SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The 2026 launch race:
10 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab
According to a press release yesterday from the Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Maryland that is building the Dragonfly helicopter that is going to Saturn’s moon Titan, the rotors have completed the first round of testing, and are now about to undergo “fatigue and cryogenic trials under simulated Titan conditions.”
Over five weeks, from August into September, the team evaluated the performance of Dragonfly’s rotor system — which provides the lift for the lander to fly and enables it to maneuver — in Titan-like conditions, looking at aeromechanical performance factors such as stress on the rotor arms, and effects of vibration on the rotor blades and lander body. In late December, the team also wrapped up a set of aerodynamics tests on smaller-scale Dragonfly rotor models in the TDT [Transonic Dynamics Tunnel].
This quote about the manufacture of the rotors however stood out the most:
Pennington and team cut Dragonfly’s first rotors on Nov. 1, 2024. They refined the process as they went: starting with waterjet paring of 1,000-pound aluminum blocks, followed by rough machining, cover fitting, vent-hole drilling, and hole-threading. After an inspection, the parts were cleaned, sent out for welding, and returned for final finishing.
“We didn’t have time or materials to make test parts or extras, so every cut had to be right the first time,” Pennington said, adding that the team also had to find special tools and equipment to accommodate some material changes and design tweaks. [emphasis mine]
In other words, this is another hardware-poor NASA project. What they build is what they have. No time or money for testing of prototypes.
This mission is really pushing the envelope, possibly more than any NASA planetary probe in a half century. I just hope they get it right.
I’m shocked, shocked! According to news reports in Russia yesterday, Roscosmos has now delayed the initial launches for its own copycat “Starlink” constellation because the production of the satellites has fallen behind schedule.
In September 2025, Roscosmos head Dmitry Bakanov promised that by the end of 2025, the first 300 satellites would begin to be deployed in orbit as part of the Rassvet project. They are supposed to become “an analogue of the Starlink system” and provide “access to the internet at any geographical point.”
According to the publication, the postponement of the launch of the first 16 devices until 2026 may be due to the fact that the required number of satellites has not yet been assembled.
The project is being run by a Bureau 1440, supposedly a private Russian commercial company that is providing two thirds of the $5.7 billion budget, with the Russian government picking up the difference. It claims it will begin launching this year and have 318 satellites in orbit by 2028.
Wanna bet? Russia has not been able to complete any space project on time in decades, and even when its projects do finally launch, each routinely has had serious technical and quality control issues.
Screen capture from video of the RFA-1
test failure in August 2024. Note the flame
shooting out sideways.
The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday awarded the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg a two-launch contract under its “Flight Ticket Initiative”, designed to encourage the development of a commercial independent European launch market.
With these signatures between ESA and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), two more missions will be launched with the RFA One rocket from Saxavord Spaceport in the UK as part of the Flight Ticket Initiative. ESA and the European Commission have thus once again placed their trust in RFA as a future launch service provider.
…The Lurbat mission will fly a collection of demonstrator technologies and is developed by Added Value Solutions based in Spain. … A second mission will see the launch of two CubeSats developed under ESA contract by the Spanish company Indra Space. The CubeSats will hold five experiments selected by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe IOD/IOV call for Expression of Interest
Rocket Factory also has a launch contract with the German government. However it needs to first complete the first launch of its RFA-1 rocket. That launch was originally supposed to occur in 2024 but was canceled when the rocket’s first stage was destroyed during a static fire test on its Saxavord launchpad that year.
Since then the company has released little information about the rocket’s status. According to this news report today, it hopes to finally do that test launch this year. It better do it soon, as there is a slew of other European rocket companies that intend to do the same.
And then of course there is the question of the Saxavord spaceport and the red tape that has crippled all the spaceports in Great Britain. Both Saxavord and Rocket Factory have previously gotten their launch licenses from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), but it is unclear if those licenses remain valid, especially after the static fire explosion. Based on its past behavior, the CAA could have pulled the licenses, and is now reviewing the whole thing.
If so, it might take years for both to get an approval again. In fact, this might very well be the reason Rocket Factory didn’t launch in 2025.
The New Glenn first stage after landing
in November.
In a sign that Blue Origin’s CEO David Limp is beginning to reshape the previously slow culture of the company, it announced yesterday that its next New Glenn launch, set for no earlier than late Feburary, will reuse the first stage that the company successfully landed on the last New Glenn flight in November 2025.
If this launch takes place as scheduled, it will mean Blue Origin was also able to inspect, refurbish as necessary, and prepare that used first stage in a little over three months. While not as fast as SpaceX is now doing with its Falcon 9 first stages, it is still remarkably fast, considering it is the first booster Blue Origin has recovered. SpaceX didn’t attempt its first reuse of a recovered first stage for a little more than a year after its first successful landing.
Of course, SpaceX was breaking new ground, so more caution and engineering work was needed. Blue Origin has the advantage of almost a decade of experience to draw upon. Nonetheless, Blue Origin’s decision to reuse so quickly is still impressive. It suggests its engineering behind New Glenn is very robust.
Limp still has work to do, however, to get Blue Origin operating with the speed matching SpaceX. This third launch of New Glenn will place an AST SpaceMobile Bluebird satellite into orbit, because the original payload, Blue Origin’s unmanned Blue Moon MK1 lunar lander, wasn’t ready as planned, and is still undergoing final ground check-ups.
Blue Origin announced yesterday that it going to build a major satellite constellation — dubbed TeraWave and comprising more than 5,000 satellites — to provide internet service to the globe while also providing data center capability for those companies that wish to establish space-based cloud computing facilities.
It plans to begin launching satellites in 2027.
As I noted in today’s quick links below, such a story would normally merit a full post, “but considering Blue Origin’s inability to get almost anything off the ground, this proposal doesn’t deserve that much coverage at this point.” I just can’t get excited about any Blue Origin proposal, until they actually start launching it. For almost a decade this company has been making these kind of grand announcements, and has only so far managed to achieve one, its New Glenn rocket. And that has come years late and at a pace that is glacial.
Not surprisingly, the mainstream propaganda press immediately went bonkers over this proposal, immediately declaring most absurdly that TeraWave is already a major challenger to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. Here are just a few very typical examples:
This adulation by the mainstream press of Bezos is far from unusual. For reasons that baffle me, the propaganda press has consistently considered any project proposal coming from a Jeff Bezos’ company to instantly be God’s gift to humanity. For more than a decade now it has been touting Blue Origin as the company that SpaceX needs to beat, flipping reality on its head. Now it ranks Blue Origin’s TeraWave constellation a major Starlink rival, when it is at least two years from even launching its first satellite.
There is one aspect of this story however that does deserve to be highlighted because it appears no one else is noticing it, which is why I after some thought I decided to write this full post. » Read more
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on November 6, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The science team labels this image “Fresh-Looking Gullies.” It was clearly taken to study the gullies flowing down the north interior crater wall of this 4.4 mile-wide unnamed crater, about 1,500 feet deep.
What causes these gullies remains an open question. They are found in many places in the Martian mid-latitudes. When first discovered scientists thought they might be related to the sublimation of underground ice. More recent research suggests they are formed by the seasonal dry ice frost cycle that in the high latitudes has carbon dioxide condense to fall as snow in autumn and then sublimate away in the spring.
» Read more
Early this morning Rocket Lab successfully placed into orbit two satellites for the satellite company Open Cosmos, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the company’s two launchpads in New Zealand.
The satellites appear to be test satellites designed to demonstrate Open Cosmos’s capabilities.
The 2026 launch race:
9 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace yesterday canceled its second attempt to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport, citing an issue with a “pressurization valve”.
We are standing down from today’s launch attempt to address an issue with a pressurization valve. The teams are currently assessing the next possible launch opportunities and a new target date will be announced shortly.
The update also stated the company is moving to a “new launch window” without noting the dates of that window. This statement however suggests that no new launch attempt will occur for at least a month. And considering it is winter at Andoya in the high north, it is quite possible the launch will be delayed until March.
Meanwhile, Andoya continues to lead the race to become the first spaceport in Europe to achieve an orbital launch. Sweden’s Estrange spaceport is limited because of its interior location. The two sea platforms proposed for the North Sea are not yet ready.
And the United Kingdom has effectively eliminated itself from the competition. Its bureaucracy and Byzantine regulations have now put two rocket companies out of business, and that same red tape (combined with location opposition) has essentially shut down the Sutherland spaceport. I doubt there are any rocket companies willing to deal with the UK at this point.
In a long interview released yesterday, the CEO of the French smallsat rocket startup Latitude revealed that they expect to do the first launch its Zephyr rocket no later than early ’27, and that launch will not take place in French Guiana, where it is presently developing facilities for launches.
The spaceport at French Guiana is developing a single launchpad designed to serve multiple rocket companies, and so it can’t handle Latitude’s planned launch rate. Thus the company is presently negotiating with other spaceports for its first launch, to give it more flexibility.
Zephyr will also not be reusable, as the company has determined that it isn’t profitable for small rockets.
Latitude has deliberately chosen not to pursue first-stage reusability for Zephyr, a decision Maximin defended with detailed economic analysis. “Our calculations show that with that size, it is not economically viable,” he stated, noting that even with parachute recovery, the maintenance costs and performance penalties outweigh manufacturing savings for a rocket of Zephyr’s class. He pointed to Rocket Lab’s paused reusability efforts as validation: “They have stopped it, despite having done everything. I think it’s not that profitable, if not at all.”
If the company upgrades to a larger rocket in the future it plans to revisit this issue.
Video of the interview is available here.
Artist’s rendering of Neutron’s first stage fairings opening
to deploy the payload with the second stage engine.
According to an update posted yesterday, during a pressure test of a first stage tank for Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket, the tank ruptured.
As the company pushes Neutron to the limits and beyond to qualify its systems and structures for launch, qualification testing of the Stage 1 tank overnight resulted in a rupture during a hydrostatic pressure trial. Testing failures are not uncommon during qualification testing. We intentionally test structures to their limits to validate structural integrity and safety margins to ensure the robust requirements for a successful launch can be comfortably met.
There was no significant damage to the test structure or facilities, the next Stage 1 tank is already in production, and Neutron’s development campaign continues while the team assesses today’s test outcome.
The team is reviewing the Stage 1 test data, which will determine the extent of the impact to Neutron’s launch schedule.
The company was aiming to do Neutron’s first launch in the first quarter of this year. Though the press release is vague on this point, its language suggests the rupture did not occur at the expected maximum pressure, but took place sooner, at a lower pressure level. If the tank failed at maximum pressure, then there would be no need to reconsider the launch schedule. A failure at lower pressures would require changes in tank design, and thus a launch delay.
The company says it will provide an update in February, which further suggests a launch in the first quarter is now unlikely.
In what appears to confirm the story yesterday that the rocket startup Orbex was about to be bought out by the French startup The Exploration Company — thus likely ending operations in Great Britain — there was a second follow-up story later in the day that claimed Orbex’s Danish subsidiary is about to file for bankruptcy.
On 20 January, more than 15 Orbital Express Launch ApS employees announced at around the same time on LinkedIn that they were looking for work. Since then, European Spaceflight has received confirmation from three independent sources, who wished to remain anonymous, that the subsidiary has dismissed its entire workforce, with the company expected to officially file for bankruptcy on 22 January.
The article notes that this subsidiary had been losing millions in the past two years, and was entirely reliant on cash from its parent company. Unfortunately, Orbex has had no incoming revenue itself, because red tape in the United Kingdom had prevented it from launching for the past four years.
If true, this story confirms that Orbex’s negotiations with The Exploration Company is likely an attempt to make as much money from its remaining assets as possible before closing down.
Congratulations to the United Kingdom, the land where rocket companies go to die!
