Tag: politics

Russia launches Progress freighter to ISS

1:04 pm

Russia today (July 4th in Kazakhstan) successfully launched a new Progress freighter to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

The freighter will dock to ISS in two days, bringing with it almost three tons of cargo and more than a half done of hardware and equipment. Expect NASA to order its astronauts to shut the hatch between the American and Russian sections of ISS due its fear that a docking to the Zvezda module could cause a catastrophic failure because of the stress fractures in that module’s hull. That docking will however not be directly to Zvezda, but to the Poisk module that is itself docked to Zvezda.

The lower stages and strap-on boosters crashed inside Kazakhstan in the normal drop zones that Russia has used for decades.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

84 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 84 to 63.

Russia’s launch pace this year is its lowest pace in decades. At this rate Russia might only get about 15-17 launches off in 2025, a count more comparable to what it did in the very early 1960s. This decline can be directly linked to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. That invasion caused Russia to lose billions in contracts in the international launch market. And it continues to prevent Russia from winning any new international contracts as well. Except for its government launches (which are limited due to government cash shortages), the only other missions Russia flies are those to ISS, and those number about four per year.

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European capsule startup wins $15 million grant

10:43 am

A Luxembourg-based startup aimed at building orbiting recoverable capsules for cargo as well as in-space manufacturing has won a $14.7 million grant from the European Innovation Council as part of its European Innovation Council Accelerator program to encourage development in Europe’s private commercial space sector.

The company, Space Cargo Unlimited, will use the money to develop what it calls its “BentoBox in-orbit testing and manufacturing platform.” It is also partnering with well-established European company Thales-Alenia, with the BentoBox development based on previous work done for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Rider demonstrator project.

The overall nature of this grant and work illustrates Europe’s aggressive shift in the past two years from the government model, where ESA designed and owned everything, to the capitalism model, where the government is merely the customer, buying what it needs from the private sector. The government-built Space Rider, which was intended to be a re-usable space plane similar to the X-37B, has never flown. Now, its technology is being repurposed by private European companies for their own spacecraft with the intention of making profits. And this Bentobox project is a prime example.

The inaugural flight of the BentoBox platform as a standalone system using the ATMOS inflatable heatshield is expected in the fourth quarter of 2025. As of a late 2024 update, Space Cargo Unlimited had already secured bookings for 80% of the inaugural flight, and 50% and 40% of the second and third flights, respectively.

Note too that Space Cargo is a European competitor with Varda in the U.S. It appears Europe wants some of this business for itself.

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China launches technology test satellite

10:27 am

China today successfully launched a technology test satellite, its Long March 4C rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

As is usual for China’s state-run press, little information about the satellite was released. The most information any article provided was this:

The satellite, designed and built by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, will measure and survey space environmental elements and test new technologies.

Nor did that state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

84 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 84 to 62.

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Two more former SpaceX employees sue the company for harassment and discrimination

10:19 am

SpaceX employees cheering the first chopstick capture of Superheavy
SpaceX employees cheering the first chopstick capture of
Superheavy, October 13, 2025. Click for video.

Two new articles today outline two different new lawsuits against SpaceX by former employees, with both claiming harassment and discrimination as reasons for their firing.

In the first case, the former employee, L’Tavious Rice, claims that he “was fired for being late to work while caring for his young daughter as she recuperated from a heart transplant, while his white colleagues were given a pass for their own “consistent tardiness and absences.” The lawsuit also claims the SpaceX human resources department was retaliating against him because he testified about another employee’s misbehavior in another unrelated case.

In the second case, the former employee, Jenna Shumway, claims she was passed over for promotion, and the man who got the job “waged a campaign of harassment against her, which included stripping her of her responsibilities over a period of months and ultimately leading to her termination in October 2024.” She also claims this “harassment extended to other female employees, too.”

I have no idea whether these claims are true or not. I tend to be skeptical, because of the overall make-up of SpaceX’s entire work-force. The image to the right, a screen capture from the company’s broadcast during the fifth flight of Starship/Superheavy on October 13, 2024 and taken mere seconds after the first successful capture of Superheavy. illustrates this. The SpaceX work-force is young, and typical of engineering, more male than female. At the same time it has many long time female employees, including the company’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell.

We must not also dismiss the possibility of political motives in these lawsuits. In the past three years the left has made it clear it is out to get Elon Musk, and that campaign has included vandalism, regulatory sabotage, and numerous other environment lawsuits by leftist activist groups whose funding is political.

At the same time, it is very possible that these two former employees have legitimate beefs. We shall have to see how both cases play out in the courts.

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New data: the ozone hole occurs mostly because of the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays, not CFC pollution

1:18 pm

The ozone hole linked to the solar cycle

The uncertainty of science: A science paper released yesterday suggests that the ozone hole over Antarctica that scientists have been tracking for almost a half century is caused mostly by the solar cycle and the accompanying fluctuations in cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere, not the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that used to be used in aerosol spray cans.

The graph to the right, from figure 2 of the paper, illustrates the data. The red line is the ozone hole fluctuations predicted by the paper’s model, labeled “CRE Theory”, based on the increase of cosmic ray radiation during solar minimum. The blue, black, and green lines indicate the actual fluctuations of ozone and temperature in the lower stratosphere where the ozone layer exists. As you can see, the model and actual fluctuations match quite closely. From the paper’s abstract:
» Read more

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Senate reconciliation budget bill includes Cruz’s big spending additions to NASA

9:36 am

Senate NASA budget increases

According to a tweet yesterday by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), the reconciliation budget bill that was passed by the Senate included the budget additions that Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had proposed to save SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway.

The graphic to the right lists these budget numbers. It is not clear whether the launch taxes on payloads that Cruz proposed were also included, though likely not based on the rules under which the reconciliation bill was passed.

This additional money for these projects contradicts directly the NASA 2026 budget proposal put forth by Trump that aimed to cancel Lunar Gateway and end SLS and Orion after only two more flights. Their existence in this passed Senate bill suggests that Congress is cool with the idea of spending this money and continuing these projects, even though they do nothing but waste taxpayer money and get us no where in space.

It also appears from the language in the graphic that the Senate is eager to also spend more money on NASA’s Mars sample return project, even though NASA itself still has no idea how to accomplish the task.

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China releases images of Earth and Moon, taken by its Tianwen-2 asteroid probe

9:40 am

Tianwen-2 images of the Earth and the Moon
For original images go here and here.

According to a report today in China’s state-run press, its Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return spacecraft is operating normally, and has successfully taken pictures of both the Earth and the Moon to test its instrumentation.

Those images are to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here.

The CNSA [China National Space Administration] said that the narrow-field-of-view navigation sensor equipped on the probe recently captured the images of Earth and the moon, demonstrating good functional performance.

The images released include a photograph of Earth obtained by Tianwen-2 when it was approximately 590,000 kilometers away from the planet, as well as a new photograph of the moon captured when it was about the same distance from the moon. After the images were transmitted back to the ground, they were processed and produced by scientific researchers.

The Tianwen-2 probe has currently been in orbit for over 33 days, at a distance from Earth exceeding 12 million kilometers, and it is in good working condition, the CNSA said.

The probe will take about a year to reach asteroid Kamo’oalewa, where it will fly in formation studying it for another year, during which time it will attempt to grab samples by two methods. One method is a copy of the touch-and-go technique used by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. The second method, dubbed “anchor and attach,” is untried, and involves using four robot arms, each with their own drill.

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Mitsubishi wants to cut launch price of H3 rocket to $35 million

8:52 am

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which developed the new H3 rocket for Japan’s space agency JAXA, wants to attract commercial launch business, and to do so hopes to cut the rocket’s launch price to about $35 million.

According to the article at the link, the price for the H2A rocket that the H3 has replaced was 10 billion Japanese yen, about $70 million.

The H2A launched more than 70 satellites and other objects into space, serving as the backbone of Japan’s space transportation. However, there was an average of only two launches a year, and most depended on “public demand” for government satellites. There were only orders for commercial launches for five satellites belonging to foreign countries, such as South Korea and the United Kingdom.

…For Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., which took over the manufacture and operation of the H2A from JAXA in 2007, winning commercial orders has been a longstanding issue. The H3 was jointly developed by MHI and JAXA with the aim of halving the launch fee.

That price listed for the H2A rocket is likely wrong, much lower than the real price, as it matches what SpaceX has been offering publicly for the Falcon 9 for more than a decade. If the H2A had been that cheap, it would have garnered some business. It did not.

Lowering the cost for the H3 rocket to $35 million would definitely be competitive in the present launch market. Whether Mitsubishi can accomplish this however remains unclear. So far there is no indication that this new rocket has attracted any more business than the H2A, but as the rocket has only just started launching it is still too early to judge.

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Orbex delays first launch from Saxavord until 2026

2:26 pm

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.

Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.

Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).

Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.

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Another blacklisted professors wins big in court

11:22 am

Law professor Scott Gerber
Law professor Scott Gerber

Fight! Fight! Fight! After two years of battle in the courts, a blacklisted tenured professor who was fired by his university in 2023 without due process because he had publicly criticized and opposed its racist diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quota policies has now won a complete victory in court.

First the background: In 2023 Ohio Northern University (ONU) sent campus police to Dr. Scott Gerber’s classroom — while he was teaching a class — and had him physically removed from the campus, without warning or explanation. In firing Gerber no legal due process was followed, with the university violating in every manner its own employment policies. Even months later university officials refused to give any reason for his firing. The timing of its action though strongly suggested the university administration objected to his opinions, as he had that same week published an op-ed opposing the school’s DEI policies.

Gerber sued, hiring the pro-bono legal firm America First Legal (AFL) to defend him. (You can read the full complaint here [pdf]. The college’s actions were clearly unconscionable.)

Now two years later, AFL announced yesterday that it has won a full settlement victory for Gerber.
» Read more

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OSHA investigating the collapse of a crane at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility

9:13 am

OSHA has now opened an investigation into the collapse of a crane at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility on June 24, 2025, captured by one of the commercial live streams that track activities there continually for the general public.

I have embedded the video of that collapse below.

A SpaceX crane collapse at the company’s Starbase, Texas facility on Tuesday has prompted an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency told CNBC in an email.

The crane collapse was captured in a livestream by Lab Padre on YouTube, a SpaceX-focused channel. Clips from Lab Padre were widely shared on social media, including on X, which is owned by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether any SpaceX workers were injured as a result of the incident. Musk and other company executives didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The article at the link provides no additional information, instead focusing on what appears to be an anti-SpaceX screed. It never mentions that cranes such as this are almost certainly not owned by SpaceX, and are likely rented and operated for SpaceX by other independent crane companies. Thus, this failure is likely a failure of that crane company, not SpaceX directly.
» Read more

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Nozzle blows off of Northrop Grumman SLS solid rocket booster during static fire test

1:05 pm

During a static fire test of a new upgraded strap-on solid-fueled booster to be used on the second version of NASA’s SLS rocket, it appears the nozzle broke off near the end of the test.

I have embedded the video below.

This failure is not good for getting the upgraded version of SLS built, dubbed Block 2. Block 1 has flown once unmanned, and is planned for the next two manned missions. Block 2 would be for further manned missions beyond that. The Trump administration has proposed cancelling it, ending SLS after those two Block 1 flights. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has instead introduced a bill that would save it in order to fly two Block 2 SLS manned missions.

This failure is definitely going to delay and add cost to Block 2 development, a program that is already over budget many times over and a decade-plus behind schedule. These additional delays and cost overruns are not going to help it politically. It justifies the Trump administration’s desire to cancel it.

Moreover, this nozzle failure suggests a very fundamental design problem. Northrop Grumman, which built and was testing this booster, also builds the solid-fueled strap-on boosters used on ULA’s Vulcan rocket, which had a similar nozzle failure during Vulcan’s second launch in October last year. Both Northrop Grumman and ULA have said they had identified and fixed the cause of that failure, and the military has certified it for operational launches, but nonetheless Vulcan still remains sidelined, more than eight months later.

I suspect ULA is going to have to do more testing of the Northrop Grumman Vulcan side boosters before its next Vulcan launch, delaying that rocket further.
» Read more

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French startup Latitude to spend $9.3 million on building its French Guiana launch facility

9:52 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad.)

The French rocket startup Latitude has announced it will spend $9.3 million to build its own launchpad at the spaceport in French Guiana, where hopes to launch its Zephyr rocket in 2026.

In a 23 June update, Latitude confirmed the Guiana Space Centre as the launch site for the inaugural flight of its 19-metre-tall, two-stage Zephyr rocket, which is designed to deliver payloads of up to 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The site was one of two under consideration, with the company also having committed to developing launch infrastructure at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland. When that partnership was announced in March 2022, Latitude, then known as Venture Orbital Systems, aimed to carry out its first launch from SaxaVord in 2024.

Construction of the ELM-Diamant shared launch facility began in 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2026. According to Latitude’s 23 June update, the company will work with CNES and the European Space Agency in the coming months to implement its dedicated launch infrastructure at the site. This will be followed by the inaugural launch of its Zephyr rocket in 2026.

It is not clear exactly how that ELM-Diamant launch site will be shared. France’s space agency CNES (which operates French Guiana) had previously said it wanted all the new European rocket startups that wanted to launch from there to use a common launch infrastructure, thus requiring them to share technology as well as redesign their rockets to fit CNES’s requirements. The rocket startups objected, but it now appears two startups, Latitude and PLD, and come to an agreement of some sort.

This deal also suggests that Latitude is shifting away from using the Saxavord spaceport in the United Kingdom, possibly because it has seen the difficult regulatory hurdles required there and has decided French Guiana is a better option.

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Mexican president threatens action against SpaceX at Boca Chica

9:08 am

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, yesterday indicated that her government was considering taking legal action against SpaceX because of the debris from its Superheavy rocket that was found washed up on its beaches after a test launch.

Mexico’s government was studying which international laws were being violated in order to file “the necessary lawsuits” because “there is indeed contamination”, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference on Wednesday.

…Mexican officials are carrying out a “comprehensive review” of the environmental impacts of the rocket launches for the neighboring state of Tamaulipas, Sheinbaum said.

Other than this one quote, the article at the link is largely junk, focusing on the test stand explosion last week of Starship, an event that has nothing to do with the material found on Mexico’s beaches. Moreover, that debris was apparently so harmless Mexicans were able to quickly gather it for souvenirs, with some immediately making money from it by selling it on social media.

In other words, this “investigation” and this “reporting” is nothing more than anti-Musk rhetoric because Musk has aligned himself with Trump.

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Rocket Lab wins launch contract from the European Space Agency

9:09 am

The American rocket company Rocket Lab announced today that it has been awarded a launch contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to place two European-built GPS-type test satellites into orbit.

Rocket Lab will launch two “Pathfinder A” spacecraft for ESA, provided by European satellite prime contractors Thales Alenia Space and GMV, from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 no earlier than December 2025. The spacecraft will be deployed to a 510km low Earth orbit as part of a mission to test a new approach of providing location, direction, and timing services from satellites in low orbit – otherwise called LEO-PNT (Low Earth Orbit Positioning, Navigation, and Timing). ESA’s LEO-PNT demonstration mission will assess how a low Earth orbit fleet of satellites can work in combination with the Galileo and EGNOS constellations in higher orbits that provide Europe’s own global navigation system.

That ESA gave Rocket Lab this contract illustrates the failure of this government agency’s own commercial rocket division, Arianespace, as well as the slowly emerging new commercial rocket startups in Europe. ESA likely rejected Arianespace’s Ariane-6 and Vega-C rockets as too expensive. These rockets were also likely unable to meet the required launch time table. It also could not pick any independent private European companies, because none have yet to successfully launch.

And ESA did this even as top government officials in Europe have been loudly demanding that Europe only launch its satellites on European rockets. That demand might make a nice sound bite, but reality trumps nice sound bites every time.

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NASA sets another new date for Axiom’s Ax-4 commercial manned mission to ISS

9:21 am

NASA today announced a new launch date of June 25, 2025 for Axiom’s Ax-4 commercial manned mission to ISS carrying a three passengers from India, Poland, and Hungary respectively and commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (now working for Axiom).

As with previous announcements, the information provided was sparse:

NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are targeting 2:31 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, June 25, for launch of the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, Axiom Mission 4.

The mission will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will travel to the orbiting laboratory on a new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after launching on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. The targeted docking time is approximately 7 a.m. Thursday, June 26. NASA will provide more details and its coverage information shortly.

The launch had previously been delayed several times because NASA and Russia wanted to first assess the repair work on the leaks in the Russian Zvezda module before allowing another docking at the station. No information however has been released so far detailing that assessment. Though there have been indications that the loss of air in ISS was stopped by the repair, neither NASA nor Roscosmos have provided any specific data.

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Ispace: Resilience’s failure was due to a hardware issue in laser range finder

8:34 pm

In a press conference today, officials of the Japanese startup Ispace explained that the failure of its second lunar lander, Resilience, to land softly on the Moon on June 5, 2025 was due to a hardware issue in its laser range finder that prevented it from providing correct altitude data.

At the same time, they have not yet been able to pin down precisely what caused the failure. It could have been because of unexpected degradation during flight, or possibly a technical fault with the range finder in gathering data at the speeds and altitudes experienced.

The company is forming a task force in partnership with Japan’s space agency JAXA as well as NASA to try to figure out the issue. It is also going to add lidar instrumentation to future missions to provide a backup to the laser range finder. These actions will add about $11 million in additional costs, an amount Ispace says it can absorb.

Ispace is building two more lunar landers, one for NASA in partnership with the American company Draper, and the second for JAXA. It appears both missions are still moving forward.

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Parker completes its 24th close fly-by of the Sun

10:13 am

The Parker Solar Probe has successfully completed its 24th close fly-by of the Sun, the last of its initial primary mission, matching the distance and speed record set during two previous fly-bys.

Parker Solar Probe checked in with mission operators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland — where it was also designed and built — on Sunday, June 22, reporting that all systems are healthy and operating normally. The spacecraft was out of contact with Earth and operating autonomously during the close approach.

During this flyby, the spacecraft also equaled its record-setting speed of 430,000 miles per hour (687,000 km per hour) — a mark that, like the distance, was set and subsequently matched during close approaches on Dec. 24, 2024, and March 22, 2025.

The data obtained during this fly-by will be beamed back to Earth in the coming months, as Parker moves to the outer part of its orbit, farther from the Sun.

Though this completes the planned orbits of the mission’s primary mission, the proposed Trump budget continues to fund the spacecraft’s operation for the next five years, allowing it to monitor changes in the Sun as it ramps down from solar maximum to solar minimum.

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France’s space agency awards ArianeGroup contract to build methane-fueled engine

10:12 am

France’s space agency CNES this week awarded ArianeGroup, the rocket partnership between Airbus and Safran that builds the Ariane-6 rocket a contract to develop a more powerful methane-fueled rocket engine.

Aiming to reach between 200 and 300 tons of thrust, the new engine will be twice as powerful as the current Vulcain 2.1 main stage engine that propels Ariane 6.

No details about cost or time schedule were released.

The significance of this deal isn’t the engine, but that it was issued directly to ArianeGroup by France’s space agency, instead of through the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Arianespace commercial arm, as has been routine for the past three decades. The deal illustrates how the ESA is essentially beginning to break up. Rather than go through it, its individual nations are now going it alone, each providing support and funding to their own commercial private space startups. Germany began this process, encouraging the development of three new rocket companies (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, and Hyimpulse). Spain and Italy soon followed with their own new rocket companies, (PLD and Avio respectively). France, which until recently lobbied to keep the old government model alive in ESA, has in the past year shifted strongly to the capitalism model.

This contract only underscores this shift.

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Isaacman hints of future space plans

9:11 am

In receiving an award from a space advocacy group on June 21, 2025, billionaire Jared Isaacman hinted that his future space-related plans could include working with science organizations to finance scientific probes.

[Had he become NASA administrator he had wanted] NASA to partner with academic organizations on missions where such organizations would have had a bigger role in funding. “My priorities would have been leadership in space and the orbital economy,” he said, “and trying to introduce a concept where NASA could help enable others to conduct interesting scientific missions, getting academic organizations to contribute.”

That was something he said he might be interested in pursuing outside the agency. “I wouldn’t mind maybe trying to put that to a test and see if you could fund an interesting robotic mission, just to show that it can be done, and try and get some of the top tier academic institutions who want to perform. So that’s on my mind.”

He also indicated that he generally has no problem with the Trump administration’s proposed NASA cuts, noting that such academic organizations need to figure out how to work with less money.

Despite this statement, it appears he is still unsure of what he will do next in space. He has not restarted his Polaris Dawn manned program — suspended when he was nominated to become NASA administrator — and has said that right now he is more focused taking advantage of this unexpected break from work to spend more time with his family.

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ESA partners with French company to build space plane “demonstrator”

1:12 pm

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the French company Dassault Aviation yesterday announced a partnership for building a space plane “demonstrator” that will lay the groundwork for developing a family of such spacecraft dubbed Vortex.

The ESA press release is here. Both this release and the Dassault release linked to above provided little detailed information, other than the demonstrator will be a small scale suborbital testbed for eventually developing the full scale orbital vehicle. Neither a budget nor time schedule were even hinted at.

ESA has funded a number of these demonstrators in the past decade — Themis and Calisto come to mind — all of which are behind schedule and have as yet not flown. It will be interesting to see if this project fares better, as it seems it is being led by a single commercial company rather than the government run mishmashes of the other projects.

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France government invests big in Eutelsat-OneWeb

10:59 am

According to the satellite company Eutelsat-OneWeb, the French government has now committed more than a billion dollars in investment capital to the company, doubling its stake to almost 30%.

France would more than double its stake in Eutelsat to nearly 30% as part of a $1.56 billion capital raise backed by multiple shareholders, bolstering the French operator’s plans to refresh its OneWeb constellation amid Starlink’s growing dominance.

The funds would be raised in two parts before the end of the year, Eutelsat announced June 19, a day after the French military agreed to buy OneWeb services over 10 years in a deal potentially worth up to one billion euros ($1.15 billion).

OneWeb itself almost went bankrupt until it was saved by cash from a major Indian investor and the government of the United Kingdom. This new deal means that the merged company is largely controlled by France, the UK, and India.

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Chinese pseudo-company Landspace completes static fire test of 1st stage of its Zhuque-3 reusable rocket

10:12 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Landspace today successfully completed a static fire test of 1st stage of its Zhuque-3 reusable rocket, firing all nine engines for 45 seconds.

This lays the groundwork for the first launch attempt of this rocket.

The first Zhuque-3 orbital launch attempt was earlier slated for the third quarter of the year and would carry a prototype of the reusable Haolong cargo spacecraft, designed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute under the Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC). The test is part of a program for low-cost cargo delivery to the Tiangong space station. Landspace did not provide a timeframe for the launch in its static fire test statement.

It appears increasingly that three different Chinese pseudo-companies are getting close to launching reusable rockets within the next year or so. In addition to Landspace, there is CAS-Space (the rocket division of a government agency) and Space Pioneer. In addition, there five other pseudo-companies doing similar rocket hop tests. All are working under the supervision of the government, which requires them to share data.

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India transfers ownership of SSLV rocket from space agency to government-owned private aerospace company

9:55 am

Capitalism in space: As part of the Modi government’s effort to switch its space industry from something owned and run entirely by its space agency ISRO, it has now awarded the ownership and control of ISRO’s newest and smallest rocket, the SSLV, to the aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

The company paid about $60 million for the purchase, and the right to build, market and launch it. It hopes to build between 6 to 10 rockets per year, depending on launch demand.

This transfer is not as radical as it appears. Though HAL operates mostly as an independent aerospace company, it is still owned by the government with its board of directors appointed by the president of India. The rocket will thus still be owned and controlled by the government, not a private company.

At the same time, this deal acts to shift power away from the space agency ISRO, which I suspect is the plan: Divvy up ISRO’s assets, which will eventually make it harder for it to block independent operations by private companies. As part of that program, the government has also transferred construction of the larger PSLV rocket from ISRO to a consortium of companies.

Whether this shift can create an independent and competitive rocket industry in India is very unclear. In many ways the country’s strategy so far mimics more China’s pseudo-company approach (where the companies raise investment capital, compete for government and commercial contracts, but are always under the full control and supervision of the government) then it does America’s free enterprise system (where ownership and control resides entirely with the companies, and the government only buys the services it needs from them).

The American model is by far the most successful in encouraging innovation and competition for the least cost. The Chinese model produces some results for less cost, but relatively little innovation. Instead, it copies what Americans do.

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China launches communications satellite

9:20 am

China today successfully launched a communications satellite, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

As is usual for its state-run press, no information was provided about the satellite or where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

76 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 76 to 57.

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NASA delays Axiom manned mission again

9:11 am

Without providing any specific details, NASA today announced that it has once again scrubbed the June 22, 2025 launch of Axiom’s Ax-4 manned mission to ISS as it assesses the Russian repairs to the air leaks in the Russian Zvezda module.

The space agency needs additional time to continue evaluating International Space Station operations after recent repair work in the aft (back) most segment of the orbital laboratory’s Zvezda service module. Because of the space station’s interconnected and interdependent systems, NASA wants to ensure the station is ready for additional crew members, and the agency is taking the time necessary to review data.

No new launch date has been set. Because the agency provides so little specific information, we don’t know if the air leak repairs are working, are failing, or have indicated even more serious problems that make any station docking a greater risk. Almost certainly, this latter fear is unfounded and the repairs have succeeded in stopping or slowing the loss of air, but the paucity of information from NASA allows for wild speculations. It would be better if the agency told us what it has so far learned, and exactly why that knowledge requires it to extend the data-gathering time period.

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Ground-based imagery now suggests China has completed a docking and undocking of two robotic servicing satellites

10:28 am

According to ground-based imagery by the commercial company S2A, China’s Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 robotic servicing satellites appear to have completed a docking and undocking on June 13 and June 14, 2025.

China’s Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites had been moving toward each other in geosynchronous orbit, around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above the equator, Spacenews reported on June 6. And now the pair appear to have had a brief first encounter, according to observations from the ground.

Optical tracking by the space situational awareness firm s2a systems shows a close approach between the two on June 14, with the pair, at times, virtually unresolvable from the other. This suggests that Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 made at least a test-run close approach and may have even performed a docking and undocking test.

You can see video of the first apparent docking here.

Shijian-21 was launched in 2021, and was used to grab a defunct Chinese geosynchronous satellite and tug it to a graveyard orbit. Shijian-25 was launched in January 2025 to test robotic servicing of satellites. These maneuvers with Shijian-21 appear to be part of those tests.

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Monaco-based startup unveils its proposed European-built lunar rover

10:17 am

Capitalism in space: The Monaco-based startup Venturi Space, this week unveiled its own proposed European-built lunar rover, dubbed Mona Luna. and offered it to both the European Space Agency (ESA) and France’s CNES space agency.

Venturi has received some support from ESA for key technologies needed for the rover. The company is hoping to win support for a rover development project at ESA’s ministerial conference in late November, when member states will decide on funding for agency programs for the next three years. Antonio Delfino, Venturi’s director of space affairs] argued a rover like Mona Luna fit a gap in Europe’s exploration plans. Mona Lisa is designed to be delivered to the lunar surface on ESA’s Argonaut lander, which would launch on an Ariane 64.

The company has said it is willing to commit some of its own investment capital to develop the rover, should either ESA or CNES decide to buy it. Whether ESA or CNES agree to build this rover however will likely depend on whether either has a program to land on the Moon. At the moment the status of NASA’s Artemis program is unclear, and it was that program that Europe was relying on to get to the Moon.

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Russia launches classified military satellite using its Angara-5 rocket

9:50 am

Russia today successfully launched a classified military satellite, its Angara-5 rocket rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeastern Russia.

This was the fifth flight of the Angara-5 rocket, the most powerful version in the Angara family of rockets that Russia first proposed three decades ago to replace its older rockets and has had an extremely slow development history. Its core stage and four strap-on boosters crashed in drop-zones across Russia,

On June 9, 2025, the administration of the Kolpashevo District in the Tomsk Region of Russia declared several communities at risk of debris impact during an Angara-5 launch scheduled around 06:00 Moscow Time on June 19, 2025. The danger area covered the Verkneketsky, Kolpashevsky, Kargasoksky and Parabelsky Districts and was located around 65 kilometers north-west of Lake Tresh. This particular area, located around 2,320 kilometers downrange from Plesetsk, would normally be used as a drop zone for the second stage of an Angara rocket heading to an orbit with an inclination 63.4 degrees toward the Equator.

The rocket’s first stage boosters were expected to fall in the Komi Republic around 850 kilometers downrange, while the third stage would splash down in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines, where the Russian authorities also declared a danger zone.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

76 SpaceX
34 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 76 to 56.

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France’s space agency agrees to let Spanish rocket startup PLD establish its own launch site at French Guiana

12:38 pm

Though France’s space agency CNES had initially attempted to place many rules and restrictions on the commercial operations of new independent private rocket companies at its spaceport in French Guiana, it has now backed off those demands in agreeing to let the Spanish rocket startup PLD establish its own launch site there at the decommissioned launchpad used by France’s Diament rocket in the 1970s.

This new contract greenlights the implementation of the infrastructure project designed by PLD Space with technical support from CNES and grants legal use of land in the ELM-Diamant area, where the MIURA 5 Preparation Zone and Launch Zone will be located. Construction will begin with the start of the dry season in French Guiana, expected in the summer months of 2025.

In September 2024 CNES said it wished to standardize the launch site for the seven different European rocket startups (Avio, HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude) it had approved to use it. At the time I sensed there was opposition from these companies to this policy, since each rocket was different and would not function with this standardized design.

At a minimum that policy apparently delayed PLD’s plans, as it originally hoped to start its launchpad construction in October 2024 and launch in 2025. That schedule went by the wayside.

It now appears PLD will proceed with development as it wishes, for its rocket, and the others will have to figure out how fit their rockets to that design. Or maybe CNES is going to open up further sites at French Guiana to avoid this conflict.

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