Eutelsat has signed an Authorisation to Proceed (ATP) with Airbus Defence and Space covering initial industrial activities for these 229 satellites. They are planned in addition to the 440 satellites already procured from Airbus due for delivery and launch soon. It will bring the total of new OneWeb satellites manufactured by Airbus to 669, and will ensure and enhance service continuity of the OneWeb constellation.

The satellites will be manufactured at Airbus Defence and Space’s Toulouse facility, already actively delivering the previous batches, enabling production continuity, rapid and homogeneous delivery rate.

The constellation presently has over 600 satellites in orbit. The press release did not reveal how much Eutelsat will pay Airbus for this work, nor did it provide a timeline for delivery. In addition, Eutelsat made no mention of a launch provider to get the satellites into orbit, though in 2022 it signed up Relativity’s not-yet-launched Terran-R and in 2024 Mitsubishi’s H3 rocket for this work. Previously it had largely depended on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket, but that deal ended when Russia invaded the Ukraine. Subsequently SpaceX and India picked up the slack so the launches could go on more or less on schedule, but since then Eutelsat has clearly worked to find other rockets for its launches.

Amazon yesterday announced that it has purchased six more launches from Arianespace to use its Ariane-6 rocket to launch Leo satellites, raising the total launches on the contract to 24.

Amazon Leo is expanding its launch commitment with Arianespace, adding six new Ariane 6 contracts and bringing total contracted launch capacity from 18 to 24 launches. Amazon Leo is a key customer for Arianespace, the world’s first commercial launch service provider, and the new agreement extends what was already the largest commercial contract in the company’s history. The expanded commitment provides a long-term demand signal that supports the continued ramp-up of Ariane 6 and helps Arianespace grow launch capacity for commercial and institutional customers.

Amazon presently has 396 Leo satellites in orbit and, according to its FCC license, it must place another 2636 in orbit by July 30, 2029 or else the constellation’s total satellite count will be truncated. The problem is that, of the five rockets Amazon has hired to launch these satellites, two are grounded and one is retired.

• Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket: 24 launches (3 completed)
• SpaceX’s Falcon-9: 13 launches (3 completed)
• Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket: 24 launches (reduced from 27) [GROUNDED]
• ULA’s Vulcan rocket: 39 launches [GROUNDED]
• ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket: 8 launches (8 completed) [RETIRED]

It is therefore not surprising Amazon has bought more Ariane-6 launches, especially because Arianespace has been working with Amazon to both increase the number of satellites launched on each flight as well as speed up the cadence between launches.

Whether Amazon can get the required satellites into orbit by the 2029 deadline however remains uncertain. Of these rocket companies, only SpaceX has shown the ability to launch at the pace required. Blue Origin hopes to get New Glenn flying again by the end of the year, but doing launches as frequently as once per month will be unlikely for quite awhile. Meanwhile neither ULA nor Northrop Grumman have provided any recent updates on when the nozzle issue on Northrop Grumman’s strap-on solid-fueled boosters will be fixed. And that rocket was intended as Amazon’s mainstay for launching its Leo satellites.

Though the company provided no live stream, as it usually does, and said nothing about the customer or the payload, it is believed to be the fifth launch for Black Sky, which has a constellation of high-resolution Earth imaging satellites used by the War Department. Previously Electron launches for Black Sky have been similarly restricted as to any information released.

The leader board for the 2026 launch race:

106 SpaceX
56 China
14 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
11 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 106 to 100.

NASA late yesterday announced that the small Middle Eastern nation of Djibouti will become the 72nd nation to sign the Artemis Accords on September 14, 2026.

The map to the right shows the Middle Eastern countries that have signed the accords, which also indicates the Arab nations most interested in developing their space industries, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman. Djibouti’s decision to join at first appears to be a puzzle, as it has no significant high tech industries and has never done anything internally to indicate an interest in space. However, in 2023 it signed a deal with a Hong-Kong-based Chinese company to build a spaceport, only to have that deal canceled two months later. Its decision now to join this American alliance in space suggests that experience convinced it that the U.S. was likely a better partner, both in the development of space as well as here on Earth.

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

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

• Astrolab touts its three lunar rovers, FLIP, CLV-1 and FLEX

• Russian official offers India the use of Russian hardware, such as spacesuits and cosmonaut seats
  He also reiterated Russia’s desire to do joint flights to the Russian and Indian space stations. As Jay notes with sarcasm, “Russia is still looking for a date.”

• The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) — which builds China’s Long March rockets — vows to strengthen quality control, review programs & management & “hold personnel accountable”.
  This vow is in reference it appears to recent launch failures of its Long March 3B and 7A rockets. It also appears this might be part of an overall crackdown by the Chinese government on all its many space pseudo-companies that appears to be occurring.

• Chinese pseudo-company Hspace claims it will launch its Houyi-1 rocket by the end of the year
  We shall see.

• A hydraulics issue apparently caused the cancellation of Russia’s Progress freighter launch this week
  The issue appears to have been resolved and the launch rescheduled for September 16, 2026.

• On September 10, 2009 Japan lanched its first HTV cargo freighter to ISS

• On September 10, 2011 NASA’s twin GRAIL lunar orbiters were launched by ULA’s Delta-2 rocket
  The two orbiters, dubbed Ebb and Flow, remained in orbit for about a year to create a precise gravity map of the Moon, necessary for correctly planning future orbital missions.

SpaceX has rolled Superheavy Booster 22 out of Mega Bay 1 to [the test stands at] Massey’s for cryogenic proof testing. Ship 42 has since joined it there on its second trip to the test site. The pair is slated to fly on Flight 15, which could come about a month after the upcoming Flight 14 if that mission goes well.

The wait continues for a confirmed launch date for Flight 14 pairing Booster 21 and Ship 41, which is aiming for around mid-September. Both vehicles are awaiting rollout from the Production Site to Pad 2.

The tests appear to be proceeding smoothly, which suggests the company is pushing hard to up the Starship/Superheavy launch cadence. At the moment, it appears from various indirect sources (notices to airman and road block notices) that SpaceX is now targeting September 18, 2026 for the 14th test flight. As the company has not confirmed this date, it should be considered very tentative.

As the article at the link notes at length, the timing of the 15th flight will wholly depend on what happens on the 14th flight. If all goes well, the next flight should follow in about a month. If not, expect a longer time gap between flights.

Though there have been a number of stories in the press recently lamenting the present inability of the rocket industry in the capitalist west to meet the exploding demand of getting new payloads of all types into orbit, the reality is that this shortage of rockets is only a very temporary phenomenon, and that in only a year or so we shall see the arrival of so many new rockets that the press will start to whine about a glut of launch capacity.

In fact, this wave of new rockets has already begun, with successful orbital launches by two startups in just the last seven weeks, as shown on the right. The Indian startup Skyroot successfully launched its Vikram-1 rocket on July 18th, while the German startup Isar Aerospace completed the first launch of its Spectrum rocket on September 5th.

But these two companies are only the start. While it remains true that the only western companies right now capable of launching reliably and frequently are SpaceX and Rocket Lab, the launch industry (outside of Russia and China) is on the verge of a revolution unmatched by anything seen since the first orbital rocket was launched in 1957.

The already established rockets

The leading operational rockets

First there are the rockets — government and commercial — that already exist and have established a track record of some kind. SpaceX of course leads the way. Its ability to launch its Falcon 9 almost daily, with its Falcon Heavy rocket for larger payloads, has allowed it to dominate the entire global industry for the past three years.

Rocket Lab follows with its Electron rocket. Of all the established rocket companies, it is the only one other than SpaceX that has a reliable rocket that can launch at a pace more than once a month. At present it is averaging about two launches per month.

The rest of the rockets in the capitalist world have generally done poorly in their effort to compete, but they do provide options. First the government rockets: Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket is operational and launching about once every two months, with hopes of doubling that launch pace next year. Japan’s H3 rocket, built by Mitsubishi, is operational though it can only launch a few times per year and is very expensive. India’s ISRO space agency has its SSLV, PSLV, and various iterations of its GLSV rockets, though the PSLV has been grounded due to technical issues and ISRO has been slow to launch the others out of what appears to be some fear of failure.

Next come the established commercial launch vehicles: Both ULA and Blue Origin have new operational rockets — Vulcan and New Glenn respectively — but both are presently grounded due to technical failures. Both however should resume launches by early next year, and should be able to launch monthly before the end of 2027. Blue Origin especially has the opportunity to challenge SpaceX, as its New Glenn rocket is reusable, with a greater capacity than the Falcon 9.

Italy’s Avio meanwhile has its operational Vega-C rocket. It has been aggressively courting both European and American business, but because it is smaller and expendable and somewhat expensive, it cannot come close to matching SpaceX in customer demand or launch rate. And it appears satellite customers so far prefer Rocket Lab’s Electron, though this could change.

As noted, except for SpaceX and Rocket Lab, the other established rockets have generally done a poor job of meeting the needs of the industry. They tend to launch infrequently, cost too much, and have done a poor job eliminating technical problems that cause failures. But they exist, and there are good reasons to hope they will do better, especially because the demand is so high and the opportunity for profits is so great.

The new rockets

The next wave of rockets

The next wave of rockets continued

The next wave continued

What makes the situation more hopeful is the flood of new rockets on the verge of taking off. I have already described the successes of Skyroot and Isar. They are just the beginning. Two other European rocket companies are also close to launch. The German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg has its RFA1 rocket at its launch site at the Saxavord spaceport in the United Kingdom, and hoped to launch in July, only to cancel due to technical issues. It is not known when it will try again, but it is likely that this company’s first launch attempt will happen in the near future.

Meanwhile the Spanish startup PLD is in the process of shipping its Miura-5 rocket to French Guiana for a launch before the end of the year. The updates from this company have been very detailed and impressive, suggesting it will succeed on its first try and be capable of following up quickly with more launches.

In the U.S. at least five companies are expected to introduce new or upgraded rockets by next year. Rocket Lab hopes to launch its reusable Neutron rocket before the end of 2026, while Relativity hopes to do the same with its Terran-R rocket. Both could slip to early 2027, but both appear to be making good progress. Both also have ample cash on hand. Both already have launch contracts for these new rockets.

Meanwhile, the startup Stoke Space — flush with more than $2 billion in investment capital — expects to begin launches of its own reusable Nova Pathfinder rocket in 2027 and 2028, followed in 2029 by its larger Nova-2 rocket.

Then there are upgraded and new rockets from Northrop Grumman and Firefly. The former has its Antares-330 rocket, but this is presently under development as it awaits a new first stage being built by Firefly. Similarly, Firefly has upgraded its Alpha rocket, with the first launch of Alpha-2 expected by the end of this year. The company is also building its larger Eclipse rocket, which will use the same first stage configuration that Firefly is providing Northrop Grumman. Eclipse is targeting a 2027 launch date.

Finally in Australia the startup Gilmour Space in 2025 tried and failed to launch its Eris rocket, from its own spaceport. It has raised almost $300 million (Australian) in private capital, and has said it will try another launch attempt this year.

That is a list of the most likely launches coming in the near future. Other rockets however are in the works. In Europe the startup Maiaspace — wholly owned by the established rocket company ArianeGroup — now expects to launch its Maia rocket in the second half of 2027. In India a second startup, Agnikul, has raised $500 million in private capital and is developing its own reusable Agnibaan orbital rocket. It has announced no launch dates, but it has completed one suborbital test launch. In South Korea the startup Innospace tried and failed on its first orbital launch attempt in December 2025. It has made deals to launch at several different spaceports, and has gotten several launch contracts from satellite companies. No new launch date however has been announced. In Japan the startup Space One has tried three times to get its Kairos rocket into orbit — from its own spaceport — but failed each time. It is not clear where its future presently stands, though it has obtained significant investment capital from a number of major Japanese companies and banks.

Those are all the startups that are most advanced and have actually cut metal. There are others, but until they begin testing real hardware, as these companies have, they cannot be taken that seriously. The fact however that so many such rocket startups exist, have raised significant capital, and are on the verge of launch, tells us that this new industry is about to burst out aggressively.

Conclusion

To really comprehend this coming launch wave, I think a quick short-form review is in order. I recognize that the schedule below carries a lot of uncertainty, but I also think the weight of numbers strongly says much of it will take place relatively close to when promised.

The rockets currently operational:

• SpaceX’s Falcon 9
• SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy
• Rocket Lab’s Electron
• Arianespace’s Ariane-6
• Avio’s Vega-C
• Japan’s H3
• ISRO’s SSLV
• ISRO’s GSLV variations
• Skyroot’s Vikram-1
• Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum

Furthermore, expect the first operational flights of Starship/Superheavy before the end of the year. The ship and booster won’t yet be in their final iteration, but SpaceX plans to use this year’s test launches to place Starlink Version 3 satellites into orbit. And there is no reason the company won’t begin to sell payload space to others.

Before April 2027 we will likely see these rockets return to operation:

• Blue Origin’s New Glenn
• ULA’s Vulcan
• ISRO’s PSLV

Before April 2027 we will likely also see the following companies complete first launches of new rockets:

• Rocket Lab’s Neutron
• Relativity’s Terran-R
• Firefly’s Alpha-2
• Stoke Space’s Nova Pathfinder
• PLD’s Miura-5
• Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA1
• Gilmour’s Eris

And before December 2027 the following new or upgraded rockets should begin flying:

• Firefly’s Eclipse
• Northrop Grumman’s Antares-330
• Maiaspace’s Maia

That’s fourteen operational rockets by early 2027 (six of which are American), with another ten attempting to become operational by the end of 2027 (six of which are American). That’s a lot of rockets in the pipeline, even if many of them are small, or are only beginning operation and likely face failures, or are not quite ready for a fast launch cadence. All told, these rockets lay a strong foundation for the kind of launch industry required by the emerging payload industry.

And that foundation is strengthened by the vast and quickly growing investment capital being committed to these companies because of the rising demand to serve that burgeoning orbital industry, which now includes huge constellations of communications, imaging, radar, GPS-type, and data-center satellites, recoverable capsules, manned space stations, satellite repair and de-orbit robots, military satellites, and any number of other new projects that can now make money because the cost to orbit has plummeted and continues to drop.

In fact, this summary strongly suggests that by 2030 the prediction by the Trump administration that there will be 1,000 launches per year is not only quite right, it might even be conservative.

SpaceX’s vision of a city on Mars. Click for source.

One final point: The demand for launch capacity for the next decade appears so strong that at this moment it appears even if all these rockets begin launching frequently they will still be insufficient to meet it. Their numbers, and competition between them, is likely going to force the current launch price to continue to fall, which in turn will only make it possible for more orbital payload companies to enter the market.

Thus, the demand will continue to grow, which in turn will fuel more rocket startups and more capable rockets, which in turn will further lower the launch price which in turn will fuel more demand. It is my expectation that there is no end in sight for this cycle, and that we are now on the cusp of a new space age, one in which the human race will truly begin exploring, colonizing, and settling the solar system.

Ad Astra! If we don’t bankrupt ourselves or vote in tyrants, it appears we finally have the chance to conquer the stars.

The French capsule startup The Exploration Company has now won a €760 million ($883 million) contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) for the first three missions of its Nyx cargo capsule. It has also signed a second contract with Arianespace to use the Ariane-6 rocket to launch the first mission, a demo flight to prove out the capsule.

The total value of the contract signed at the Space Summit amounts to €760 million, with €310 million allocated for the demo mission and optional two additional service missions for a total of €450 million, to be confirmed later.

…The Exploration Company also entered into an agreement with Arianespace for the first Nyx demonstration mission to launch on an Ariane 6 rocket.

The amount Arianespace is charging TEC for the Ariane-6 launch has not been disclosed. The company has said it is targeting a 2028 launch date for this mission, but the release today makes no mention of launch dates.

The company has already done parachute drop tests of Nyx, while completing the structural test model shown to the right. It is now building the flight model for the demo flight. It has also raised $680 million in private capital, and has opened an American subsidiary to court cargo-ferrying business from the five American space stations under development.

Subject to Multilateral Crew Operations Panel (MCOP) review and approval, Dr. Adrianos Golemis, who has worked as a flight surgeon for ESA, will serve as Mission Specialist. The MCOP’s decisions are reached through a consensus among representatives from all five space station partners: NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. Pending approval, Golemis will become the first Greek astronaut to conduct a mission on the International Space Station.

Artist rendering of Haven-1 with docked
Dragon capsule

Golemis is expected to join ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France and ESA Project Astronaut Aleš Svoboda of the Czech Republic for the mission. Pesquet has been named Commander and Svoboda is slated to serve as Pilot. The final crew member will be announced soon, with training beginning shortly thereafter.

France’s deal also includes a second astronaut flight to Vast’s Haven-1 single module station (as shown in the graphic to the right), also scheduled for launch next year.

All these deals demonstrate again that there is a strong market for the five American space stations presently under development. The customers are out there, from governments, private citizens, and a host of companies that see profits from manufacturing in space.

First, China placed six military remote sensing satellites into orbit, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages (using very toxic hypergolic fuels) crashed inside China.

Next, SpaceX launched a classified Space Force payload, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Though classified, the payload was likely a set of satellites “based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite bus.”

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 28th and 30th flights respectively. The first stage (B1081) completed its 27th flight (40 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leader board for the 2026 launch race:

106 SpaceX
56 China
13 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
11 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 106 to 99.

Firefly yesterday announced it has won a two-launch contract for its Alpha-2 rocket from SSC Space, the company that operates the Esrange spaceport for the Sweden’s government.

Targeted to launch no earlier than 2028, the missions will serve Sweden national security customers as well as additional commercial rideshare customers, marking a significant step forward in delivering orbital launch capabilities from mainland Europe.

… Under the multi-launch agreement, SSC Space secured the full payload capacity and can allocate payload space to its government and commercial customers, providing flexible accommodations and launch opportunities for the European satellite market.

The agreement builds on the momentum of Firefly and SSC Space’s partnership after recently establishing the required transatlantic regulatory frameworks and completing key infrastructure to launch Firefly’s Alpha rocket from Launch Complex 3C at Esrange Space Center. [emphasis mine]

As shown on the map to the right, any launch from Esrange must pass over territories controlled by other nations, and as far as I know, those nations have not agreed to this possibility, with Norway actually publishing a report opposing such launches. The highlighted phrase above suggests that Sweden has somehow solved this issue, but SSC Space has not posted any press releases saying so. Nor has Sweden, as far as I can determine.

The announcement makes no mention of launch dates, but in July 2026 Firefly announced it was targeting a 2028 launch date from Esrange, for SSC Space. Whether any of this will really happen I think wholly depends on whether Sweden can work out the necessary approvals from its neighbors.

NASA late yesterday announced that it has approved use of Relativity’s not-yet-launched reusable Terran-R rocket, allowing the company to bid on future NASA launch contracts once the rocket is operational.

A NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract has been awarded by the agency to Relativity Space Inc., and its Terran R launch service in accordance with the contract’s on-ramp provision. The Terran R launch service will be available to NASA’s launch services to use for future missions.

The NLS II contracts are multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with an ordering period through June 2030 and an overall period of performance through December 2032. The NLS II contracts include an on-ramp provision that provides an opportunity annually for new launch service providers to compete for future missions and allows existing contractors to introduce launch vehicles not currently on their NLS II contracts.

That’s a lot of words to simply say that after 2030 NASA will now consider an offer from Relativity when the agency issues a request for bids.

Relativity hopes to launch Terran-R for the first time before the end of this year, and based on the company’s recent work at its Cape Canaveral launch site, it appears that if it doesn’t meet that schedule, it will not miss it by much.

To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here or here.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

• Startup Besxar tests semi-conductor technology on Falcon 9 first stage
  The goal was to test the ability of the technology to survive launch and the space environment. Because it flew on that first stage, it could be recovered afterward for review.

• Regulators in India approve rules that might eventually allow Starlink there
  It seems the number of approvals required in India are endless. This process has been going on for several years, with no end in sight and no indication when Starlink will finally get an okay.

According to an update posted today by William Farrand on the Curiosity science team, the rover on August 26, 2026 achieved a new milestone, in that it has now climbed a total of one kilometer in elevation since it landed in Gale Crater more than eleven years ago.

The overview map to the right shows the rover’s entire journey, now exceeding 23 and a half miles. Though it has climbed 1,000 meters, or about 3,280 feet, it still has about 14,720 feet to go before it reaches the top of Mount Sharp, about 29 miles away to the southeast.

As the rover has been climbing it has found Mars to be a many-layered planet, with layers upon layers, each holding thinner layers within layers, down almost to a microscopic level, implying that the geological history of the red planet is made up of many cycles, repeating endlessly. And along the way the rover keeps finding strange geology, such as the cool image below.

Click for original image.

The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on September 7, 2026 by Curiosity’s high resolution camera. It gives us just one more example of the weird and delicate rock features that the rover has been finding since it entered the foothills of Mount Sharp in 2022.

In the past, the features tended to be fragile flat flakes extending out into space, pieces of a layer that had not yet been worn away by the very thin Martian wind.

In this case however we have something even stranger, nodules stuck together and hanging in space. These were apparently formed in a group, with later erosion wearing away the ground under them to leave them hanging out in this manner. Because there is no rain on Mars, and the atmosphere is so thin, the erosion processes allow such delicate formations to survive.

What formed them initially however is inexplicable. This reminds me of some cave formations I have seen, but I won’t dare apply the Earth-based formation processes on these Martian features.

Using the Chandra X-ray space telescope, astronomers have discovered a new class of unusually low-energy X-ray objects that also emit high ultraviolet radiation but are not linked to any visible objects or star clusters at their locations.

You can read the research paper here [pdf]. The picture to the right is figure 2 from the paper, and shows the two types of these new X-ray objects (HSS and SSS) found in the spiral arms of the galaxy M101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy.

The researchers found a total of 84 of these “hypersoft X-ray sources” — so named because they give such low-energy X-rays — in the six different galaxies they searched, using data openly available to the public in the Chandra archive. Two of the galaxies are spirals, M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) and M101 (the Pinwheel galaxy), while the other four are ellipticals. They found hypersoft X-ray sources both in regions of active star formation and areas where there are older stars.

… It is unclear what types of objects are responsible for these low-energy X-rays and intense ultraviolet radiation. The team thinks they most likely involve a black hole, neutron star, or white dwarf pulling material from a companion star. The material pulled from the companion star is heated up to produce X-rays before falling onto the white dwarf or neutron star, or into the black hole. Such binary systems have been seen before, but not with such bright ultraviolet radiation and low-energy X-rays.

The discovery suggests that there may be large populations of binary systems with energetic ultraviolet radiation that have been undetected until now.

The objects were difficult to find because of their low X-ray output, which required this much more careful search to identify. And though the astronomers propose several theories as to what these objects are, there is presently not enough data to come to any firm conclusion. What the discovery does tell us however is that the evolution and death of stars is far more complex than posited by all present theories, all of which tend to simplify things far too much.

Though not confirmed as yet publicly, four long-established European telecommunications companies appear to be in negotiations to form a joint effort to obtain spectrum for developing a phone-to-satellite constellation that would block both SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo from European markets.

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone are reportedly hatching a plan to take on SpaceX’s Starlink in Europe with a joint bid for mobile satellite spectrum to deliver their own direct-to-device (D2D) services, according to Bloomberg. The report said the four biggest European telcos are in early talks about forming a consortium to bid for spectrum, citing people familiar with the matter. The discussions seem to be just talk for now, given the unnamed sources noted no final decisions have been made about the consortium or spectrum bidding plans.

The joint consortium would then bid for spectrum that is currently held by Echostar and Viasat that will become available in 2027 when their licenses expire. The Echostar spectrum at present belongs to SpaceX as part of SpaceX’s 2025 purchase.

This whole deal is sparked by the European Union’s plans — not yet approved — to re-alocate this spectrum to favor European companies, limiting bidding access for non-Europeans companies to only one-third of the frequencies. By pooling their resources, these companies increase their chances to win the spectrum. Meanwhile, these new anti-American proposed rules are likely another reason the White House asked American companies to pull out of this week’s French space summit, and those companies immediately agreed.

Nor are these established European telecoms the only ones attempting to team up. In May 2026 Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile agreed to form their own consortium, aimed at competing more effectively with both Starlink and Leo.

What I find lacking in all these plans is a commitment to produce a better product. These established companies seem instead more intent in creating a powerful entity capable of blocking the new kids on the block.

• Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has hired 47 Amazon Leo satellite engineers to build its TeraWave constellation
  Essentially this is Bezo’s right hand taking from his left. The article hints at some sort of conflict of interest, though it admits nothing illegal has been done. I wonder at the quality of the engineers, as Leo has been very slow to reach orbit.

• Video of yesterday’s undocking of Progress MS-33 from ISS
  It undocked to make room for the next freighter, but that launch has now been delayed due to rocket issues with no launch date yet set.

• Rocket Lab touts its role as Synspective’s sole launch provider since 2020
  It has completed 11 launches successfully out of a 27-launch contract.

• On September 7, 1967 Biosatellite-2 was launched, carrying 13 experiments to study how weightlessness and radiation affected living organisms
  It found evidence that microgravity could have a negative impact on some life forms, such as wheat seedlings, while other organisms, such as frog eggs, showed no ill effects.

• Short NASA documentary describing Surveyor-5, the third spacecraft to soft land on the Moon, which launched on September 8, 1967
  Its instruments found the lunar soil was made up of 58% oxygen, 18% silicon, 6% aluminum, and 1% iron, with 13% a variety of other elements.

• Video of the crash of the Genesis sample return capsule on September 8 2004 due to parachute failure
  It spent two years collecting solar wind material a million miles closer to the Sun at L1, but the crash at landing made it difficult to properly assess what it had gathered.

Data gathered using a new instrument on the Herschel telescope on the Canary Islands has found that the tail of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas is richer in nitrogen than solar system comets, and thus the comet was likely to have formed in a very cold environment.

From the paper’s abstract:

We present WHT/WEAVE-LIFU observations of 3I/ATLAS, performed post-perihelion on 2025 November 30 and 2025 December 2. We simultaneously detect the ions N⁠, CO⁠, CO⁠, HO⁠, and CH located in an antisolar tail. Using common fluorescence factors, we determine abundance ratios of these species in the tail. In particular, the N/CO ratio allows us to constrain the lower-limit N/CO0.001, indicating that 3I/ATLAS is N-rich compared to Solar system comets, a property which can be linked to cold formation conditions.

In other words, the comet likely formed far from its sun, in the equivalent of that star’s Oort cloud.

There is a lot of uncertainty here, but this data point and the conclusions do make sense, based on everything we presently know about comets and their formation. It also illustrates how alike these interstellar comets have been to our own solar system comets, despite the differences. The data strongly suggests that comet and solar system formation are similar everywhere within the galaxy.

In a replay of the same turf war that occurred in the U.S. in the 2010s when NASA first began shifting away from building everything itself to instead using the capitalism model to hire the private sector to do the job, the employee associations from nine different facilities run by India’s space agency ISRO last week issued a public letter demanding that the Modi government reassure them that their jobs are secure and that the work they do building rockets will continue forever.

In a letter dated September 4, the associations questioned what role ISRO would retain under the proposed changes and raised concerns over the impact on existing employees, sanctioned posts, vacancies and future recruitment. The associations referred to remarks made by Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) chairman Pawan Goenka on August 21, in which he said ISRO would eventually stop manufacturing launch vehicles, with such activities being undertaken by private companies or public sector undertakings.

The employee bodies said no official communication had accompanied the remarks explaining the policy framework, legal basis, implementation timeline or implications for the workforce. They sought clarity on whether the design, development, integration, testing and launch of vehicles such as the PSLV, LVM3 and SSLV would continue to remain with ISRO. They also asked how the proposed changes would affect recruitment of scientific, technical, administrative and industrial personnel across ISRO centres.

The Modi government has for the past six years been pushing to encourage an independent competing private sector, while applying strong pressure on ISRO to transfer much of its rocket industry to that sector. In 2020 it created IN-SPACe, a government agency expressly tasked with making that shift happen. As part of this shift, IN-SPACe forced ISRO to shift the management of both its SSLV rocket and its new spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam to private companies. It is also working to do the same with ISRO’s LVM3 rocket.

The letter from these ISRO employee associations is the typical pushback seen from every government union whenever such transitions take place. The employees’ careers are not really threatened, as all they need to do is find work in the new private sector, and that should not be hard for them to do with ISRO on their resumes.

The real threat is to the existence of these union associations, and so they act to whip up political fury to stop the change. Not surprisingly, the press in India picked up this letter with numerous stories, which in turn forced ISRO to issue a clarification, stating the agency’s future remains secure.

Despite that clarification, it does appear the Modi government is not backing down and will continue this transition to capitalism. The head of ISRO yesterday added his own thoughts, noting that while he wished to reassure ISRO’s workers, it remains essential that the private sector must grow and ISRO’s job is to help make that happen.

Expect this battle to continue for the next decade or so, until that private space sector in India gets strong enough to stand on its own feet. When that happens, the battle will end, because everyone will see how much better things are when freedom and private enterprise is allowed to function. That’s what has happened in the the U.S. The same will happen in India.

The Labor government presently running the United Kingdom today released a new space strategy using a new $10.5 billion fund designed to jump start that nation’s space industry

Backed by a record £7.8 billion ($10.5 billion) until 2030, the UK Space Strategy brings government’s space investment and activity under one plan to drive growth, strengthen security and back the technologies that underpin modern life.

In reviewing the press release and the actual strategy document [pdf], it appears the government’s focus is to spread that cash around to mostly government projects, though the $35 million investment announced earlier today in the Saxavord spaceport is part of this distribution.

The strategy however also devotes a large section to regulation reform, the first clear recognition by any UK government in years that this has been the biggest obstacle in the past decade to the development of a British space industry.

We have worked closely with the sector to prioritise regulatory reforms to enable growth, strengthen national space capabilities and enhance the UK’s competitiveness. Early priorities include speeding up licensing processes by removing duplication and enabling repeatability, and reducing costs associated with licensing and insuring missions. The CAA [Civil Aviation Authority] will explore options for a more flexible approach to licensing repeat and multiple-mission activity, including through the multi-mission licensing sandbox, with the aim of reducing cost and administrative burden for UK operators.

Whether this effort will work remains decidedly unclear. First, it is not the first priority of the plan. Spending money for government projects gets first place. Second, the language relating to regulatory reform is filled with bureaucratic weasel words and gobbly-gook, suggesting strong resistance within the bureaucracy (and the CAA). When bureaucracies use such language it usually means they are making believe they are cooperating when in truth they plan to do everything in their power to delay or even foil the plan.

Third and maybe most important, this new UK space strategy is very focused on detailing almost minutely what the government wants to achieve, rather than allowing the private sector to grow naturally based on demand. In other words, it is a top-down Soviet-style strategy, the kind that generally fails because there is no way a government can ever truly predict the direction of markets.

France’s capsule startup The Exploration Company has now raised an additional $450 million in new investment capital, bringing its total cash on hand to $680 million.

The Exploration Company (TEC), a European space company scaling globally, today announced a $450 million Series C financing, the largest-ever Series C announced by a European space company. It also marks the largest funding round ever secured by an EU-headquartered company led by a female founder and CEO. The round is co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico, and the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, with participation from TEC’s existing European backers including Balderton, Plural, Cherry and Red River West.

The financing expands TEC’s investor base across both sides of the Atlantic while maintaining a strong European foundation, bringing long-term capital behind a shared objective: to scale reusable space transportation platforms capable of serving customers and institutions across borders. Bessemer’s Alex Ferrara will join the TEC board of directors. The financing brings TEC’s total funding secured to date to approximately $680 million.

The company will use this money to accelerate construction of both its Nyx cargo capsule as well as a new rocket engine, dubbed Storm. The press release notes that they are now beginning construction on the flight model of Nyx, with a 2028 target date for its first orbital launch. Though its first flight is hoping to dock with ISS, the company is very clearly marketing that capsule for use by the five American space stations presently in development. In fact, company officials say they already signed $800 million in cargo contracts, 90% of which are with the commercial space station companies Axiom Space, Vast, and Starlab, with the rest government contracts. As part of that effort, TEC has been expanding its U.S. operations, opening an American subsidiary in July.

The American rocket startup Stoke Space announced today that it has raised another billion in new investment capital, bringing its total capital raised to $2.3 billion.

Stoke Space Technologies, Inc. the rocket company developing fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicles, announced today that it has completed an initial closing of its billion-dollar Series E financing round. This funding brings Stoke’s total capital raised to $2.3 billion and will support the company as it prepares for its first orbital launch, expands production and launch capacity, and accelerates development of its larger Nova Block 2 launch vehicle.

The round was co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, with participation from General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital, Y Combinator, and other new and existing investors. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase above is also news, as it is the first mention the company has made of a new upgraded version of its Nova rocket, with the first version now dubbed Nova Pathfinder and the upgrade Nova Block 2. The graphic to the right, from a second press release issued today that outlines in detail the upgrade, compares the two rockets, while providing the company’s first detailed flight schedule.

Our immediate focus is flying Pathfinder. We plan to fly multiple Pathfinder missions in 2027 and 2028, giving us a growing body of flight data while we build and test Nova in parallel. Block 2’s first flight is scheduled for 2029.

… Pathfinder’s role does not necessarily end when the larger vehicle arrives. We see value in having more than one way to serve the market, since some missions are particularly well suited to the Pathfinder configuration. Its longer-term flight cadence will be informed by what we learn over the next two years and by the needs of our customers.

The company’s second release also goes into great detail about the rising demand for rockets combined with the general shortage, and outlines how these two rockets are designed to address both. In a sense, Stoke is setting itself up to grab the small satellite market that SpaceX right now dominates with its Falcon 9 and appears to be moving away from as it develops Starship.

Hat tip reader Nate P.

The Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands of Scotland announced today that it has gotten a £30 million ($35 million) investment from the government of the United Kingdom, that must also be matched by additional private investment capital.

The government investment, which is subject to due diligence, is being announced as part of the UK’s updated space strategy published today (Tuesday), and will be complemented by £30 million of planned private investment.

The spaceport said the funding will support completion of key infrastructure as it moves towards regular commercial launch operations. It is targeted towards all three launchpads, mission management infrastructure and second integration hangar required by international launch companies keen to bring their business to the UK.

The timing of this announcement, only days after Germany’s rocket startup Isar Aerospace completed the first European private rocket launch from Norway’s Andoya spaceport, suggests it is an effort to salvage some positive PR, since Saxavord started its spaceport effort before Norway and yet lost the race for the first launch.

Whether Saxavord actually gets this government investment remains uncertain, as it must be matched by private sources. Considering the lack of interest the UK government has in eliminating the odious red tape that has stalled launches at all UK spaceports while bankrupting two rocket companies, we should not be surprised if Saxavord has trouble raising that private money.

The spaceport presently has two German rocket companies signed on, Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse, but the former’s launch this year was scrubbed due to technical issues with a reschedule partly stalled due to that red tape. The latter meanwhile only intends to do a suborbital launch. These launches will likely take place, but expect these companies to move elsewhere when they finally begin ramping up their launch cadence. Neither can survive the kind of bureaucratic licensing delays that killed Virgin Orbit and Orbex, and so far the UK appears uninterested in dealing with this issue.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

• Graphic showing the past flights of the four core engines to be thrown away on the Artemis-3 mission next year
  The shuttle was reusable, to a point. SLS is not.

• Graphic showing the size differences between Blue Origin’s manned and unmanned Blue Moon lunar landers
  Now all the company has to do is get them launched.

• Cape Canaveral rocket companies Stoke and Relativity advance their launchpad toward first flights
  A nice quick summary about the status of each pad

• China proposes a lunar mission deploying 30 cubesats in 2030
  It is an international project led by China with Thailand, Serbia, Egypt, Senegal, and Indonesia signed on.

• Video of the September 7, 2013 launch the lunar orbiter LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer)
  It orbited the Moon for seven months, measuring the dust in the lunar environment.

While there have been no reported issues with the Mars rover Perseverance, and while it appears to be functioning normally as it moves around the hilly barren terrain west of Jezero Crater, there appears to be some sort of indecisiveness in how the science team has been operating the rover for more than a year, with an almost complete black-out of updates to explain what they are doing.

The map to the right provides a sense of this dithering. The last time the rover drilled a core sample was June 6, 2025 (sol 1551), more than fifteen months ago.

Since then, the rover first traveled south along the outer rim of Jezero Crater to point A, then west to point B, then west again to point C, then south to point D, then south to point E, then north again to point D, then east passing point B to head north to its present position at point F. As far as I can tell, during these entire wanderings over more then a year, the science team made no effort to drill any core samples, even though they spent some time at each of these points and even did some preliminary drill work in a few places.

Furthermore, since December 2025 the science team has issued no updates. For most of the mission the team would issue an update about once every two weeks. After the rover left that last core sample site in June 2025, this pattern continued for several months, but by in the fall of 2025 the updates slowed to once a month, and after December 2025 they ceased altogether.

The lack of updates might simply be a budget issue. The team might no longer have enough money to pay someone to write the updates, and is using its money instead to focus solely on operating the rover.

Yet, why have they not drilled any additional core samples? Did the decision to cancel the Mars Sample Return mission impact the operations at Perseverance? Without any mission to bring core samples back, could it be that NASA management issued an order to stop getting core samples?

And why the wandering back and forth over the same ground? It could be they are simply doing an overall survey of this terrain before picking a drill site, but it seems to be taking them much too long to do so.

It seems that the time is long past due for a new update. Otherwise it will start to appear they are hiding something.