Happy Independence Day - 2026

I've run this post almost every July 4th in the 16 years I've been blogging.  There were only two years I didn't and both of those posts were about problems that must have seemed really big. They not only were really big but still are (2012, 2014).  My lesson is that while they were important, the big picture is to remind ourselves of the history, and celebrate the achievement of getting to our semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of our Republic, while we enjoy the day with family and friends.  The problems will still be here on the fifth. 

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. 

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. 

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. 

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states: 

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing taxes on us without our consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: 

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: 

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies: 

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: 

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. 

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.  

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

It has been shown mathematically that in a system with multiple parties, they either converge to two declared parties or through something like a coalition system they functionally become a two party system. In our society, we are too broken apart along party lines, despite the idea of one big “uniparty” now being the subject of millions of jokes and other comments. In reality, the important choice is a question of whether or not the politico you're referring to is a follower of our founding documents or someone else's. Right now, it appears the biggest competing idea is a tyrannical minority in the name of some form equality, equity or some such nonsense. The biggest competitor is Karl Marx. People are not, and cannot be both free and equal. We are either free or forced into subjugation to create equal outcomes. Opportunities can be equal, like that word that used to be a goal but is now punishable: colorblind. Outcomes can't be. 

Enjoy your day no matter what you do. To those who serve - and have served - to provide this gift of liberty for us:  Thank You from the bottom of my heart.

The Last Atlas V Leo Launch

This morning's Atlas V launch was labelled by the local newspaper as, "Atlas V rocket's final satellite mission...". Which is mostly true at one level, but it's not the last Atlas V launch and not their last launch of any satellite whatsoever. 

Say what? 

The version of the Atlas V that launched today was the Atlas V 551, where 551 means it had five strap-on solid rocket boosters, a 5 meter wide payload fairing and a Centaur upper stage with one engine. The payload was 29 Amazon LEO satellites, so while it's the last launch of LEO satellites for Amazon, that doesn't mean they can't launch other satellites into a Low Earth Orbit.

Here's the tricky part. 

Following Thursday’s launch there will be just six Atlas 5 rockets remaining. All of those are reserved to fly Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. 

Will there really be six Starliner flights? Good question. I don't think I'd put much faith in that, but we'll find out. We just know they won't be flying the 551 version for Starliners. 

Those rockets fly in the N22 configuration and are the only variant of an Atlas 5 rocket that feature a dual-engine Centaur upper stage. After the 2024 Crew Flight Test of Starliner in 2024 experienced several issues resulting in NASA declaring a Type A mishap, the cargo-only Starliner-1 launch date is in question. 

The Atlas V has put 224 Amazon LEO satellites in orbit, and they have bought three launches each from Arianespace on their Ariane 6, and SpaceX, on their Falcon 9. They've also contracted for 38 launches using ULA’s Vulcan rocket and 27 launches with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Their problem is that both of those launch vehicles are grounded due to anomaly investigations, and Blue Origin is also slowed down by reconstruction of their SLC-36 structure after the late May explosion of the New Glenn on the pad.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 551 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the Leo Atlas 8 mission on July 2, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

While it's impossible to give a date for a New Glenn launch, the Vulcan launch is targeted for "sometime in the third quarter of 2026." Technically speaking, that's now, but I expect closer to the end of the quarter. Except, it's being reported that ULA stacked its Vulcan rocket inside its new VIF-A hangar and plans to conduct a wet dress rehearsal tanking test following this morning's launch. 

It's time to start asking some bigger questions about Starliner

The foundational question isn't really when it will fly a crewed mission. The bigger question is whether Starliner can ever get to fly as well and safely as it was sold. The ISS is in the last years of its life and Starliner is running out of time to get re-designed or fixed.

Word broke today that NASA's office of the Inspector General (OIG) released an audit of the vehicle Tuesday saying that it's looking likely that Starliner won't be certified for operational flights to the International Space Station until next year. 

The irony here is that Starliner was first expected to fly in 2017. Yeah, 10 years late. Boeing started working on Starliner years before that. 

While the story is covered by both Ars Technica (that link just above) and Space dot com, I'll say here that Space.com might be a better stop, primarily because at the top of their article, they have a full video, nine minutes long, of a talk Administrator Isaacman gave that's good listening. I expect that most readers here are probably fairly familiar with the story of how bad Starliner's Crewed Flight Test went in 2024. Pages have been posted here about it, and this set of search results can re-familiarize you with the story, if needed. Or you can listen to Isaacman's talk hosted at Space.com. 

Interestingly and as expected, Isaacman wasn't remotely afraid to place blame for things NASA did wrong, not just what Boeing did. Writing about the OIG, Space.com author Elizabeth Howell noted:

The authors added that underperformance on CFT can be traced to NASA's overconfidence in the spacecraft design, "unrealistic launch and flight test schedules" made by Boeing and accepted by NASA, and "pressure to adhere to this aggressive schedule." And these issues were compounded by NASA not exercising "data rights," which would have let the agency look at "flight-simulation-training failures" that likely would have helped with crew safety ahead of launch. 

Before it gets too forgotten, people need to remember that when the Commercial Crew Program was starting in 2014, Boeing got this contract and SpaceX didn't. Everyone expected that the safe bet was Boeing. They had the name, decades of experience contracting to NASA, while SpaceX was an unknown. SpaceX had yet to achieve their first successful booster landing and were just getting started in launching for others. That they would completely beat Boeing, so completely that the Starliner Crew of Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams had to ride a SpaceX Dragon capsule back down and it had become so commonplace that nobody thought about not sending the Dragon for them. 

It's not that SpaceX didn't have their own problems, they just solved them years ago - their first booster landing was on December 21, 2015. 

NASA concurred with all of OIG's recommendations to the agency going forward, which are:

• Delay payments to Boeing until Starliner's human-rating certification completes;
• Create a schedule with Boeing for the next Starliner flights;
• Document and resolve all of the CFT issues in "NASA's mishap information system" and update the schedule for Starliner with these issues in mind;
• Make private company flight-simulation testing on hardware and software changes accessible to NASA;
• Make NASA's mishap-classification requirements more clear;
• Prioritize NASA hiring efforts to focus on "critical skillsets" related to commercial crew and to the expected decommissioning of the ISS.

In case you've forgotten what a Starliner looks like, this is probably the 20th time I've used this photo of the Starliner that Butch and Sunni rode up to the ISS, docked to its port. Image Credit: NASA

NASA may send backup to Mars rover Perseverance to the moon

It won't surprise most readers that when NASA builds a critical piece of equipment, like the Perseverance rover currently operating on Mars, that they build two. The rationale is simple: there's a better chance of getting finished with one of them meeting all requirements if you build two. Plus, you have a useful model all the way through the mission. If new software mods are needed, they can be tested on the ground here instead of 20 minutes each way by radio - or more, or less depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars. 

NASA officials today publicly revealed they're seriously considering sending the backup rover to the lunar south pole. Wait - did I mention it's nuclear powered and better suited to working through the two week long lunar night than the landers we've sent to the moon?

The car-sized rover nicknamed “Promise,” which serves as a testbed for Perseverance and was not otherwise planned for a launch, would land equipped with a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) to power it across difficult terrain and through the lunar night. NASA’s other rovers primarily operate on solar power.

“We are thinking very hard right now about sending Promise to the Moon,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Tuesday during a monthly update on the agency’s plans to build a Moon base.

Sounds like win-win to me. I've got to believe the Promise rover has been paid for already, and while it's true that one of the justifications for building the backup rover is that if Percy (on Mars) had issues with something it was supposed to do, they could test the software on Promise, it's also true that with the years of learning just how Percy works, they most likely don't use it for that anymore. Or they don't use it much.  

The twin of NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, Promise, arrives at JPL's Mars Yard garage on October 29, 2021. Credit: NASA

The main drawback to using Promise is that it weighs a ton, and I'm sure by the time it's ready for launch that weight will go up. Eric Berger at Ars suggests it might require a heavy-lift vehicle more like New Glenn or Falcon Heavy. A check of the Falcon 9 specifications document I got long ago says the Falcon 9 can put 18,300 lb.s into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, and that sounds pretty capable of putting 2000 lb.s to Translunar Injection. 

Although the Mars rovers were designed to operate on the surface of Mars, the JPL engineers said Promise could be modified to work on the Moon. NASA will also need to make some adjustments to the scientific instruments aboard the vehicle, but Isaacman said this represents a creative way to advance the agency’s interests in understanding the environment where it wants to establish a long-term human presence.

“We’ve got the hardware, and this is exactly what we should be trying to do to put wins on the board, getting a capability like Promise to the surface of the Moon,” he said. 

It's an interesting idea and it raises the question of the landers that are already being planned for the moon, like Blue Origin's Blue Moon and SpaceX's HLS. Those are fine for sending astronauts to the moon, but what if we sent rovers like this instead of landers that stay in one place like those? 

It's worth emphasizing that this is under consideration, not actually committed to yet. Today's announcement reinforces that Isaacman and his team are scouring NASA for hardware and other tools to advance the agency’s mandate to return to the Moon and to build a surface base.

---

I should update that the SWIFT rescue launch liftoff is scheduled for 5:43 a.m. EDT (0943 GMT) on Wednesday, July 1 - tomorrow morning to me as I write. Pegasus will be released by Stargazer once the aircraft reaches about 39,000 feet (12,000 meters), traveling at Mach 0.82. Five seconds later, the rocket will ignite its engine and ascend to orbit. I've found no way to watch that as it happens.

Rocket Lab diversifies with a major purchase

This morning, Rocket Lab, the launch company best known for the small-payload-carrying Electron rocket and its coming "big brother" Neutron, announced that it is acquiring the satellite communications company Iridium. Iridium was first making headlines building satellites for Motorola in the 1980s, but now is a satellite network company.

The deal pairs the launch company, founded and led by Peter Beck, with a decades-old profitable satellite company whose network of 80 satellites in low-Earth orbit provides telecommunications services.

“We believe this will be one of the most transformative deals in the space industry,” Beck said in a short promotional video announcing the deal. “It’s the ultimate combination for growth.”

And watch that video. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck is always worth listening to.

The deal, made for cash and shares of Rocket Lab stock, values Iridium at about $8 billion. 

As we regularly say, "you don't need a Ph.D. to see..." that this is a very good way for Rocket Lab to enter the “space applications” business making them another step closer to being an alternative to SpaceX, now far ahead in the communications sector with Starlink and the much larger Starship seemingly close to being deployable. This is where the money to be made in space systems is to be found. 

“This is a deal where one plus one equals three,” he said. “One being Rocket Lab—we have unfettered access to space and the ability to build spacecraft at scale. We also do missions for people that matter. Then you think of Iridium, they have an already operational constellation; spectrum, and not just any spectrum but extremely valuable spectrum; millions of customers and they’re a profitable business. The result of these two things is a fully integrated, self-launching space superpower.”

The "extremely valuable" spectrum that Beck refers to Iridium having is L-band. Loosely defined, that's in the 1.0 to 2.0 GHz range. A lot of existing cellphone technology as well the GPS satellites operate in this window. Iridium is also developing a commercial position, navigation, and timing service as an alternative to GPS. 

Iridium is a company with a long history. First founded in 1998, it had to be rescued from bankruptcy only a couple of years later by the US government due to the difficulty of building and launching a commercial satellite communications network. Arriving as CEO in 2006, Matt Desch developed a plan for a next-generation constellation and worked with SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket to get it launched in the 2010s. For a time, Iridium was SpaceX’s most important commercial launch customer. Those satellites generate the bulk of Iridium’s revenue today. 

Rocket Lab's Peter Beck says that in order to become a “self-launching space superpower,” they need to get their Neutron rocket development completed and the sooner the better. The first mention of Neutron that I can find searching through old posts, was in December of 2021, so 4-1/2 years ago. They've been saying "we'll be flying real soon, now" since 2024, and Eric Berger of Ars Technica says that while they're saying the first launch will be this year, "... given the testing issues, it’s not even certain that Neutron will make its debut in 2027."

Rocket Lab released this picture of what they call the "Hungry Hippo" fairing that appeared here on December 3, 2021. Once you've seen that, you can't unsee the kids' hippo game.

While there's a lot of reasons to respect this acquisition and merger, there's also still a list of things they need to accomplish to become the company they apparently are aiming to be. Seeing the Neutron fly would be the big step.

It was BIC intensive weekend

I really have very little to write about since I spent a lot of time living up to the observation that there's nothing quite like staying BIC to get the best out of time in front of the radio. 

I spent most of Saturday and today BIC and striving to get "new" things on 6m.  My final total was 

• New grids contacted for FFMA credit: 4
• New countries contacted for 6m DXCC credit: 2

While I don't qualify for either, I'm far closer to DXCC than the FFMA. 

The band conditions (propagation) were better from Saturday morning through about 0000 UTC or Saturday evening around 7:30 PM local time, when I came out here to write the "It's Field Day" article.  Sunday morning meant continuing with our search for a new church, but the conditions from lunch through most of the day were pretty poor compared to yesterday.  

Even sitting here now and looking at it, it looks like a lot of BIC time for those amounts of increase, but, there are plenty of times when I spend days in the chair and only get one or two new credits, or nothing new at all. 

Since I've been watching for this, I should update that the SWIFT rescue launch to on the "last" Pegasus rocket has been delayed until Tuesday at 6:23 AM EDT, but it's not from here or Vandenberg. It's from the Marshall Islands.

Northrop Grumman's Pegasus launch vehicle on the belly of their Stargazer heavy lift airplane. Image Credit: Northrop Grumman

It's Field Day Weekend '26 - Remember your BIC

As I write, it's Saturday evening the 27th, both EDT and UTC. It's the last weekend in June and that marks the weekend of the year when American ham radio operators conduct the biggest operating event of the year that isn't a contest: Field Day. Strictly speaking, Field Day (or FD) is an event organized by the American Radio Relay League, or ARRL, so people who are opposed to the ARRL for whatever reason look down on the event. Saying it's not a contest is one of those things that's technically true, by definition, but people submit scores and their logs for bragging rights. FD runs from 1800 hours UTC on Saturday (2PM EDT) to 2059 Sunday ( 4:59:59 PM EDT). 

But that's not why I'm here. I've written about Field Day before, and this previous paragraph is almost word for word from last year's post.  The only edit I remember is changing the date in first sentence from last year's June 28th and I wrote that one in the afternoon. 

The main point of this post is something I haven't written about before. I've mentioned being a paper chaser, with several pieces of wallpaper earned and others that I'm actively working on today - 6m DXCC and the FFMA. As I said before, one of the first few posts (post #6) on the blog was about what I called my Lifetime Achievement Award in Ham Radio, 5BDXCC, short for Five Band DXCC (5BDXCC), and now that stands at 8BDXCC. I'm closing in on my ninth band, 6m  (50-54 MHz). I've told myself that my chances of achieving the FFMA approach zero simply because of the geography. The FFMA is an award for contacting all 488 of the Maidenhead Grid Squares, (1 degree in latitude by 2 degrees in longitude) in the lower 48 states. I'm far closer to the geographic SE corner of the CONUS than the center. Only one station in Florida has earned the FFMA, and that was someone in the NW-most corner of Florida, around 500 miles from me. 

So how does one work toward this? And what's this BIC I mention? 

I'm not going to insist this is the only way to get there, but the First Law for working countries, states or grid squares you've never worked before is simple.  Listen first. Listen, listen, listen and then listen some more. There are other sources of information. The easy one is something I've mentioned dozens of times, websites that allow hams to report hearing other stations, and present a graphical display like this one from DXMaps. 

It's important to point out how you should use something like this, because I've sat in the station many times with a red blob of reported contacts like that and heard almost nothing. The important thing about this is that every line on it has two ends on it, it's either a contact between the two calls, or one end of it is being reported by their computer on its own because the computer can do that on its own. 

Your best chance of knowing you'll hear someone is if someone near you is either reporting working or hearing the call on the other end of the red line. If you see a call that's near you on the map and they have a better station than you do (they can hear weaker signals than you), you may not hear the same station they do. Look at Florida on this plot an you'll see several red lines going toward the NE, perhaps New York, or Pennsylvania, maybe even New England. You'll also see a smaller couple of red lines headed more northwest into the middle of the blob. Someone in that part of the country might be heard as well. 

None of those red lines going east to west across the middle of the country mean anything to us down here in Florida.

This is where BIC comes in, which is an acronym for Butt In Chair. Sit in the chair and listen. If you're using one of the digital modes implemented in software that displays every call it's demodulating, read that like it's the most important contract you've ever gotten.  

One of the things about 6m that's striking is openings can be really specific. Over the years, I've seen times when I'll get a cross county opening to one grid square; sometimes for one 15 second transmission ( common in FT8) sometimes for a few minutes, then it jumps to another grid square, or disappears for some time, then appears again to a different square.

Let me show you a real example. I modified a map of the US showing all the grid squares to show where my central Florida signal popped into the Pacific NW. 

The red lines are supposed to be showing the first square I contacted was CN84 in Oregon and worked a station there. A few minutes later, it went silent, and then I heard CN86 and worked another station. Again, it went silent after a few minutes, and then opened to CN85, where I heard and worked the third station of that day. The details like "how long was it open? then how long did it close?" and more are long gone, but I think the whole thing lasted around 30 minutes. I've since heard similar things with closer grids, enough for me to think that it's actually not a rare thing.

If I wasn't BIC, I wouldn't have heard any of that. Similarly today, there were two guys in two different grid squares that I've never worked yet, DM86 and 96. If it weren't for monitoring closely I wouldn't have gotten both of them. BIC, watching the signals being copied out of my computer on my desktop instead of reports from places like DXMaps. 

Knowing where and when to transmit is another "listen, listen, listen" thing and it varies with the mode you're operating. On CW and voice, they'll generally tell you something like, "listening up 5" or "up 10 to 15". The important part is not to transmit when they're transmitting, but when they're listening. Saying "up 5" or that sort of thing doesn't happen on the new digital modes because those modes don't give enough bits of information. You have to pay attention to when the station is transmitting and choose to not transmit when they are. On WSJT-X's FT-8, which seems to be the most popular mode, I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen someone calling the DX while the DX is transmitting, not listening. 

All DXers have heard this many, many times.

How did this one get by me?

I should have seen this story earlier in the week, but missed it.  

The next big space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrived at the KSC this past Sunday morning. The NGRST will undergo a series of tests and final assembly operations while waiting for the proper launch window to arrive, to launch to the L2 Lagrange Point, currently the home of the James Webb Space Telescope, the European Union's Euclid infrared space telescope and a convenient place for passing visitors, like the Escapade mission did on the way to Mars. Both Escapade satellites are on the way to Mars now, not at the L2 point. 

NASA has chosen a Falcon Heavy to get the NGRST to its destination. There have been 11 Falcon Heavy launches to date, with a 100% success rate for the 230-foot-tall, heavy lift vehicle. Not surprising since it's three different Falcon 9s strapped together (although the upper stage is different) and that's the most reliable vehicle in history.

The launch is currently targeted for August 30th. 

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, nestled inside its transport container nicknamed ‘the Chariot’, passes by the Vehicle Assembly Building on its way to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

I suppose calling it ‘the Chariot’ is probably a joke based on 'Roman' in the NGRST's name, but it's not a reference to the Roman Empire, it's a tribute to Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first Chief Astronomer.

An illustration of the field of view of Roman Space Telescope vs. the Hubble Space Telescope.  From the NASA Roman mission website. 2000 square degrees vs 1.6. 

If you want to know something else to make  you a fan of the NGRST, there was a statement I ran across a while back that I'm sure I've never heard in a NASA program certainly not heard of elsewhere. The August 30th launch for the NGRST is eight months ahead of schedule, and under budget.

On a slow news day

It was a busy "get stuff done around the house" day and when I started checking the various news sites, there's really not much going on. I tried to see if there are any updates on the Starfall mission, but SpaceX themselves haven't updated anything about the mission since Tuesday's launch. 

There is a little story that has been getting repeated and re-emphasized as the week has gone by though. It first appeared on Ars Technica on Monday (22nd), then in a slightly different form on Space.com on Wednesday (24th).  

The story is based on a report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) saying that the infrastructure on KSC is getting too old and decrepit for the new vehicles it has to deal with. In particular, it centered on the big vehicles, like Artemis/SLS and New Glenn, then touches on ULA's Vulcan and SpaceX's Starship. 

“NASA’s launch infrastructure is vital to providing the agency, other government agencies, and commercial partners access to space for their most complex and expensive missions,” states the report, published by the NASA Office of Inspector General. “Nevertheless, NASA’s launch infrastructure is dated and often does not provide the capacity to meet the growing demands of the agency and its partners.”

Let me do a quick overview for those new here or that haven't spent much time reading about the Cape. The heart of Apollo era (designed in the early 1960s) launch infrastructure is the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The Apollo Saturn V stack was 363 feet tall, and adding height for cranes and other lifting machinery had them make the VAB 526 feet tall (I believe that's the exterior of the building). There were two identical launch pads built when the system was developed, pads 39A and 39B, both big enough to handle the Saturn V. 

Over the last decade, pad 39A was leased to SpaceX, and 39B was assigned to the Artemis program. SpaceX has done quite a bit of improvement (modifications) to 39A. 

It's something that's talked about regularly that still seems to be new information for many, but there are two spaceports on what's just called Cape Canaveral. All of this hardware I've just mentioned is on the portion called the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The pads and other infrastructure south of 39A is not part of that, but are what's called Cape Canaveral Space Force Station or CCSFS. This graphic should be helpful. 

Since this article is about infrastructure, it's worth mentioning that there's well over 200 miles of paved roads, and bridges that KSC and CCSFS share. Most importantly, there are supply lines for cryogenic helium and nitrogen. Additionally, the report cites serious concerns about a six-decade-old electrical power distribution system for NASA’s launch pads.

There also has to be distribution for things like gaseous nitrogen used for many purposes. According to the OIG report, during the Artemis I launch campaign in 2022, there were issues with the availability of enough nitrogen to support the rocket. But according to the report, the problem has not gone away.

“The system cannot simultaneously support launches … of Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle at Space Launch Complex 36 and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle at Space Launch Complex 41,” the report states. “Blue Origin officials stated this issue created a major scheduling challenge during preparation for the New Glenn-1 mission that launched in January 2025, and further expressed concern that during future Space Launch System launches there could be 1- to 2-month blackout periods from the pipeline.”

The solution for this is to construct a new gaseous nitrogen system to supplement the existing capacity, but the $25 million project is currently unfunded.

The bigger problem looming now isn't the "day or two here and there" it's that there's talk from all of the big providers of test firings and launches going above one per day by late 2028 or 2029. 

SpaceX has told NASA it plans to launch Starship every eight days from Launch Complex 39A for the purposes of propellant depots in orbit. (The report states, in a footnote, that “at least” 15 Starships will be required to deliver propellant for a Starship lunar lander.) From all of its Florida pads, SpaceX estimates 120 annual Starship launches, and Blue Origin projects 120 annual launches of its super heavy-lift New Glenn rocket as well by 2035.

In addition, Blue Origin has expressed interest in a third New Glenn pad located north of NASA’s existing pads.

The Space.com piece (which I haven't quoted here so far) is advancing the number that it will take $1 billion to bring the infrastructure up to what's required, although they don't quote a specific source, saying:

Though it credits NASA for already taking steps to address these issues, agency officials estimate it will take at least $1 billion to complete all the necessary upgrades, of which only $250 million was provided as part of NASA's funds allocated in last year's 2025 H.R.1 reconciliation bill. 

They predict the ability to get by with what they have will run out in the 2028/29 time frame. There's also talk that NASA has been getting allocated less per year than they should. With a two to three year "due date" being predicted, it seems that getting started ASAP would be a good idea. 

NASA shifting to new views of lunar settlement

Back in March as Jared Isaacman was settling into his post as NASA administrator, he had spent enough hours looking at what was being spent on the Artemis program and developing his own ideas of what was needed for his vision (along with the administration's) of what a settlement on the moon needed and began efforts to "trim the fat." Thus began a presentation called "Ignition" or "the Ignition Event" and Isaacman let the collection of programs he intended to cancel be known. Sure, there was grumbling from contractors who saw their gravy train being cut off. Completely to be expected.

“For too long we tried to satisfy every stakeholder,” he said during the Ignition event in March. “Billions of dollars wasted. Years lost. Hardware that never launched. Fewer flagship science missions. And fewer astronauts in space, which means fewer kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween. I don’t like it. The president doesn’t like it. The American people have waited long enough.”

We've talked about this to some degree, and a key part was canceling the Lunar Gateway - talked about in March but only officially told to shut down last week. 

On Wednesday, NASA’s Office of the Inspector General prepared a memorandum on the elements of the Artemis Program that NASA was canceling as its focus shifted to the Moon’s surface. These were:

• Exploration Upper Stage, an upgrade for the Space Launch System rocket
• Universal Stage Adapter, which links the Orion spacecraft to the Exploration Upper Stage
• Mobile Launcher 2, a larger launch tower for the upgraded Space Launch System rocket
• Habitation and Logistics Outpost, a habitation module for the Lunar Gateway

The memorandum notes that each of these projects has experienced substantial cost increases and numerous delays over the last decade.

“Over the course of their life cycles, the combined contract values for these efforts ballooned from nearly $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion and NASA extended their contracted delivery dates by up to seven years,” states the report by the inspector general. “However, our projections indicate that if NASA allowed work to continue to completion, the systems would have cost more and taken longer than what was on contract.”

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has done a feature piece on this, and for illustration chooses the least expensive module of the four, the Universal Stage Adapter. NASA contracted with Dynetics in June 2017 to design, test, and build this piece of spaceflight hardware. Not particularly big or exotic, the original contract awarded to Dynetics totaled $131 million, to which NASA added another $9 million for a payload separation system, so $140 million. 

At the time the program was canceled earlier this year, the contract value had grown to $353 million, with a delivery date delayed to September 2028. The inspector general’s report projected that the project would likely cost $497 million and not be ready until May 2030. 

Left to its previous price trajectory, $497 million is probably optimistically low, but it's pretty easy "in your head math" to see $497 is closer to four times the $131 ($524 million) than to three times the initial contract (or $393 million).

To reduce it to its essence, NASA was probably going to pay half a billion dollars for a tall (33 feet) but relatively straightforward stage adaptor. This doesn’t have propulsion or anything like that on board. On top of the cost, it was probably going to take 13 years to complete. 

Admittedly huge, it's a tapered pipe for a fancy, overpriced system. The only important thing it has to do is match the pieces it's installed between. 

A test version of the Universal Stage Adapter is seen at Marshall Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA

There's still a Boeing Starliner capsule

Sometimes it's hard to imagine that NASA and Boeing are still working on preparing Boeing's Starliner capsule for another attempt at a crewed test flight. Back on February 19th, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman released a long-awaited summary of the mission. The headline was that NASA had classified the Starliner mission as a “Type A” mishap. That level is the most serious on the scale that goes from A down to D, plus one minor fault without a letter. The definition at the linked page (.pdf) is the direct cost of mission failure and property damage greater than or equal to $2,000,000 with two other conditions aimed at aircraft mishaps rather than spacecraft. 

Today we learned that Boeing and NASA are still working on a next Starliner flight, which has no defined date and not many more details. 

During a public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) on Monday, member Kent Rominger said that NASA was still assessing opportunities to launch the uncrewed Starliner-1 mission. He said the agency and Boeing were still working through post-flight work from the CFT mission and address issues raised in the Program Investigation Team (PIT) report.

“NASA and Boeing continue working toward the goal of Starliner’s crewed certification, which includes defining what is needed and acceptable for the next uncrewed mission to reduce risk and confirm readiness for crew missions,” the former NASA astronaut said. “The Starliner-1 uncrewed mission launch target is under review as work remains to close the final propulsion system issues.” 

The Starliner crewed flight test (CFT) mission had many major problems; that is, serious, but short of killing the crew. The big examples were the failures of five thrusters on the spacecraft’s service module that failed during the rendezvous, along with leaks in seven out of eight helium manifolds on the service module and a reaction control system jet failure. 

In his summary of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) status for the ASAP meeting, Rominger said recommendations from the PIT report are being addressed and that “management and operational changes have been made.” 

The PIT report pointed to “cultural and leadership challenges that undermined technical rigor and exacerbated technical risks.” The report stated that the root causes were as follows:

NASA’s hands-off contract approach limited insight into the Starliner’s development

Boeing’s inadequate systems engineering and reliance on subcontractors without sufficient oversight created gaps in hardware qualification

NASA CCP’s culture prioritized provider success over technical rigor

The PIT report took a dim view of the CCP and claims to have changed their way of doing business, but from our standpoint of interested observers, we don't have a way (that I'm aware of) to tell if that's just drawing a different org chart or if people are moved into jobs they're good at or out of jobs they're not particularly good at. 

There's little mention of the big problem that's hanging over Starliner: they're running out of time.  You'll remember that months ago there was some talk about extending the life of the Space Station, but lately there has been talk about whether the ISS can even make it to 2030 and its planned de-orbit. 

During Monday’s ASAP meeting, Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Chair and former commander of the 45th Space Wing, said that while the ISS is intended to be in use until at least 2030, the ongoing leaks on the Russian segment are “one of the most significant safety risks to the program.”

She also pointed to the more than 40-year-old spacesuit equipment, which makes the suite of upcoming spacewalks increasingly challenging. Helms did note that there was “a robust life extension plan” in place for those.

The astronauts on the Space Station get pretty much routine six month stays on the ISS and now are primarily riding SpaceX Crew Dragons for those missions, although there are still missions that launch from Russia. The original plan was for Crew Dragons and Starliner to alternate flights. One of the things that's being considered is making the missions shorter so that there can be more of them. 

The next change of crews, Crew-13, is currently slated to fly in September, moving up from its previously planned window in November “to help increase the frequency of U.S. crew rotation missions to the space station.” It will be a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission. 

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft rests in the desert of the White Sands Space Harbor after its return to Earth from its failed mission to the International Space Station in 2024. Image credit: Boeing

SpaceX sets yet another record

It's a regular observation of mine that just about every launch from SpaceX is new record of some kind, whether a reuse record for a booster, a record for how fast some mission to mission turnaround took place or something more obscure. 

The record this time is a bit more of a face slap to every other launch provider and I frankly don't see any place that looks like it could challenge this.

As of June 12th, SpaceX has launched more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined in all of history. 

Investor and former space-industry executive Christian Keil highlighted the achievement in a June 12 X post, which noted that SpaceX had launched 15,262 satellites as of that date. The combined total for all other companies and organizations since the dawn of the space age in 1957 was 15,138, according to Keil.

Graphic from Christian Keil's X channel, named "Pronounced Kyle". June 12th was obviously 10 days ago as I write.

Not very hidden in the graphic is that majority of payloads SpaceX has lifted into orbit have been Starlink and Starshield satellites (like Starlink but with more secure data links for government and military usage) - in dark blue with lighter blue being for other payloads. Of course this makes sense - they've been working toward a goal of 40,000 Starlink satellites and Space.com's article says they've launched 12,318 of the internet spacecraft to LEO, as of June 18, crediting the number to Jonathon McDowell, from whom we've gotten this kind of numbers before.  

SpaceX has teased a future that features thousands of Starship flights every year as the company helps humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other ambitious tasks. So, it's safe to say that SpaceX doesn't plan to relinquish its launch lead anytime soon.

Happy summer solstice!

The Summer Solstice happened earlier this year than others I've checked before. The exact minute of this years summer solstice was 4:24 a.m. EDT (0824 GMT) . It's now officially summer, and today is the longest day of the year. I used to wonder if anyone has ever measured that with the extremely accurate clocks we have these days. There's always some wobble to the Earth such that times can move around with days milliseconds longer or shorter than predicted. Today is supposed to be 0.3664 milliseconds (or 366.4 microseconds, if you prefer) longer than 24 hours.  

Screen capture from TimeandDate.com

The sunrise/sunset app I have on my phone (really old - I think it's not supported anymore) says sunrise this morning was in the minute it calls 6:26 AM. The earliest sunrise of the year was called 6:25 AM and the phone app said sunrise was 6:25 from June 2 until June 19. Sunrises will get later every morning from here until the new year. Sunset, meanwhile is 8:21 and doesn't reach the latest sunset of the year, 8:23, until June 25 and stays there until July 8th. After that, sunsets get earlier until around the end of November. 

You were expecting symmetry?

It's there, but not what most people seem to expect. Sunrise and sunset don't both move smoothly getting earlier and later reaching their min/max on the solstice. In the summer, the earliest sunrise is before the solstice, latest sunset is after. In the winter, the earliest sunset is before the solstice, late November/early December and latest sunrise is after it - the first week of January. That seems like mirror image symmetry. I should emphasize this in the northern hemisphere. I've never checked this pattern in the southern hemisphere.

I went looking through the blog history searching for articles on this and found that I've only written about the summer solstice a couple of times before, but have written about the winter solstice more times. That's probably at least partly because I greatly prefer our winter over our summer, so I look forward to the winter solstice more.

If you've ever spent time with a good globe, you'll know about an analemma, that shows the motion of the sun - usually shown as seen from the equator. I've posted one pretty picture an amateur took of the sun that recorded the phenomenon for a full year. That was in a winter solstice post. 

America 300

It's hard to think about the Tricentennial of the USA as we’re wobbling toward America 250 in two weeks. And since I was technically an adult (22) for the Bicentennial in 1976, some sort of miracle happening would be necessary for me to be around to see 2076. (and I’m fairly sure I called it the bison testicle anyway, instead of the real word).  

Somebody had this in their collection of memes in the last week. I don't know who gets credit.

Strangely, this post starts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise, where John Wilder started this Monday’s (6/15) post “America 350: Looking Backward from 2126” with a comment I left to him a couple of weeks earlier. My comment was essentially that we’re seeing more and more America 250 talk in the last month, and does he think that we’ll make it to America 300? Many billions have been spent trying to take our country down already, are they going to get the US to collapse?

His answer was “yes.” I tend to agree and honestly have to admit that part of it is I’m surprised we’ve made it to America 250. Now, John makes a detailed argument pointing out the contributing aspects, like forced importation of foreigners, forcing people to accept all manner of bad people in their societies, from rapists and child predators to all sorts of theft, fraud and criminal acts. Basically, many of the social ills we see in the honest news practically every day. 

Years ago, and it’s hard to find the transition point, I switched the blog over to writing mostly about space topics, which took over and expanded my old “Techy Tuesday” posts into Most Days being Techy Days. Some weeks are all space, but I also write on other technical topics like ham radio, the real environmental stories, some economics, and tend to stay away from politics and political talk.

One of the reasons I tend to agree with Wilder on this is we both lean toward being “real money guys”. That phrase tends to be used for people who think we should shut down the Federal Reserve and get rid of their “constant benign inflation” belief. I was going to say “policy” but it's more of a wild speculation. There’s really only one way to think it has anything to do with real life, and that’s that simply that one of the justifications of them targeting mild inflation is that if people honestly believe that prices on everything they want to buy will be higher the longer they wait, it encourages spending on the car, coat, furniture, house improvement, new car or whatever right now rather than saving up for it. That creates more activity for some businesses and tends to make positive headlines. Naturally, if you live on a credit card the card companies depend on the interest you’re paying for their livelihood so they want you to buy it now and pay them for it over the next few years.

In reality, I think "real money" guys are just a bit looser than those who advocate for gold-based currency. At least some that I've read (and my personal belief) is that gold really isn't all that different from the big stone rings (called rai) they use on Yap Island. The stones aren't something that can be created in infinite amounts like digits in a computer. They can't do a stone version of "just print more" like the Federal Reserve does with paper money or just create the number in a computer file. In fact, they can't create any more of those rings now. 

Wilder talks about something like this - limiting the supply of money - in what he calls BasedBux©. There will never be more than 100 million of those. 

In contrast to prices going up by inflation, there’s a little-talked about principle known as one of the “golden laws of manufacturing” that says if your company doubles the amount of things it produces, the price for each one tends to come down 25 to 30%. Part of that is “quantity discount” that reduces the price of parts the more they buy, and part of it is the increase in efficiency of everyone sitting and working on the same thing instead of interrupting their work all day to change what they’re working on, bringing built products out and bringing in newer ones to work on.  

The real issue for America is we need to find some animal we can rename the Trison (try-son). Purely so we can refer to the Trison testicle year. 

Small Space News Story Roundup 82

Two interesting launches are coming before the end of June. Let's start with more obscure story. 

SpaceX will test their Starfall vehicle NET Tuesday 

Word started getting around within the last two weeks or so that SpaceX had gotten FAA approval to do a test flight of new orbital reentry vehicle called Starfall. As of now, the launch is scheduled for No Earlier Than Tuesday morning, June 23, at 6:40 AM EDT from SLC-40 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

So what is it?

Starfall is a new concept for a reentry vehicle, originally intended for small manufacturing operators in space who might need to send small lots of chemicals like pharmaceuticals which they produce in zero G, or perhaps microchips from semiconductor manufacturers, down to coworkers on the ground. Instead of the conventional, more or less conical vehicles currently widely in use, Starfall is essentially pill-shaped; that is, a round, short, relatively flat circular tablet. Overall, it's 3.1m (10.2 feet) in diameter and 0.75m (2.5 feet) tall. They weigh approximately 2,100 kg (4630 lbs), and capable of carrying 1,000 kg (2200 lbs) of payload.

Image credit: to Eggasaurus Rex (no, I'm not making that up).

SpaceX has also released a rendering of a holder that would handle four Starfall landers at a time. 

Image credit: to Eggasaurus Rex

The initiative was first reported by Bloomberg in July 2025 as a confidential internal project exploring space-based industrial manufacturing.^[1] By vertically integrating both the launch system and the cargo return vehicle, the program positioned SpaceX to offer end-to-end space manufacturing services at scale, competing with standalone capsule startups.

In May 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a Final Environmental Assessment and a Record of Decision, officially granting SpaceX approval to conduct its first two prototype Starfall reentry test flights. According to the regulatory findings, these initial missions are authorized to splash down in international waters within the Pacific Ocean, roughly 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) off the coasts of California and Mexico.

Concurrently, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulatory filings revealed that SpaceX intends to mount integrated Starlink Earth stations on the prototype vehicles. These terminals will undergo testing to maintain active data telemetry links directly through the plasma blackout phase experienced during atmospheric reentry.

If this isn't enough info, you might want to watch Scott Manley's video on Starfall that was posted nine days ago. It goes quite a bit deeper than this, and is well done on Scott's part.

A bold, "wild and crazy" plan to rescue a doomed satellite launches on June 27

Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What’s more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?

The satellite they're trying to save is called Swift, launched in November of 2004 to detect gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the known Universe. Despite its age, astrophysicists still rely on Swift’s multi-wavelength instruments to identify and locate gamma-ray bursts for follow-up observations by other observatories. The problem is that as solar cycle 25 has gotten more like the solar cycles before Swift launched in cycle 24, our atmosphere has expanded, which increases drag on the satellite. 

The observatory launched into an orbit roughly 363 miles (585 km) above the Earth. As of Thursday, Swift was flying at 225 miles (363 km). The decay rate will increase as the spacecraft dips into denser layers of the atmosphere until Swift finally burns up during reentry. 
...
NASA engineers estimate Swift will fall below an altitude of 186 miles (300 km) this fall—perhaps around October.

NASA's leader on this project, Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, selected a small company already working for NASA because they simply didn't have the time to follow their normally required procedures.

“To be honest, no one thought it was going to be possible. No one thought we would get as far as we’ve already gotten today,” Domagal-Goldman said. “And I have to be honest, there are still risks ahead of us, but I’m both deeply thankful and as optimistic as I can be that we’ll meet those challenges because of the people that have worked on it.”
...
In September, NASA awarded Katalyst Space Technologies a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst’s Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift’s orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

It's an interesting and impressive story. The Link satellite will launch on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL, a "far from typical" launch vehicle in a program that's far from typical everywhere you look. The Pegasus XL is airdropped at 39,000 feet by what appears to be a moderately-sized commercial jet, it ignites a series of three solid rocket motors and makes it to orbit. After 45 missions since 1990, this is scheduled to be the last Pegasus rocket to fly.

The launch is scheduled for Saturday, June 27, at 5:00 AM EDT to 10:28 AM. The "launch site" - which I interpret to be where the airplane starts from - is the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, in the Marshall Islands.

The Link spacecraft integrated with Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket. Credit: NASA/Ron Beard

Since this isn't from Cape Canaveral, I don't expect to get to watch this launch, but I'm hoping to get some video. 

As Elon Musk sorta said, "boring is good."

That's a bit of a reach, what Musk actually said was more like, "I'll know we've been successful when watching launches becomes boring."  

I'm going to get there because this piece is really about how SpaceX launched three BlueBird satellites for AST SpaceMobile at 2:39 a.m. EDT (0639 UTC) on Wednesday, June 17th. We've reported on BlueBird satellites a few times and I have to confess to being interested in these satellites because of having designed receivers for things like the BlueBird downlinks. They're interesting because the satellites aren't designed for large antennas on each receiver, they're for direct to cellphone coverage. I'd hazard a guess that a large percentage of cellphone users don't even know they have an antenna. The necessary large antennas are on the satellites. Like close to 2400 square feet. While not actually square in shape, for reference, that would be a square almost 49 feet on a side.

An artist's concept of a giant AST SpaceMobile BlueBird mobile broadband satellite for smartphone connectivity. (Image credit: AST SpaceMobile)

The side story is bigger than that, though. See, SpaceX launched BlueBird 8, 9, and 10 on one SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. So what happened to BlueBird's 1 through 7? 

BlueBird 7 was the payload on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket from the Cape. While the company was able to recover its first stage booster, ‘Never Tell Me the Odds,’ the New Glenn suffered an upper stage anomaly and was unable to deliver the satellite to the intended orbit. Then, 'Never Tell Me the Odds" was the Blue Origin launch vehicle that blew up on the launch pad at the end of May. That was on the 28th - three weeks ago as I type. 

Prior to this launch, the company deployed its BlueWalker 3 test satellite and five, Block 1 BlueBird satellites on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets in Sept. 2022 and Sept. 2024 respectively. The first Block 2 satellites, BlueBird 6, launched on an Indian LVM3 rocket.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted AST SpaceMobile the ability to deploy 248 of its satellites into low Earth orbit.

That is, they're allowed to deploy 248 satellites if they can actually get them in orbit reliably.

SpaceX Falcon 9, tail number B1077, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the BlueBird 8-10 mission for AST SpaceMobile on June 17, 2026, as seen from the sands of Cocoa Beach, Florida. This was the 29th mission for Booster 1077 Image: Michael Cain, Spaceflight Now

Towers at Vandenberg intended for the Shuttles taken down for SpaceX

I'm gonna go out a limb to say a lot of you will be aware of this aspect of space history but the space shuttles were expected to fly out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, and a launch complex (Space Launch Complex or SLC, pronounced "Slick") SLC-6 was built for California shuttle launches that never actually happened. Over the years, SLC-6 was used for various launch vehicles: the Titan IV in the early 1990s, Lockheed Martin’s LMLV-1 in 1995, followed by Athena I and Athena II rockets with payloads for NASA and Space Imaging (later GlobalEye) in 1997 and 1999, respectively. The final launch from SLC-6 was of a Delta IV Heavy on September 24, 2022. 

In 2023, SpaceX signed a lease to use SLC-6 for its Falcon launches but has never used it, instead launching its Falcons regularly form SLC-4, which it started doing ten years earlier, in 2013. Fast forward to today.

A series of demolition charges on Tuesday (June 16) brought down the access tower, mobile service tower, and what remained of the assembly building at SLC-6—pronounced “slick-six”—in Southern California. Once the location for the US Air Force’s first effort to put humans into space and later, the West Coast launch site for the space shuttle, SLC-6 will next be used by SpaceX in support of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. 

Flash back to February 1985. NASA’s prototype space shuttle orbiter Enterprise, stacked with an external tank and two solid rocket boosters, stands at Space Launch Complex-6 (SLC-6), flanked by the assembly building (left) and mobile service tower at back when it was called Vandenberg Air Force Base (today it's a Space Force Base). Credit: U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. James Pearson

One year after this photo, on January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight killing the entire crew of seven. That led the DOD to rethink relying on the shuttle. The Air Force walked away from SLC-6 and never launched a shuttle.

Towers originally built to support early Air Force spaceflight efforts and later never-realized West Coast launches of the space shuttle were toppled at Vandenberg Space Force Base's Space Launch Complex-6 (SLC-6) in California on June 16, 2026. Credit: Space Launch Delta 30/Staff Sgt. Daekwon Stith

“Space Launch Complex-6 represents six decades of American innovation and our unwavering commitment to securing space superiority,” Col. James T. Horne III, commander of Space Launch Delta 30 at Vandenberg, said in a statement. “By modernizing this historic footprint in partnership with our defense industrial base, we are building directly upon the foundation of our pioneers.”

The demolition was known to be planned but was only announced hours after it was completed at 11 am PDT (1800 GMT) on Tuesday. The detonations brought down the access tower first, followed by the mobile service tower and then the large American flag-adorned assembly building. Typical of Vandenberg weather, a marine layer of low clouds and fog added a somber look to the scene.

According to an environmental impact statement they filed, SpaceX seems to expect it will take another 18 months to complete modifications to SLC-6, including the construction of two landing pads for the reusable Falcon 9 first stage boosters. They talk about launching Falcon Heavy missions from SLC-6, which would require the two landing pads, but I see no mention of Starships launching from the left coast in the source article.