Tag: politics

More delays expected in India’s first manned Gaganyaan orbital mission

9:30 am

Artist rendering of India's Gaganyaan capsule
Artist rendering of India’s Gaganyaan capsule

It appears that India’s space agency ISRO is now hinting that the first manned orbital flight of India’s Gaganyaan capsule will not occur in 2027 as planned, but could be delayed until 2028.

ISRO had hoped to fly the first unmanned orbital test flight, Gaganyaan G1, before the end of this year, followed by several more unmanned flights in 2026, with the manned flight in 2027. G1 however has slipped to early 2026, though it appears the mission is finally coming together.

In a response to a question posed at the Lok Sabha, the State Minister for Space, Jitendra Singh noted that the first Gaganyaan mission is nearly ready to fly, “Major infrastructure such as the Orbital Module Preparation Facility, Gaganyaan Control Centre, Crew training facility have been established. Second launch pad modifications have been incorporated. Precursor missions such as TV-D1 and IADT-01 have been successfully accomplished. Ground tracking networks, terrestrial links and IDRSS-1 feeder stations have been established. Crew Module Recovery plan as well as assets to be deployed have been finalized. For the first uncrewed mission (G1), all HLVM3 stages and CES motors are ready. Crew and Service Module systems have been realized. Assembly and integration activities are nearing completion.”

…The Gaganyaan G1 flight is the first of eight planned missions as part of an expanded programme cleared by the Union Cabinet last year with a total budget of Rs 20,193 crore. Initially, the programme was envisioned with two developmental flights followed by a crewed flight, with a budget of Rs 9,023 crore. There are now two crewed flights in the revised campaign, with ISRO aiming for the first crewed flight in 2027-28. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted dates are the first time ISRO has suggested the first manned flight might slip to 2028.

When the Gaganyaan program was first announced in 2018, the first manned flight was scheduled for 2022. Since then that schedule has been repeatedly delayed. I suspect ISRO’s schedule will only become more reliable after it finally completes that first G1 orbital test flight.

The endless incremental delays however are reminiscent of NASA’s Artemis program, designed to hide a sluggish program with problems.

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Kenya to build its own spaceport

9:04 am

Kenya spaceports
Kenya spaceports

The Kenyan government has now initiated a project to establish a second commercial spaceport on the country’s coast, located near the town of Kipini.

As stated in the document made public on December 16, 2025, the government is looking to recruit a skilled transaction advisor who is capable of analyzing the technical, financial, legal, environmental, and social feasibility of the construction of the spaceport based on a PPP model. The strategy utilizes Kenya’s location on the equator, which provides some benefits in satellite launches, among them lower fuel consumption, lower launch costs, and easier satellite placement in low-inclined orbits around the earth’s equatorial region.

…Under the plan, the transaction advisor will prepare a detailed feasibility study in line with the PPP Act, 2021. The study will include concept designs, launch vehicle options, infrastructure requirements, lifecycle cost estimates, and a phased implementation plan for the facility.

As shown on the map to the right, this new facility would be to the north of the San Marco offshore platform that had been used for eight launches by Italy from the ’60s to the ’80s and that the Italian rocket company Avio is now planning to re-open.

The Kenyan government apparently wants to build its own a launch site that it can offer to others to use.

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Jared Isaacman confirmed as NASA administrator

1:29 pm

Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk
Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk in September 2024

The Senate today finally confirmed Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA administrator, by a vote of 67 to 30.

All of the opposition came from Democrats, who fear Isaacman will eliminate several NASA centers in their states, centers that for decades have accomplished little but be jobs programs sucking money from the American taxpayer.

During hearings and private meetings with the senators Isaacman denied he had any intention to do this. In fact, the 62-page policy document Isaacman had written outlining his plans when he was first nominated for this position back in the spring makes it clear that is not his goal.

Instead, an honest read of that document shows that Isaacman has approached this position as administrator like the businessman he is. He intends to review every aspect of NASA’s operations and to restructure them to run more efficiently. For one example, he plans to eliminate the numerous “deputies” that every manager at NASA has been given. The managers should do the work, not hire a flunky to do it for them.

He also plans to review the next two Artemis missions, specifically looking at the Orion capsule and the questions relating to its heat shield and its untested environmental system. The concern that I and many others have expressed is that this capsule is not ready yet for a manned mission. The heat shield showed significant and unexpected damage on its return to Earth from its first unmanned mission around the Moon in 2022. Rather than replace it or redesign it, NASA has decided to push ahead and fly four astronauts on it around the Moon no later than April 2026. The agency’s solution will be to change the capsule’s flight path to reduce stress on the shield, a solution that might work but remains untested. It is also willing to fly the astronauts in a capsule with a untested environmental system. This NASA decision to push ahead is so it can meet the goal of Trump and Congress to get humans back on the Moon ahead of the Chinese, and hopefully within Trump’s present term of office.

In other words, NASA management is once again putting schedule ahead of safety and engineering, as it did with Challenger and again with Columbia.

It appears that Isaacman will at least review this situation. Whether he will have the courage to take the astronauts off that mission however remains unknown. He will certainly face fierce opposition from Trump and Congress if he does so.

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European sea-level satellite releases first data

10:39 am

First data from Sentinel-6B
Click for original.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel 6B satellite, launched a month ago, has now released its first sea-level data.

Following its launch on 17 November 2025, the first data from Sentinel-6B was captured on 26 November by the satellite’s Poseidon-4 altimeter. The image [to the right] is a combination of altimeter data from both the Sentinel-6 sea-level tracking satellites: Sentinel-6B and its twin, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, which was launched in 2020. The image shows the Gulf Stream current in the North Atlantic Ocean, off the eastern coasts of the US and Canada.

The Gulf Stream is a hugely important area of the North Atlantic Ocean, not only for the role it plays in global weather patterns and climate, but also because it’s a busy shipping route as well as a key ecosystem for marine species and therefore an important fishing zone.

What makes this particular government press release unusual is that though it is about a climate-related satellite, it makes no mention of global warming and how the sea level rise that has been recorded by the string of similar orbital satellites going back to 1993 is going to eventually drown us all. Maybe that’s because that total rise measured since 1993 equals only about 4 inches. That’s 4 inches of rise detected in more than three decades. At that rate, a little over an inch per decade, it will take centuries to drown anyone, but only those who refuse to walk a few feet to higher ground.

It could be the scientists and government PR hacks that are involved in writing this release also realized that the gig is up, and everyone now knows it, and it would only embarrass them further to push the global-warming hoax again.

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France and U.S. militaries complete rendezvous maneuvers in orbit

9:21 am

According to a statement by France’s military, the U.S. and France have successfully completed planned rendezvous maneuvers by two of their satellites in orbit.

These operations also apparently included the United Kingdom.

While the neither the US nor its allies have made public the satellites involved in any of the joint RPOs, the private space tracking firm COMSPOC said Sept. 19 that the maneuvers with the UK involved a US Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) neighborhood watch bird. The GSSAP satellite, USA 271, began moving on Sept. 5 and on Sept. 12 stopped just 13 kilometers (8.1 miles) from the UK’s SKYNET 5A military communications bird, the firm explained.

COMSPOC also watched the Franco-American pas-de-deux, which a company spokesperson told Breaking Defense involved another GSSAP, USA 324, and France’s SYRACUSE 3A. The satellites performed three sets of maneuvers: Nov. 11-14; Nov. 22-23; and Nov. 28-29, according to COMSPOC’s observations. “In all these movements, SYRACUSE 3A seems to lead and USA 324 seems to follow as the maneuvers performed by USA 324 is lagged by a day,” the spokesperson said, with the closest approach being about 25.1 kilometers (15.6 miles). [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the distances above because these military maneuvers are actually quite unimpressive when compared with similar recent commercial rendezvous and proximity tests in orbit. The just completed Impulse/Starfish test for example got within 1.25 kilometers. And in 2024 Japan’s Astroscale did proximity operations within 50 meters of an old abandoned upper stage.

I suspect the best thing these militaries could do is to stop wasting money trying to do this themselves, and just hire the commercial companies instead. They’d do much better.

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Two launches early today

9:02 am

Both China and the American company ULA successfully completed launches since yesterday.

First, China placed the third satellite in an new Earth observation constellation, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

Developed by the China Academy of Space Technology, the satellite will join the Ziyuan III 02 and 03 satellites already in orbit to form a high-precision observation constellation. Equipped with a stereoscopic mapping camera, multispectral camera, and laser altimeter, it will capture high-resolution 3D imagery critical for geographic data collection and natural resource management.

It appears however that this constellation is used by China’s military, so I suspect its purposes do not exactly match this description. China’s state-run press also provided no information as to where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

Next, ULA launched another 27 Leo satellites for Amazon, its Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Amazon now has 181 satellites in orbit, with a requirement to get about 1,600 in orbit by July 2026 to meet its FCC license obligations. As it took about eight months to get those first 181 satellites into space (with SpaceX launching 72), Amazon’s three launch providers, ULA (42 launches), Arianespace (18 launches), and Blue Origin (27 launches), will have to ramp up their launch rate significantly to get even close to meeting those obligations in the next six months. There is also a question whether Amazon can manufacture enough satellites at a fast enough pace for those rockets.

As for the rocket, ULA now has only ten Atlas-5 rocket left in stock, with four reserved for Leo launches and six for Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule.

This was also ULA’s sixth launch in 2025. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

166 SpaceX
84 China (a new record)
16 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 166 to 138.

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A ray of hope during a weekend of horror

12:17 pm

This past weekend was truly a weekend of horror. There were two mass murder terrorist attacks, one in Australia against Jews celebrating Hanukkah and another at Brown University in Rhode Island in a classroom. In California someone drove up to a home with a Hanukkah display, cursed the home-owners for being Jewish, and sprayed the home with bullets. And in Amsterdam masked Jew-haters attacked a Hanukkah concert.

Meanwhile, two previously popular major rightwing pundits, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, have gone off the deep end, falling into the same rabbit-hole of anti-Semitism and conspiracy madness based on slanders and lies. In the case of Candace Owens, that madness has her make absurd and vicious accusations against the family and friends of Charlie Kirk, claiming without evidence that they were somehow complicit in his murder.

Nor have I even scratched the surface of the ugliness and incivility and violence and barbarism that seems to have overwhelmed civilization in the past decade.

Bringing the cultural principles of the First Amendment back to America
Bringing the cultural principles of the
First Amendment back to America

And yet, buried within the horrors of this past weekend I stumbled by accident upon a ray of hope. And believe it or not, that hope comes from one of our most disgraced and for decades most biased mainstream news outlets, CBS News. It seems that outlet’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, is attempting to abandon the one-sided, 24/7 leftwing perspective that has dominated that news organization (as well as all of America’s so-called “intellectual” culture) for decades.

Instead, she is advocating openness and a willingness to let many different opinions and ideas be heard.

There had been indications she would do this when she was hired, based largely on her open approach to reporting that forced her out of her job at the New York Times and became the hallmark of her work at her own subsequent news outlet, The Free Press.

Her position was made quite clear during a CBS Mornings interview on December 12, 2025, embedded below, where she plugged a CBS News Townhall aired on December 13, 2025 in which her guest was Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.
» Read more

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House joins Senate in proposing a new space bureaucracy here on Earth

11:52 am

Gotta feed those DC pigs!
Gotta feed those DC pigs!

In mid-November a bi-partisan group of senators introduced legislation they claimed would help the U.S. beat China in space by creating a new government agency called the “National Institute for Space Research.”

The absurdity of creating a new agency to do this was obvious. Don’t we already have something called NASA that is tasked with this job? As I noted then, “This is just pork.”

Rather than funding real research or development in space, this legislation simply creates another Washington government agency supposedly functioning independent of presidential or even congressional oversight (a legal structure the courts have increasingly declared unconstitutional).

Well, it appears two congress critters in the House have decided they had to keep up with the Jones in the Senate, and have now introduced their own variation of this legislation.

Yesterday, Congresswoman Valerie Foushee [D-North Carolina], Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, and Congressman Daniel Webster [R-Florida] introduced H.R. 6638, the Space Resources Institute Act, bipartisan legislation which directs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator and the Secretary of Commerce to report to Congress on the merits and feasibility of establishing a dedicated space resources institute relating to space resources, the surface materials, water, and metals often found on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids.

The bill would give NASA 180 days to submit its report.

This is just more junk from Congress that will do nothing but distract NASA from its real business, fostering a new American aerospace industry capable of colonizing the solar system for profit. Note too that like the Senate bill, this House bill is a bi-partisan effort in stupidity.

As I said in reporting on the Senate version of this proposal, “Ugh. There are times I wish I didn’t have to read the news from DC. It almost always depresses me.”

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Software issue forces Russia to delay Proton launch until next year

11:28 am

Because of a software issue detected once the rocket was arrived in Baikonur, Russia has been forced to delay one of its last Proton launches from next week until next year, with the new launch date undetermined.

[O]n Dec. 13, 2025, final checks revealed a problem in the Block DM-03 upper stage which forced to postpone the launch, Roskosmos announced. According to the Zakryty Kosmos Telegram channel, a software issue will require the return of the rocket back to the processing building and the disassembly of the payload section. The potential need to ship the onboard avionics back to the manufacturer would likely push the mission well into 2026.

Proton has largely been retired, though it appears it has some undetermined number of military and government launches left on its manifest. In 2023 there were discussions to restart its assembly line, but nothing since has been announced.

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Components for the first Ariane-6 Amazon’s Leo launch shipped to French Guiana

11:20 am

The components for the first Ariane-6 launch in its 18-launch contract with Amazon are now on their way by boat to French Guiana for a launch earlier in 2026.

Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite network, Amazon Leo, reached another milestone this week as Arianespace’s hybrid industrial cargo ship, Canopée, departed from Bordeaux, France, transporting essential components of the Ariane 6 rocket for its first Amazon mission planned for early next year.

…Canopée’s voyage is supporting Amazon Leo’s inaugural mission on Ariane 64—an Ariane 6 variant featuring four additional boosters for maximum satellite launch capacity. The vessel will transport the rocket’s central core stage, upper stage, and other critical components on a weeks-long journey across the Atlantic to the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Once there, the components will undergo final assembly and integration in preparation for the LE-01 mission.

Though Ariane-6 has successfully launched four times, none of those versions were this most powerful version. The plan is for it to place in orbit 32 Leo satellites, some of which Amazon has already shipped to French Guiana.

Arianespace plans six Ariane-6 launches in 2026, though it is unclear how many of these launches will be for Amazon. Amazon, which has about 154 satellites in orbit, needs to get about 1,450 more launched by July to meet its FCC license obligations. Both ULA and Blue Origin say they will be ramping up their launch pace in 2026 to meet this need, but it remains unclear if all three rocket companies can get the job done on time.

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Vast opens Japanese office

11:06 am

As part of its recent push to establish links with as many foreign governments as possible, Vast announced earlier this week the opening of a new Japanese office, to be headed by a retired Japanese astronaut.

In November Vast announced preliminary agreements with Uzbekistan, the Maldives, and Columbia. This new office in Japan continues that trend. The company is clearly marketing its demonstration single module space station Haven-1 to these international customers. None have yet committed to a flight, but expect a lot of action once Haven-1 launches in the spring and is proven operational. The company wants to fly four 30-day manned missions to the module during its three year mission, and if launched successfully these international customers are likely to sign on for flights.

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South Africa lifts its racial quota rules for Starlink

11:01 am

The South African government has finally removed the racist rule that required SpaceX to sell 30% of its company to local black citizens before allowing Starlink terminals to be sold in its country.

Instead, the government will allow SpaceX to do what the company had repeatedly offered to do, make substantial investments in “local development programs.”

Starlink has been unable to launch in South Africa for years because the current ICASA rules require telecommunications companies to sell 30% of their equity to historically disadvantaged individuals. Starlink has consistently refused, stating it does not sell equity in any market where it operates.

But now under the new directive, multinational companies that cannot sell equity due to global shareholding structures can instead make substantial investments in local development programs. These equity equivalent investment programs must be worth either 30% of the company’s South African operations value or 4% of annual local revenue. The programs require approval and monitoring by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition.

…Starlink has already outlined plans to invest nearly R2 billion in South Africa. The company proposed investing R500 million to connect approximately 5,000 schools to high-speed internet, benefiting about 2.4 million students.

One of the reasons the government backed down on this issue is that it received more than 19,000 public comments in which 90% blasted the racist quotas and demanded the government approve SpaceX’s proposals.

If you live in South Africa however don’t expect to go out and buy a Starlink terminal tomorrow. Final regulatory approvals will still delay Starlink availability until late 2027, at the earliest.

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More details revealed about what caused the damage on that Russian launchpad

10:46 am

Anatoly Zak at russianspaceweb.com has uncovered more details behind the collapse of the mobile platform at Russia’s only manned launchpad at Baikonur.

According to one rumor from Baikonur, the mobile platform was retracted and moved back to the rocket as many times as five times, as the specialists tried unsuccessfully to secure it in its parking position inside its shelter, after the routine call to retract the platform had been issued during the final countdown less than an hour before launch.

When the personnel was finally ordered to evacuate the pad some 30 minutes ahead of the liftoff, the decision was made to leave the platform in its parking position inside its shelter without securing it properly rather then to postpone the launch. It was not immediately clear who made a decision to proceed with the launch despite this clear violation of launch criteria.

The veterans of the center speculated that the mission management had been under pressure to go ahead with the launch so not to disappoint high-ranking officials and as many as 3,000 paid tourists who came to the remote center to witness the event.

Sounds remarkably reasonable. Zak’s report also adds that Russian officials say they will have a new mobile platform in place and the launch pad operational by April 12, 2026, the day when Russians annually celebrate Yuri Gagarin’s first human flight in space.

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China launches recoverable capsule; satellite launched two days ago just misses Starlink satellite

11:03 pm

Two Chinese launch-related stories tonight. First, one of the nine satellites launched on a Kinetica-3 rocket on December 10, 2025 apparently almost collided with a Starlink satellite after deployment in orbit.

As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude.

The government-owned pseudo-company that launched the rocket, CAS Space, responded shortly thereafter.

Our team is currently in contact for more details. All CAS Space launches select their launch windows using the ground-based space awareness system to avoid collisions with known satellites/debris. This is a mandatory procedure. We will work on identifying the exact details and provide assistance as the LSP.

It is possible China did the proper due diligence but the large number of satellites in orbit as well as being launched simply makes these events increasingly likely. It is also possible CAS Space is lying, and it didn’t do a thorough analysis prior to launch. Either way, this incident should force it to do a better job in the future.

Next, China tonight (December 13, 2025 in China) continued its annual end-of-year ramp up of launches, placing the first Dear-5 recoverable capsule into orbit, its Kuaizhou-11 rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. This capsule is comparable to Russia’s Bion capsule, designed to be used for research in orbit for return to Earth for sale.

China’s state-run press made no mention where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

164 SpaceX
83 China (a new record)
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 164 to 135.

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Leftist lawsuit against beach closures at Boca Chica appealed to higher Texas court

10:59 am

The leftist anti-Musk activists groups have now appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit against the law allowing more frequent beach closures at Boca Chica for Starship/Superheavy launches.

The lawsuit was filed by Save the Rio Grande Valley (SaveRGV), the Sierra Club, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas against Cameron County, the Texas General Land Office, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, and the Texas attorney general. When the case was reviewed by the lower court in Cameron county, it dismissed it entirely, saying the activist groups had no standing and had failed to show any harm from the law.

The activists then appealed to a higher court.

The Thirteenth Court of Appeals found the Plaintiffs have standing and that immunity had been waived for each Defendant. The case was remanded to the trial court to proceed on the merits, but Defendants appealed the Thirteenth Court’s ruling to the Supreme Court of Texas.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court of Texas will occur on January 13, 2026. In the more rational world of America until two decades ago, the case would be thrown out again, since the law that initially limited these beach closures was legally revised by the state legislature.launches. Just because these leftists don’t like it doesn’t mean they and the courts have the right to cancel legal legislation.

We no longer live in that more rational American world, however. Politics now rule, and it is leftist politics that most often win, regardless of the law or rationality.

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Space Force creates new naming system for its satellites

9:36 am

Though this is hardly the most important story of the day, the head of the Space Force yesterday announced that the agency has now established a new naming system for its in-space satellites and weapons.

The result is a taxonomy of seven categories tied to seven mission areas. Orbital warfare systems will take their names from the Norse pantheon. Cyber warfare tools from mythological creatures. Electromagnetic warfare systems from serpents. Navigation warfare tools from sharks. Missile warning assets from sentinels. Space domain awareness systems from ghosts. And satellite communications systems from constellations.

The service is also taking care to avoid copyright issues, Saltzman said: “We had to find categories that you could use, like ghosts or constellations or things that nobody could claim ownership of.”

This naming system will allow one to immediately identify the general purpose of the satellite or payload, though of course more specific details will be classified.

The system will however also include a less informative numbering system:

Alongside the thematic nicknames, the Space Force is also adopting a new alphanumeric satellite designation scheme. Each spacecraft will receive a two-letter prefix indicating mission type followed by a number. For example, the next generation of geostationary reconnaissance satellites will carry the RG-XX designator, adding a layer of standardized classification to complement the symbolic names attached to operational systems.

It was not made clear whether this naming system will be applied to previously launched spacecraft.

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Avio to build $500 million rocket facility in Virginia

9:18 am

The Italian rocket company Avio has selected Virginia as the location where it will build a $500 million solid-fueled rocket facility as part of establishing its American-based division.

Italian rocket builder Avio has announced that it has selected the state of Virginia to build its planned US-based production facility. The $500 million project forms part of the company’s expansion of its defence business.

Avio founded its wholly owned US subsidiary, Avio USA, in 2022 to capitalise on a market opportunity created by constrained solid rocket motor production capacity relative to surging demand for tactical propulsion solutions. Since then, the company has signed contracts with the US Armed Forces, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.

Avio presently builds the Vega-C solid-fueled rocket, which until this year was managed and controlled by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial division, Arianespace. That arrangement however is ending. Beginning next year, Arianespace will be out of the picture. Avio is already marketing its own rocket, as indicated above, and as part of that process the company has been expanding operations, such as creating this U.S. division.

And for Avio this situation presents a great opportunity. The only company producing solid-fueled rockets and missiles in the U.S. appears to be Northrop Grumman, and the lack of competition has made its rockets expensive. There is room for competition. Moreover, the decisions of the Biden administration to provide the Ukraine a very large percentage of the Pentagon’s missile stock means there is a big need to replenish those stocks.

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Turkey begins construction of spaceport in Somalia

9:07 am

Somalia

According to statements by one Turkish official this week, his nation has begun building its own spaceport on the southeast coast of Somalia at a location not yet specified.

Türkiye has begun construction of a space launch facility in Somalia, marking the country’s entry into an exclusive group of nations with oceanside spaceports, Board Chairman of Baykar Selcuk Bayraktar announced on Thursday. “Türkiye now has a space launch station. Normally, you need to be by the ocean. Türkiye has a 30 kilometer by 30 kilometer area in Somalia,” Bayraktar said during a panel at Take Off İstanbul 2025. “When you have oceanside access, you can deploy launch vehicles, meaning you have a spaceport. There are 12 such places in the world. Because Somalia is part of our heartland geography, there will be a space station there,” he noted.

This plan has been in the works since earlier this year, though few real details (such as its specific location) have not been released. It appears however that Turkey wants to use it to test both ballistic missiles and eventually launch orbital rockets. The location on the coast will permit test flights of bigger missiles that Turkey cannot do from its present test sites inside Turkey.

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China launches nine more Guowang internet-of-things satellites

8:56 pm

China today successfully launched another nine internet-of-things satellites for the Guowang (or SatNet) constellation, its Long March 12 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

China’s state-run press did not reveal the number of satellites, but the previous three Long March 12 launches that carried Guowang satellites all launched nine, so I think it is safe to assume nine launched today as well. This was the sixteenth launch for this constellation, which now has about 119 satellites in orbit, with a planned 13,000 once complete.

The Long March 12 is expendable. Though the launch proceeded over the ocean, one drop zone for the rocket’s lower stages was in the Philippines, where authorities warned its citizens to avoid those zones and to exercise caution if they see any likely rocket debris.

An upgraded version, the Long March 12A, with a first stage designed to land vertically and be reused, is scheduled to launch sometime in the next two weeks.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

164 SpaceX
82 China (a new record)
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 164 to 134.

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French startup The Exploration Company now building an in-orbit servicing spacecraft

12:28 pm

The French startup The Exploration Company, which has been developing an unmanned cargo spacecraft called Nyx to supply the commercial space stations under development, has now also gotten funds from the European Space Agency (ESA) to build an in-orbit spacecraft designed to provide refueling and servicing capabilities as well.

More information here.

In a 25 November update on its progress with an ESA-funded project, the company revealed that it is also working on a spacecraft called Oura, designed to refuel satellites in orbit, thereby extending their operational lifespan.

…As part of the 25 November update, the company announced that it had been awarded a Phase B2 contract for the InSPoC-1 programme. The Phase B2 development of the project will include activities up to Technology Readiness Level 6, which represents the development of a prototype and its demonstration in a relevant environment.

Once again, this contract from ESA is radically different than its past policy of building and owning everything itself. Instead, it is hiring this French company to develop this capability, which this French company will then own and be able to sell for profits to others.

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