Tag: spaceflight

Boeing wins $2 billion satellite contract from Space Force

9:05 am

In what appears to be the first major space contract Boeing has won in awhile, the Space Force yesterday awarded it a $2 billion contract to build two new military communications satellites, part of the War Department’s MUOS constellation.

The Boeing Co., El Segundo, California, has been awarded a maximum $2,002,862,607 fixed-price-incentive-firm-target contract for the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) service life extension Phase II effort. This contract provides for the design, development, build, launch support, and on-orbit test support of two MUOS satellites. Work will be performed in El Segundo, California, and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2035. [emphasis mine]

Boeing won the contract competition over Lockheed Martin, which had built the previous MUOS satellites.

I highlight the fixed-price nature of the contract. Boeing’s space-related division in the past two decades has had trouble dealing with such contracts, its corporate culture having become spoiled with cost-plus contracts, which are essentially blank checks. Its fixed-price Starliner contract is the best example, but the company’s repeated inability to stay under budget or get things done got so bad that by 2020 NASA announced it would no longer entertain any contract bids from the company, a policy that it still follows.

For Boeing, making this fixed-price contract work is literally a make-or-break situation. It needs to beginning producing such contracts on-budget and on-time, or else it will die.

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Some details about SpaceX’s secretive Starfall demo mission

8:40 am

Artist's rendering of Starfall provided during today's live steam
Artist’s rendering of Starfall provided during the launch live steam

In reading every report in the past day about SpaceX’s Starfall demo mission, in which it tested a returnable capsule capable of doing manufacturing in space or point-to-point transportation of cargo, the only one that appeared to provide any details about the mission itself was this article at NASAspaceflight.com.

And even those details are unconfirmed and somewhat sparse:

The Starfall demonstration vehicle stayed attached to the Falcon 9 second stage in LEO [low Earth orbit] for around 1.5 orbits. The second stage then deorbited itself and the Starfall capsule, after which Starfall was jettisoned and prepared for reentry. SpaceX released limited information about the mission, and it is unknown whether the Starfall demonstration vehicle carried any payloads, though instrumentation was likely used to measure reentry forces.

Following reentry, Starfall separated its two halves, deployed its parachutes, and splashed down in the Pacific, approximately 1,300 km off the west coast of the United States.

That’s all we presently know. Based on SpaceX’s tight-lipped approach, this mission was probably paid for by the War Department. In 2021 the Air Force had issued the company a $47.9 million contract to test point-to-point cargo transport by rocket “anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity.” That cargo requirement suggested the rocket had to be Starship. It is very possible the contract was later amended to fit the 20 ton capability of Falcon 9, and this flight was the first demonstration of this cargo transport capability.

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Scientists: Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas is very old, as much as 12 billion years old

12:51 pm

Webb data
Click for original image.

Based on spectroscopic data obtained by the Webb Space Telescope in the past year as interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas zipped through our solar system, a team of scientists have now concluded that its make-up suggests it is extremely old, as much as 12 billion years old, which means it was formed in the very early universe not that long after the Big Bang.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. The graph to the right was published by NASA of the infrared spectroscopic data produced by the Webb Space Telescope that supports this conclusion. That data shows the comet was lacking in isotopes commonly found today, while enriched in isotopes expected only in the early universe. From the paper’s abstract:

[W]e report isotopic measurements of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which reveal an elemental composition unlike any Solar System body. The water in 3I/ATLAS is enriched in deuterium, at a level of D/H = (0.98 ± 0.06)%, which is more than an order of magnitude higher than in known comets, while its range of 12[Carbon]/13[Carbon] ratios (141–191 for CO2 and 123–172 for CO) exceeds typical values found in the Solar System, as well as nearby interstellar clouds and protoplanetary disks.

Such extreme isotopic signatures indicate formation at temperatures ≲ 30 K in a relatively metal-poor environment. When interpreted with respect to models for Galactic chemical evolution, the carbon isotopic composition implies that 3I/ATLAS may have accreted as long ago as 12 billion years, following a period of intense, early star formation. 3I/ATLAS thus represents a preserved fragment of an ancient planetary system.

As the scientists add in what I think is an understatement, “Its distant origin in space and time makes 3I/ATLAS a uniquely-valuable object studies tool for Galactic archaeology.”

That the comet is still remarkable similar in many other ways to comets in our solar system also tells us that the formation processes that form all solar systems are somewhat common. The solar system in which Comet 3I/Atlas formed was different from ours only that it formed when the universe was young, and thus somewhat different in make-up. Otherwise the processes were the same.

At the same time, Comet 3I/Atlas has given us a window into the early universe, and suggests future interstellar comets will do the same. And there will be future interstellar comets, because we are now developing the observational tools to see them as they routinely fly past on a regular basis.

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SpaceX to raise $20 billion more by selling bonds

9:49 am

As part of its need for cash both to support its planned major capital projects and partly it appears to pay off some debt, SpaceX now plans to sell bonds in order to raise an additional $20 billion more.

The proceeds from the bond offering will mostly be used to refinance a $20 billion bridge loan SpaceX took in March as it prepared to go public. Such loans basically ensure that companies planning to go public have the money they would need to wait out an unfavorable turn in market conditions.

As the article at the link notes, however, SpaceX is hardly cash poor, having on hand over $100 billion after its initial public offering (IPO) of stock two weeks ago. On the surface this bond sale seems unnecessary, but I suspect its purpose is merely refinancing some already existing debt in order to save the company some money.

The propaganda press has been making much in the past week about the drop in SpaceX’s stock price following its original burst during the IPO, often spinning the drop as proof that SpaceX is not that valuable a company (see this NBC report for example). After raising to above $200 per share from its initial price of $135, it has since dropped to about $160. All of this is entirely normal. New stocks that capture the public’s interest all do this. The stock is simply now finding its natural market price, which by the way is still higher than that initial price.

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China’s Shenlong X-37B copy deploys a satellite

9:33 am

Shenlong in orbit shortly after launch
Shenlong in orbit shortly after launch.
Click for source.

According to data from the space surveillance company LeoLabs, China’s Shenlong mini-reusable shuttle — similar to the X-37B — deployed a object sometime before June 22, 2026.

At 02:30 UTC on 22 June 2026, LeoLabs detected an unknown object in the vicinity of the Chinese Shenlong reusable spaceplane.

This object did not correlate to any other object in our catalog. It was first observed by our Tracker radar in New Zealand.

This is not the first time a Shenlong in orbit released an object. On two previous flights in 2023 and 2024 it did the same. The Shenlong in orbit now was launched on February 7, 2026, the fourth mission of this X-37B copycat.

Overall, China has released very little information about Shenlong. We have no idea if the same or multiple Shenlongs have launched on the four known missions. No official pictures have ever been released, though the image of it to the right was apparently captured in orbit by amateur astronomers shortly after that February launch.

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Two launches by China and SpaceX

8:29 am

Since yesterday there were two more launches by the global rocket industry.

First, China placed a “communication technology experimental satellite” into orbit, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. No other information was provided.

Artist's rendering of Starfall provided during today's live steam
Artist’s rendering of Starfall provided during today’s live steam

Next, SpaceX launched in the early morning the first demo mission for its Starfall recoverable capsule, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The company has released little information about this project, including not showing the deployment or splashdown of Starfall in the launch broadcast. Its short description of Starfall during the live stream made it sound very similar to Varda’s recoverable capsule, though larger. According to Wikipedia,

Starfall has a circular, disk-shaped form measuring 10′ in diameter and 2′ 6″ in height. Its empty mass is 2,100 kg (4,600 lb). Starfall carries up to 1,000 kilograms of payload in a volume of 2.5 by 0.5 meters and a total mass of about 3,100 kilograms. The vehicle consists of a top plate with maneuvering thrusters and a heat shield that jettisons before a parachute assisted splashdown. Starfall reaches orbit as a payload on Falcon 9 or Starship. The design focuses on precision delivery to specific locations, supporting rapid delivery for critical cargo.

The company has at this time provided no information about the results of this demo mission.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 24th and 36th flights respectively. The first stage (B1078) completed its 29th flight (29 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight this booster moved past the space shuttle Columbia into a seventh place tie in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

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

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

75 SpaceX
41 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 75 to 70.

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Botswana to sign the Artemis Accords

8:01 am

NASA yesterday announced that the Republic of Botswana will sign the Artemis Accords on June 25, 2026, becoming the 68th nation to join this American alliance in space.

The Republic of Botswana will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 9:30 a.m. EDT Thursday, June 25, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Botswana’s Minister of Communications and Innovation David Tshere and U.S. Department of State Senior Advisor for Space Gregory Autry for the event.

Since NASA administrator Jared Isaacman took over, the NASA press releases announcing these signings have eliminated much of the pro-globalist language introduced during the Biden administration. No longer does NASA claim the accords are designed to “reinforce” the Outer Space Treaty. In today’s release the language is relatively vague, stating merely that the accords are

responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies. The accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

As the accords were originally conceived by Trump as a long term tool to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property and the establishment of American law in its colonies, this vagueness is likely intended to avoid antagonizing Russia and China, to lull them into apathy about the issue at this time. Later, when the U.S. Moon base is largely established expect that vagueness to fade. That will be the time to use the clout of this large alliance to force a major legal change in this international treaty.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, 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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NASA IG: NASA’s launch infrastructure at Kennedy and Wallops needs attention

12:30 pm

Launch sites at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral
Figure 2 of IG report, annotated further by me.

According to a report released today [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general (IG), NASA’s launch infrastructure at both the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia are aging and need upgrades, but there is a systemic limitation on NASA’s access to funds to do the work.

The IG report — as is always expected from such a government report — of course whines about the lack of funding in recent NASA budgets, noting that Congress recently allocated $250 million for this purpose, but NASA claims it needs four times that amount, or $1 billion.

The report however also recognizes that this not the real problem. The map to the right, Figure 2 from the report, has been further annotated by me to show who is leasing or using each launch complex at both the Kennedy Space Center (managed by NASA) and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (managed by the military but also supported significantly by NASA). As you can see, almost all launch sites are either leased by private rocket companies, or are being primed for future such leases. Yet, “statutory funding barriers” limit how much money NASA can collect from these companies. From the report’s conclusion:
» Read more

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Astronomers discover an asymmetrical radio galaxy distorted wildly as it plows into the surrounding galactic medium

9:49 am

Distorted radio galaxy
Figure 1 from the paper. Click for original.

Using ground-based radio telescopes, astronomers have now discovered a very strange asymmetrical radio galaxy squashed into a gigantic arc almost two million light years across as the galaxy pushes its way into the surrounding material of an even more gigantic galactic cluster.

In RAD-BAARG [the name they have given the galaxy], the researchers say one of the jets appears to interact with a large bow shock-like structure formed as the host galaxy falls through the surrounding hot gas toward a nearby cluster of galaxies. Similar to the shockwave formed ahead of a supersonic aircraft, a galaxy moving faster than the speed of sound in the surrounding intracluster medium can compress the ambient gas and generate a large-scale shock front.

The radio-emitting plasma from RAD-BAARG appears to illuminate this otherwise extremely faint structure, making it visible in low-frequency radio images, according to the team. The western side of the source contains a narrow jet feeding a sector-shaped emission region and a giant arc-like feature extending over nearly 560 kiloparsecs (1.8 million light years).

On the opposite side, the jet develops a distorted S-shaped morphology followed by a faint offset tail extending to almost 600 kiloparsecs. The overall structure suggests strong interaction between the radio plasma and the surrounding large-scale environment.

You can read their published paper here. The images to the right are figure 1 from that paper. The top image is just the radio data. The bottom image shows the contours of that radio data over the optical view. The cross marks the location of object’s host galaxy, as seen in the optical.

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Canada’s second proposed spaceport opens first rocket factory

9:03 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace, which also hopes to operate the Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland, last week announced the opening of a new headquarters where it hopes to begin building its smallsat Tundra rockets.

The 60,000 square foot advanced manufacturing campus is dedicated to the production of the company’s light and medium-lift orbital launch vehicles alongside its space systems division, and represents a 10x expansion over NordSpace’s previous headquarters.

In reading between the lines of the press release, it appears this facility is mostly the company’s administrative and operations headquarters, though it is large enough to assembly two Tundra smallsat rockets at the same time, designed to put about three times more payload into orbit than Rocket Lab’s very successful Electron rocket.

Unlike Spaceport Nova Scotia, which was first proposed more than a decade ago and after years of struggle was leased in March by the Canadian government for $200 million, Nordspace has only been around since 2024 and has received a relatively small grant from the government, some portion of a $8.3 million program to support three Canadian rocket startups.

With both spaceports, there has been a lot of blarney spouted. Thus, separating the sizzle from the steak is difficult. No launch dates for Tundra have been provided, though the company says it has purchased the land for an even larger manufacturing facility, though once again it provides no timetables.

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Rocket Lab and SpaceX complete launches

9:49 am

In the past two days both Rocket Lab and SpaceX successfully completed launches.

I am reporting the Rocket Lab launch two days late because it was unannounced and remains officially unconfirmed by the company two days after lift-off. [UPDATE: Rocket Lab finally confirmed the launch on June 22, 2026.] According to two different launch tracking websites (here and here), the company’s Electron rocket lifted off successfully from one of its two New Zealand launchpads on June 19, 2026, placing a Rocket Lab payload into orbit dubbed Puma, a Space Force satellite designed to rendezvous with a target spacecraft dubbed Jackel that was built by the company True Anomaly and launched on an earlier SpaceX launch.

The mission secrecy was also for a second purpose, as outlined by Rocket Lab:

The $32 million contract includes a Rocket Lab spacecraft, configured for the unique requirements of the VICTUS HAZE mission, that will launch on Electron within just 24 hours’ notice. The mission is designed to improve Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) processes and timelines to demonstrate the SSC’s ability to respond to on-orbit threats on very short timelines.

SpaceX then followed up today with a launch of 24 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 33rd flight (70 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight this booster moved into a tie with the space shuttle Atlantis for fourth place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

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

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

74 SpaceX
40 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 74 to 69.

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Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite goes airborne in advance of launch

9:26 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite — that will attempt to grab the Gehrels-Swift space telescope and raise its orbit — began its journey to its launch area over the south Pacific on June 18, 2026 when Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket that will launch it was taken airborne by company’s Stargazer L-1011 airplane.

Stargazer, a modified L-1011 operated by Northrop Grumman, took off for Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Attached to the belly of the aircraft was one of the company’s Pegasus XL rockets with LINK inside.

…Stargazer will carry Pegasus and LINK to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean with stopovers in California and Hawai’i.

Sometime later this month Stargazer will go to its launch area, climb to 40,000 feet, and release the Pegasus rocket, which will then ignite its engines to carry Link into orbit. Link will then attempt to rendezvous with Gehrels-Swift, using its robot arms to catch it (the telescope has no grapple attachment). If successful, it will then raise the telescope’s orbit so that it can resume observations for years to come.

The mission is daring in more ways than just described. Katalyst has never done this before. It is a startup that reconfigured its first demo mission into this rescue mission.

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Texas Supreme Court rejects beach closure lawsuit against SpaceX

9:35 am

The Texas Supreme Court today unanimously rejected the lawsuit by fringe activist groups against SpaceX and the closure of beaches near Boca Chica for Starship/Superheavy launches.

Siding with SpaceX and the attorney general’s office, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that environmental groups did not have a right to sue to preserve public access to a beach that has been closed during rocket launches. The unanimous ruling said a trial judge properly dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the groups could not refile it with changes.

The lawsuit was brought by SaveRGV, a very small group of leftist anti-Musk activists who have tried to use lawfare for the past five years to shut down Boca Chica. Later, the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas joined in. The latter is a fake Indian tribe, as this tribe never existed in Texas at all, and is presently non-existent.

This decision essentially ends the lawfare campaign of these groups. I am sure they will try again, but their options continue to shrink, especially because they have practically no support in the southern Texas region. Everyone else is enthusiastically enjoying the prosperity and wealth SpaceX is bringing to the area.

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Problems during first drop tests of Europe’s Space Rider prototype

8:23 am

Artist rendering of Space Rider in orbit
Artist rendering of Space Rider in orbit. Click for original.

It appears that there was an undisclosed problem in May that prevented the first drop tests from a helicopter of a prototype of Europe’s Space Rider mini-reusable shuttle.

During a June 17 press briefing following the 347th ESA Council meeting, weeks after the aborted attempt occurred, ESA’s head of strategy and institutional launches for space transportation, Lucía Linares, explained that the agency could not provide a concrete date for the final drop test, stating only that it would take place after the summer and before the end of the year.

When asked what had prompted the several-month-long delay, an ESA spokesperson confirmed that the previously unannounced test campaign had taken place. According to the agency, the two-week campaign had concluded on 8 May, when the anomaly forced teams to abort the final test sequence. According to the spokesperson, the anomaly occurred during the captive ascent phase. During this phase, the mock-up was raised to drop height by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. The agency did not, however, provide details about the nature of the anomaly.

This reusable capsule concept by the European Space Agency (ESA) is essentially a variation of either Varda’s returnable capsule or Boeing’s X-37B, but its development has been ridiculously slow. It was first tested by ESA in 2015. By 2017 the agency was promising it would be flying commercially by 2025. A decade later and they have not yet begun testing a full scale spacecraft.

Last summer ESA did helicopter drop tests of just the “brain” and parafoil. Now the drop tests this year of a full scale model — not the real thing — has been delayed until the end of this year because of an undisclosed “anomaly.”

When ESA finally does helicopter drop tests of the actual flight model remains completely unknown. Based on its pace of development, this reusable capsule won’t fly for another five to ten years. By then, a dozen companies will be flying their own private reusable capsules and spacecraft, as well as offering similar services on private space stations.

At that point ESA will likely cancel the program, after wasting two decades and more than a $100 million.

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SpaceX launches classified payload for National Reconnaissance Office

8:09 am

SpaceX in the early morning today successfully launched a classified payload for National Reconnaissance Office, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The number of satellites in the payload was not disclosed. The rocket’s two fairings completed their 3rd and 35th flights. The first stage completed its 3rd flight (29 days after its previous flight), landing back at Vandenberg.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

73 SpaceX
40 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 73 to 68.

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Final results from Lucy’s 2025 fly-by of asteroid Donaldjohanson: A tumbling peanut!

8:00 am

Lucy's gravitational field
Click for movie.

The science team for the asteroid probe Lucy yesterday published their final results from the spacecraft’s fly-by of the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson in April 2025, outlining their present hypothesis based on the data as to the asteroid’s origins and evolution that has left it today a tumbling peanut.

The image to the right comes from a short animation showing the asteroid’s computed tumbling. The colors indicate the strength of its gravitational field, depending on slope. “Higher values (warmer colors) indicate steeper terrain relative to the local gravitational pull.” From the conclusion of their published paper:

We propose the following scenario for the formation and evolution of DJ [Donaldjohanson]. The parent body of the Erigone family was ≈80 km in diameter and was destroyed by a ≈20-km impactor at ≈155 [million years ago]. DJ’s bilobed shape probably arose from the accretion of fragments from this break-up event. This left DJ with an initial spin period of ≪10 hours.

The YORP effect [the pressure of sunlight] then slowed DJ’s rotation and shifted its spin axis toward low obliquity. After 20 to 60 [million years], DJ’s spin period reached ≈10 hours, causing slopes in the neck region to fail. The resulting widespread mass movement toward both lobes produced the ridge and smoothed the neck region.

Sometime later (<40 [million years ago), craters smaller than 0.4 km were globally erased, possibly owing to seismic shaking by an impact. Localized mass wasting on the neck continued, degrading the morphology of many craters without altering the small crater SFD. From 80 to 120 [million years] after formation, DJ’s rotation entered its current NPA [non–principal axis] state, with a spin period of 100 to 200 hours.

A more prosaic way of describing “non–principal axis state” is to say the asteroid is tumbling.

Lucy is presently on its way to the Trojan asteroids that orbit with Jupiter 60 degrees fore and aft of the gas giant. It will fly past ten Trojans during its mission, with the first the asteroid Eurybates on Aug. 12, 2027.

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A “thermal anomaly” in young Martian lava

12:08 pm

A
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 1, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this picture “Thermal Anomaly in Young Lava Flows”. The anomaly, indicated by the arrow, is the distinctly blue floor of the unnamed small 300-foot-wide crater about a third of a mile east of that 30-foot-high mesa. According to MRO guidelines [pdf] for interpreting the colors the camera produces:

Frost and ice are also relatively blue, but bright, and often concentrated at the poles or on pole-facing slopes. Some bedrock is also relatively bright and blue, but not as much as frost or ice, and it has distinctive morphologies.

The guidelines say more, but based on this information it suggests the floor of that crater is unusually cold, able to hold frost and ice. The picture was taken during the Martian winter, so seeing frost inside this crater at this time is possible, though its location, deep inside the dry equatorial regions of Mars where no near surface ice is generally found, tells us that if this is frost, it is truly unusual, deserving the description of “an anomaly.”
» Read more

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Update on rocket startup Relativity and its Terran-R rocket

9:38 am

Link here. With NASA awarding it a major contract yesterday to launch and operate a Mars orbiter by 2028, this detailed report today on the status of the company’s Terran-R rocket and its launchpad at Cape Canaveral is very well timed.

The report provides details on the testing status of the rocket’s first and second stages. It also describes the construction at the launchpad, with the horizontal assembly building just about finished. The key paragraph in the report however is the last:

With the second stage on its way to Stennis for testing, the first-stage qualification article preparing for structural load testing, and LC-16 rapidly approaching its final configuration, Relativity Space is entering the pivotal final phase of Terran R development. If this pace holds, the company will remain on track for a maiden flight by the end of 2026 — introducing a new heavy-lift launch system with a payload capacity significantly higher than SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

In addition to Relativity, there are a lot of companies that hope to do the first launch of a new rocket this year, including the American companies Rocket Lab and Stoke Space, the German companies Isar and Rocket Factory Augsburg, the Spanish company PLD, the South Korean company Innospace, the Australia company Gilmour, and the India company Skyroot. It is also possible I have missed one or two, there are so many.

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The suborbital spaceplane company Dawn Aerospace raises $25 million in private capital

9:19 am

The crew and Mk-II Aurora
The crew and Mk-II Aurora

According to a press release issued June 16, 2026, the suborbital spaceplane company Dawn Aerospace has now raised an additional $25 million in private investment capital, more than doubling the amount of money raised by the company.

Dawn Aerospace today announced the close of its Series B funding round, raising $25 million at a $195 million post-money valuation. The round was led by US-based VC, Balerion Space Ventures.

Since its Series A in 2022, Dawn Aerospace has become the leading provider of non-toxic chemical propulsion worldwide with 200 thrusters in space on more than 50 satellites. Dawn has also flown supersonic with the Aurora suborbital spaceplane, making it the first privately developed aircraft to fly supersonic since the Concorde, and one of only two supersonic UAVs operating globally today.

…Commercially, revenue has grown from less than $3 million in FY22 to well over $15 million with growth of over 90% in the last 12 months and cash-flow positive operations.

The company has not only been flying its supersonic small MK-II Aurora spaceplane numerous times successfully, including doing so at least once twice in one day, it has been successfully selling space on those flights.

None of those flights however have been to space. The company says it launch a bigger version of Aurora within the next 12 months with the capability of reaching suborbital space, and plans to begin regular suborbital spaceplane flights from Oklahoma in 2027. It also hopes to demonstrate in orbit a refueling system for satellites by 2028.

If it succeeds, it will likely grab the market share that Blue Origin’s has abandoned when it shut down its New Shepard suborbital capsule, and that Virgin Galactic has lost by not flying for the past few years. Moreover, even if these companies resume suborbital operations, because Dawn’s spaceplanes are not designed for human flight, they are likely much cheaper to fly, and will grab more business.

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France changes the companies to use its old Diamant shared launchpad

9:00 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, and the Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup
MaiaSpace.)

France’s CNES space agency, which manages the French Guiana spaceport France owns, has now made some major changes in the rocket startups it will let share use of its old long unused Diamant launchpad.

In 2021, CNES opened a call for interest in a new commercial launch facility that it would build on the grounds of the old Diamant launch site at the Guiana Space Centre. On 25 July 2025, the agency announced seven companies that had been shortlisted: HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Latitude, MaiaSpace, and Avio.

Since that announcement, Avio and HyImpulse have been removed from the list, with CNES offering no explanation. MaiaSpace voluntarily gave up its space after CNES, in September 2024, selected the company to assume control of the former Soyuz launch facility, now renamed ELM2.

The story today is that another new European rocket startup, Sirius Space, has been selected as a user of this pad. Thus, this shared launchpad will now be used by five companies, PLD, Isar, Rocket Factory, Latitude, and Sirius.

Of those five, the first three appear closest to launch, though only PLD intends to use this pad at present. Isar hopes to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport on June 20th (after numerous scrubs). Rocket Factory has requested a launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to launch its RFA-1 rocket in July from the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, but that remains to be seen, considering the CAA’s past slow behavior.

Meanwhile, PLD has committed €35 million to the Diamant site to prepare it for its own first launch of its Miura-5 rocket, presently expected before the end of 2026. How it will get reimbursed when those other companies begin using the launchpad facilities it built and paid for is not clear.

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