Tag: spaceflight

Space Force requests proposals for new Vandenberg launchpad for heavy and super-heavy rockets

8:07 am

Vandenberg Space Force Base

The Space Force on December 29, 2025 released a request for information (RFI) from the private sector for building a new launchpad at the southern-most tip of Vandenberg Space Force Base, for use by “new” heavy and super-heavy rockets.

The Space Force said it prefers to use the site for new vehicles rather than ones that already have launch sites at Vandenberg, to “increase launch diversity” at the base. The service is also interested in vehicles with “unique capabilities,” such as point-to-point transportation or the ability to return payloads.

The RFI emphasizes the need for “technically mature” vehicles capable of operating from SLC-14 within five years of signing a lease agreement. Companies must also provide details about their operations to address safety concerns and minimize impacts on other launch operators at the base.

You can read the actual RFI here. The map to the right, taken from the RFI and annotated to post here, labels the area under consideration as “Sudden Flats”. SpaceX’s two launchpads are indicated, with SLC-6 presently under development.

Though the description of the request appears to favor SpaceX, it could also apply to Blue Origin’s New Glenn as well as the company’s proposed larger versions of that rocket.

The request asks for proposals within 30 days.

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China launches two satellites for “new technology verification for space target detection”

7:55 pm

China today successfully launched two technology test satellites designed to do “space target detection”, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

China’s state-run press provided no other information. It also appears the drop zones for the rocket’s lower stages were once again in Philippino waters, requiring that government to warn its citizens to avoid those zones and subsequent any rocket debris.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
90 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
17 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 150.

At this moment no other launches are scheduled before the end of the year, thus closing out the 2025 year in rocketry. I will publish my annual global report in the next few days. Stay tuned.

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The up and down tale of two rocket startups, Vector and Phantom

11:01 am

Jim Cantrell and cars
Jim Cantrell at Vector in 2017, shown in front of
one of his side businesses, fixing and refurbishing race
cars and rare luxury sports cars (located then at Vector).

The tales of rocket startups are often fraught with ups and downs of all kinds, often traveling in circles that no one can ever predict. This is one such tale.

In the mid-2010s there was a rocket startup called Vector, based here in Tucson, founded by a guy named Jim Cantrell. At that time Cantrell pushed the company in the style of Elon Musk, going very public for publicity and to raise investment capital.

He was remarkable successful at both. Unfortunately, his engineers were not as successful at engine building. After years of effort they all realized that their rocket engines were under-powered, and wouldn’t be able to get the rocket into orbit. In 2019 the company’s biggest investor backed out, Cantrell left the company, and new owners took over, hoping to rebuild.

Flash forward to 2021, and Jim Cantrell has reappeared with a new rocket company, Phantom Space, also based in Tucson, raising $6 million in seed capital. In the next four years he obtained a small development contract from NASA, completed two more investment rounds raising first $22 million and then around $37 million, and began development of a new orbital rocket, dubbed Daytona. The company also began work on its own small satellite constellation, PhantomCloud (more on this later).

As for Vector, there was little to report during those four years. The only update said the company was buying engines from the rocket engine startup Ursa Major, the same company Phantom was using.

It is now the end of 2025, and the fate of these two companies has once again intertwined, in a most ironic manner. Last week I learned from Jim Cantrell that Vector had closed shop, and that its last remaining assets, some of which Cantrell himself had helped develop when he headed Vector, had been bought by Phantom. This includes several unused rocket stages, the vertical rocket test stands, a lot of computers, and hardware.
» Read more

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Colliding galaxies, as seen in the infrared and X-rays

9:02 am

Colliding galaxies in the infrared and X-rays
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates how beautiful images of heavenly objects don’t always have to be in wavelengths our eyes can see. With the wonders of modern technology, we can now see wondrous things in wavelengths that are invisible to us.

The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is a perfect illustration. It was released on December 1, 2025, and combines X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory with infrared data from the Webb Space Telescope. From the caption:

This view of NGC 2207 and IC 2163 takes a James Webb mid-infrared image (white, gray, and red) and adds the X-ray view from Chandra (blue). Together, it is quite an eye-catching result.

…Here, both spirals are shown face on, with the smaller of the two galaxies, IC 2163, at the upper left of the larger galaxy, NGC 2207, which dominates the center and lower right of the image. Both galaxies have long, spiraling, silver blue arms, dotted with specs of blue and red. Toward our upper left, the curving arms overlap, and bend toward their neighbors’ core.

In optical wavelengths the gossamer lines of structure would be lost, overwhelmed by the light of each galaxy’s stars.

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European Space Agency hacked

8:43 am

It appears some of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) servers have been hacked, with some of its internal data placed for sale on the web.

On 26 December, reports began to emerge on X claiming that ESA had suffered a significant data breach, with a hacker using the alias “888” offering more than 200 gigabytes of data for sale. According to the hacker’s listing, the allegedly compromised data included source code for proprietary software, sensitive project documentation, API tokens, and hardcoded credentials.

ESA has since issued a statement claiming the data breach was limited, but according to information posted on X, the breach included “Confidential internal documents (Airbus Defence & Space, Thales Alenia Space)” and “sensitive technical information related to space programs.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if China is bidding for this information right now. Then again, Europe’s space effort is so unimpressive compared to China that China might not see the information worth much.

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Russia’s early warning satellite constellation is apparently no longer functioning

8:32 am

The satellites in Russia’s constellation for giving its military early warning of missile attacks, dubbed EKS, have been one-by-one failing in recent years, and it now appears the last one has now experienced a malfunction as well.

After the launch of the 6th Tundra satellite in 2022, the Russian military seemingly gave up on the effort to deploy the EKS early warning constellation or, possibly, the industry was simply unable to build new satellites due to technical problems associated with the Western sanctions and/or financial problems. No fresh satellites were launched into the network in the following three years, while, according to an analyst of the Russian strategic nuclear forces Pavel Podvig, the orbital tracking indicated that from March 2025 to December of the same year, the number of operational Tundra satellites fell from three to just one, possibly as a result of in-orbit failures.

…As of December 2025, Kosmos-2552 (EKS-5) was the only satellite within the EKS system which did not show a clear sign of failure, according to Podvig, but the spacecraft did miss a maneuver expected in November 2025, based on the usual pattern of its detectable orbit adjustments.

None of this is a surprise. Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has not only isolated the country, it has crippled it in numerous ways, both financially and technologically. It no longer has access to many western high tech components it had relied on, and the loss of all its international launch customers has left its rocket industry devoid of hard currency.

Thus, when Russia makes any grandiose claims about its future space plans, it is wise to harbor great doubts.

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China launches Earth mapping satellite

8:20 am

China yesterday successfully placed what it called a “geographic mapping” satellite, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

Its state-run press provided no additional information about the satellite, nor did it provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
89 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
17 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 149.

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The headwaters of an ancient Martian channel

11:46 am

glacial debris in canyon floor
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this simply as “irregular terrain.” It is far more than that. We are looking at a three-mile-wide shallow canyon, with what appear to be eroding glacial features on the canyon floor.

The location is at 35 degrees north latitude, so finding glacial features here is entirely unsurprising, especially because this location is the southern edge of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip in Mar’ northern hemisphere I label glacier country, because almost every picture shows such glacial features.

In this case, the channel also suggests a much more complex geological history, that could involve flowing water though flowing glaciers are increasingly becoming an alternative explanation.
» Read more

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SpaceX pulls Starlink service from Papua New Guinea

9:23 am

SpaceX has now withdrawn the Starlink services it informally had provided customers in Papua New Guinea after a volcano eruption in 2021 due to regulatory demands by the government there.

It’s been two and a half years since a volcano eruption tore apart Tonga’s underwater internet cables, and a sympathetic Kiwi MP pleaded to Elon Musk for help on their behalf. Musk, CEO of SpaceX, would answer Shane Reti’s call, offering his Starlink technology in aid of their reconnection to the world.

Starlink’s Pacific debut came with limited trials in American-owned Guam and the Northern Marianas, followed by the Cooks in April 2021. But for the wider Pacific community, its deployment in Tonga captured hearts and minds. The service, provided by a special satellite network, has been hailed as “transformational” in numerous island nations, broadening internet coverage to remote areas, some for the first time.

That is, unless, you’re in Papua New Guinea. Starlink’s attempts to gain licensing in PNG have been tied up since December 2023, with the Ombudsman Commission challenging the government over Starlink’s reliability. The Commission blocked licensing efforts in February 2024, and have argued that existing regulations may not be adequate to manage potential risks to public interest and safety.

In-fighting within Papua New Guinea’s government continues to block Starlink license approval, so it appears SpaceX has decided the best way to get a positive decision is to walk away, hoping the ensuing pressure from its customers might force action from the government.

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ESA cancels call for commercial cargo services to ISS

9:14 am

European Space Agency logo

In what might be a larger decision by the European Space Agency (ESA) to pull back from support to ISS, the agency has cancelled a call for proposals that asked private commercial startups to provide cargo to ISS.

On 3 October, ESA published a call for proposals under its CSOC Cargo Commercially Procured Offset (3CPO) initiative, seeking commercial transport services to the ISS to deliver between 4,900 and 5,000 kilograms of pressurised cargo to the orbiting laboratory. According to the call, the mission was intended to act as a “strategic offset’ to secure flight opportunities for ESA astronauts. It did, however, stipulate that the prospective procurement would only proceed if member states agreed to fund the initiative at the agency’s Ministerial Council meeting on 26 and 27 November 2025.

Following the late November meeting, ESA announced that member states had “agreed to implement short-term actions to guarantee European astronauts’ access to the International Space Station until its planned end of exploitation in 2030.” While this initially appeared to signal a favourable decision on the 3CPO initiative, the agency formally cancelled the call on 17 December, citing “the implementation of programmatic adjustments.”

What makes me speculate that this decision is part of a larger strategy to pull back from ISS is based on other statements by ESA officials cited in the article. It appears ESA is also delaying the mission of one astronaut to ISS that had originally been planned for ’26, possibly by as much as two years.

Though that official said ESA had fully funded its commitments to ISS at its recently concluded ministerial council meetings, both of the above decisions suggest it is shifting its support elsewhere. It could very well be that ESA is beginning the process of transferring its support from ISS to the new commercial private stations, most especially Starlab, which it already has signed a partnership agreement. By delaying funding to ISS, it reserves that money for later use at the new stations.

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Another American orbital capsule company turns to Australia for a landing spot

11:38 am

Proposed Australian spaceports
Australian spaceports: operating (red dot) and proposed (red “X”)
Click for original image.

The American orbital capsule company Lux Aeterna has now signed a deal with the Australian spaceport startup Southern Launch to allow its capsules to land at its Koonibba Test Range in southern Australia.

Under the agreement, two Lux Aeterna Delphi satellites will return to the Koonibba Test Range with Southern Launch. The first mission is targeted to return in 2027.

Lux Aeterna, based in Denver, Colorado, USA, is developing a reusable satellite platform designed to operate in Low Earth Orbit and support defense, intelligence, and commercial missions such as technology demonstrations, hypersonic and materials testing, in-orbit servicing, and in-space manufacturing. The Delphi platform and its core components are engineered to withstand the thermal and structural demands of atmospheric re-entry, enabling routine return and recovery of both the satellite bus and payload to support expedited technology development.

…Under the partnership, Southern Launch will provide end‑to‑end services for each orbital re-entry, including regulatory approvals, range operations, air and maritime coordination, and recovery operations.

This is the second American orbital capsule company to sign with Southern Launch. Varda was the first, and it did so because red tape in the U.S. made use of an American drop zone impractical. It appears Lux Aeterna has come to the same conclusion, and thus went to Australia instead.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the Trump administration. It is absurd that red tape is forcing American capsules to land in another country on the other side of the globe.

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Isar ready for second launch attempt

11:26 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

In a press release earlier this week, the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace announced that it has successfully completed static fire tests of both stages of its Spectrum rocket, and is now prepared for a second attempt to reach orbit, nine months after the first attempt failed seconds after liftoff.

Though its press release made no mention of a launch date, rocketlaunch.live is listing that attempt for January 13, 2026, taking place at Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

If successfully, the launch will achieve a number of milestones. First, Isar will be the first German rocket company ever to launch a rocket into orbit. Germany’s government has for decades been a partner in Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency, but no private company has ever built and launched its own rocket.

Isar’s success will also beat out the German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg and Spanish startup PLD, both of which are getting close to a first launch as well.

Second, the launch from Andoya will make that spaceport the first in Europe to place a satellite into orbit, despite coming to this commercial spaceport competition years after two of Great Britain’s proposed spaceports in northern Scotland. While Norway’s government has greased the rails, removing red tape to allow Andoya to become operational quickly (and thus attracting rocket startups like Isar, Firefly, and Astrobotic), Great Britain’s red tape has delayed its spaceports for years, while putting one rocket company, Virgin Orbit, out of business.

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Russia launches more than fifty satellites

11:03 am

Russia today successfully launched more than fifty satellites, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Vostochny spaceport in far eastern Russia.

The main payloads were two Russian Earth imaging satellites, both dubbed Aist-2T

In addition to the launch of the Aist-2T pair, the same Soyuz-2-1b rocket was also booked to carry 50 dual-purpose secondary payloads, ranging from light-weight experimental satellites down to an assortment of educational cubesats and a small carrier platform, itself designed to release the tiniest satellites known as pikosats. A total of 33 payloads were to be deployed from 17 launch containers provided by Moscow-based Aerospeis Kapital.

The most notable secondary payloads on the mission were two Marafon-IoT experimental satellites, developed at ISS Reshetnev and intended for paving the way to the so-called Internet-of-Things satellite system, however, by the time they reached the launch pad, the main project was facing cancellation due shrinking Russian space budget.

The most significant foreign payload on the Aist-2T mission was a trio of Iranian dual-purpose satellites all intended for remote-sensing of the Earth’s surface. Other small foreign payloads were ordered by various institutions in Montenegro, Kuwait, Qatar, Ecuador and Belarus. [emphasis mine]

Russia continues to show an inability to get anything of substance into orbit due to a lack of capital, caused by Putin’s policies of squelching competition and invading other countries.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
88 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
17 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 148.

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China launches weather satellite

8:35 pm

China today (December 27 in China) successfully placed a new Fengyun-4 satellite into orbit, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xinchang spaceport in southwest China.

China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. This Fengyun-4 satellite is the third in a new constellation of seven upgraded weather satellites.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
88 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
16 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 147.

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China launches nine more satellites in Guowang constellation

12:18 pm

Last night China successfully placed nine more satellites for the Guowang (or Satnet) internet-of-things constellation, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its Wenchang coastal spaceport, The constellation now has 128 satellites in orbit out of a planned 13,000. Though the rocket’s lower stages all fell in the ocean, some landed within the Philippines, once again requiring that government to warn its citizens to avoid the drop zones.

China’s last night also scrubbed a launch of its solid-fueled Smart Dragon-3 (also Jielong-3) rocket, set to lift off from a launch platform off the coast of northeastern China. The launch was rescheduled for December 28th. China also had a Long March 3B launched scheduled for this morning, but no news about that launch as yet been published.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
87 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
16 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 146.

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Former ULA CEO Tory Bruno now working for Blue Origin

11:05 am

In a tweet on X, Blue Origin today announced that former ULA CEO Tory Bruno is now working for them, acting as president for its “newly formed National Security Group.”

Blue Origin’s CEO, David Limp, quickly chimed in with his own tweet, endorsing the hire.

My guess is that Limp felt Blue Origin needed someone with experience dealing with the military, and Bruno brings that capability, having managed ULA’s military launch contracts for years. It also means Blue Origin is very serious about grabbing a larger market share of those launches once its New Glenn rocket begins launching regularly.

I also wonder if Bruno grew tired of the culture at ULA, which has appeared resistant to building reusable rockets. Bruno sold Vulcan initially with the idea of quickly upgrading it to recover its engines for reuse, but by all signs the company has been very unenthusiastic about the idea. (The idea itself might not be viable, but overall ULA has shown no interest in developing a reusable rocket of any sort.) Bruno might have decided he’d rather work with a company enthused by reusability, especially as this is the future. Once ULA completes its large Amazon Leo launch contract it faces a bleak future, with many newer cheaper reusable rockets coming on line.

It could also be that Bruno was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Money is always a powerful incentive.

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Japanese bank invests in Starlab

9:41 am

Starlab design in 2025
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.

The consortium building the Starlab space station today announced that the Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank of Japan has invested in the project.

Through this investment, SuMi TRUST Bank will support Starlab’s efforts to develop and commercialize space station technologies, while exploring opportunities for collaboration that contribute to the advancement of space-related industries and broader industrial development in Japan and globally.

The press release provided no other information, other than this boilerplate PR jargon. The amount invested was not mentioned.

Regardless, the investment tells us two things: First, Starlab has now raised more than $400 million in investment capital, and appears in a solid position to begin work on its large single module station to be launched on Starship.

Second, the investment in this American-based space project by this Japanese bank speaks volumes about the sad state of Japan’s own commercial space industry. Other than the lunar lander Ispace, Japan has seen little success from any other major rocket startups. One rocket startup, Interstellar, has obtained some investment capital, but the development of its rocket seemingly stopped for the past five years. Another, Space One, has had one launch failure. And though Honda has completed a successful vertical take-off and landing of a small rocket prototype, it doesn’t expect to attempt an orbital launch until 2030.

Meanwhile, the two rockets owned by Japan’s space agency JAXA, the H3 and Epsilon, are grounded because of launch failures.

It appears this bank believes it is more likely to earn profits from this American project than from these other Japanese space efforts.

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The SpaceX alumni that are reshaping the space industry

10:16 am

Link here. The article provides a very comprehensive list of the many former SpaceX employees who have left SpaceX to form their own companies, most of which in space or related industries, raising $3 billion in private investment capital.

The list includes a lot of very small operations doing work on the periphery, such as in the health industry or software for a variety of industries, not just space. It also includes some new major space players, such as the orbital tug company Impulse, and the recoverable capsule company Varda.

For some reason the article refers to this new generation of space entrepreneurs as the “SpaceX Mafia”, as if they are teaming up like mobsters to eliminate any competition. This is beyond false. Instead, they are the epitome of competition and the American dream, each forming their own company to push new ideas.

Take a look. It provides a nice and very hopeful overview of the future.

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Avio wins launch contract from Taiwan to launch four satellites

10:01 am

The Italian rocket company Avio has won a $81 million launch contract from Taiwan’s space agency TASA to use its Vega-C rocket to launch four Earth observation satellites.

FORMOSAT-8 will be a constellation of six high-resolution optical Earth observation satellites. The first was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in November. The next, FORMOSAT-8B, which does not yet have a publicly announced launch services provider, is, according to TASA, slated for launch in December 2026. The FORMOSAT-9 constellation will be made up of two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, which are expected to be launched in 2028 and 2030, respectively.

All four satellites will be launched aboard Vega C rockets from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

It is not clear if this contract involves four separate launches, or two (one for Formosat-8A and B, and a second for Formosat-9A and B). It is also not clear if this contract is one of the two launch contracts Avio had previously announced, without revealing the customers.

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Russia launches classified weather satellite

9:47 am

Russia today successfully placed a long delayed first satellite in a new series of weather radar satellites, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

The satellite, Obzor-R1, was originally proposed in 2015 for launch in 2019. It was placed in a polar orbit, so the rocket’s lower stages all landed in the oceans north of Russia.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China
18 Rocket Lab
16 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 145.

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Layers in the biggest canyon in the solar system

12:07 pm

Overview map

Layers in the solar system's biggest canyon
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, on the lower slopes of the south rim of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon on Mars and by far the largest so far discovered in the solar system. From the rim to the floor the elevation drop here is about 23,000 feet, with the layers shown in the picture to be about 5,000 feet above the canyon floor.

Those layers cover about 500 feet of that elevation drop. Each layer suggests a past event, possibly volcanic eruptions. The curved headwall near the upper left also suggests that some layers were avalanches or mass wasting events flowing downhill to the northeast, one on top of another.

As always, the scale of Valles Marineris is hard to imagine. The rim is 20 miles to the south, but the canyon’s opposite rim is from 140 to 300 miles to the north. You could fit two to five Grand Canyons in this part of Valles Marineris and each would look small in comparison.

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Next Starship/Superheavy launch in March?

9:17 am

According to this detailed update on SpaceX’s work at Boca Chica by NASASpaceflight.com, we should expect the next orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy some time in March 2026.

As far as the launch date for this first flight of Block 3, sources point to March as the most likely viable timeframe. This launch will mark numerous firsts, from the vehicle, its Raptor 3 engines, and the first use of the upgraded Pad 2 architecture that will be mirrored at Pad 1, along with 39A and SLC-37 on the East Coast.

Block 3 refers to a major upgrade in Starship, which will fly prototype #39. Meanwhile, work getting Superheavy prototype #19 prepped has moved fast, following the loss of #18 from an explosion during ground fueling tests.

Recent observations show significant milestones: after welding the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank to the engine section (including pre-installed landing tanks and transfer tube), teams added methane tank barrels and the forward dome with its integrated hot staging ring. By December 20, all barrel sections were delivered and stacked, achieving this in just 25 days from November 25 — half the 42 days required for Booster 17, the final Version 1 booster.

The report also said that a February launch is a possibility, but is less likely.

Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting that the Trump administration is considering giving SpaceX about 775 acres in a wildlife preserve adjacent to Starbase in exchange for 692 acres SpaceX owns elsewhere. If confirmed, this deal would be similar to the land swap Texas had wished to do with SpaceX the company scrapped last year.

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Italian rocket company Avio wins two launch contracts valued at $117 million total

9:07 am

Last week the Italian rocket company Avio announced that it has signed launch contracts for its Vega-C rocket with two different unnamed satellite customers, the value of the contracts equaling $117 million total.

The satellites to be launched will be used for Earth observation, environmental monitoring and resource management purposes for civil and scientific applications, providing high-resolution imagery as well as best-in-class geolocation accuracy. The passengers will feature a mass ranging from more than 400 to more than 1,000 kilograms and will be deployed into a ~500 km Sun-synchronous orbit.

These contracts totally secure over EUR 100 million for launch services to be scheduled between 2028 and 2031.

Though the customers remain unnamed, the Avio release indicated that one was from Europe and the other was non-European. That latter contract deal could be linked to Avio’s announcement at about the same time that it is spending $500 million to build a rocket facility in Virginia. If the non-European customer was American and its satellites were for the Pentagon, having a U.S.-based facility made that contract award far more likely.

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Recovering Maven appears increasingly dim

8:57 am

According to a NASA update late yesterday, engineers have still not been able to recover the Maven Mars orbiter since all communications ceased suddenly on December 6, and are now facing a month-long period when the Sun will block all communications with Mars entirely.

The MAVEN team also continues to analyze tracking data fragments recovered from a Dec. 6 radio science campaign. This information is being used to create a timeline of possible events and identify likely root cause of the issue. As part of that effort, on Dec. 16 and 20, NASA’s Curiosity team used the rover’s Mastcam instrument in an attempt to image MAVEN’s reference orbit, but MAVEN was not detected. Additional analysis will continue, but planned monitoring will be affected by the upcoming solar conjunction.

Mars solar conjunction – a period when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun – begins Monday, Dec. 29, and NASA will not have contact with any Mars missions until Friday, Jan. 16. Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA plans to resume its efforts to reestablish communications with MAVEN.

That December 6th tracking data had suggested the spacecraft was tumbling. Though NASA management has not yet given up hope, the longer the spacecraft remains out of touch and in an uncontrolled state, the less chance there will be for it to survive. Batteries will drain, equipment will freeze, and the spacecraft will die. Right now, that appears to be its fate.

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India launches AST SpaceMobile’s sixth Bluebird satellite

8:39 pm

India’s space agency ISRO today (December 24 in India) successfully launched AST SpaceMobile’s sixth Bluebird satellite into orbit, its Bahubali rocket (LVM3) lifting off from its Sriharikota spaceport on India’s eastern coast.

This Bluebird is an upgrade from the first five satellites, providing ten times the bandwidth. The constellation acts as satellite cell towers for smart phones. These Bluebird satellites have been the largest in size ever launched, and this satellite will break their previous records. It is also the heaviest satellite India’s Bahubali rocket has ever put in orbit, on its sixth launch.

For India, this is its fourth launch in 2025. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 144.

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Hubble images gigantic protoplanetary disk

10:20 am

Largest known protoplanetary disk
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on February 8, 2025, and shows what scientists believe is the largest protoplanetary disk so far measured.

Located roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth, IRAS 23077+6707, nicknamed “Dracula’s Chivito,” spans nearly 400 billion miles — 40 times the diameter of our solar system to the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt of cometary bodies. The disk obscures the young star within it, which scientists believe may be either a hot, massive star, or a pair of stars. And the enormous disk is not only the largest known planet-forming disk; it’s also shaping up to be one of the most unusual.

…The impressive height of these features wasn’t the only thing that captured the attention of scientists. The new images revealed that vertically imposing filament-like features appear on just one side of the disk, while the other side appears to have a sharp edge and no visible filaments. This peculiar, lopsided structure suggests that dynamic processes, like the recent infall of dust and gas, or interactions with its surroundings, are shaping the disk.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. The structure of this system has left them with more questions than answers. They can’t see the central star due to the dust. They don’t know if any planets exist as yet in the system. They don’t really understand the structural details that they can see.

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Starlink added a million new customers in just the past month

9:58 am

According to a tweet by SpaceX yesterday, Starlink now has nine million active customers in 155 countries worldwide.

These numbers tell us the company is now getting more than a billion dollars per month in revenues, based on what it charges for its various plans. What make the numbers even more startling is how fast they are growing.

In a similar post from November 5, SpaceX said Starlink had 8 million customers, meaning that its customer base has expanded at a rate of more than 20,000 per day since that date.

At more than billion dollars per month, SpaceX essentially has about half the annual revenue of NASA, which it can use far more efficiently. And those numbers will only increase in the coming years, as the company opens up new markets worldwide and begins launching its upgraded Starlink satellites with Starship.

It still seems to me puzzling why, with these numbers, Musk is considering making the company public this coming summer. Though that move would bring in a gigantic amount of new investment capital from the stock sale, it would also subject the company to serious government regulation as a publicly-traded company. The Starlink revenue can only grow. Why add government interference when you can live without it?

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JAXA identifies cause of H3 rocket failure

9:44 am

In releasing today the preliminary results of its investigation into the failure on December 21, 2025 of the upper stage of its H3 rocket, Japan’s space agency pinned the likely cause on the rocket’s fairings.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency officials told a science ministry panel on Dec. 23 they suspect an abnormal separation of the rocket’s payload fairing—a protective nose cone shield—caused a critical drop in pressure in the second-stage engine’s hydrogen tank.

Engineers think the fairing might have hit the rocket at separation, damaging the tank.

Japan at present has no way to launch payloads. It has no operating independent commercial rocket companies, and its JAXA-owned H3 and Epsilon-S rockets have had repeated problems. The H3 failed on its first launch in 2023, causing a year-long delay, and Epsilon-S still in limbo because of repeated failures during development.

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No contact with Mars’ rovers for the next month

9:21 am

The Sun is about going to cause a month-long break in communications with Curiosity and Perseverance, the two rovers on Mars.

This communications pause occurs every two years, when the orbits of Earth and Mars align with the Sun in between.

his holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.

This is not a unique situation. Both rovers have gone through conjunction several times previously. The science teams will place the rovers in secure positions to hold them over during the break.

As for the orbiters circling Mars, it isn’t clear how much their operations will be impacted. The update at the link above makes no mention of them, and my memory says communications with them is less hampered, though reduced somewhat.

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China’s Long March 12A launches but fails to land the first stage

9:21 pm

China’s new Long March 12A reusable rocket completed its first launch today (December 23 in China), lifting off from the Jiuquan space spaceport in northwest China. The attempt to softly land the first stage vertically at a landing pad down range however failed.

According to one report, the rocket’s upper stage reached orbit, but this remains unconfirmed. A Google-translation of this Chinese state-run report confirmed the failure of the first stage:

The rocket lifted off successfully after ignition, and its flight appeared normal during the visual observation phase. However, reports from the recovery site indicated an anomaly during the first stage’s re-entry, resulting in a “mushroom cloud” formation, and the successful recovery of the first stage was not achieved.

Several Chinese outlets showed the same image of that cloud. This is the second unsuccessful attempt by China this month to land a first stage, the first being the December 2nd attempt by the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace’s Zhuque-3 rocket. The Long March 12A is built by the government, so there is no make-believe company involved.

UPDATE: China’s state-run press has confirmed the upper stage reached orbit.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 143.

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