make this thermal management more complex throughout the mission.

I can find no other reports about this at NASA, DOE, or in the American press. If true, this issue raises the risks of this very risky $3 billion mission that is vastly overbudget and, according to a September 2025 inspector general report, not likely to meet its 2028 launch window. Recent NASA press releases have implied it is on schedule, but we shall see.

And while NASA has built a helicopter that worked on Mars, the environment of Titan is far more alien. Worse, no NASA mission has ever attempted to function in such conditions. Thus, Dragonfly will not only be going to a very strange place, it will be trying to do so with engineering never tried before.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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FCC overhauls its licensing process

8:04 am

FCC logo

Faced with the on-going launch of thousands to millions of new satellites as well as several new commercial space stations and recoverable capsules of all sizes, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last week a major overhaul of its licensing process, designed ostensibly to speed approvals and reduce red tape.

You can read the full report here [pdf]. Some of the changes are simple but extremely practical. For example, the FCC has adopted a single form for providing the basic information about each company that can be submitted with each new application. In the past the company had to submit its company information repeatedly, in great detail, requiring many company man-hours to write and many FCC man-hours to review. Now the company and FCC do this once, and then apply it to all future applications.

Similarly, the overhaul standardizes the application forms in an attempt to speed the process. And it allows single applications to apply across larger groups of satellites, reducing the number of applications required.

The overhaul also reviewed the regulations, and eliminated a lot of out-of-date rules that no longer applied.

Will this work? Your guess is as good as mine. Much of the changes read like typical bureaucratic jargon, rearranging the offices and renaming the procedures to make them seem more effective. For example, instead of “traditional licensing process” it is now replaced with a “licensing assembly line.” My heart be still!

In other areas this overhaul continues the mission creep of the commission. The FCC’s statutory powers, which was established merely to assign electromagnetic spectrum to different users, did not include the right to regulate how satellites are decommissioned. Yet, the commission is taking this issue on nonetheless. The new rules address the issue of space junk by requiring companies to provide plans for de-orbiting their satellites or space stations when they are retired. While certainly necessary with the numbers being launched, such requirements could hinder new projects if imposed too stringently or obsessively.

At the same time, this particular rule appears more rational than that attempted by the FCC under Biden. Then, the FCC tried to do this as well, but much more aggressively by outlining in detail how and when all satellites must be de-orbited. The Trump FCC is instead leaving these details to the company, letting them decide the specifics. It is hard to say just now how this more laissez-faire approach will work, for good or ill.

In general, the FCC’s aims appear to be laudable, to eliminate or reduce government interference in the private sector. At the same time, it continues to expand subtly that government interference, though doing it gently.

As I said whether this will work to the benefit of the space industry remains unknown.

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A Japanese company reserves space on the Starlab space station

11:12 am

Starlab design as of December 2025
Starlab design as of December 2025

The commercial space station Starlab has gotten another customer. A Japanese space-based computer company, DigitalBlast, on July 25, 2026 signed an agreement that allocates it space on Starlab once it is launched and operational.

Based on the press release, it is very difficult to determine exactly what DigitalBlast intends to do with this allocation. It appears the company’s function will be to act as a go-between allowing others use of its equipment.

DigitalBlast will serve as a user-integration partner for R&D that puts the space environment to practical use, and will work to build itself into one of the gateways through which companies and research institutions in Japan and the wider Asia region can access orbit.

The release also says DigitalBlast is developing something called “Orbital Data Center Construction Technology” under a program created by Japan’s space agency JAXA and the ten year $6.6 billion Space Strategic Fund the government gave it in 2023 to encourage private enterprise.

Either way, this deal once again shows that there is market interest in using these commercial stations, outside of NASA funding.

My updated ranking of the five American space stations presently under development:
» Read more

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Soyuz safely returns three astronauts from ISS

9:22 am

A Russian Soyuz capsule today safely landed in Kazakhstan, completing an eight-month mission to ISS by two Russians and one American.

NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud‑Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev wrapped up a 241‑day mission, orbiting Earth 3,856 times and traveling more than 102 million miles. Soyuz MS‑28 launched and docked with the International Space Station on Nov. 27, 2025. This flight marked the first mission for Williams and Mikaev and the second for Kud‑Sverchkov.

After routine post‑landing medical checks, recovery teams will fly the crew by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Williams then will board a NASA aircraft bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Because of financial problems resulting from its invasion of the Ukraine, Russia has increased the length of its missions to ISS from six months to eight, so that it only has to do three manned launches every two years, instead of four. Though Russia did this to save money, it has the benefit of making eight month missions routine, allowing for better research on the long term effects of weightlessness.

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Wildfire in Spain threatens one of NASA’s three Deep Space Network antennas

10:13 am

UPDATE: NASA late today reported that the site avoided any significant damage.

A wildfire in Spain has forced the evacuation at NASA’s Madred Deep Space Network antenna, one of three the agency maintains worldwide to communicate with its interplanetary missions.

Spain and France are battling wildfires in many regions right now. The BBC reports that more than 130,000 people have been evacuated in the two countries.

NASA’s DSN station is in Robledo de Chavela, Spain, about 65 kilometers (37 miles) west of Madrid. La Razon reports that the entire town was evacuated. INFUES Ávila, which tracks forest fires in the province of Avila, posted an image on X (@InfuesAvila) of fire and smoke near one of the antennas.

The agency says all employees are safe, and that the fire “has already passed through” the area. It will assess the damage when it is safe to return to the area. Meanwhile, NASA has using its Goldstone antenna in California to pick up the slack. It also has its Canberra antenna in Australia.

The temporary loss of one third of this network however will likely slow communications with the Mars orbiters and rovers as well as other missions.

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GAO releases a schizophrenic report on NASA

11:31 am

GAO: Work force reductions across NASA

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this week released a report on the state of NASA’s major projects and the impact on the agency of Trump’s work force reductions.

The graph to the right, from the report, shows those reductions across numerous NASA centers nationwide.

In reading the report [pdf], I couldn’t help noting the sharp contrast from its first section, outlining the generally solid state of the agency’s major projects, and its second section, describing the terrible impact of Trump’s workforce reductions, which reduced NASA workforce by about 22%.

The report appeared almost schizophrenic, having a dual personality, with the first section written by a Republican and the second section by a Democrat.

In the first section, after reviewing the major changes imposed on the Artemis program by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the key paragraph was this:
» Read more

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JAXA successfully tests older solid-fueled motor for use in its Epsilon-S rocket

9:15 am

Japan's space agency JAXA

Japan’s space agency JAXA has successfully completed a two minute static fire test of an older version of an upper stage solid-fueled motor for use in its new Epsilon-S rocket, the first launch of which has been delayed years because its upgraded upper stage motor kept failing in tests.

The engine burned normally for about two minutes in the test conducted at 9 a.m. at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture. JAXA will now examine the data, such as temperature and strain, in detail before determining whether the test was a success. It seeks the launch of a demonstration rocket within this fiscal year.

… In a change in policy, JAXA used an older model with a history of successful launches in the test, because two previous tests of a new model had ended in an explosion. It made the decision so that its flagship rockets will all be operational as soon as possible.

Epsilon-S was originally supposed to do its inaugural launch in 2024. JAXA now hopes to do it later this year. Using the older upper stage design however reduces the rocket’s capabilities, and also likely increases its cost, as the original design was supposed to be less expensive.

While India is making a real effort to promote a private rocket sector and shift to the capitalism model, and China has been utilizing a pseudo-version of that model to invigorate its space industry, Japan remains a backwater, barely able to launch anything because it continues to rely too much on its space agency while its private sector seems captured by it.

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

8:36 am

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

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

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

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

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

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China launches five classified satellites

8:24 am

China today successfully placed five classified satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket (also called Lijian-1) lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

China’s state-run press provided no information about the satellites, not even mentioning their names. That state-run press also said nothing about where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

88 SpaceX
48 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 88 to 83.

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The study that found half of all social science papers cannot be replicated also found that NO education research could be replicated

1:53 pm

Junk research in the soft sciences
Junk research in the soft sciences

In June 2026, I reported on a major 7-year study of more than 3,900 social science papers that found that more than half could not be replicated, suggesting that a very very large percentage of social science research is junk and should be ignored.

A recent close analysis of that paper, shown in the graph above, reveals even more starkly how worthless some of this “science” is. In the field of education, of the six papers the researchers attempted to replicate, only three could be “approximately replicated” (which the researchers appeared to consider largely unsatisfactory). No papers could be confidently replicated. In the field of business, of the six papers tested only one could be replicated, with two others getting that “approximately replicated” label.

In sociology the result was only slightly better but still terrible, with only two of nine papers replicated with confidence.

Meanwhile, about 60% of the papers tested in economic and political science could be replicated.

These are all the soft sciences, but it appears that education, business, and sociology are softer than others. Or to put it more bluntly, the research in these fields is likely all worthless. Education and sociology have been poisoned by Marxist critical race theory now for years. The education field in particular has become more interested in teaching kids the queer agenda and telling lies of oppression about western civilization than teaching the three “R’s”. This inability to replicate any of its junk research shows how bankrupt this part of academia has become.

Business research meanwhile has been equally poisoned by Marxist ideology and the bad business practices of the MBA academic world. No wonder modern corporations so routinely treat their customers like dirt, and fail so spectacular. Their Ivy League managers care only about DEI and ending capitalist oppression and nothing about running a company effectively while creating good products people will want to buy.

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Starlink now available in the Seychelles Islands off the eastern coast of Africa

8:48 am

Starlink has now offering terminals to citizens of the Seychelles Islands, located about 800 miles east of Africa.

Starlink has launched commercial satellite internet services in Seychelles, expanding its footprint to 28 African countries. Unlike its previous African markets, Seychelles already has one of the continent’s highest internet penetration rates and affordable broadband.

The one tidbit of information from this story that struck me was its claim that 28 African nations have approved Starlink. I had not thought it was that high, considering the number of stories of African governments opposing the SpaceX company.

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China launches a communications satellite for its manned space program

8:43 am

China last night successfully launched a communications satellite used by its manned space program, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No mention was made in China’s state-run press as to the crash sites of the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

88 SpaceX
47 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 88 to 82.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches nine satellites from ocean platform

8:50 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Orienspace today successfully placed nine satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Gravity-1 rocket lifting off from an ocean platform off the coast of northeast China.

This was the third launch of Gravity-1, all successful. Though supposedly privately designed and built, solid-fueled rockets are routinely used for military missiles. It is thus very likely this “company” was closely supervised by China’s military in developing the rocket, which also likely controls its actions in all ways.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

88 SpaceX
46 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 88 to 81.

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

10:04 am

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

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

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

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

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

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Australia’s leftist government issues a new policy statement on space

9:46 am

The leftist Labor party that is presently running Australia’s government today issued a new policy statement on the nation’s space industry, focused on trying to encourage its growth.

You can read the statement here [pdf]. Though it is mostly filled with meaningless bureaucratic and leftist jargon, including an an “acknowledgement” of the primary land rights of the aborginal population (or as it calls them, “the many nations of First Peoples”), the statement has one item at the very end that suggests this government recognizes its bureaucracy is slowing development.

After many pages of gobbly-gook that has little substance in reality, that last action item is the following:

Action: Advance regulation and international governance:

  • Evolve domestic regulatory frameworks to support current and emerging
    Australian space activities, ensuring safety, security and national interests
    while enabling entrepreneurship and innovation.
  • Shape international governance by contributing to global rules and norms
    for the safe and sustainable use of outer space.

It appears the Labor government recognizes the regulatory framework in Australia is slowing development, and is at least willing to say it wishes to fix the issue. At the same time, it also vows its continuing allegiance to international globalist regulations and the need to make space “safe and sustainable.”

These two goals are generally opposed to each other. How Labor will square this circle is quite unclear, but at least it appears it is aware of the regulatory issues. Its ability to fix them however will I think be hampered by that party’s very “woke” focus. For example, the statement opens by endorsing ancient aboriginal religious beliefs, but never once recognizes the very basic western values of private property and law that built the country that presently exists.

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Another bad indicator relating to the UK’s space effort

2:30 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9:21 am

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

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

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

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

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Russia launches 2nd set of Rassvet satellites

8:51 am

Russia today successfully launched 16 more Rassvet satellites as part of its own Starlink-type internet constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

This launch was originally scheduled for April but never occurred. Furthermore, Russia issued multiple flight plans for this launch covering a period of 24 hours, all likely designed to prevent the Ukraine from targeting the actual launch with drones. The Ukraine considers this constellation a direct military threat, and it appears it has attempted to use drones to attack Plesetsk during earlier launches.

With this launch the Rassvet constellation has 31 satellites in orbit. It is being built by Bureau (Buro) 1440, a so-called private company in Russia, which hopes to get the full 700+ satellite constellation in orbit by 2035.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

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

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 80.

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NASA cancels Draper/Ispace unmanned lunar lander contract

12:45 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NASA’s Artemis mission schedule:
» Read more

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