Tag: spaceflight

Isaacman: SLS stands on very thin ice

2:46 pm

Though NASA administration Jared Isaacman continues to support unequivocally NASA’s planned Artemis-2 ten-day manned mission around the Moon — presently targeting a March launch date — in a statement today on X he revealed that he also recognizes the serious limitations of the SLS rocket.

And it takes two-plus years between launches
And it also takes two-plus years between launches

The Artemis vision began with President Trump, but the SLS architecture and its components long predate his administration, with much of the heritage clearly traced back to the Shuttle era. As I stated during my hearings, and will say again, this is the fastest path to return humans to the Moon and achieve our near-term objectives through at least Artemis V, but it is not the most economic path and certainly not the forever path.

The flight rate is the lowest of any NASA-designed vehicle, and that should be a topic of discussion. It is why we undertake wet dress rehearsals, Pre-FRR, and FRR, and why we will not press to launch until we are absolutely ready.

These comments were also in connection with the first wet dress rehearsal countdown that NASA performed with SLS/Orion in the past few days, a rehearsal that had to be terminated early because of fuel leaks. NASA now plans to do another wet dress rehearsal, requiring it to push back the Artemis-2 launch until March.

I think there is more going on here than meets the eye.
» Read more

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Pluto and Charon come out of the dark

1:40 pm

Pluto and Charon come out of the dark
Click for original image.

Cool image time! I have decided to start delving into the archives of some of the older planetary missions, because there is value there that is often forgotten now years later, that should not be forgotten.

In looking through the archive of images from the main camera on New Horizons as it sped past Pluto in July 2015, I found the picture to the right, taken on July 10, 2025 when New Horizons was still about three million miles away.

This is the raw image from that camera, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. It is also the first time in human history we had a sharp look at these two planets that sit at the outer fringes of the solar system. The science team that day released a version that they enhanced to bring out the details, which I immediately posted. They then noted the following:

A high-contrast array of bright and dark features covers Pluto’s surface, while on Charon, only a dark polar region interrupts a generally more uniform light gray terrain. The reddish materials that color Pluto are absent on Charon. Pluto has a significant atmosphere; Charon does not. On Pluto, exotic ices like frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide have been found, while Charon’s surface is made of frozen water and ammonia compounds. The interior of Pluto is mostly rock, while Charon contains equal measures of rock and water ice. “These two objects have been together for billions of years, in the same orbit, but they are totally different,” said Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

This difference is quite clear in the raw image, with Charon markedly dimmer than Pluto even though they are getting the same amount of light from the Sun.

More than any other objects in the solar system, the double planet system of Pluto-Charon demonstrates how uniquely different every object in the solar system is from every other object. Even when formed together, as these two planets were, they formed in a manner that made them drastically different.

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India schedules next PSLV launch for June, claims it knows cause of January launch failure

9:10 am

India's space agency ISRO, as transparent as mud
India’s space agency ISRO,
as transparent as mud

According to a statement by a government minister yesterday, India’s space agency ISRO now knows what caused the January launch failure of its PSLV rocket, and has thus scheduled its next launch for June 2026.

This had been the second PSLV launch failure in a row, both of which occurred with the rocket’s third stage at almost the exact same time. With the first failure, ISRO never outlined publicly the cause, though it claimed it had solved the issue. According to the minister’s statement, the failure of the second launch was unrelated to the first.

The minister also said that the two PSLV missions that had failed—PSLV-C61 in May 2025 and PSLV-C62 in January this year—were unrelated. “It wasn’t the same problem. When the first mission failed, there was a detailed assessment, and the problem was fixed. Both the issues were different,” Singh said.

He also added that separate internal and external failure assessment committees have been set up to analyse what went wrong in each of the missions.

No word however as to the cause of the failure has yet been released. Though he also claimed the PSLV has not lost its customers due to these issues, ISRO’s lack of transparency says otherwise. If it claims the two failures came from different causes, it should provide the details in order to reassure potential customers.

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NASA makes right decision and delays Artemis-2 launch to do a 2nd dress rehearsal countdown

8:53 am

Artemis Program logo

NASA management announced today that it has decided to postpone the launch of the manned Artemis-2 mission around the Moon until March in order to give it time to do a second wet dress rehearsal countdown of the rocket and fix the hydrogen fuel leaks that occurred in yesterday’s rehearsal.

Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives. To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.

Moving off a February launch window also means the Artemis II astronauts will be released from quarantine, which they entered in Houston on Jan. 21. As a result, they will not travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday as tentatively planned. Crew will enter quarantine again about two weeks out from the next targeted launch opportunity.

It should be understood that these hydrogen leaks have been systemic to SLS’s core stage rocket engines, which come from the shuttle era. Shuttle launches were routinely delayed due to similar leaks. This was partly because hydrogen is extremely difficult to control, as its atom is so small and light, and partly because of the engine design. This was the first rocket system ever to use hydrogen as fuel, and was thus cutting edge, in the 1970s. We should not be surprised by such issues.

Newer hydrogen-fueled designs have apparently overcome the problem. For example, Blue Origin uses hydrogen as a fuel in the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket, and though it has only launched twice, it has not had such issues on either launch.

In its announcement NASA also noted a bunch of other issues that occurred during this first rehearsal, all of which suggest that a delay is called for. There was a valve issue in the Orion capsule, some audio communication channels kept dropping out, and the cold weather affected some equipment. Waiting until warmer weather will help alleviate some of this.

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Falcon 9 upper stage has issue preventing de-orbit burn; SpaceX pauses launches

8:34 am

According to a SpaceX tweet yesterday afternoon, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that successfully launched 25 Starlink satellites “experienced an off-nominal condition” when it was preparing to do its final de-orbit engine burn.

During today’s Falcon 9 launch of @Starlink satellites, the second stage experienced an off-nominal condition during preparation for the deorbit burn. The vehicle then performed as designed to successfully passivate the stage. The first two MVac burns were nominal and safely deployed all 25 Starlink satellites to their intended orbit.

Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight

It appears that SpaceX has temporarily paused its launch schedule while it reviews this incident, shifting a launch that was supposed to occur last night back three days to February 5th. While the launch itself was successful, the company likely wants to get a handle on what went wrong before resuming launches.

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Fuel leaks cause Artemis-2 dress rehearsal countdown to terminate at T-5:15, several minutes early

11:15 pm

Artemis Program logo

Two hydrogen fuel leaks during today’s Artemis-2 dress rehearsal countdown forced an early termination of the count as well as the cancellation of a second practice countdown.

The Artemis II wet dress rehearsal countdown was terminated at the T-5:15 minute mark due to a liquid hydrogen leak at the interface of the tail service mast umbilical, which had experienced high concentrations of liquid hydrogen earlier in the countdown, as well. The launch control team is working to ensure the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket is in a safe configuration and begin draining its tanks.

An earlier leak of hydrogen in the count forced a hold and a recycling of the count, though it did not stop the rehearsal.

The initial plan had been to do two terminal counts. First they would run the countdown down to T-33 seconds, hold for a few minutes, then recycle back to T-10 minutes and do it again. Because of that first leak delay the launch director canceled the second count. And because of the second leak they were unable to run that one count all the way to T-33 seconds.

The wise action would be for NASA to review their data, figure out what caused the leaks, correct it, and then do another dress rehearsal countdown. This being NASA, do not be surprised if they review the data, figure out what caused the leaks, and decide they can go ahead with the launch on February 8, 2026.

Why not? They are already launching this manned 10-day mission around the Moon with an untested life support system and a questionable heat shield. Might as well try a launch when you haven’t worked out all the fueling kinks.

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Musk: I have merged xAI with SpaceX

3:35 pm

Elon Musk today announced that he has merged the company xAI (which includes X) with SpaceX, because in his mind the needs of the two companies interlace perfectly.

The requirement to launch thousands of satellites to orbit became a forcing function for the Falcon program, driving recursive improvements to reach the unprecedented flight rates necessary to make space-based internet a reality. This year, Starship will begin delivering the much more powerful V3 Starlink satellites to orbit, with each launch adding more than 20 times the capacity to the constellation as the current Falcon launches of the V2 Starlink satellites. Starship will also launch the next generation of direct-to-mobile satellites, which will deliver full cellular coverage everywhere on Earth.

While the need to launch these satellites will act as a similar forcing function to drive Starship improvements and launch rates, the sheer number of satellites that will be needed for space-based data centers will push Starship to even greater heights. With launches every hour carrying 200 tons per flight, Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year, enabling an exciting future where humanity is out exploring amongst the stars.

The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.

My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space. This cost-efficiency alone will enable innovative companies to forge ahead in training their AI models and processing data at unprecedented speeds and scales, accelerating breakthroughs in our understanding of physics and invention of technologies to benefit humanity.

Many sources online are speculating that this new merged company will make the company’s initial public offering (IPO) now rumored for this summer even more sky high. I remain puzzled however why Musk would want to do it, and this merger today illustrates why. He controls both SpaceX and xAI completely, as both are privately owned. He didn’t need to convince government regulators of anything. Once the company is public, with publicly traded stock, that will change. He will no longer have such freedom of action.

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A galaxy’s swirling dust lanes

12:07 pm

A galaxy with swirling dust lanes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of follow-up observations of a now faded supernovae that occurred there two years earlier.

This was on purpose: the aim of the observations was to witness the aftereffects of the supernova and examine its surroundings, which can only be done once the intense light of the explosion is gone.

The galaxy itself, NGC 7722, is 187 million light years away, and is unusual in itself.

A “lenticular”, meaning “lens-shaped”, galaxy is a type that sits in between the more familiar spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies. It is also less common than these — partly because when a galaxy has an ambiguous appearance, it can be hard to determine if it is actually a spiral, actually an elliptical galaxy, or something in between. Many of the known lenticular galaxies sport features of both spiral and elliptical galaxies. In this case, NGC 7722 lacks the defined arms of a spiral galaxy, while it has an extended, glowing halo and a bright bulge in the center similar to an elliptical galaxy. Unlike elliptical galaxies, it has a visible disc — concentric rings swirl around its bright nucleus. Its most prominent feature, however, is undoubtedly the long lanes of dark red dust coiling around the outer disc and halo.

The streak in the lower left is a very distant background galaxy, seen on edge.

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Amazon buys ten more launches from SpaceX to place its Leo satellites in orbit

10:59 am

Amazon Leo logo

Hidden in Amazon’s submission last week to the FCC, requesting more time to launch its Leo internet constellation, was this tidbit:

Less than two years after the Commission granted its authorization, Amazon Leo announced the largest commercial launch procurements in history to deploy its initial constellation. It has since added to this launch capacity, and today has contracted for 102 launches across four providers: 18 launches on Arianespace’s Ariane 6, 24 launches on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 38 launches on ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, 9 launches on ULA’s Atlas V, and 13 launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrases indicate the significant changes. In my initial post last week I was focused solely on whether the FCC would grant Amazon the time extension to get its constellation in orbit. At the moment it has only 180 satellites operating in orbit, and to meet its license requirement it must have 1,616 launched by July.

Thus, I didn’t look closely at these launch contract numbers. While the number of launches for Arianespace (18) and ULA (47) appears to match Amazon’s contract numbers from its original 2022 announcement, Blue Origin’s total has dropped by three launches, 27 to 24.

SpaceX in turn has gained another ten launches, on top of its original already completed 2023 three-launch contract. (In 2023, faced with a stockholder lawsuit for ignoring SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the only operational rocket among all of these at the time and by far the cheapest, Amazon’s management quickly signed SpaceX to that three-launch contract.)

The submission last week tells us that sometime recently Amazon signed SpaceX to a new contract for ten more launches. The numbers also suggest that the company took three launches away from Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Apparently, Amazon is not happy with Blue Origin’s launch pace, and signed SpaceX to help get more satellites in orbit. Without question, SpaceX will get these ten additional launches off faster than ULA, Arianespace, or Blue Origin combined. In fact, I bet it gets all ten done before the middle of this year, assuming Amazon can deliver it the satellites.

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SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites; uses 1st stage for 31st time

9:28 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The 1st stage (B1071) completed its 31st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Though this number set no records, it moved that booster closer to catching the records for the most reused launch vehicle, presently held by the shuttle Discovery:

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

Sources here and here.

The 2026 launch race:

14 SpaceX
6 China
2 Rocket Lab

This list is likely inaccurate, as Russia had a Soyuz-2 launch of a classified payload planned just prior to SpaceX’s launch, but as yet there been no confirmation of its success. SpaceX also has another launch schedule for this evening. I will include both when I update then.

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SpaceX submits proposal to FCC for new constellation of one million satellites

3:03 pm

SpaceX yesterday submitted a proposal to Federal Communications Commission to build new satellite constellation made up of one million satellites designed as an orbiting data center.

In one 8-page document, SpaceX describes its proposed Orbital Data Center system. “To deliver the compute capacity required for large scale AI inference and data center applications serving billions of users globally, SpaceX aims to deploy a system of up to one million satellites to operate within narrow orbital shells spanning up to 50 km each (leaving sufficient room to deconflict against other systems with comparable ambitions),” the company says.

The same satellites would harness the sun’s energy, orbiting at “between 500 km and 2,000 km altitude and 30 degrees and sun-synchronous orbit inclinations,” the company adds. The orbiting data centers would also use “optical links,” or lasers, to connect with Starlink, using the existing satellite internet system to route traffic to users below.

“Orbital data centers are the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power,” the filing adds in bold, pointing to the growing energy costs of AI data centers on Earth. The company is also betting it can launch the space-based data centers at a rapid clip using SpaceX’s more powerful Starship vehicle, which is also crucial to upgrading Starlink with next-generation satellites.

The FCC is likely not going to okay this submission, as written. It is clearly very preliminary, but appears to be consistent with SpaceX’s way of doing business. It sees an opportunity, and jumps in with full force. While others are working up their plans, SpaceX submits its first license proposal outlining the plan in very broad terms, thus getting there first.

And SpaceX is very well positioned to launch this constellation as promised. It has the rockets, and has proven itself capable of running a satellite constellation of vast size.

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Axiom wins slot for next tourist mission to ISS

2:25 pm

NASA yesterday announced that it awarded the space station startup Axiom the next slot for a tourist mission to ISS.

NASA and Axiom Space have signed an order for the fifth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, targeted to launch no earlier than January 2027 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

…Axiom Mission 5 is expected to spend up to 14 days aboard the space station. A specific launch date will depend on overall spacecraft traffic at the orbital outpost and other planning considerations.

Both Axiom and the space station startup Vast had been bidding for the fifth and sixth tourist slots. That Axiom had already done this four times previously was probably NASA’s reasons for choosing it. The agency has not yet decided on who will get the sixth slot, targeting a mission likely in 2028. My bet is that it will give to Vast, because by then Vast’s own demo station Haven-1 will have launched and been visited, thus giving that company some of the experience Axiom already has.

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Russia in discussions with Malaysian province about potential spaceport

1:49 pm

Proposed spaceports in Malaysia
Proposed spaceports in Malaysia

Officials from Glavcosmos, the commercial division of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, have been holding meetings with officials from the Malaysian province of Sabah about building a spaceport there.

Glavkosmos said technical studies identify Sabah as the most suitable location in Southeast Asia for orbital launches, including low-earth and sun-synchronous orbits, due to its strategic geography and safe rocket stage drop zones. The proposed spaceport could create more than 2,000 high-income jobs and boost local supporting industries.

One year ago, in January 2025, the Sabah government announced it was holding similar discussions with the Ukraine. It seems either those talks fell through, or Russia decided to move in and block the Ukraine from making a deal.

A second Malaysian state, Pahang, is also planning a spaceport, working instead with China.

In all cases, it does appear for some reason Malaysia is not very interested in working with western nations.

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Blue Origin shuts down New Shepard suborbital tourist flights

1:22 pm

Blue Origin yesterday announced it is “pausing” the suborbital tourist flights of its New Shepard spacecraft for no less than two years.

Blue Origin today announced it will pause its New Shepard flights and shift resources to further accelerate development of the company’s human lunar capabilities. The decision reflects Blue Origin’s commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.

Those “lunar capabilites” not only include its lunar landers, both manned and unmanned, but its New Glenn rocket, which it wants to sell to NASA to use for these missions. Both need more attention. In addition, it could be the company’s CEO, David Limp, wants to allocate more resources to the company’s Orbital Reef space station proposal, which has been sitting dead in the water for the past year-plus. All these projects have been very slow to get out of the starting gate, partly because of the very leisurely culture that Blue Origin’s previous CEO installed, and partly because the company has put out too many projects it is not focusing well on finishing.

There is also likely a third reason: New Shepard was not making a profit. While the company has been flying it quite regularly in recent months, it does not appear it could ever recover its costs. Moreover, I suspect the demand for these short suborbital tourist flights has diminished with advent of orbital tourism and the soon-to-arrive multiple commercial space stations.

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Comet K1/Atlas has broken apart, not interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas

10:37 am

the end of Comet K1/Atlas

CORRECTION: The image to the right is not that of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas, as I reported earlier today. I misread the Gemini Telescope release. This is comet K1/Atlas, another comet from our own solar system that made its close approach to the Sun in October, when it broke up.

The the latest image from the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii shows at least four sections slowly drifting apart.

The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 6, 2025. Gemini’s previous image, taken in November 11th, shows about the same number of objects, but clustered much more closely together.

It appears that as the comet made its closest approach, the stress was too great. This is not surprising, as it happens to many comets that get too close to the Sun.

Sorry for the error and hat tip to reader Tom Laskowski for letting me know. I need to look at the names of comets named after the ATLAS telescope, as they are very similar and most are NOT interstellar comet 3I/Atlas.

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China launches Algerian satellite

10:23 am

China today successfully placed an Algerian “remote sensing” satellite into orbit, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. China’s state-run press also said little about the satellite, other than claiming it would be used for “land planning and disaster prevention and mitigation.” This however doesn’t match what “remote sensing” satellites usually do, which is military surveillance.

The 2026 launch race:

13 SpaceX
6 China
2 Rocket Lab

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Rumors: Musk is considering merging SpaceX with xAI and Tesla

1:56 pm

According to a bunch of unconfirmed stories today from different news outlets, Elon Musk is considering merging SpaceX with xAI and Tesla as part of the initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX that the company is contemplating for sometime this summer.

Reuters reports that Musk wants to merge xAI — his very valuable AI company that has already merged with the company that used to be called Twitter — into SpaceX, his very valuable rocket company. And Bloomberg reports that SpaceX is also considering a merger with Tesla, citing people familiar with the matter.

The SpaceX-xAI tie-up could help Musk build data centers in space. “The combination would bring Musk’s rockets, Starlink satellites, the X social media platform and ​Grok AI chatbot under one roof,” the Reuters report says. Then again, Reuters also says it doesn’t know several key details about the theoretical deal, including “its ‌primary rationale.”

None of this is confirmed, but Musk has not denied it either. If so, this IPO would be the largest ever in the history of the stock markets, by many magnitudes. As noted at the link, xAI is raising gigantic amounts of capital. SpaceX in turn is expected to do even better in its IPO, as a single entity. Tesla is in far less demand, but this merger could be a way to reshape that company to give it a better future. It has already said it is beginning the transition from electronic cars to robots and other autonomous machines.

Whether such a merger will help SpaceX or Musk in his goal of building a Mars colony remains decidedly uncertain. A publicly traded stock company does not have the freedom of action that SpaceX now has as privately owned company.

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Russian defunct military satellite breaks up in graveyard orbit

1:42 pm

A Russian defunct military geosynchronous satellite that was launched in 2014 and spent a decade spying on other geosynchronous satellites only to be moved to a graveyard orbit in 2025 when its fuel ran out apparently broke apart earlier today.

The Swiss company S2A systems, which specializes in tracking orbital objects, captured the moment the spacecraft began disintegrating. I have embedded that footage below, though it really is far less exciting than it sounds.

The debris poses a very small risk to other geosynchronous satellites, which orbit at about 22,000 miles elevation where there is too little atmosphere to decay orbits. The graveyard orbit is several hundred miles higher.
» Read more

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FAA moves forward on its environmental assessment of SpaceX’s proposal to launch Starship/Superheavy from Kennedy Space Center

12:01 pm

Proposed Starship/Superheavy launchsites at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral
Proposed Starship/Superheavy launchsites at
Kennedy (LC-39A) and Cape Canaveral (SLC-37)

While NASA has already determined that Starship/Superheavy launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will have no significant impact on the environment, the FAA has not yet completed its own environmental impact statement.

Last week it released a preliminary summary [pdf] of its impact statement, revealing that it has reduced its final options to either approving SpaceX’s request to do as many as 44 launches per year, or to reject any changes — the “no action alternative” — which would block all Starship/Superheavy launches at Kennedy.

The overall tone of this summary suggests strongly that the FAA is almost certainly going to approve SpaceX’s request, allowing as many as 44 launches per year from launchpad LC-39A, as shown on the map to the right. As it notes in describing the “no action alternative”:

SpaceX would not launch Starship-Super Heavy from LC-39A. NASA would not develop, implement, or approve agreements with SpaceX associated with Starship-Super Heavy operations at LC-39A. The No Action Alternative would not meet the purpose and need. [emphasis mine]

In other words, rejecting SpaceX’s request would not fulfill the FAA’s obligation to serve the public. It would also not fulfill the FAA’s obligation to serve a fellow government agency, NASA, which has already approved this SpaceX request in a 2019 environmental assessment.

It appears a final decision by the FAA is imminent. A nice summary of this FAA document can be found here, which notes that if approved, it will give SpaceX license approval to launch Starship/Superheavy as much as 146 times per year, from its launchpads at Boca Chica, Kennedy, and Cape Canaveral. Note too that this FAA assessment is independent of the Air Force’s environment assessment, which has already approved 76 launches per year at the SLC-37 launchpad.

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Orbex failure occurred partly because UK government withheld promised funding

10:34 am

Prime rocket prototype on launchpad
The prototype of Orbex’s never-launched Prime rocket,
on the launchpad in 2022

It appears the government of the United Kingdom contributed to the bankruptcy and sale of the British rocket startup Orbex in more than one way.

Orbex had hoped to do its first launch from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland in 2022, but was blocked for four years because of red tape. First, the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority would not issue the spaceport and launch licenses. Second, local opposition delayed approvals as well. Those delays ate into the company’s resources, until it became entirely dependent on grants from the UK government (some through the European Space Agency) to keep it afloat.

Orbex’s problems were further compounded when it became clear in 2024 that the Sutherland spaceport would never get clearance. Orbex then switched to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, but this forced more delays because the company had no facilities there. It had already spent a fortune building everything for Sutherland.

A new report today says that it was finally forced to shut down and sell its assets to the French startup The Exploration Company because the UK government had withheld some of that promised funding.

News of the potential sale came just a month after a European Space Agency document confirmed that €112 million of €144 million UK government funding, earmarked for the European Launcher Challenge (ELC) scheme, was still “to be distributed”.

As a result, Orbex received just €34.9 million from the scheme – one-fifth of the €169 million awarded to each of its rivals by European governments.

That shortfall equates to about $160 million, a substantial amount of cash. While it is perfectly reasonable for the UK government to withheld these funds if it thinks the money would be badly spent, none of this government funding would not have been necessary at all if the UK government had simply issued the launch permits in a timely manner, allowing Orbex to launch and earn revenue.

As I noted early, congratulations to the United Kingdom, the place where rocket companies go to die! This is now the second such company killed by UK red tape and government incompetence, the first being Virgin Orbit.

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Russian official says Soyuz launchpad repair likely delayed

9:48 am

According to the Russian official in charge of ground infrastructure at Roscosmos, the repair of Russia’s only Soyuz launchpad for launching Progress and Soyuz capsules to ISS might not be completed by late March, as Roscosmos has previously promised.

It appears the winter weather at Baikonur is causing issues. In addition:

Barmin explained that the new service platform had to be assembled from components manufactured at different times and sometimes mismatching each other, requiring on-site modifications. For example, the core of the spare platform was manufactured in 1977 in accordance with a different set of blueprints for a planned-but-never-implemented refurbishment of another Soyuz pad, Barmin said. When it was shipped from an arsenal in the city of Tambov to Baikonur, the set of hardware was incomplete, requiring it to be complemented with parts from other sources and with newly manufactured elements.

It also appears the Russian government is going to make scapegoats of the workers who handled the launch platform during the November 2025 launch. It has placed them under criminal investigation. The managers, whom according to one report demanded the launch take place even though these workers could not get the platform properly fastened in place, appear to have been cleared of wrong-doing.

Until this pad is repaired, Russia has no way to launch any manned missions. Nor can it send cargo to ISS.

The decision to scapegoat the workers will further hinder work, as it will certainly damage morale. Such an approach also helps explain why there has been several cases of sabotage of Soyuz and Progress capsules while they are being prepped for launch.

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NASA delays Artemis-2 wet dress rehearsal countdown due to weather

9:30 am

NASA today announced it is delaying until February 2, 2026 the wet dress rehearsal countdown of its Artemis-2 mission due to weather concerns.

NASA is targeting Monday, Feb. 2, as the tanking day for the upcoming Artemis II wet dress rehearsal at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as a result of weather. With this change, the first potential opportunity to launch is no earlier than Sunday, Feb. 8.

Over the past several days, engineers have been closely monitoring conditions as cold weather and winds move through Florida. Managers have assessed hardware capabilities against the projected forecast given the rare arctic outbreak affecting the state and decided to change the timeline. Teams and preparations at the launch pad remain ready for the wet dress rehearsal. However, adjusting the timeline for the test will position NASA for success during the rehearsal, as the expected weather this weekend would violate launch conditions.

I had previously said this dress rehearsal countdown would include the astronauts inside Orion. This was incorrect. The astronauts are in quarantine in preparation for the actual mission. Orion will be unmanned during the rehearsal countdown.

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Two American launches this evening

12:28 am

Two American companies, Rocket Lab and SpaceX, successfully completed launches during the evening of January 29-30.

First, Rocket Lab today (January 30th in New Zealand) placed a South Korean test smallsat, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. The satellite is the first of a planned mass-produced constellation to provide precise observations of the Korean peninsula.

Next, SpaceX placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours. The first stage completed fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2026 launch race:

13 SpaceX
5 China
2 Rocket Lab

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Varda capsule successfully returns to Earth after nine weeks in orbit

9:36 pm

Varda's W-5 capsule after landing today
Varda’s W-5 capsule after landing today

The orbiting capsule startup Varda today successfully returned to Earth its W-5 capsule after nine weeks in orbit, landing in Australia’s Koonibba Test Range, operated by the commercial spaceport startup Southern Launch.

W-5 launched in November 2025, Varda’s fourth launch last year, and spent 9 weeks in orbit. The mission was funded through the Prometheus program, a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and commercial space entities.

…The W-5 mission is the first reentry of Varda’s in-house developed satellite bus, designed specifically to meet the rigorous demands of both long-duration orbital pharmaceutical processing and high-velocity reentry. The W-5 flight was also equipped with an in-house manufactured heatshield, made in Varda’s El Segundo headquarters from C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator).

…The W-5 capsule carried a specialized payload for the U.S. Navy, focusing on data collection during reentry. Varda’s ability to provide fixed-cost, routine reentry offers the Department of War a unique, cost-effective platform for iterative testing of hypersonic flight characteristics. The Varda capsules endure extreme environments when they reenter at speeds exceeding Mach 25.

While previous capsules had used their time in orbit testing the manufacture of products like pharmaceuticals, this mission was used by the Air Force to test hypersonic missile sensors and equipment during the high-speed re-entry.

Varda’s earlier capsules had used a satellite bus (that provides power and control) built by Rocket Lab. With this capsule it is now capable of building its entire capsule. It is also ramping up its launch pace, with plans to launch as many as 20 capsules through ’28.

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Pluto’s mountains of ice surrounded by a sea of frozen nitrogen

2:18 pm

Ice mountains floating in nitrogen sea on Pluto
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Though we only have a limited archive of high resolution pictures of Pluto that were taken when New Horizons did its close fly-by of the planet in July 2015, it is worthwhile sometimes to take a second look at some of those images. The picture to the right, cropped and annotated to post here, was taken during that July 14, 2015 fly-by, and shows a mountainous region dubbed Al-Idrisi Montes on the shore of a white frozen ocean. The red dotted line indicates a large trench that separates the Al-Idrisi mountains from the mountainous region to the west.

Sounds similar to an arctic shoreline here on Earth, doesn’t it? Not in the least. Those mountains, ranging from 600 to 9,000 feet high, are made of frozen ice, which on Pluto are as hard as granite due to the endless cold. And the white frozen ocean is frozen nitrogen, broken into polygon shaped blocks. Even stranger: those ice mountains might even be floating in that nitrogen sea! A paper from 2019 [pdf] looked at the New Horizons data and concluded as follows:

Evidence suggests that the Al-Idrisi mountains may have been uplifted by the formation of
the western trench feature. Solid state convection appears to be our best supposition as to how the Al-Idrisi Montes reached their heights.

In other words, as that large trench/depression formed, convection (the bubbles you see when you simmer tomato sauce) pushed these mountains of ice upward to float above the “sea level” of that nitrogen sea.

At least, that’s one hypothesis. The scientists who wrote this paper admit their “our hypothesis still remains in need of study and this trench-mountain system warrants serious further research.” In other words, we simply don’t know enough to have a definitive understanding of the geology of this extremely alien planet.

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SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites

10:59 am

The beat goes on: SpaceX today successfully launched another 25 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 19th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

It also appears on this launch SpaceX placed its 11,000th Starlink satellite into orbit. The actual number of satellites in orbit presently is much less than this, as SpaceX retires older Starlink satellites on a regularly basis. Nonetheless, the overall number is impressive, in that it was accomplished in less than seven years.

The 2026 launch race:

12 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab

Though it is still early in 2026, note that SpaceX has now launched twice as much as the rest of the world, combined.

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Artemis-2 proves NASA learned nothing from the Challenger and Columbia failures

9:56 am

NASA: an agency still avoiding reality
NASA: an agency that still avoids reality

Our bankrupt new media continues to fail us. NASA is about to send four astronauts on a ten-day mission around the Moon in a capsule with questionable engineering, and that media continues to ignore the problem. Mainstream news outlets continue to describe the mission in glowing terms, consistently ignoring that questionable engineering. In some cases the stories even make believe NASA has fixed the problem, when it has not.

The most ridiculous example is an article yesterday from an Orlando outlet, Spectrum New 13: “How the lessons learned from the Challenger disaster apply to Artemis rockets”. It focuses entirely on the O-ring problem that destroyed Challenger, noting repeatedly that NASA has fixed this issue in its SLS rocket.

Of course it has. That’s the last war, long over. Engineers fixed this issue almost four decades ago. The article however dismisses entirely the new engineering concern of today, Orion’s heat shield, which did not work as expected during its own test flight in space in 2022. It covers this issue with this single two-sentence paragraph:

However, during re-entry, it broke up into chunks instead of burning away. This issue pushed back the Artemis II and III missions, but NASA has stated it has resolved the problem.

NASA however has not resolved the problem. It is using the same heat shield now on this manned mission, and really has no reason to assume it will work any better, even if the agency has changed the re-entry flight path in an effort to mitigate the heat shield’s questionable design.

You see, NASA with Artemis-2 is doing the exact same thing it did prior to both the Challenger and Columbia accidents. » Read more

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Saturn’s rings with two of its moons perfectly aligned

2:30 pm

Two of Saturn's moons above its rings
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Rather than posting another Mars orbital image, I decided today to delve into the archive of pictures taken by the Cassini orbiter during the thirteen years it circled Saturn, from 2004 until 2017. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was released on December 14, 2015, and is just one example of the many breath-taking photographs that the Cassini science team took during that mission. From the caption:

Like a cosmic bull’s-eye, Enceladus and Tethys line up almost perfectly for Cassini’s cameras. Since the two moons are not only aligned, but also at relatively similar distances from Cassini, the apparent sizes in this image are a good approximation of the relative sizes of Enceladus (313 miles across) and Tethys (660 miles across).

This view looks toward the un-illuminated side of the rings from 0.34 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in red light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 24, 2015.

The image was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million miles from Enceladus. Image scale on Enceladus is 7 miles per pixel. Tethys was at a distance of 1.6 million miles with a pixel scale of 10 miles per pixel.

Enceladus is in the foreground, and is the planet that has what scientists have labeled tiger stripe fractures that vent water and other material, including carbon molecules.

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Astronomers discover a “surprisingly mature” cluster of galaxies in early universe

11:18 am

Proto galaxy cluster
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science strikes again! Astronomers using both the Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory now think they have discovered a just-forming protocluster of galaxies only one billion years after the Big Bang, when such galaxy clusters should not yet exist.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the Webb infrared data as the background of stars and galaxies, with the galaxies thought to be part of this protocluster circled. The blue cloud is Chandra’s X-ray data. From the press release:

The Chandra and Webb data reveal that JADES-ID1 contains the two properties that confirm the presence of a protocluster: a large number of galaxies held together by gravity (Webb sees at least 66 potential members) that are also sitting in a huge cloud of hot gas (detected by Chandra). As a galaxy cluster forms, gas falls inward and is heated by shock waves, reaching temperatures of millions of degrees and glowing in X-rays.

What makes JADES-ID1 exceptional is the remarkably early time when it appears in cosmic history. Most models of the universe predict that there likely would not be enough time and a large enough density of galaxies for a protocluster of this size to form only a billion years after the big bang. The previous record holder for a protocluster with X-ray emission is seen much later, about three billion years after the big bang.

It increasingly appears that there are aspects of the universe we simply do not yet understand, which in turn make our theories of its birth and formation either incomplete or invalid. Those theories might be right in principle, but the data suggests they are wrong in detail.

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New ground-based space antenna startup raises $100 million and wins $50 million Space Force contract

10:24 am

In a clear sign that the space industry in space now requires increased support on the ground, the ground-based space antenna startup, Northwood Space, this week announced it has raised $100 million in private investment capital even as it simultaneously won a $50 million Space Force contract.

The funding round, announced January 27, was led by Washington Harbour Partners and co-led by Andreessen Horowitz. The financing came on the heels of a $49.8 million contract that was signed with the United States Space Force to help improve the “satellite control network,” which “handles a huge variety of consequential space missions for our government,” said Bridgit Mendler, founder and CEO.

Northwood is an end-to-end ground infrastructure provider for space missions. In other words, it manufactures and deploys antennae systems, which are smaller than older models, that allow Earth to communicate with satellites in space.

Northwood was only formed three years ago, so its success is an clear indication that there is a real need for more and better ground-based facilities.

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