Tag: spaceflight

First parachute drop test for The Exploration Company’s Nyx capsule a success

9:11 am

Nyx drop test

The French capsule startup The Exploration Company on May 19, 2026 successfully completed the first parachute drop test for its Nyx capsule in the Mojave desert in California.

I have embedded the company’s video of the test below. The screen capture to the right shows the capsule descending on its three main parachutes.

This test focused on one of the most critical phases of spacecraft recovery – the transition from drogue parachutes to the main parachutes that bring the vehicle safely to the ground. For this campaign, TEC used a dedicated drop test vehicle, or DTV, built specifically to evaluate parachute deployment, handover timing and vehicle dynamics during this phase of descent. The DTV was not designed to be a full spacecraft. It was designed to answer a precise engineering question: does the recovery system deploy in the right sequence, at the right time, with the expected behavior? This distinction matters. It allows us to focus effort and investment where it has the most impact – on the recovery system itself.

For this campaign, the DTV replicated the relevant mass properties, aerodynamic profile and key structural interfaces of the Nyx capsule, while using a robust internal structure and sacrificial outer panels to support ground impact, hardware recovery and future test campaigns.

The drop occurred when the helicopter carrying the DTV reached about 1.7 miles altitude. As the DTV dropped it appeared the parachute system worked perfectly, with the drogue chutes followed by the three main parachutes releases as planned.

The company is targeting 2028 for the first orbital demo flight of Nyx itself. Its relatively fast-paced development in a sense puts to shame the American space industry, which except of SpaceX has not been able to develop such large orbital capsules. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule might be flying, but much of its development occurred not in the U.S. but in Europe. Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser both remain grounded and unused after more than a decade of development.
» Read more

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German rocket startup HyImpulse signs deal to consider launching from Oman

8:49 am

Active and proposed Middle East spaceports
Active and proposed Middle East spaceports

The German rocket startup HyImpulse has signed an agreement with Oman to study the possibility of launching its rockets from Oman’s proposed Etlaq spaceport located near the town of Duqm.

Under the proposed collaboration, HyImpulse will evaluate both near-term mission opportunities and the feasibility of establishing a longer-term operational presence at Etlaq Spaceport. Beyond offering an alternative launch base outside northern Europe, the arrangement is expected to capitalize on Oman’s advantageous geographic latitude, enabling access to a broader range of orbital inclinations and enhancing mission flexibility for customers across the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], Asia and, potentially, emerging African markets.

The two sides also plan to assess the possibility of supporting future launch campaigns involving HyImpulse’s SR75 and SL1 launch vehicles from Oman. Etlaq would provide access to launch infrastructure, operational facilities and mission-support capabilities as the European company studies deployment opportunities in the Sultanate.

HyImpulse is now the second European rocket startup to sign such a deal. In 2025 the Spanish company PLD agreed to use Duqm as well.

At the same time, Oman had previously said the spaceport would see a number of suborbital test flights in 2025, none of which happened.

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Gigantic slumping Martian cliffs

11:14 am

Gigantic slumping Martian cliffs
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 5, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this an “alluvial fan.” What we are looking at is the top 5,700 feet of a 9,400-foot-high cliff which is slumping downward. As it does so, its outer layers have been falling downward into the canyon below almost like liquid, producing the slope’s streaked look.

According to this definition, alluvial fans…

are mounds of coarse grained sediments formed when a confined stream disgorges into an unconfined area. They typically occur along the margins of mountain ranges where bedrock incised channels draining uplands spill out on to broad open valley floors. Alluvial fans occur in areas with significant topographic relief caused by rapid subsidence or uplift (rift basins, foreland basins, fold-and-thrust belts, etc.).

While the definition implies these fans only form from the flow of liquid water, that does not have to be the case. Many fans form from the long term downward motion of material from mountainsides into lower valleys or canyons, though water — either by rain, a freeze-thaw cycle, or streamflow — is usually a factor in causing this erosion.

At this location something has made that cliff slump, and in doing so produced the flow patterns on that slope
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

9:03 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 16th flight (37 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

65 SpaceX
32 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 65 to 57.

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Venturi Space expands investment in new French factory for building Astrolab’s rover

8:59 am

Venturi Space, the European half of the partnership with the rover startup Astrolab, is increasing its investment in a new French factory from 100 million to 250 million euros.

On 1 June, Venturi Space announced that it had increased its expected investment in the new facility to €250 million. The announcement indicated that it would no longer begin with the initial smaller facility and would instead move directly to the full 16,000-square-metre planned “technology centre.” This likely accounts for the additional €150 million in funding.

According to the company’s 1 June press release, the facility will be used for the “design and manufacture of critical technologies for lunar and Martian mobility, as well as [for] the assembly of the rovers developed by the company.” …Venturi Space is providing wheels, batteries, and battery management systems to US-based Venturi Astrolab for use aboard its rovers. During a 26 May event, NASA announced that Venturi Astrolab was one of two companies selected to build rovers for the agency’s Artemis programme.

The partnership is an unusual one. Venturi Space and Astrolab are separate companies, working together to build Astrolab’s rovers for NASA. Venturi however is also developing its own rover for the European Space Agency.

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NASA officially ends its MAVEN Mars orbiter mission

8:42 am

High altitude wind patterns on Mars
Mars’ global high altitude wind patterns,
found by MAVEN.

More than six months after engineers lost contact with the Mars orbiter MAVEN, NASA today officially ended the mission, determining the spacecraft is “not recoverable.”

The agency convened an anomaly review board in February to evaluate recovery efforts and assess the spacecraft’s probable current state. The review board has determined that the MAVEN spacecraft is not recoverable, and it is no longer capable of performing its science and data relay mission, which is consistent with the mission team’s findings.

Telemetry from MAVEN prior to the spacecraft’s passage behind Mars in December showed all subsystems working normally. After the spacecraft emerged, NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) did not observe a signal. A brief fragment of telemetry data from analysis of radio signals recorded by the DSN’s open-loop receivers indicated the spacecraft was in safe mode and rotating at an unusually high rate when it emerged from behind Mars, indicating a disruption in MAVEN’s orbit trajectory. The review board concluded that due to this rotation, the batteries on the spacecraft had drained, causing the communications system to lose power and rendering MAVEN in an unrecoverable state.

The actual cause of the rotation remains uncertain.

MAVEN’s mission was to study the atmosphere and surrounding environment of Mar. It gave scientists their first data on how Mars could have lost both its atmosphere as well as a significant amount of its initial supply of water. It also produced the first map of the red planet’s high altitude winds, finding that even at high altitude the winds shift around the Tharsis Bulge where Mars’s biggest volcanoes are located.

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Axiom’s CEO provides update on corrosion and the timetable for its space station

8:01 am

Axiom's module assembly sequence
Axiom’s module assembly sequence

Jonathan Cirtain, the CEO of the space station startup Axiom, this week gave an interview where he provided a short update on the status of their station’s construction, including the present launch timetable as well as the corrosion issue known to exist on the two module hulls that Thales-Alenia is presently building for the company.

It [the corrosion] was actually observed during ISS using a similar manufacturing technique. They mitigated it.

Now it’s come back. … We’re going to fix it the same way they fixed it for the International Space Station, the Columbus module, which has been operational now for eighteen, nineteen years. Had that same challenge. So we’re working our way through that. That should get resolved by the end of the month of June.

Because this interview took place just prior to NASA’s announcement yesterday that it has abandoned its core module concept proposed last month, Cirtain describes how the company was considering some design and construction changes to deal with it. That issue however has now vanished.

Cirtain added that the module’s hulls will next be shipped from the Thales-Alenia factory in Europe to the U.S., where Axiom will then begin installing the interior and exterior components of each, with a planned launch of the first, dubbed the PPTM, by 2028, the same target date the company announced in January 2026. That the date has not changed six months later suggests either the corrosion issue did not delay things, or it was the cause of that delay.

As I noted in January, Axiom’s schedule margins for getting its station launched, docked to ISS, loaded with ISS equipment, and then separated before ISS retires in 2030 are extremely tight. It cannot afford any further delays.

In other Axiom news, the company announced yesterday that it has established a a wholly owned subsidiary based in Switzerland, dubbed Axiom Switzerland, thus establishing itself within the Europe to facilitate future contracts with the European Space Agency, the European Union, and the member nations of both.

Below are my updated rankings of the five American space stations presently under development:
» Read more

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Spanish rocket startup PLD raises the budget for its launch facilities in French Guiana to €35 million

11:18 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The ELM-Diamant launch site
is labeled “B.” Click for full resolution image. (Note: The
Ariane-5 pad is now the Ariane-6 pad, and the now destroyed
Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup MaiaSpace.)

The Spanish rocket startup PLD, preparing for the first orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket before the end of this year, has significantly raised its investment in its leased launch facilities in France’s spaceport in French Guiana, from about €11 to €16 million to €35 million, with much of the planned construction aimed at shared facilities that other European rocket startups can use.

PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has announced a €35 million investment in the development and deployment of its Launch Complex at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in Kourou (French Guiana) over the 2025-2026 period. This investment positions PLD Space as the first private operator to deploy capital expenditure at this scale at the ELM-Diamant site, contributing to the diversification and strengthening of Europe’s historic spaceport.

Of the total investment, €22 million is being executed within the French industrial ecosystem, with €13 million directly allocated to more than 20 companies based in French Guiana, including a significant number of SMEs. This approach reinforces PLD Space’s commitment to embedding its industrial activity within the local territory and strengthening the regional space ecosystem beyond established players.

France, which owns French Guiana, decided in 2024 to refurbish the long-abandoned ELM-Diamant launch site as a common pad for the many small European rocket startups. It appears it has strong-armed PLD to pay for much of that joint infrastructure. “You want to launch first? Then pay for this work that others will use.” It is possible PLD will be able to recover this investment from those other companies, but its press release does not say so.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space raises $500 million in private investment capital

11:01 am

Impulse's tug and proposed lunar lander
Impulse’s Helios tug, transporting its proposed
lunar lander to the Moon. Click for original image.

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced today that it has successfully raised $500 million in private investment capital.

The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, bringing the company’s total capital raised to over $1 billion. The funding will support hiring and manufacturing growth as the company scales its effort to build in-space mobility infrastructure: the vehicles, propulsion systems, and operational architecture that determine where and how spacecraft move after launch.

The company was founded by Tom Mueller, who was one of SpaceX’s first employees and helped develop the Merlin engine used on the Falcon 9. It has a fleet of tugs, with its Mira tug having already completed a number of missions. Its larger Helios tug is scheduled for its first mission next year.

Hat tip reader Nate P.

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The wind speeds on seven exoplanets also suggest presence of magnetic fields

10:54 am

Astronomers using two different ground-based telescopes were able to measure the wind speeds on seven different gas giant exoplanets, and found the speeds also suggested the presence of planetary magnetic fields, the first time such magnetic fields have been deduced on an exoplanet.

In the study, the researchers investigated the wind speeds on seven exoplanets orbiting different stars. These are gas giants similar to Jupiter, which are very close to their star. Elspeth Lee explains: “The rotation of the planets was synchronized with their orbits by the tidal forces of the parent star. Just as we only ever see one side of the moon, these planets always have one side facing the star. Thus, a glowing hot day side and a permanently dark night side have formed on the planets. The extreme temperature differences in turn lead to the generation of extremely strong winds.”

…The research team was able to show that wind speeds of around 7,200 km/h to over 25,000 km/h prevail on the exoplanets. For comparison: the fastest winds measured on Jupiter reach speeds of around 1,500 km/h.

The data showed that the hotter the planet, the slower the wind, the opposite of what was expected. The scientists believe that each planet’s magnetic field is acting to brake the winds, with the hotter planets likely having more powerful fields.

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Space station startup Voyager Technologies acquires lunar lander startup Astrobotic

10:43 am

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated
Mission’s to the Moon’s south pole.

The space station startup Voyager Technologies, the lead company in the consortium building the Starlab space station, announced today that is its acquiring the lunar lander startup Astrobotic Technology.

The acquisition directly supports NASA’s Artemis program and Administrator Jared Isaacman’s commitment to a permanent American presence on the Moon by 2028. Voyager intends to accelerate investment to scale Astrobotic’s lunar and reusable rocket programs in support of America’s Moon Base plans.

Following Voyager’s strategic investment in Max Space’s expandable habitat architecture, the company’s capabilities will span the full arc of lunar operation. This includes lunar mission management, communications and propulsion; surface delivery via Astrobotic’s Peregrine and Griffin landers; surface power through Astrobotic’s LunaGrid solar distribution system; long-duration habitation through Max Space; dust mitigation with Voyager’s clear-dust repellent coating; and in-situ resource production.

After three years of delays, Griffin is scheduled to launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket before the end of this year, landing near the south pole with four NASA payloads and Astrolab’s Flip demo rover, as indicated on the map to the right. Astrobotic has launched one previous lander in 2024, but was unable to attempt a landing because of a fuel leak that occurred shortly after launch.

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Giant SpaceX barge for transporting Starship/Superheavy arrives in Texas

10:19 am

SpaceX's Starship barge
For scale, note the tiny people watching on
shore. Click for source.

The giant specially designed barge that SpaceX plans to use to transport Starships and Superheavys from Boca Chica to Florida, dubbed “You’ll Thank Me Later”, arrived in Texas last week.

Avid Space, a Starbase streaming outlet part of Labpadre, captured the barge’s arrival, posting images, of which the one to the right is a screen capture. From the first link:

The retrofitted barge Marmac 31, nicknamed “You’ll Thank Me Later” by Elon Musk’s space firm, arrived at the Port of Brownsville last week. It will be used to carry Starship megarockets built at Starbase to Florida and eventually other destinations.

The Starbase-headquartered company has said it would use barges to float the rockets to Florida for launches from there until the Starship factory that it’s building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is complete. The company has been in talks with port officials about a 50-year lease for an 83-acre site that would be used as a terminal for the 400-foot-long rockets. Those negotiations are ongoing.

This barge’s arrival in Texas not only makes Starship launches from Florida more likely in the near future, it gives SpaceX the option to buy other launch sites along the Gulf coast, such as that rumored purchase in Louisiana.

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