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.  

Japan's H3 aces it's return to flight test

I started out the week talking about launches that aren't from US with the scrub of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum on Monday the 15th, from Norway's Andøya spaceport. That was a convenient starting point, but absolutely not the start of launches from overseas. 

I didn't know until this morning's Payload newsletter that Spectrum's launch was preceded by a Japanese (JAXA) launch, and will be followed by the European Space Agency's Ariane 6 mission carrying Amazon LEO satellites which will launch from French Guiana on Wednesday morning, June 17 at 7:53 AM Eastern time. The Isar Aerospace launched that scrubbed on Monday has been rescheduled for Thursday at 4:00 PM Eastern US time.  That linked site is currently saying the video coverage is private and not openly viewable, but I wouldn't be surprised if that changed. Not that we have lots of experience with Isar Aerospace launches - it's still only their second test flight. 

JAXA's (the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) H3 test flight was a follow up to the failed mission in December of '25. 

JAXA notched a successful return to flight for its H3 rocket following its failure in December.

The rocket launched on its eighth mission—the first successful flight of the new three-engine variant—Friday morning from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center, delivering all six of its payloads to space. 

“The launch vehicle flew as planned, and the second stage of the H3 launch vehicle was injected into the predetermined orbit,” JAXA said in a statement. “JAXA appreciates all for the support shown on behalf of the launch.”

H3 clears the tower on the way to a successful Return to Flight mission. Image credit: JAXA

The H3 carried five payloads to the desired orbit. 

• PETREL, an EO sat developed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology;
• STARS-X, a debris capture demo from Shizuoka University;
• BRO-22, an RF sat for maritime surveillance from Unseen Labs;
• VERTECS, a scientific sat to study star formation from the Kyushu Institute of Technology;
• HORN-L and HORN-R, a pair of sats demoing how atmospheric drag can support debris mitigation.

While it's true the SpaceX launches more than the rest of the world combined, that doesn't mean they're not working to catch up. It's a source of national pride for other countries or regions (like the European Union) to be able to launch their own payloads.

Europe's Isar Aerospace having a tough time getting off the ground

Isar Aerospace is in a unique place for a private space corporation in Europe. They've actually launched a rocket once, back on March 30 '25, but the rocket didn't make orbit, and honestly didn't get much higher than a few launch towers. You may remember seeing it lose control less than one minute after launch as engines either couldn't or wouldn't run, then it crashed in to the water around Andøya spaceport in Norway and exploded.

Isar has been working toward the goal of the second flight of their Spectrum rocket since then and has been trying since this January, but something keeps coming up that stops them. The most recent scrub was this afternoon (Norwegian time) when ground control systems were “detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle’s fluid systems,” and they scrubbed. Isar hasn't named a next day for an attempt, but remarked the launch window is only open (approved) until June 21. 

The Spectrum rocket has missed three launch windows so far this year. Isar called off a launch attempt on January 21 due to an issue with a pressurization valve, and then halted a countdown on March 25, moments before liftoff, when engineers detected rising temperatures in the rocket’s liquid propane fuel. Isar officials attributed the problem to a delay earlier in the countdown caused by an unauthorized boat in restricted waters along the rocket’s flight path.

Managers stood down from another launch attempt on April 9 to evaluate a suspected leak in a composite overwrapped pressure vessel [COPV]. That led to Isar’s latest try to launch the Spectrum rocket on Monday.

“Scrubs are part of the business,” Isar founder and CEO Daniel Metzler said in April. “Each attempt gives us valuable experience and lessons learned.”

As far as I know, every launch site like Andøya that launches from a site close to a beach has issues with some friction between other users of the water, both fisherman (recreational and professional) and people who just want to visit the beach. The same sort of concerns haunt Isar and the Andøya spaceport. Isar sits at the front of the pack of European startups trying to being commercial launch capacity to the European nations. 

Several other companies—Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg, France’s MaiaSpace, and Spain’s PLD Space, among others—are developing their own small satellite launchers to provide a lower-cost alternative to Arianespace and Avio, Europe’s incumbent launch providers.

Isar sits at the front of pack because they've gotten closer to successful launch than the others. So far. This is the attempt on March 30, 2025.

There were no customer payloads onboard the failed Spectrum launch last year. This time, Isar has placed five small CubeSats and a non-separating technology experiment into the Spectrum rocket’s payload fairing. The second test flight is supported by the European Space Agency’s “Boost!” program and the German Aerospace Center’s Microlauncher Competition, which provide funding for commercial space transport initiatives.

Isar Aerospace is set to receive up to 205 million euros ($238 million) from ESA through the European Launcher Challenge program, augmenting the company’s private fundraising and financing rounds worth more than 800 million euros (nearly $1 billion), including 270 million euros ($313 million) announced just last week. This makes Isar, by far, the most well-capitalized private launch company in Europe.

So far the weekend is a dud

I mentioned this weekend's ARRL VHF contest a few times and that's where I was all of Saturday - at least until 11:00 PM local (eastern US) time.

It's hard to know this is correct, but yesterday, I thought it might have been the least active, and least interesting of these contests. Ever. Compared to the activity I heard last weekend, it was very low activity and very poor propagation.

Naturally, if I say it was bad, the obvious reply is, "how bad was it?" 

As I've said many times, I tend to use a software package called WSJT-X and a mode called FT8. The "JT" is for Joe Taylor, the physicist who developed the mode and puts the software out for free and I believe the whole name reduces to Weak Signal by Joe Taylor - eXtended (more than just the original few features). The big picture overview is that the FT8 software transmits and receives in alternating 15 second intervals.  And now I can finally answer the "how bad was it?" 

Last weekend, during the busy periods, I would see that in 15 seconds, the software had demodulated and put on screen over 50 different transmissions. For perspective, most of yesterday, I saw four to six. Sometimes it would show two and I don't recall ever seeing the incoming calls get to even 10. The only good part is that while I didn't catch any new stations or new areas I haven't contacted (worked) yet, I did get propagation openings into southern parts of Arizona and California.  

It's practically impossible for me to read over 50 call signs going by in 15 seconds and recognize any I need to respond to. Yes, I have some software that helps with that, too. 

Well it's just after 9AM here, and the band looks even slower than yesterday, but I'll go turn the station on. 

 

 

SpaceX IPO a success

Since a few times during the past week we were dancing around the topic of SpaceX's IPO today, it's convenient to end on that note and talk about it for a minute or two. 

I didn't have to look hard for this; this browser is Firefox under Windows 11 and what I think is the standard installation leaves lots of attention attractors on a blank tab. One of those today was a link to NPR (National Public Radio) who posted a summary of the IPO that seemed correct. 

SpaceX's newly listed stock leapt on its first day of trading on Friday, after an initial public offering that shattered records and made CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.

SpaceX stock, listed on the Nasdaq under the SPCX ticker, rose 19% on its first day of trading to close at $160.95. It became one of the world's biggest listed companies on its first day on the market, valued above $2 trillion.

The company raised some $75 billion selling more than 555 million shares at its offer price of $135,making it the biggest IPO in history.

While it might have been coincidence, NPR implies that to draw attention to the IPO, they launched a Falcon 9 carrying a load of Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral. Which I happened to miss because of not remembering the correct launch time.  (By the time we get the rocket sounds here, the flight has been going for over two minutes and there's not much chance of seeing anything. Which is fine because I was in the bathroom and wouldn't have been able to get up and go watch, anyway.). 

Musk was at Starbase, Texas and had a group presentation with President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen. 

"Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to mars, and ultimately beyond," Musk said, noting it was hard to believe the company had just pulled off the biggest IPO ever.

"I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all, to be clear," he said of the company's early days. "In fact I told people this, I said 'look, we're probably going to fail, but you know we should give it a try because if we don't, if there's not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-faring civilization."

One of the places I looked at while looking for news on this had a picture of a guy who started at SpaceX as a welder. As of today's market action, the shares he was given as a bonus made him a multimillionaire. Charles Payne of Fox Business had this take.

A look at SpaceX's plan for orbital data centers

Back on Sunday, in the story about SpaceX's imminent IPO, I mentioned the thing I'd seen about the plan for the new public corporation included data centers in space: "Not one or two - a million AI data centers." It's kind of a mind-boggling concept - and if you're not used to thinking at the scale of the requirements they're facing, it can definitely be off-putting. How do you dissipate the heat your processors generate? How do you get the data down? What do we need that much processing power for? Replacing everything on Earth? 

SpaceX and Elon Musk in particular are the people to listen to because with their Starlink constellation they've put more satellite mass in space than any other company (or country). 

Space.com put up an interview with Elon in a casual setting somewhere in their corporate buildings. It turns out this interview is taken from one SpaceX posted on their X account that's just over a half hour long at 31 minutes. As you can see, this one is half that long. 

I'm not convinced it's a good thing to work toward, probably because I'm not convinced that the future we've glimpsed of how AI will affect everything is a good future. That said, it's worth watching. Is he on to something really important? It's possible. That's a different question than "should I invest in the IPO?" 

---

I should add that the next couple of days could end up being spotty. Tomorrow we're having some electric maintenance done on the house - we're replacing our whole-house backup generator, which died back in March and while I don't expect to be taken down, it's more likely than any other day when they're not working on stuff.  This weekend is the ARRL VHF contest from Saturday at 2PM until Sunday night at 11PM - both in my local Eastern Daylight Time.

Well that didn't take long

Yesterday, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis III mission, along with information on the mission itself and what they will be doing.  

By this morning, the complaints that the crew wasn't diverse enough started surfacing. "They're all men! You can't do that!" OK. I made that line up, so here's a real quote for you.

Isaacman wrote on the social media platform X that “I have seen reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage.” One such response on Reddit called the crew announcement “massively upsetting.”

“Women represent 50 percent of the population,” the post read. “They deserve at least one seat on every mission from a government run agency.”

Although he tried, there's nothing that can be said to people who focus on things like that. Everything that Administrator Isaccman said sounded like when people used to say "I'm not a bigot; some of my best friends are black" (or Hispanic or whatever). 

But Isaacman strongly defended the crew selection, saying he had “personally been to space twice with 50 percent female crews. My closest advisors and some of the smartest engineers I know are women. In our latest NASA leadership organization, nearly 50 percent of the center directors and mission directorate leadership are women.

“The last astronaut candidate class selected under this administration was majority female [six women and four men] because they were the best of the best, including one astronaut [Anna Menon] I previously went to space with.”

The article on Spaceflight Now spends its column space talking about how non-discriminatory they are. What do you say to someone who says something like that line, “They deserve at least one seat on every mission from a government run agency.” One seat on a flight with two people, or one seat in a crew of 500 people? What percentage? Does it need to be 50%? What if the ship can only hold five? Do you cut two people in half and sew the halves together? That's how absurd that sounds to me. 

It's a waste of time to worry about such things. Best person for the job, no matter what they look like. If your life is on the line, do you want the best at what they're doing or someone there because they meet someone else's diversity demands? 

NASA announced its 2025 Astronaut Candidate Class on September 22, 2025. The 10 candidates, pictured here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston are: U.S. Army CW3 Ben Bailey, U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Anna Menon, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, Dr. Lauren Edgar, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, and Dr. Imelda Muller. Credit: NASA

Let me point out that of the 10 candidates, six are women and four are men. I should point out that in the left A, posing on the floor, the blonde is Anna Menon, the former SpaceX engineer who flew on Polaris Dawn with NASA administrator Isaacman, and there are many pictures of her here on the blog. 

NASA unveils crew and details of the Artemis III Mission

Today, June 9, NASA introduced the crew for next year's Artemis III mission and updated information about the mission.  

The international crew consists of three spaceflight veterans and one first-time spaceflyer, all with backgrounds specially suited for their upcoming mission. The three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut of Artemis 3 include commander Randy Bresnik of NASA, ESA's Luca Parmitano as pilot, and NASA astronauts Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio as mission specialists. All were present at the announcement ceremony today (June 9) here at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

The crew of NASA's upcoming Artemis 3 mission (from left to right): NASA's Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.  NASA's Frank Rubio, and NASA's Andre Douglas. (Image credit: Future/Josh Dinner)

The linked story goes into more details about the crew members but the most important part of this story is the mission itself. It seems that the most likely date for this mission is toward the second half of 2027, so more than a year from now, especially in light of the loss of Blue Origin's vehicle back on May 28th. The mission is not going to have much in common with Artemis II and will not leave low Earth orbit. The details are all pretty loose for the time being, but before the loss of the New Glenn, the concept that was that Blue would launch their Blue Moon Mark I lunar lander and SpaceX would launch their Human Landing System version of Starship. The crew of Artemis III would rendezvous with both landers, preferably docking with both and testing as many systems as they can. 

"Artemis 3 will be an extraordinary demonstration of what is possible when the greatest aerospace companies across the United States, alongside our European partners come together to showcase the technological might and ambition of the free world," Isaacman said during the event. "This seems like the beginning of the future that we imagined as children. This seems like the very beginning of Earth's first Starfleet to me" 

Since Artemis' Orion capsule launches on the SLS, Blue Origin's lander launches on New Glenn and the HLS launches on Starship, and those are pretty much the three most powerful launch vehicles on Earth, that's going to be the most resources ever used on a mission. Temper that with not having a clue if New Glenn can be flying by then. While SpaceX's HLS hasn't technically flown yet, the modifications to the Starship are small, and while Starship hasn't technically made orbit, that has been a bunch of very deliberate decisions to reduce risks and the cost of recovering from risks. I think Starship is in better shape than Blue Moon Mark I. Put another way, it seems to me, Starship could go into orbit immediately, and the differences between Starship and the HLS are simply different parts used in a handful of places.

In what seems to be a very possible outcome, if Blue Origin can't get back to launching fast enough to join this party, that leaves HLS to be the one that delivers astronauts to the lunar surface for the program's first moon landing on Artemis 4, which NASA is hoping to launch in 2028. Should neither lander be ready to launch by NASA's 2027 window for the upcoming mission, a moon landing the following year would be unlikely, and would probably shift NASA's entire timeline for establishing a permanent lunar base at the turn of the decade further into the 2030s.

Go ahead and say this sentence - that nobody on Earth could say before

Here's the short version of this sentence, a sentence that nobody alive on Earth could have said honestly yesterday.  "A rocket just flew its 35th orbital mission and stuck the landing coming back."

Or how about a longer, more informative sentence?  Falcon 9 booster B1067 turned 5 years old—and just set another reuse record. A rocket developed by a private company, manned by a staff largely not from the existing government-run space programs. 

Yeah, what's gotten to feel like an old friend, booster 1067 - the fleet leader, broke the 35th flight barrier, just like it has broken the previous 34 flight milestones, essentially flawlessly. Eric Berger at Ars Technica begins his coverage this way:

A little more than five years ago, a shiny white Falcon 9 rocket made its debut flight, boosting a Cargo Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Over the next year, it would launch a pair of astronaut missions and a handful of commercial spacecraft.

But since then, this first stage booster, designated B 1067, has mostly flown Starlink missions. It has launched them one after another, always returning safely to a drone ship before undergoing refurbishment and flying again. Sometimes it has flown twice in a single month.

Something that I regularly get reminded of is how in their early days, nobody had any idea how many flights they could get out of a Falcon 9 and I recall reading quotes about how someday they hoped they could get 10 flights out of one. Now a booster with 10 flights is considered, "like new." I remember them making the 20th flight (it wasn't B1067) and it was all still experimental, but the talk had shifted to their expecting to certify for 40 flights. Here's the kicker: that was just over two years ago; April of '24. 

Eric Berger asks if 40 is really the goal, or will they extend it again? He doesn't ask "why stop at 40?" But he does say something important: We take the Falcon 9 rocket for granted. But we probably shouldn’t.

We take the Falcon 9 rocket for granted. It now launches so often—a few times a week—that its flights are a complete non-event. Even a milestone like a 35th launch and landing, bringing it closer to space shuttle Discovery‘s record of 39 spaceflights across nearly four decades, seems hardly worth mentioning. 

But in reality, the Falcon 9 rocket is the bedrock of SpaceX’s success today. And whatever one might think of the company’s impending IPO—whether it’s a financial boondoggle or a long-awaited opportunity for investors to own a piece of SpaceX—its valuation is largely due to the Falcon 9 vehicle.

B1067 flies for the 35th time on the Starlink 9-35 mission this morning, a few minutes before sunrise. Image credit: SpaceX

Let's wind up this fan-letter with some perspective.

Finally, it’s worth considering just how much work this single Falcon 9 rocket, once so clean and shiny and now so dark and grimy, has accomplished in its short lifetime.

For some context, consider the performance of SpaceX’s top US-based competitor in medium- and heavy-lift launch, United Launch Alliance. Since Booster 1067 made its debut in June 2021, the company has flown its workhorse Atlas V rocket a total of 22 times and the Vulcan rocket four times, and the Delta IV Heavy vehicle made its final three flights.

So in the time that this single Falcon 9 first stage has flown and landed 35 times, its competitor company has made 29 total launches. Put another way, this rocket has put more mass into orbit than more than two dozen expendable rockets over half a decade of effort.

I think that last observation is good way to define excellence.

This week: SpaceX's IPO Hits the markets Friday

Here's one of those news stories that I keep an eye out for but isn't what I consider particularly big and important news. 

By now, I assume most people remotely interested in the launch industry or space industry have heard of and are maybe even tracking that SpaceX is going public and is going to launch an IPO, or Initial Public Offering, of shares of their stock. 

Space.com carried the story that SpaceX is going to start selling shares of their stock, this coming Friday, June 12th, and they're expected to become the 7th most valuable company in the US at $1.77 trillion. 

The company revealed this week that it plans to sell shares at $135 apiece during the IPO, which will occur June 12 when SpaceX begins trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX.

That share price would give the company a valuation of $1.77 trillion, according to CNBC. Just six American companies are worth more: NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom. [From 1 to 6 in order - SiG] 

Now I personally don't get involved in trading and I'm not going to play in the IPO, so I don't need to tell you, "dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a daytrader! Don't put any weight on financial stuff I say." That said, the reference link to CNBC has an article that says one of their experts says the IPO is overpriced and he's not buying. Their article is entitled, "‘Dean of Valuation’ Aswath Damodaran is not buying SpaceX: ‘Too richly priced’". They may not be expecting their article to change the results of the IPO, but the market value isn't settled until the people bidding on the prices of shares are settled and SpaceX may well end up being worth more or less than that predicted $1.77 trillion. 

The market has the final word. Just as every launch is on schedule until the weather speaks, we won't know if SPCX is valued at $1.77 trillion until the dust settles on Friday night - NASDAQ time.

My main concern is that this isn't really an IPO for the SpaceX we've come to know and admire.  They have diversified beyond launch and their Starlink telecommunications into artificial intelligence. 

SpaceX recently acquired xAI, the startup that Musk founded in 2023. xAI owns X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), built the generative AI chatbot Grok and operates Colossus, a supercomputer cluster in Tennessee. 

You've probably heard that they intend to put AI data centers in space. Not one or two - a million AI data centers. They're undoubtedly better suited to do this than any other launch provider but that doesn't mean it's a given that they'll put it all up and everything will work. 

My bias is that I think the whole AI thing going on is the biggest hype cycle in history. There are things that AI seems to be good at, but too much of what we see/hear/read is pi in the sky, if you'll pardon the John Wilder joke. 

Starship Flight Test 12 takes to the air back on May 22nd. (Image credit: SpaceX)

OK Hams, you've got a week to get ready

I write about this every year because the best VHF contest of the year is pretty much always the June VHF contest put on by the American Radio Relay League or ARRL. As always, the contest starts on the second Saturday of the month, with the peculiarity that it doesn't start at midnight UTC - as the vast majority of contests do - which would be Friday night, June 12th at 8:00 PM. Instead, it starts Saturday afternoon at 1800 UTC which is 2:00PM EDT and goes until 0300 UTC or 11:00 AM Sunday night, which is Monday morning the 15th in UTC. 

WA7BNM's Contest Calendar shows it this way: 

ARRL June VHF Contest: 1800Z, Jun 13 to 0259Z, Jun 15
	Geographic Focus:	United States/Canada
	Participation:	Worldwide
	Mode:	All
	Bands:	50 MHz and up
	Classes:	Single Op All Band (All Modes/Analog Modes)(Low/High) Single Op Portable (All Modes/Analog Modes) Single Op 3-Band (All Modes/Analog Modes) Single Op FM Rover Limited Rover Unlimited Rover Unlimited Multi-Op Limited Multi-Op
	Max power:	(see rules)
	Exchange:	4-character grid square
	Work stations:	Once per band per grid square
	QSO Points:	1 point per 50- or 144-MHz QSO 2 points per 222- or 432-MHz QSO 3 points per 906- or 1296-MHz QSO 4 points per 2.3 GHz (or higher) QSO
	Multipliers:	Each grid square once per band
	Score Calculation:	Total score = total QSO points x total multipliers
	Submit logs by:	0300Z June 24, 2026
	E-mail logs to:	(none)
	Upload log at:	http://contest-log-submission.arrl.org
	Mail logs to:	June VHF ARRL 225 Main St. Newington, CT 06111 USA
	Find rules at:	https://www.arrl.org/june-vhf

 

Almost a month ago, I ran a post called, "Did it just turn into summer?" because suddenly, the VHF bands, in particular 6 meters (50 - 54 MHz) where I do most of my VHF operating these days suddenly came alive like it hadn't been so far this calendar year. Well, the answer was "no" because that 6m opening wasn't long enough lived. As the calendar flipped into June,it started being more like summer, with the sporadic E "red blob" over massive parts of the country happening more like every day. 

I just took another screen copy of the DXMaps site and it's noticeably bigger and wider than the one I posted in May, so let me post the new one and talk a little about what to look for. This plot was grabbed at 0018 UTC on June 7th.   

If you've never seen a plot like this, you might be overwhelmed by the number of contacts shown. Every red, brown or other color line on the map is a contact between two hams. Most, but not all, of those contacts have the call for both ends of the line. That is, if both ends have the call, when you click it will tell you if that station contacted the other or just monitored (heard) the other end.  For example, in the upper left of the USA, there's a station with a white background called N7DNF and it you hover your mouse pointer over the white area, the live DXMaps would display "N7DNF (DN55RS) last reported by" - the call of the station reporting it (so not N7DNF) with the time reported, the frequency it was heard on and modulation mode. The DN55RS is the grid square N7DNF reported being in. If you were doing this "live" on your computer, you'd see somewhere in the blob, another one of those white or yellow rectangles would change its appearance a little to help you find the other end of the QSO.

First important note: you may look at that and think if you turn on your radio, you'll hear all these calls. With luck you'll hear one or two stations that others living near your end of the line will hear. One of the things that still impresses me after decades of observing it on 6m is how "oddly specific" the targeting is. A maidenhead grid square is one degree of latitude by 2 degrees of longitude which is approximately  70 × 100 miles in the continental US. I have seen grid squares open for a contact while the adjacent square north or south is as dead as if it was on another planet; minutes later it would jump over the adjacent square which still wouldn't be audible, and minutes after that it would jump down to the one it had previously jumped over.  

When the map looks like this, I've heard two adjacent - or just "close to each other" - squares and not another station in the country. I've been operating FT8 the majority of the time, which operates in 15 second intervals so that stations alternate which 15 second interval they transmit in: 0 to 15 and 30 to 45 seconds or 15 to 30 and 45 to 60 seconds. I'll hear, for example, two stations in New England on the first (0-15 and 30-45 seconds, called the even intervals) and somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska in the odd intervals.  

There are other sources of maps like this other than DXMaps, and totally different ways of presenting the information. There are other contests besides the ARRL June VHF contest, and July has one I've played around in a couple of times - the CQ magazine contest. And, of course, one of the biggest events of the year is the ARRL's Field Day, the last weekend of June. 

NASA's quiet X-59 supersonic jet finally breaks sound barrier

This is a story that has been languishing in the background for quite some time. NASA has been working to reduce the amount "sonic boom" that aircraft make as they exceed the speed of sound for several years, and rolled out the first prototype of an experimental supersonic airplane called X-59 in August of 2023. The X-59 bears little to no resemblance to current supersonic fighters like the F35 or earlier craft like the F-22 or F-18. That said, they've been modeling and talking openly about it for much longer than just since 2023.  

Today, the X-59 actually flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time. 

Friday's flight began and ended at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The X-59, with NASA test pilot Jim "Clue" Less at the yoke, took off at 2:08 p.m. EDT (1808 GMT; 11:08 a.m. local California time) and touched down 81 minutes later.

Less took the jet to a maximum altitude of 43,400 feet (13,228 meters) and a top speed of 713 mph (1,147 kph). That works out to about Mach 1.1, or 1.1 times faster than the speed of sound, NASA officials said in the statement. (The speed of sound varies with temperature, as sound waves move faster in warmer air. At sea level, where the air is relatively warm, Mach 1 is about 761 mph, or 1,225 kph.)

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft exceeded the speed of sound for the first time on June 5, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Lori Losey)

Don't expect the X-59 crew to rest on their laurels - they're planning on a bigger follow-on mission soon. 

In just a few days, they plan to send the plane on its first "mission conditions" flight — one that reaches a top speed of Mach 1.4 and an altitude of about 55,000 feet (16,764 m).

"This speed and altitude are the base conditions for the X-59 when it will eventually fly over several U.S. communities, enabling NASA to gather data about how people may perceive its quiet thump," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. 

"NASA will share this data with U.S. and international regulators to help establish new data-driven noise standards to enable a future viable market for supersonic commercial flight over land," they added.

The X-59 was built by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works - a group that has quite a range of "first ever" air craft and their flights.

"Since the aircraft’s first flight on Oct. 28, 2025, the team has made tremendous progress, flying 16 times in the last 90 days and getting into a steady test rhythm," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the same statement. "I'm grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio."