Tag: Russia

Russia will charge about $27 million for future tourist flights

9:26 am

According to Dmitry Bakanov, head of Roscosmos, it will likely charge about two billion rubles, about $27 million, to fly tourists in space in the future.

The cost of a space tourist trip will be approximately 2 billion rubles, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov said in an interview with VK Video on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “It’s still an expensive project. The costs include the rocket divided by the number of participants. There must be two professionals, because they can guide it, so it’s about two billion rubles,” Bakanov noted.

The report of his remarks in Russia’s state-run press is not entirely clear as to whether this number is the price per tourist, the price for the entire flight, or Roscosmos’ cost for the flight, excluding its mark-up. Assuming it is the price for the entire flight, it is about a quarter of what Russia was charging NASA during the last few ferrying trips to ISS before SpaceX’s Dragon capsules became operational. This makes sense, since Russia was milking NASA for as much as it could get during those last flights. Future private tourists won’t have as much money as a spend-thrift government, so Roscosmos is now forced to charge a realistic price.

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NASA astronauts ordered to shelter in Dragon while Russians repair air leak

8:53 am

For somewhat unclear reasons that seem at first glance to be an over-reaction, NASA officials today ordered all five non-Russian astronauts on ISS to shelter in the Dragon capsule docked there while the two Russian astronauts did repair work on the new air leak in the Zvezda module on the Russian half of the station.

Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5. Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has directed all four of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-12 members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture in the Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway.

As it turned out, the Russians only did “measurements” today, no actual repairs, and so NASA then canceled its “shelter in place” order.

This new air leak, first detected in May, has been estimated to be equivalent to the loss of about one pound of air per day, which is relative low compared to the loss rates seen from 2019 through 2025, as shown in the lower right corner of the graphic below, taken from a 2024 inspector general report. In late 2025 the Russians were able to stop those leaks, only to have this new one return last month.
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time.

Unless the Russians planned some radical repair plan (unlikely), sheltering in Dragon seems overkill. For several years NASA’s policy has been to simply close the hatch between the American and Russian sections of ISS during dockings to Zvezda. It likely also did this during earlier repair work. For the agency to now escalate its safety precautions suggests either the repair work was more risky, or NASA administrator Jared Isaacman wanted to make a political and engineering point that would be noticed by the mainsteam press.

If the latter, Isaacman got what he wanted, as there have been numerous stories today from many mainstream outlets, with some misreporting the story as if the leak was suddenly new and required an emergency evacution (see here, here, here, and here).

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Zvezda module on ISS is leaking once again

8:51 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Multiple Russian, Chinese, and American satellites in maneuvering dance in orbit

9:41 am

Three different articles in the aerospace media today document multiple maneuvers by multiple military satellites from Russia, China, and America, either doing proximity operations near each other or moving close to another country’s satellites to spy on them.

This article in space.com describes the rendezvous operations of Russia’s Cosmos 2581, 2582, and 2583.

The satellites, known as COSMOS 2581 and COSMOS 2583, got within just 10 feet (3 meters) or so of each other on April 28, according to COMSPOC, a Pennsylvania-based space situational awareness software company. “This wasn’t a coincidental pass — COSMOS 2583 performed several fine maneuvers to maintain this tight configuration,” COMSPOC wrote in a May 1 post on X, which featured an animation of the rendezvous.

The two satellites and a third one, COSMOS 2582, launched to low Earth orbit in February 2025 atop a Soyuz rocket. According to COMSPOC, all three of them were involved in the recent rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), as was “Object F,” a subsatellite previously deployed by COSMOS 2583.

Then russianspaceweb.com had two different articles describing different similar operations. First, a set of satellites launched in February 2026 appeared to be testing operations in very low orbit, illegally transmitting data using frequencies that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) allocates for amateur radio operations.

Finally, the website reported a complex dance between Russian, American, and Chinese satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

Almost immediately after entering the geostationary orbit, Kosmos-2589 was “approached” by a presumed American inspector satellite, officially known as USA-325. On April 19, 2026, the US satellite, itself drifting eastward relative to the geostationary position and the Earth’s surface, seemingly overshot Kosmos-2589, but once the Russian satellite stabilized at 98 East longitude, USA-325 stopped and returned. By around April 28, 2026, … one approach under favorable lighting conditions for the “inspector” was within 13 kilometers from Kosmos-2589, according to a team of observers from Exton, PA, cited by COMSPOC.

In turn … Kosmos-2589 essentially occupied a position registered by China under designation CHNSAT-98E, with three Chinese commercial and military satellites deployed in relative vicinity of that location.

… Moreover, in April 2026, China’s presumed inspector satellite — TJS-10 — pre-positioned itself at 92.4 degrees East longitude after an easterly drift, which would put it on a rendezvous course with Kosmos-2589 at 98.0 East longitude. Instead, the Chinese satellite stopped its drift with a maneuver on May 1, 2026, which “fixed” it in a geostationary orbit at 92.4 degrees East longitude, in the vicinity of the US AEHF military satellite, which carries high-security communications of the US military and its allies.

With this last story, we have this almost absurd situation: The U.S. satellites are spying on Russian satellites, which are spying on Chinese satellites, which are spying on American satellites.

All this maneuvering however indicates once again that the ability of commercial satellites to rendezvous with other objects — either to de-orbit space junk or repair damaged satellites — is only going to get better. The military might control these capabilities now, under a veil of secrecy, but such capabilities always leak out into the private sector shortly thereafter.

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Russia arrests Angara contractor for fraud

9:17 am

Fraud is a given when it comes to government operations, whether in the U.S. or Russia. A contractor doing work on the production facilities for Russia’s new Angara rocket has now been arrested for stealing more than $7 million.

In May 2026, Gazeta.ru, citing regional courts, reported an arrest of Dmitry Zolotarev, the Director General at OOO RST Genpodryad, which was involved in renovations and upgrades of facilities for serial production of Angara rockets at PO Polyot under a contract with GKNPTs Khrunichev.

Zolotarev and his accomplices were accused of stealing 545 million rubles (approximately $7.3 million) during a period from 2022 to 2025, by submitting the Federal treasury agency in Moscow forged documents with an inflated purchase price of overhead cranes and pocketing the difference. According to Gazeta.ru, Zolotarev was suspected of other similar schemes and faced 10 years in prison if convicted.

Government routinely does a bad job in monitoring its spending, which thus creates an easy temptation for others to put their hands in the cookie jar and take what’s not theirs. We can see this same thing occurring now in the U.S. with many so-called “safety net” programs. Since Russia’s entire aerospace industry is government controlled, this kind of corruption therefore happens frequently within it.

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Russia completes 1st test, suborbital, of its new Soyuz-5 rocket

8:21 am

According to Russia’s state-run press, it successfully completed the first suborbital test flight of its new Soyuz-5 rocket, the rocket lifting off from Baikonur in Kazahkstan on April 28, 2026 carrying a dummy payload.

A special launch was conducted today as Soyuz-5, a new Russian carrier rocket with the world’s most powerful liquid-fuel engine, blasted off. <...> Operating the rocket will make it possible to substantially reduce the unit cost of the payload capacity. This will have a positive impact on the economics of space launches,” the Russian state-owned space corporation quoted its CEO Dmitry Bakanov as saying.

The rocket will eventually be able to place about 17 tons in low Earth orbit, making it more powerful than the Soyuz-2 — now used to launch capsules and satellites — but less powerful than Russia’s Proton rocket, used to launch station modules and other more demanding missions.

Soyuz-5 however is not reusable, so it will remain more expensive to use that the new rockets being developed everywhere else outside Russia. Like all of Russia’s rockets, stages will continue to fall inside Russia with each launch. In this case, the first stage and fairings crashed somewhere in Russia, while the second stage splashed down in the Pacific.

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Two launches today, by China and Russia

3:30 pm

Both China and Russia completed launches today. First China put a Pakistani Earth observation satellite into orbit, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in north China. China’s state-run press made no mention of where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

Next Russia launched a Progress cargo capsule to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The freighter will dock with ISS in two days.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

49 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 49 to 42.

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Soyuz launch site destroyed at French Guiana

9:56 am

As promised, the Soyuz-2 launch site at France’s French Guiana spaceport was destroyed in a controlled explosion yesterday.

I have embedded video of the explosion below.

The remaining infrastructure at the site—including the assembly and testing complex, railway lines, liquid oxygen storage facilities, and fueling systems—will be transferred to MaiaSpace, a French startup affiliated with Arianespace. The company plans to reuse up to 80% of the existing infrastructure for its own launch vehicle program.

MaiaSpace is not “affliated with Arianespace.” It is a wholly owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, the company that makes the much larger rocket Ariane-6. The company hopes MaiaSpace’s smaller Maia rocket can capture some of the smallsat business presently owned by Rocket Lab and SpaceX.

The Russians had almost a dozen launches scheduled from this launchpad, worth more than a billion dollars in revenue, when Putin decided to invade the Ukraine in 2022. Russia immediately became a pariah to the rest of the work. That revenue instantly vanished and the companies found other launch providers.

Europe meanwhile gave control of French Guiana back to France, which owns it. France in turn has now been leasing out the unused launchpads there to new rocket startups. Though some pie-in-the-sky academics lobbied to preserve the Soyuz launchpad for “historical reasons”, the French had no desire to do so. Better to make money.
» Read more

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Russia launches the smallest version of its Angara rocket

9:34 am

Russia today successfully launched the smallest version of its Angara rocket, dubbed Angara-1.2, from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia, placing a number of classified payloads into orbit.

Russia’s state-run press released almost no information about this launch, partly because of its military nature but also because it has discovered recently that the Plesetsk spaceport is within range of Ukrainian drones, with one attack causing a launch to be scrubbed.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

49 SpaceX
21 China
7 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 49 to 39.

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Two launches since yesterday, by Russia and China

8:26 am

The launch beat goes on! Russia and China each completed launches since yesterday, with Russia first placing a classified military payload involving “multiple spacecraft”, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia. The rocket’s flight path took it over the Arctic, so the core stage and four strap-on boosters fell harmlessly in the ocean.

Next, China placed what it claimed was a “high-precision greenhouse gas detection” satellite into orbit, its Long March 4C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. China’s state-run press provided no other information. Nor did it indicate where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

46 SpaceX
21 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 46 to 37.

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Latvia to sign Artemis Accords

3:27 pm

NASA announced today that Latvia will be signing on to the Artemis Accords on April 20, 2026, becoming the 62nd nation to join this American alliance in space.

The Republic of Latvia will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 9 a.m. EDT Monday, April 20, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host Dace Melbārde, Latvia’s minister for education and science; Jānis Beķeris, chargé d’affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia to the United States; and Jacob Helberg, under secretary of state for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

With this signing, all three of the Baltic states that were once occupied and part of the Soviet Union have now joined this American alliance. So have the former Soviet provinces of the Ukraine and Armenia, as well as the nations of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia, all of which were once part of the Soviet Bloc, behind the Iron Curtain. In fact, almost all of Russia’s neighbors in Europe have allied themselves with the U.S. Artemis space alliance. It does appear that Putin’s stupid effort to recapture the Ukraine has backfired badly, encouraging these nations to come to us out of fear of the aggressive tyrant on their borders. These nations also probably recognize that Russia’s space effort is a Potemkin Village, hollow and of little worth. If they want to go to space, they need to align themselves with American technology.

The full list of all signatories to this American space alliance:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

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Russia’s latest plans for its post-ISS space station

8:12 am

The present Russian plans to transition from ISS to its Russian Orbital Station
Click for full resolution image.

Anatoly Zak yesterday posted the picture to the right, showing a presentation by Russian officials of Roscosmos’ latest plans for its transition from ISS to their own Russian Orbital Station (ROS). Though it is in Russian, I think I can glean from it some significant take-aways about Russia’s future space plans.

First, if these plans proceed as planned (doubtful based on Russia’s track record in the past three decades), at some point in the next four years they will attach a new module to ISS, docking with the Prichal docking hub, launched in 2021. Then in 2030 they will undock this new module as well as Prichal and the Nauka module, which also launched in 2021, and use these three modules as the core of their new station.

That 2030 date is significant, as it is an admission by Russia that it intends to stay with ISS until then. Up till now Roscosmos has only committed to ISS through 2028, even though NASA and its partners at ESA and Japan have set 2030 as ISS’s present retirement date.

Second, they plan to add more modules to this core station, beginning in 2031, and by 2034 to have completed a four-module cross-shaped station with Prichal as the central hub. That completion date is one year later than the timeline Russia announced in 2024, when it claimed ROS would be completed in 2033. That 2024 timeline also said ROS’s first module would be launched in 2027, but the graphic to the right no longer gives any date for that launch. I suspect 2027 is extremely unlikely.

Finally, don’t expect the new modules promised in the 2031-2034 timeframe to launch on schedule either. As I note above, all Russian space projects in this century have routinely been delayed repeatedly, with most never launching at all.

This plan also makes no mention of an agreement with India in December 2025 to coordinate the construction of its station with Russia’s, flying both in the same inclination presently used by ISS. This is not really a surprise, as both projects will operate independently, so that delays in one do not impact the other.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Russia launches classified military payload; China has a launch failure

9:11 am

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

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

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

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

41 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

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

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

8:46 am

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

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

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

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

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

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Progress docks with ISS

8:25 am

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

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

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

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Three launches today from three continents and three nations

2:59 pm

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

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

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

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

Sources here and here.

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

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

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

37 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

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

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SpaceX completes a Starlink launch

2:14 pm

UPDATE: It appears The Russian launch described below did not occur as indicated by the story I linked to. There is no confirmation anywhere on the web that the launch occurred. If it had, the nature of the payload would have guaranteed some story in Russia’s state-run press. See also this X post, which suggests the lack of information about the scrub is related to Russian concerns about Ukrainian drone attacks.

Original post
———————-
There were two launches today, both of which sent up a cluster of satellites for broadband internet constellations.

First, Russia launched the first 16 satellites in its proposed 700+ satellite Russvet internet constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia. The satellites are built by the Russian company Bureau-1440, which hopes to have the entire constellation in orbit by 2035. Considering that this constellation is designed to compete with Starlink, its pace of launch is ridiculously low. SpaceX can generally launch 700 Starlink satellites in about a month, not ten years. By the time Russia gets this constellation in orbit it will be woefully obsolete.

SpaceX meanwhile proved this point today by continuing its brisk pace in Starlink launches. It successfully placed 29 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage (B1077) completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 26 days after its previous flight. This flight also moved the booster up to just behind the space shuttle Columbia in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

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

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

35 SpaceX
12 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia (corrected)

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

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Russia completes repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur

8:47 am

According to Roscosmos, it has completed the repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur, and will do launch a Progress freighter to ISS on March 22, 2026.

According to the State Corporation, a total of 150 workers from four contractor organizations prepared and painted 2,350 square meters of structures, replaced all the attachment devices, replaced and tuned up electric equipment and inspected or serviced all the systems and mechanisms of the service platform. The team also made 250 welding lines.

The most complex task was the installation of the platform elements, some of which had a length of 19 meters and mass of 17 tons, which required a development of special methodic, Roskosmos said.

The State Corporation confirmed that the first mission departing from the repaired launch pad at Site 31 was scheduled for March 22, 2026, carrying the Progress MS-33 cargo ship to the ISS.

For Russia, this repair was completed remarkably fast. But then, the Russians generally get things done fast when it is absolutely essential to do so. Without that pad, Russia had no way to launch any astronauts in space. Nor could it send supplies to ISS. A delay would have been very public and embarrassing.

If there is no immediate need, however, its projects drag on endlessly.

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Cargo Dragon successfully returns to Earth

11:49 am

A cargo Dragon capsule successfully splashed down in the Pacific late Thursday, February 26, 2026, bringing back several thousand pounds of hardware and experiments.

The ship had been docked at ISS for the past six months, during which it used its engines six different times to raise the station’s orbit. That capability has traditionally been done by Russian Progress freighters, but NASA has been testing other options as they are unsure Russia will remain with the station after 2028. Furthermore, there are risks using Progress to do these reboosts, as the burns take place when Progress is docked to its Zvezda module port, and the hull of the Zvezda module has been developing stress fractures in the past five years that could catastrophically fail.

Not only has Dragon now demonstrated this boost capability, so has Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule.

I strongly expect Russia to stick with ISS for as long as it can, mainly because its own proposed new space station is not likely to launch as presently scheduled later this decade. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Roscosmos has consistently been unable to complete almost any new proposed projects, and the few it has completed launched literally decades late.

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time. The leaks in Zvezda now appear to have been sealed, but there is no guarantee more stress fractures will not appear as dockings continue at its port.

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Four launches today with mostly positive results

10:15 am

This morning saw a string of launches from China, Russia, America, and Europe, with all four appearing to get their payloads into orbit though the American launch, by ULA’s Vulcan rocket, appeared to have a problem with one of its solid-fueled boosters.

First, a Chinese pseudo-company owned entirely by a Chinese government agency successfully placed seven satellites in orbit, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket (also called Jielong-3) lifting off from a platform off the coast of northeast China. Of the satellites, the prime payload was a Pakistani Earth observation satellite.

Though this launch was from a pseudo-company, I think I can safely say that the pause in launches by China’s so-called commercial market continues. Smart Dragon-3 was built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), which while structured as a private company is owned and controlled by several agencies of the Chinese government.

Next, Russia successfully launched a new weather satellite, its Proton rocket launching from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. This was the first Proton launch in three years, a pause partly because Russia is in the process of retiring that rocket. The lower stages crashed in a range of spots in Kazakhstan and across southern Russia, just missing China in two places.

The American company ULA then followed with its first launch in 2026, its Vulcan rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida and carrying two military satellites designed to track other satellite operations in high geosynchronous orbit.

Unexpected debris falling from rocket at about T-1:00
Unexpected debris falling from rocket at about T-1:00

While it appears the launch was able to get the satellites into their correct orbits, the Vulcan rocket had an issue during the launch. According to ULA, one of the rocket’s four solid-fueled boosters had a problem during its flight. More details can be found here, suggesting the booster, built by Northrop Grumman, might have had a been a failure of the booster’s nozzle, similar to the same burn-through that occurred on a booster during Vulcan’s second launch in 2024, and also occurred during a Northrop Grumman static fire test in 2025.

This issue is likely going to delay further Vulcan launches, and will likely make it impossible for ULA to meet its goal of launching 16 to 18 Vulcan missions this year. It will also raise hackles within the Pentagon, which certified Vulcan for military launches in 2025. That certification will likely be questioned, and possibly even pulled.

Finally, Arianespace sent 32 Leo satellites into orbit for Amazon, its Ariane-6 rocket lifting off from French Guiana. This was the first Ariane-6 launch in its most powerful variant, using four strap-on boosters.

Amazon has now launched 212 Leo satellites. Its FCC license however requires it to have 1,616 in orbit by July. The company has requested a waiver on that requirement, and is likely to get it, since it is now demonstrating that it is serious about launching the constellation.

The 2026 launch race:

16 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

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