Tag: spaceflight

NASA outlines new program of unmanned missions to Moon

2:15 pm

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

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

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

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

Leave a comment

Colorful Martian dunes

12:00 pm

Colorful Martian dunes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 15, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels the image a “dune field.” What struck me immediately however was the vast range of colors, something that is usually not seen on Mars. Within a very short distance we go from bright orange to dark blue, with the change sometimes exceedingly sharp.

The orange is likely coarser rocks or bedrock, while the dark blue patches are likely piles of sand that has piled up due to prevailing winds. Why the dunes on the upper plateau change from bright orange to dark blue however is an unknown.

And why the patches of dust remain undefined is also a mystery. Dust on Mars is generally organized into dunes by the wind. It isn’t here.
» Read more

Leave a comment

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

10:06 am

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a comment

Redwire completes testing on robot arm prototype for ESA

9:45 am

The European division of the American space manufacturing company Redwire last week delivered to the European Space Agency (ESA) a full developed and tested robot arm prototype, as per a 2024 contract.

The project is being led by Redwire’s Luxembourg team, which recently completed several project milestones including preliminary design and performance assessment.

Before successful delivery, the MANUS Breadboard Model underwent a comprehensive test campaign to verify the functionality and performance of the manipulator and tool-changer subsystems, and to demonstrate operational scenarios aligned with system requirements. All planned operations, including payload handling, end-effector actuation with wireless data and power transfer, range extender manipulation, and automatic deployment, were executed successfully, confirming overall system readiness. Functional testing validated safe and reliable mechanical performance, demonstrating strong joint-space accuracy and stable interaction among subsystems.

The arm is intended for ESA’s Argonaut lunar lander, allowing it to unload cargo from the lander to the lunar surface. ESA’s 2024 development contract was issued to both Redwire and the Polish company PIAP. PIAP however has not even built the actual prototype. It appears ESA is now moving forward on the full contract phase for the entire rover, and it appears Redwire’s Luxembourg division is in the best position to win the robot arm contract portion.

Not surprisingly, Redwire’s stock surged by 24% following this announcement.

Leave a comment

Voyager wins $16.5 million DARPA contract to give solid-fueled rockets variable thrust

9:29 am

The space station startup Voyager Technologies announced today that DARPA has awarded it a $16.5 million contract to develop a technology for use by all solid-fueled rocket manufacturers that will allow those rockets to have variable thrust while firing.

Until now, once you light a solid-fueled rocket motor (SRM) it works like a firecracker, burning at the same high thrust until it runs out of fuel. The goal is to introduce ways to change that thrust along the way, if need be.

During the 20-month contract, Voyager will combine its expertise with complex system modeling and controls with the propellant and manufacturing specialized to develop and validate proof-of-concept systems, culminating in tailorable SRM hot-fire demonstrations.

The program also focuses on manufacturing scalability and post-manufacturing control architectures, including the integration of structural health monitoring systems to support real-time health monitoring and performance. These activities are intended to prepare the technology for rapid industrial transition across multiple weapon systems, enabling flexible weapons procurement and large-scale production and stockpiling.

The vagueness in this description likely comes from two reasons. First, the technology is likely difficult and still uncertain. Two, when developed this technology is certainly going to be classified, since solid-fueled rockets are used extensively by the War Department in missiles. It will be made available to multiple American manufacturers, but only to them.

Whether this technology can become operational in less than two years remains a large question. We shall see. Nonetheless, as a company Voyager continues to expand its reach, diversifying its effort beyond its Starlab space station.

11 comments

SpaceX launches another 24 Starlink satellites

9:11 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched 24 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its sixth flight (32 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

62 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 62 to 52.

One comment

An outcrop of many parallel layers on Mars

1:52 pm

An outcrop of many parallel layers on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 11, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture has been rotated so that north is to the top.

The science team describes this feature as “dark linear ridges.” Apparently the ground at this location at some point in the past tilted upward, exposing these layers and creating this 250 to 400 foot high escarpment facing south. What makes this even more intriguing is the ground was only uplifted in this one area. If you look at the full image you will see that the surrounding terrain is flat and relatively featureless.

The location is in the high southern latitudes in the Martian cratered highlands. Thus, it is likely that there is some near surface ice in these layers, and in fact the many Martian climate cycles produced by the wide swings in the planet’s rotational tilt likely contributed to making the layers themselves.
» Read more

2 comments

The geology of the Moon’s far side, revealed in pictures taken during Artemis-2

9:04 am

A sample of Andrew McCarthy's work
A sample of Andrew McCarthy’s work. Click for original.

When Artemis-2 commander Reid Wiseman took pictures as his Orion capsule swung around the far side of the Moon, he did so as per the instructions of astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, thus producing enhanced-color photographs capable of distinguishing the lunar geology with more detail.

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy is known for turning the moon into something it decidedly isn’t to the naked eye; a colorful, mineral-rich landscape that looks more like a geological survey than the grey orb hanging in the night sky. His technique relies on stacking hundreds or thousands of images together to suppress noise and amplify the subtle spectroscopic differences between different surface materials. The result is both scientifically accurate and visually arresting.
Linking up with Artemis

As Space.com details, just weeks before the Artemis II launch window, McCarthy DM’d mission commander and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman with a proposal: could Wiseman shoot the moon the same way McCarthy shoots the moon? It turns out he could. “He was immediately onboard,” McCarthy said. “It was a dream come true, obviously, for me, but I saw it as this very unique opportunity.”

McCarthy worked up a plan alongside Wiseman and NASA’s lunar photography team, the same group that had trained the Orion crew on their camera kit. As regular readers will already know, the primary workhorse was a Nikon D5 DSLR paired with an 80–400 mm Nikkor lens, a decade-old body chosen specifically for its exceptional high-ISO performance. Wiseman shot burst sequences at varying exposures throughout the flyby, generating a dataset McCarthy could stack back on Earth.

The picture to the right is a small sample of McCarthy’s work.

Hat tip to reader Ferris Akel.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:38 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully 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 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, 64 days after its previous flight. With this flight, the booster moves into a tie for seventh place with the Columbia shuttle and another Falcon 9 booster in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

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

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

61 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 61 to 52.

3 comments

NASA practically eliminates any Starliner flights before ISS retires

10:11 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS in 2024.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24 comments

China launches three astronauts to its Tiangong-3 space station

9:21 am

China today successfully launched three astronauts to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

The Shenzhou capsule docked with the station 3.5 hours after launch. The overall mission is planned as a standard six-month mission, though depending on how the crew fare one will continue and attempt to complete a yearlong mission.

China’s state-run press provided no information on where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters (using extremely toxic hypergolic fuels) crashed inside China. That press however made a big deal about how one of the astronauts comes from Hong Kong, no longer free and now under the full thumb of the communist government.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

60 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 60 to 52.

Leave a comment

FAA clears New Glenn for launch

12:18 pm

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) yesterday approved the results of Blue Origin’s investigation into the failure of the upper stage of the company’s New Glenn rocket to reach orbit on the rocket’s third launch in April 2026.

The Blue Origin tweet announcing this FAA decision provided little information, saying only this:

The FAA has approved our NG-3 report, and corrective measures have been implemented. Prior to our second GS2 [upper stage] burn, we experienced an off-nominal thermal condition, and, as a result, one of the BE-3U engines didn’t achieve full thrust to reach our target orbit.

Blue Origin says it is preparing for the next New Glenn launch, but provided no information about when. The company is under heavy pressure to up its launch rate, which compared to SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and ULA appears almost pitiful in its slowness. It had had a contract with Amazon to do 27 Leo satellite launches, but that total has been reduced to 24 due to the lack of launches. It is also unable to do any military launches until it flies New Glenn successfully four more times.

Getting New Glenn off the ground successfully and quickly is becoming critical for the company.

10 comments

One of the three Chinese astronauts to launch this weekend will do a yearlong mission

12:02 pm

The Tiangong-3 station, as presently configured
The Tiangong-3 station, as presently configured,
with two Shenzou capsules docked to its main hub.

Though the decision won’t be made as to who until the mission is ongoing, one of the three Chinese astronauts scheduled to launch this weekend to China’s Tiangong-3 space station will do a yearlong mission, rather than the standard six month missions that they have been doing since the station became operational.

Chinese astronauts Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan and Li Jiaying (or Lai Ka-ying in Cantonese) will carry out the Shenzhou-23 crewed spaceflight mission. The astronaut selected for the year-long stay will be determined based on how the mission unfolds in orbit, CMSA spokesperson Zhang Jingbo said at a press conference.

During the year-long residency, China will implement its first space-based human body research program to collect crucial data on astronaut exposed to long-duration spaceflight environments, Zhang noted.

I guarantee this is the preliminary to a longer mission that will break the 14.5 month record set by Valeri Polykov on Russia’s Mir station in 1994-95. China’s station program is solid and robust, and even includes plans to double the size of Tiangong-3 in the coming years. There will be nothing preventing them from doing missions even longer, from two to three years, as they develop the knowledge for interplanetary travel.

10 comments

SpaceX completes a largely successful 12th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

4:41 pm

Starship and Superheavy in flight

SpaceX today successfully completed its 12th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy, with Superheavy lifting off and getting Starship into its preliminary flight path and Starship then firing its engines and getting into a workable orbit that naturally decayed over the Indian Ocean.

There were issues with several Raptor-3 engines, being used in flight on both Superheavy and Starship for the first time. During launch one Superheavy Raptor-3 engines cut off prematurely, forcing the other 32 engines to compensate for the loss. Then, after stage separation (shown in the screen capture to the right) Superheavy’s boost back burn cut off prematurely. As a result, the booster did not come down off the coast for a soft vertical splashdown as planned, but came down in the Gulf, mostly uncontrolled. It did successfully fire some engines for the landing burn, but that splashdown was hard.

As for Starship, it also had one engine shut down prematurely, requiring the other five engines to burn about 90 seconds longer to get the ship up to an acceptable orbit. Because of these engine issues, the engineering team decided to forgo a test restart of one Raptor-3 engine.

Starship then successfully deployed 20 dummy Starlink satellites, followed by two operational Starlink satellites that were modified expressly to provide visual observations of Starship and its heat shield while it is space. Only a few minutes later engineers were able to broadcast those observations, showing Starship as seen from nearby.

Starship then successfully executed its planned maneuver leading to a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Overall this sets the stage for a quick follow-up. Expect new test flights over the summer and fall, coming almost monthly. The company has made it clear it wants to do a two-week refueling mission with two Starship before the end of the year, as well as begin using Starship to deploy the bigger upgraded Starlink version 3 satellites.

Though this flight did not complete a full orbit, the rocket got Starship into an acceptable orbital path, allowing it to do most of the orbital testing desired. I consider this a success for the 2026 launch race:

60 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 60 to 51.

39 comments

Isaacman rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic of NASA

12:50 pm

NASA logo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so, the deck chairs get rearranged.

5 comments

Watching SpaceX’s 12th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight

9:59 am

After yesterday’s scrub, SpaceX has now rescheduled the 12th test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy for later today, with a launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The upcoming flight will debut the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine and launching from a newly designed pad at Starbase.

The flight test’s primary goal will be to demonstrate each of these new pieces in the flight environment for the first time, with each element of the Starship architecture featuring significant redesigns to enable full and rapid reuse that incorporate learnings from years of development and test.

I have once again embedded below several different live streams of the flight.
» Read more

17 comments

Starlab gets another investor

9:40 am

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

The consortium building the Starlab space station today announced that the investment firm 1789 Capital has made a “strategic investment” in the station’s construction, though neither would state the amount of that investment.

Starlab Space Stations and 1789 Capital announced 1789 Capital’s strategic investment in Starlab. The investment reflects mounting confidence that Starlab — the U.S.-led joint venture, next-generation commercial space station — represents a durable and commercially grounded cornerstone of the post-International Space Station (ISS) low-Earth orbit (LEO) economy.

…“America built the space age and must lead the next one,” said Omeed Malik, founder and president, 1789 Capital. “We invest in the next chapter of American exceptionalism, and Starlab is turning that vision into reality.” The firm’s investment in Starlab reflects its thesis that critical infrastructure — from the digital to the orbital — represents a generational opportunity where national interest and investor returns are aligned.

When asked, Starlab’s press office simply said “We are not disclosing the value at this time.” This has been the company’s policy when it comes to private investment. In January 2026 it announced another major investor without disclosing the amount invested.

Nonetheless, this new investment strengthens Starlab’s overall position, even if that support is tentative. In my rankings below of the five stations under development, Starlab, Vast, and Axiom remain essentially tied for first place..
» Read more

Leave a comment

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.

10 comments

Rocket Lab launches radar satellite for Japanese company Synspective

8:24 am

Rocket Lab early today successfully completed its ninth launch (out of a 27-launch contract) for the Japanese radar satellite company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

59 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 59 to 51.

2 comments

Rocket Lab wins $90 million Space Force contract to build two geostationary satellites

8:01 am

Rocket Lab yesterday announced it has been awarded a $90 million contract by the Space Force to build two geostationary satellites for the military’s “space doman awareness” constellation.

Though Rocket Lab has built and launched a number of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for both commercial and military customers, these two satellites will be the first in geosynchronous orbit.

Rocket Lab will serve as prime contractor and end-to-end mission provider, responsible for spacecraft design and manufacture, integration of the in-house Heimdall optical payload produced by Rocket Lab Optical Systems, launch integration onto a government-furnished launch vehicle, and on-orbit operations for up to five years following commissioning. The two satellites will be built on Rocket Lab’s Lightning bus, adapted for the thermal, radiation, propulsion, and station-keeping demands of GEO.

Though Rocket Lab is mostly considered a rocket company, it has done an excellent job diversifying its capabilities so as to sell aerospace products across a range of areas. This contract continues that successful trend.

Leave a comment

Starship/Superheavy launch scrubbed at T-40 seconds

4:44 pm

Starship at that hold today
Starship at that hold today

Though SpaceX mission controllers tried several times to restart the countdown when it went into an automatic hold at T-40 seconds due to some technical issues, they eventually decided to scrub the Starship/Superheavy launch today.

At present they expect to try again tomorrow, with a launch window opening at 5:30 pm (central). Expect updates later today or tomorrow.

One trivia fact noted during today’s broadcast. With its new more powerful Raptor-3 engines, Superheavy produces about 18 million pounds of thrust at launch. That is more than twice that of either the Saturn-5 rocket (seven million pounds) or the SLS rocket (8.8 million pounds). And remember, everything about Starship/Superheavy is intended to be reused, with Superheavy already proving its ability to do so.

23 comments

An amoeba in space more than a light year in size

12:59 pm

An amoeba in space more than a light year in size
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today by the science team of the 8.1 meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It provides a close-up view of the central blob that forms NGC 1514, a planetary nebula located about 1,500 light years away and nicknamed the Crystal Ball Nebula by Gemini’s PR team.

They might think it resembles a crystal ball, but to my eye this is an amoeba undulating in weightlessness.

Planetary nebulae form when a low- or intermediate-mass star ejects its outer layers near the end of its life, forming a somewhat spherical cloud of gas. They typically have smoother, spherical shapes, making the Crystal Ball Nebula unique for its bumpy shells of gas. As the central star casts away this gas, its inner core is exposed. Radiation from the core energizes the gas, giving it a scorching temperature and chromatic glow. The Crystal Ball Nebula, for example, has an estimated temperature of 15,000 K.

…While it may appear in this image as if there is a single shining light source at the heart of the Crystal Ball Nebula, as Herschel saw, it actually contains two stars. These two stars orbit each other with a period of around nine years — the longest known for any binary pair within a planetary nebula. Scientists believe that one of these stars, which was once several times more massive than our Sun, released its outer layers while in the throes of death. As the progenitor star and its binary companion orbit each other, they mold the expanding shell of gas with their strong, asymmetrical winds, forming the lumpy layers we see today.

The analogy I like to use for this process is that of a blender. The two stars act like the blender’s blades, mixing the outflowing gas from the stars into these spectacular shapes.

The Webb Space Telescope took its own infrared image of this nebula, and showed that its is surrounded by two larger rings of material, also expanding outward.

One comment

A Martian wormlike dune field on the floor of a triple crater

12:35 pm

Overview map

A Martian wormlike dune field on the floor of a triple crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on March 18, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this simply as a “dune field.” The overview map above marks the location, in a large dune field that fills most of the floor of an unnamed 16-mile wide crater that is actually part of the triple impact. If you look at the inset, you can see that there are three craters here, the first the largest with a width of about 27 miles, the second about 18 miles wide that lies on top to the southwest, and the third 16-mile-wide crater arriving last slightly more to the southwest.

What likely happened to cause this triple impact is that the bolide likely broke up as it cut through Mars’ thin atmosphere, producing three pieces that hit bam-bam-bam right after each other.

The wormlike dune field illustrates the dusty nature of Mars. Over the eons the red planet’s copious amounts of volcanic ash was blown into these three craters and got trapped there, with the prevailing winds forcing the dust to pile up to the southwest. The physics of wind, sand, and dune fields resulted in these parallel dune ridges.

One comment

Watching SpaceX’s 12th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight today

9:52 am

Assuming all goes as planned, SpaceX intends to launch its new upgraded Starship/Superheavy rocket later today, with a launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The upcoming flight will debut the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine and launching from a newly designed pad at Starbase.

The flight test’s primary goal will be to demonstrate each of these new pieces in the flight environment for the first time, with each element of the Starship architecture featuring significant redesigns to enable full and rapid reuse that incorporate learnings from years of development and test.

I have embedded below several different live streams of the flight, including a link to SpaceX’s live feed on X. That SpaceX live feed however will only go live at 4:43 pm (Central). The other feeds are using Youtube, and either will go live sooner or are able to be on stand-by awaiting the beginning of the feeds.
» Read more

14 comments

Starfish finally gets a docking target for its Otter Pup 2 orbital tug demo

9:33 am

Remora rendezvous
Images taken by Starfish’s camera on Impulse mission
in December 2025.

The orbital tug company Starfish Space has finally found a docking target for its Otter Pup 2 orbital tug demo satellite that has been in orbit since 2025. Otter Pup 2 was originally supposed to dock with D-Orbit’s ION satellite, but for unknown reasons that docking was cancelled. Since then Otter Pup 2 has remained in orbit as the company searched for an alternative target.

It has now made a deal with the Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space to use its own first demo satellite, ElaraSat.

Over the past couple of months, the Starfish team has been maneuvering Otter Pup 2 into the proper orbit to catch up with ElaraSat. The next phase will be to close the gap between the two satellites to about 6 miles (10 kilometers). Then Otter Pup 2 will transition into an acquisition phase. “Acquisition is the stage for us where Otter Pup’s onboard cameras start taking pictures of a large satellite regularly — lock onto it, if you will — and start maneuvering much, much closer,” Bennett said. “This is what will bring us down to the kilometer-type range.”

Otter Pup 2 will fly itself around ElaraSat for a thorough inspection and calibration of Otter Pup’s sensors and control system. Then the satellite will close in to attach itself to ElaraSat using an electrostatic docking mechanism.

The company’s goal is to demonstrate the practicality of that “electrostatic docking mechanism” so as to encourage as many satellite makers as possible to use it. Apparently Gilmour had agreed to do so on ElaraSat before launch, allowing for this switch when D-Orbit backed out.

On another mission in 2025 Starfish demonstrated that its software and camera design for rendezvous and proximity maneuvers works, as shown by the image above. On that mission this equipment was installed on a Mira orbital tug, built by Impulse Space, and was used to maneuver within 4,100 feet of another Mira tug.

As competitive as free enterprise normally is, note the amount of cooperation between multiple orbital tug and satellite companies, including Starfish, Impulse, and Gilmour. It proves that if a company can demonstrate it has a product of value, others — even its competitors — will be willing to buy it.

Leave a comment

Space Force study says it needs a third spaceport besides Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg

9:06 am

According to the head of Air Force at a House hearing yesterday, the Space Force is about to complete a study that concluded the military will need a third spaceport besides Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg to accomplish its future space goals.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink highlighted the finding during a May 20 House Armed Services Committee hearing, noting that the study is still moving through the approval process. The Space Force operates the nation’s busiest spaceports at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., and Vandenberg Space Force Station, Calif.—both of which are running out of room. “At a high level, what it says is we probably need another site that’s capable of heavy and super heavy launch capability, both from a resiliency perspective and just, even at the Cape, limitations on how much space we’ve got,” Meink said.

He didn’t expand any further on the findings of the study, which was mandated by Congress in the Fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and it’s not clear what locations the service is considering.

It is expected that both the Florida and California spaceports will be able to handle as many as 700 launches per year by the mid-2030s — based on all projections by all the private launch providers — but Meink indicated this will not meet the expected needs of the military, which expects to launch far more than that as part of its Golden Dome implementation. Though it hopes to meet some of this additional demand from other state- and privately-run spaceports, he implied even that will be insufficient.

Pecan Island SpaceX facility?

I think Meink is looking at this issue backwards. Rather than proposing the Pentagon establish its own third spaceport, it should be partnering with the private and state launch providers to meet its needs. For one, if the rumors turn out to be true and SpaceX is buying that 200+ square mile plot of land at Pecan Island in Louisiana, it would make great sense for the Pentagon to demand SpaceX allow other launch providers to lease launchpads there. Not only will there be ample land for such additional launchpads, it will be the fastest and cheapest way to get what the military needs. Finding and buying its own facility will take more time and cost more.

I am of course assuming it is SpaceX that plans to buy that Louisiana land. Right now nothing is confirmed. It is even possible that it is the military itself that has been in discussions there, or if not, is about to insert itself into the mix.

6 comments

SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:37 am

SpaceX early today successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage (B1077) completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, 64 days after its previous flight. With this flight, the booster moves into a tie for seventh place with the Columbia shuttle in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

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

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

59 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 59 to 50.

One comment

SpaceX files first IPO documents with SEC

5:00 am

Starship/Superheavy (version 3) on launchpad
Starship/Superheavy (version 3) on launchpad for launch
later today.

After months of speculation and behind the scenes planning, SpaceX yesterday finally filed the initial public offering (IPO) documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outlining the company’s financial standing, in order to give potential stock purchasers an idea of what they are buying.

The filing shows SpaceX’s Connectivity segment, driven primarily by Starlink, has become the company’s financial engine. The segment generated $11.4 billion in revenue during 2025, along with $4.4 billion in operating income and $7.2 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The company said the business benefited from subscriber growth [now 10.3 million], wider enterprise adoption and improved network efficiency, with operating income rising more than 120% year over year.

By contrast, the company’s newly acquired AI segment is consuming cash at a remarkable pace. The AI business generated $3.2 billion in revenue during 2025 but posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion as SpaceX ramped investment in AI applications and compute infrastructure. Capital expenditures tied to the AI segment reached $12.7 billion during the year, far exceeding spending in the Space and Connectivity businesses.

…SpaceX’s Space segment generated $4.1 billion in revenue in 2025 and posted a $657 million operating loss. The company spent more than $3 billion on research and development tied to Starship during the year alone. The filing described Starship as the “key enabler” of SpaceX’s long-term growth strategy, saying the vehicle is designed to dramatically improve payload capacity, reusability and launch frequency while opening entirely new categories of missions.

Capital expenditures in the Space segment totaled $3.8 billion in 2025, reflecting the enormous infrastructure demands tied to developing and scaling the Starship program. On a consolidated basis, SpaceX reported $18.7 billion in revenue during 2025, alongside an operating loss of $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $6.6 billion. For the first quarter of 2026, the company reported revenue of $4.7 billion and an operating loss of nearly $1.9 billion.

In other words, Starlink and rocket sales are paying for the development of Starship and AI.

It appears the company is targeting an early to mid June date for the actual IPO, which some on Wall Street predict could bring in $75 billion in cash. This will be in addition to the $12 billion SpaceX has already raised in private investment capital as well as the more than $12 billion in revenue it earns each year from its Starlink subscribers. Note also that this Starlink annual revenue is presently about half that of NASA’s annual budget, with no upper limit in sight.

In other words, if all goes as planned, the company will have about $100 billion on hand to develop all its business models, with Starship/Superheavy likely leading the way.

I repeat: SpaceX is America’s space program. NASA is merely a sideshow that will become increasingly irrelevant as SpaceX gears up to full speed. And if things go as I believe they will, SpaceX’s success will act to fuel the rest of the American space industry, making the government even less important.

19 comments

Frost on Mars

11:33 am

Frost on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 23, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows the eastern interior rim of a 4.5-mile-wide crater, and was taken to find out if there has been any change to the gullies flowing down that 800 foot slope since the last high resolution image was taken in 2020.

Both pictures were taken in the spring, and both pictures not only don’t appear to show much change, both show the same white frost in exactly the same places. As no pictures have been taken at other times in the year, we do not know yet if this frost disappears as expected in summer.

In fact, until such images are taken and prove this white material disappears in the summer, we don’t even know for sure if it is indeed frost. We could instead be looking a some unusual form of white bedrock, though in my review of many MRO pictures such things are quite rare.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Vast unveils new high powered satellite bus to support the expected boom in satellite construction

9:21 am

Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule
Artist rendering of Vast’s Haven-1 station, with a docked
Dragon capsule. Like Have Demo, it is being built using
company funds with no government support.

The space station startup Vast yesterday unveiled a new product line of high powered satellite buses, dubbed Vast Satellite, designed to support the expected boom in satellite construction.

With the launch of Vast Satellite, Vast is expanding beyond commercial space stations into high-volume spacecraft platforms designed for high-performance orbital missions. The first offering is a 15 kW-class satellite bus designed to support a wide array of power-intensive missions through flexible configurations.

Built around common in-house subsystems—including avionics, power, communications, propulsion, and flight software—Vast Satellite leverages technologies already developed for its Haven-1 space station, and validated through the successful Haven Demo mission in 2025. This shared architecture combined with Vast’s vertically integrated manufacturing model and advanced production capabilities is designed to support faster development timelines, lower costs, and increased mission reliability.

The company says it has already sold four buses to a confidential customer, with an option for 200 more. This sale occurred because Vast has proved itself with its policy of committing its own investment capital in designing, building, and flying demo missions. The Haven Demo was initially launched to test the subsystems to be used on the Haven-1 single module station the company hopes to fly next year on a three-year mission, during which four two-week manned crews will occupy it. That success allowed Vast to now diversify, using what it learned and proved on that demo to sell new products to other customers.

Similarly, its Haven-1 station, built on its own dime with no NASA funds, is intended to prove its capability as a space station provider. If successful, it is certain at that point to attract customers, including NASA.

9 comments
1 2 3 … 530