NASA's acting chief is shaking up the Artemis schedule

The Monday afternoon and evening news is saying that Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator is shaking up the Artemis program for getting too far behind where they wanted to be.  

Speaking on Fox News, where the secretary of transportation frequently appears in his acting role as NASA chief, Duffy said SpaceX has fallen behind in its efforts to develop the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. Duffy also indirectly acknowledged that NASA’s projected target of a 2027 crewed lunar landing is no longer achievable. Accordingly, he said he intended to expand the competition to develop a lander capable of carrying humans down to the Moon from lunar orbit and back.

“They’re behind schedule, and so the President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy said of SpaceX. “He wants to get there in his term. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved, and maybe others. We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually lead us back to the Moon first.”

Eric Berger, reporting at Ars Technica sees two big takeaways from this announcement: the first and biggest one is that NASA is acknowledging they're behind schedule and the 2027 date being announced for Artemis III's landing mission is unachievable. The second aspect is that by going public with this on Monday morning as an "out of the blue" announcement seems intended to influence a fierce battle to hold onto the NASA leadership position. Rumors are running that Sean Duffy intends to run for president and part of this maneuvering is to get more pubic attention. 

The shock value of that announcement is pretty small to me. Everyone knows that the way Artemis has been run has led to terrible problems with hardware being late and more expensive than reasonable.  It's more surprising to me that Duffy would say, "I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved..." and my reaction was "they already have a lunar lander contract. What more do you want?"  SpaceX won their contract to turn Starship into the Human Landing System in 2021. Blue Origin won their contract two years later in '23. 

When Duffy says “companies like Blue” may get involved, he is not referring to the existing contract, in which Blue Origin will not deliver a ready-to-go lunar lander until the 2030s. Rather he is almost certainly referring to a plan developed by Blue Origin that uses multiple Mk 1 landers, a smaller vehicle originally designed for cargo only. Ars reported on this new lunar architecture three weeks ago, which company engineers have been quietly developing. This plan would not require in-space refueling, and the Mk 1 vehicle is nearing its debut flight early next year.

Duffy also cites “maybe others” getting involved. This refers to a third option. In recent weeks, officials from traditional space companies have been telling Duffy and the chief of staff at the Department of Transportation, Pete Meachum, that they can build an Apollo Lunar Module-like lander within 30 months. Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, favors this government-led approach, sources said.

This last approach of an Apollo LEM-like lander apparently can be seen as "Big Government should run everything." Practical questions arise, centered on things like the mission Duffy is looking to be accomplished doesn't resemble the Artemis program concept of operations that SpaceX bid on so should that be revised? There was a Lunar Gateway space station that seemed to serve no real purpose and definitely won't have a purpose if they're flying something like the Apollo era Lunar Modules to orbit the moon and land directly. A NASA analysis, from 2017, estimated that a cost-plus contract for a sole-source lunar lander would cost $20 billion to $30 billion, or nearly 10 times what NASA awarded to SpaceX in 2021.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk, responding to Duffy’s comments, seemed to relish the challenge posed by industry competitors.

“SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry,” Musk said on the social media site he owns, X. “Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

Berger goes on to report on what he thinks is the politics of what's going on.  He thinks this whole story is a show put on to impress President Trump. His argument centers on that Duffy was appointed soon after Jared Isaacman's nomination was pulled in July and Trump expected Duffy would use this time to shore up NASA’s leadership while also looking for a permanent chief of the space agency. There's no obvious evidence he did anything along that line. If anything, he has used his public appearances to help his name recognition and public opinion ratings.  Meanwhile, Jared Isaacman is getting more attention, too. 

Since late summer there has been a groundswell of support for Isaacman in the White House, and among some members of Congress. The billionaire has met with Trump several times, both at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, and sources report that the two have a good rapport. There has been some momentum toward the president re-nominating Isaacman, with Trump potentially making a decision soon.
...
A Republican advisor to the White House told Ars that it is good that Duffy has moved beyond his rhetoric about NASA beating China to the Moon and to look for creative tactics to land there. But, this person said, the mandate from the Trump administration is to dominate the emerging commercial space industry, not hand out large cost-plus contracts.

“Duffy hasn’t implemented any of the strategic reforms of Artemis that the president proposed this spring,” the Republican source said. “He has the perfect opportunity during the current shutdown, but there is no sign of any real reform under his leadership. Instead, Duffy is being co-opted by the deep state at NASA.” 

I would add that there's a distinctive aroma of "let's go with someone other than SpaceX, award some big, fat, cost-plus contracts like we always used to work to and run everything just like Apollo." Compare SpaceX's record to Blue Origin's, ULA's, Lock-Mart's, or any other contractor. In terms of launches, it's SpaceX and then everyone else. In terms of innovation, I don't see much difference there.

Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy provides remarks at a briefing prior to the Crew 11 launch in August. Image Credit: NASA

A little side story

Mostly a repost, but with some corrections and clarifications. 

Growing up during the Mercury and Gemini programs, I also got interested in telescopes and astronomy.  Something that was talked about everywhere was making your own telescope, including grinding the mirror.  The most commonly talked about telescope was a 6" f8 reflector, which you would grind the mirror for and make an equatorial mount out of galvanized plumbing parts.  I had never really started down that road, but by 7th grade, I had my first good telescope (a 4" f10 reflector).  Note in both cases, the f number is the focal length divided by the objective's (mirror's) diameter

In junior high, maybe the end of 9th grade, I learned there was one of those "every 20 years" closest Mars oppositions coming (August 1971 - right before the start of my high school senior year) and a friend and I decided we were going to make our own telescopes to see Mars.  We had books that said a great first scope to make was an 8" f7. So about two years before the close opposition, this friend and I bought 8" Pyrex mirror blanks, the "plain glass tools" that we'd need, abrasives and the empty 55 gallon drums we'd need to do the grinding on.  I was going to do it! 

Except without someone to guide you through the rough points, it's not necessarily easy.  In my case, I banged the mirror on my work stand (the 55 gallon drum, which my parents graciously allowed in my bedroom) and took a big chip out of it.  Instead of finishing the mirror and painting the chip flat black, the accepted wisdom of how to fix such things (which I didn't know), I tried to grind the chip out and, well, never got that 8" mirror made. 

While I didn't get mine finished, my friend did.  I don't even remember seeing Mars during that opposition. We were still friends, so something tells me, maybe his wasn't all that successful either.  Since it was over 50 years ago, and we lost touch with each other within a couple of years of graduating high school I can't ask but I suspect his may not have worked well, either. 

Fast forward 20 years to about 1990, now an adult working for Major SE Defense Contractor, I got the bug again.  This time, it was the information age and the internet offered a precursor to the web called Newsgroups.  Buoyed on by the folks on sci.astro.amateur, and with the help of a really great book, I made my first successful mirror and first good telescope, a 6" f8 mirror; that is, 48" focal length, and a Newtonian Reflector.  It makes a good size, but like a lot of addictions, it leaves you wanting more.  

I started a bigger mirror, 10" f6.  I missed the focal length; it came out f5.6 which is still perfectly usable.  This was a more difficult mirror, but a 10" mirror gives a serious advantage over the smaller mirror.  Area goes up as radius squared, so it has a little under 3 times the area as the 6" mirror.  I completed the 10", again with some help from people I met on the newsgroups.  I built the telescope as a Dobsonian, altitude-azimuth style mount.  This is actually the second iteration of the telescope, when I replaced the typical cardboard tube (used as a form when pouring concrete) with a metal tube. 

By extreme luck, I completed this telescope in early 1994, the year that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter.  Nobody in all of human history had ever seen such a thing, and we saw the impact marks on Jupiter from our backyard through this telescope.  Armed with star charts and the old fashioned method of "star hopping" (going from landmark star to star in your finder scope until you find the object you're looking for), I spent several years exploring the sky with it.  

The story goes a bit sideways here.  These telescopes have a lot going for them but they have a serious drawback: they don't track an object so that you constantly have to reposition the scope while looking at a planet or other object to compensate for the apparent motion in the eyepiece.  On higher powers, say 300x or more, the earth's rotation can cause a planet to drift cross the field of view in seconds. (As a side note, this is half the speed of a clock's hour hand.  A star on the celestial equator goes from due east to due west in 12 hours.  That's the same as going from 3 to 9 on a clock - which shows that the clock does it twice as fast). 

It's now in the early 2000s, and my career had gotten to the point where I had "more money than time" and with that the funds to buy a commercial telescope with a computerized tracking mount and a new feature called "GoTo".  With a GoTo system, you typically tell a handheld controller what object you want to view and it moves the telescope until it puts that object in your field of view.  I literally saw more deep sky objects in my first night with that scope than I used to see in a season without the GoTo feature. 

One night, we set up a test in the backyard.  We put the commercial telescope, an 11" compound reflector side by side with my 10" reflector.  We pushed the same magnification on both scopes.  Both Mrs. Graybeard and I thought the image in my telescope was sharper - more detail visible. 

This led to a plan to go back to using mine and getting a mount for it that allowed tracking and GoTo.   Much to my surprise, I don't have any pictures of the telescope at that time.  I repainted it blue because the original paint job chipped maddeningly (I bought the tube pre-painted inside and out).  Not to get into too many details but some old plastic parts had broken down with age and had to be replaced.

The big telescope tube is 12" diameter and 60" long, for scale. Oh, for closure, look to the right of the black mount and you'll see an odd-shaped blue structure with a white disk on its side. That's my 6" f8 reflector that I started the story with. It's in a square, plywood tube, but it's a Dobsonian style mount, too. (The black box with the orange strap on a cart is an electrically heated smoker.)
I connected the controller computer to the mount and turned it on. It acted like I'd turned it off the minute before. Never missed a beat. There's still a little bit of maintenance to do on things but it's usable. The thing is, I haven't used it since the year was in single digits, like '08 or '09. Our neighborhood trees (including my own) have grown up so much that it's difficult to see the sky, and what we can see is light polluted. To use it now, the 4" casters won't cut it. Those are fine for the porch, but to get it out to where it can see even a sliver of sky, I need 20 or 26" mountain bike tires on the mount. Or garden cart wheels. And that's another redesign and building project. 

As a general rule, around here the best time for observing, at least as far as weather, bugs and general comfort matter is winter. As a coincidence, the better weather reduces radio noise from electrical storms, so winter is better for all my hobbies, even including working in the machine shop. Some backyard astronomy info might find its way into the space coverage.

Small Space News Story Roundup 69

A quieter day than the last time I posted one of these little posts.

Former VP who practically founded SpaceX to fly Blue Origin 

If you've read much about the history of SpaceX you've undoubtedly read about Hans Koenigsmann.  Koenigsmann was there from the first days of SpaceX until four years ago in late 2021.  A search of the blog shows his name (first and last) appears in nine posts.

When Elon Musk started the company in 2002, he was joined by two other “founding” employees, Tom Mueller in propulsion and Chris Thompson in structures. Koenigsmann was the next hire, brought on to develop avionics for the Falcon 1 rocket.

Koenigsmann remained at the company for two decades before leaving SpaceX in late 2021. During that time, he transitioned from avionics to lead mission assurance and safety while also spearheading every major failure investigation of the Falcon 9 rocket. He was a beloved leader and mentor for his employees within the company’s demanding culture. 

This week we learned that he has signed up to fly a New Shepard suborbital flight; a program from Blue Origin. 

Because of this experience and his prominence during SpaceX’s first crewed flights, Koenigsmann has become one of the most well-known German rocket scientists active today. And now he has announced he is going to space on a future New Shepard suborbital flight alongside his friend Michaela “Michi” Benthaus as early as next month. She’s notable in her own right—a mountain biking accident in 2018 left her with a spinal cord injury, but she did not let this derail her from her dream. She will become the first wheelchair user to fly in space.

It's a short article and Koenigsmann comes across well.  It's important to add that he comes across as what he is; an engineer who dealt with the requirements of space flight, and keeping bad things from happening but has always wondered what it was like to experience.  I think this quote sums up his desire for the mission about as well as can be:

I’ve always been interested in experiencing Max Q from the inside. Does it shake you side to side? Or is it just something you fly through so fast you don’t even notice it? None of the astronauts I’ve talked to really had a good report on that. So I want to find this out for myself. I also want to be able to say that I saw that Earth is a sphere. I just want to see the whole thing from above and get an idea of how big it really is in terms of curvature, right? Because you can extrapolate the curvature all the way around, and it gives you a great idea of how small we are and how big the planet is. 

“Michi” Benthaus and Koenigsmann pose in front of a New Shepard capsule. Credit: Hans Koenigsmann/LinkedIn

Making Vandenberg a space center again

While SpaceX hasn't finished modifying that launch complex at Vandenberg, they've already turned the Space Force Base "upside down and inside out" and they're just getting started. (Obligatory warning that's really Diana Ross)

The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX’s plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Ars reports. This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California’s Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year’s number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s. Military officials have now authorized SpaceX to double its annual launch rate at Vandenberg from 50 to 100, with up to 95 missions using the Falcon 9 rocket and up to five launches of the larger Falcon Heavy.

No big rush … There’s more to the changes at Vandenberg than launching additional rockets. The authorization gives SpaceX the green light to redevelop Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. SpaceX plans to demolish unneeded structures at SLC-6 (pronounced “Slick 6”) and construct two new landing pads for Falcon boosters on a bluff overlooking the Pacific just south of the pad. SLC-6 would become the West Coast home for Falcon Heavy, but SpaceX currently has no confirmed contracts to fly the heavy-lifter from Vandenberg.

From one launch in the year five years ago to 53 - so far this year - at a rate obviously more than one per week.   

And here's a bonus story

The current schedule shows a Falcon 9 launch from SLC-40 on Cape Canaveral SFS on Sunday morning (October 19).  Video here is set to start at 9:52 AM EDT while launch is 10:52 AM.  This is the fleet leader, B1067 launch 31, which will be a new record. 

Artemis II moves another big step closer

Back on October 1st, news broke about the Artemis II mission being pulled in earlier in time, as the new administration has been trying to speed up progress on the Artemis program to return to the moon. Within the few weeks before that post, there was a flareup of hype about the Artemis II mission.  Part of this is from the emphasis on the moon that has come with President Trump, Sean Duffy as NASA administrator and other changes, but it resulted in solid changes to the Schedule.  

Practically, the schedule movement was about one month (as best as I can recall) not several months.  The current launch time is No Earlier Than Feb. 5, 2026 at 8:09 PM.  Today, news about the next major milestone in preparation appeared in Ars Technica: the Orion spacecraft that will be home to the crew for the duration of the mission was transported across the Kennedy Space Center to be mounted to the SLS launch vehicle in the Vehicle Assembly Building. 

NASA's Orion spacecraft rolls toward the Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday night at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now

Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be the first humans to fly on the Orion spacecraft, a vehicle that has been in development for nearly two decades. The Artemis II crew will make history on their 10-day flight by becoming the first people to travel to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972.

Orion was delivered to the KSC back in May of this year and has been bouncing around between different buildings getting worked on, tested to ensure the additions work properly, then moving to the next stage of assembly.  Now that it's in the VAB where the rest of the SLS is being worked on, it's getting to be time to lift it onto the SLS.  In the coming days, cranes will lift the spacecraft, weighing 78,000 pounds (35 metric tons), dozens of stories above the VAB’s center aisle, then up and over the transom into the building’s northeast high bay to be lowered atop the SLS heavy-lift rocket.  

Then comes the step with the daily Fun Fact to it. There are 360 bolts to tighten to specification to connect the Orion spacecraft to the Space Launch System. That makes me say "one every degree of circumference?  How many inches between bolts?  How big are the bolts?" Don't you even think about doing a disappearing 10mm socket joke.   

After all of that is tested and verified, it's time for the biggest test of the system:

One of the most critical activities planned in the VAB is a countdown rehearsal with the four-person Artemis II crew. The astronauts will take their seats inside the Orion spacecraft and practice their launch-day procedures, which include configuring the craft’s cockpit for flight. The rocket won’t be fueled for this event. 

If you've followed launches like this closely, you know there will be many more tests than this. It's what they do.  

Artemis II flight plan. Credit: NASA

Vast preparing to launch 1st version of their private space station

Back at the end of September, I did another article on the race to a private space station, this one called "The Other Other Space Race."  The Other Space Race that everyone knows about is the race to start settlements on the moon; what I was referring to was the race to put a private Space Station into orbit.  

In that article, I listed the companies I can easily document working on a replacement Space Station.  Over the life of the blog, I've covered Axiom Space, VAST, and Blue Origin, while that post itself was about a fourth company I wasn't aware of, Voyager and their concept for a space station, Starlab.  

As that post talked about, Vast has been developing a prototype of a space habitat they call Haven-1.  Space.com reported today that they are in the final stages of getting ready to launch the first Haven-1 and NextSpaceflight reports that launch date to be NET May of '26.  According to the article:

In the past couple of weeks, the California-based startup has completed the final weld on the primary structure of Haven-1, followed by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article's hatch and a domed window as the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at around 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms), will be the largest spacecraft to lift off atop the rocket. The space station is planned to host up to four short-duration astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four people spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some other combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

Vast lead astronaut Drew Feustel, spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

"If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that's an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight," said Feustel, who's a former NASA astronaut.  

Space.com author Andrew Jones comments that Vast's rise has been meteoric.  They were founded in 2021 and now has around 800 employees. 

Nearly all of its hardware is built in-house, with only solar arrays and thrusters outsourced. "When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum." Feustel recalled. "Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded."

The Haven-1 flight article has been painted. Next, key components including the hatch and domed window will be integrated ahead of pressure and load testing in Mojave, CA. Image credit to Vast, posted to X.

The company has learned a lot from SpaceX - and hired a few people away from the world's busiest launch provider.  

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station and with a more human-centered design. The aesthetics, psychology and "Earth tones" of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and calm. Vast also hired a former Campbell's food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep system that allows crew members to adjust the pressure to create a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, rather than the tethered sleeping bag approach on the ISS. Visitors to the Vast exhibit at IAC could try out the new system.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it is also designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a much more ambitious, modular project that Vast hopes could replace the ISS, which will be deorbited in 2030.

Early on when I first heard of Vast, one of the things that caught my eye is that they're aiming for a station with artificial gravity - by spinning the station. 

Then I see things like this conceptual art of a Space Station made of Haven-2 modules, I don't see how they could rotate that to create the illusion of gravity. It's nothing like the giant wheel designs we've seen in sci-fi movies since the mid-60s.

An illustration of the full configuration of the Haven-2 space station, a proposed replacement for the ISS (Image credit: VAST)

Wait ... A possible way to get away from SLS?

For the years I've devoted my blogging to following the space programs everyone who has looked into the Space Launch System or SLS has written on the terrible performance of the SLS program.  Since the program started, every major goal (milestone) was delivered late and cost more than bid.  It has led to widespread desire to get rid of the SLS and go over to more cost-effective vehicles.  As I've pointed out many times, the most commonly cited launch price for the SLS/Orion missions is $4 Billion per launch. 

Several times I've pointed out that while the SLS can deliver heavier payloads to orbit than the Falcon Heavy mission, it's not many times the payload, it's only like 130% of a FH launch. Two FH launches will launch more payload than one SLS and cost about 8% of one SLS launch. A complication that occurred to me in the last month or so is that Falcon Heavy isn't man-rated, while the Falcon 9 is - and an FH is pretty much just three Falcon 9s with some modified hardware. It seems to be addressed in the way the FH would have to be modified to carry the Orion capsule. People are always such expensive cargo to carry into space.

Probably the most shocking thing I've seen in space stories is that NASA and Lockheed-Martin are now considering launching Orion on rockets other than SLS. 

... Lockheed Martin has begun to pivot toward a future in which the Orion spacecraft—thanks to increasing reusability, a focus on cost, and openness to flying on different rockets—fits into commercial space applications. In interviews, company officials said that if NASA wanted to buy Orion missions as a "service," rather than owning and operating the spacecraft, they were ready to work with the space agency.

"Our message is we absolutely support it, and we're starting that discussion now," said Anthony Byers, director of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin, the principal contractor for Orion.

A key point in that quote is in the first paragraph - operating Orion as a "service." SLS and Orion were always bought on Cost-plus contracts, which incentivize the contractors not being efficient or even good at what they do. As has been covered repeatedly, Boeing was criticized for the amount of rework required for the welding required for putting together parts of the SLS.  Since fixing that welding is a cost that they get reimbursed for, why not go find some winos that have never been within 10 feet of a welding setup? They can be paid less than experienced welders and assembling the ship takes more time. They get paid to repair the bad welding. Plus, if the stage needs to be scrapped and rebuilt - they make money on building a new replacement instead of paying for it out of the company's pocket. 

"Given the President's Budget Request guidance, and what we think NASA's ultimate direction will be, they're going to need to move to a commercial transportation option similar to commercial crew and cargo," Byers said. "So when we talk about Orion services, we're talking about taking Orion and flying that service-based mission, which means we provide a service, from boots on the ground on Earth, to wherever we're going to go and dock to, and then bringing the crew home."  

What does "as a service" mean? As they say, ISS has taught us with commercial crew and commercial cargo programs. The biggest surprise to me was this paragraph.

In 2022, Boeing, the contractor for the SLS core stage, and Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the side boosters, created "Deep Space Transport LLC" to build the rockets and sell them to NASA on a more services-based approach. However, despite NASA's stated intent to award a launch services contract to Deep Space Transport by the end of 2023, no such contract has been given out. It appears that the joint venture to commercialize the SLS rocket is defunct. Moreover, there are no plans to modify the rocket for reuse.

This talk of the Orion capsule and service module "as a service" is still talking about years out, and not something ready for contracts and switching over in the next couple of years when Artemis II and III are supposed to get us back to the moon. The system still depends on a heavy lift rocket that isn't well defined but more like SLS - or possibly Falcon Heavy - than a smaller launch vehicle. 

Don't forget that not redesigning Orion itself is a goal, not something guaranteed to be achieved.  The guy being quoted in virtually every quote above, Anthony Byers, also talks about being contacted by NASA about reuse of Orion and they literally thought the approach would be nothing like reuse of a rocket turned out in the intervening 20 years. 

"Whenever the vehicle would come back, NASA's assumption was that we would disassemble the vehicle and harvest the components, and they would go into inventory," Byers said. "Then they would go into a new structure for a future flight. Well, as the program progressed and we saw what others were doing, we really started to introduce the idea of reusing the crew module."
...
“There’s a path forward," said Howard Hu, NASA's Orion program manager, in an interview. "We're trying to crawl, then walk, then run into our reuse strategy. We want to make sure that we’re increasing our reusability, which we know is the path to sustainability and lower cost."

Lockheed plans to build a fleet of three largely reusable spacecraft, which will make their debuts on the Artemis III, IV, and V missions, respectively. Those three vehicles would then fly future missions, and if Lockheed needs to expand the fleet to meet demand, it could.

The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission, seen here with its solar arrays installed for flight, just prior to their enclosure inside aerodynamic fairings to protect them during launch. Credit: NASA/Rad Sinyak

A fantastic ending to the Starship Version 2

It's probably safe to say that version 2 of Starship never quite lived up to the things envisioned for it, because we know they've been working on Version 3 for quite some time; a quick search of the blog shows the first mention of version 3 was 18 months ago, in April of '24.  This was before the fourth flight of a Starship so two launches before Flight 5 and the first catch of a booster with the chopsticks.  Yes, the descriptions of how Ver. 3 will really differ have varied over the last 18 months, and I expect that. Version 3 is going to add a few feet to the overall height of stacked Starship and SuperHeavy booster. I don't consider this number particularly hard and authoritative, but the combined height will go from 400 feet to 410. 

Ars Technica celebrates how successful the mission was but seems unabashedly happy that version 2 is over with, saying "SpaceX finally got exactly what it needed from Starship V2."  They point out that...

It took a while for Starship V2 to meet SpaceX's expectations. The first three Starship V2 launches in January, March, and May ended prematurely due to problems in the rocket's propulsion and a fuel leak, breaking a string of increasingly successful Starship flights since 2023. Another Starship V2 exploded on a test stand in Texas in June, further marring the second-gen rocket's track record.

As you know, August's FT-10 marked a complete turnaround in performance and went remarkably well.  It left several things to be tested on Monday the 13th's FT-11 mission. All of which also went remarkably well.  The biggest success was probably the modifications to the heat shielding on Starship.  

 How would the latest version of SpaceX's ever-changing heat shield design hold up against temperatures of 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius)?

The answer: Apparently quite well. While SpaceX has brought Starships back to Earth in one piece several times, this was the first time the ship made it through reentry relatively unscathed. Live video streaming from cameras onboard Starship showed a blanket of orange and purple plasma enveloping the rocket during reentry. This is now a familiar sight, thanks to connectivity with Starship through SpaceX's Starlink broadband network.

What was different on Monday was the lack of any obvious damage to the heat shield or flaps throughout Starship's descent, a promising sign for SpaceX's chances of reusing the vehicle and its heat shield over and over again, without requiring any refurbishment. This, according to SpaceX's Elon Musk, is the acid test for determining Starship's overall success.

Ship 38 photo literally seconds before the end of its life in the Indian Ocean at the end of the mission. Image credit: SpaceX, from a "short" video on YouTube.

The ship looks like it has been through some torture.  Again, to be expected if SpaceX truly wants to test it to find its survival limits.  

A side note to Flight Test 11, is that it was widely announced it was the last flight of version 2 Starship, and the big story there is that the Orbital Launch Mount used, OLM #1, won't work for version 3. That means OLM #1 - which has been used for every Starship mission - needs to be taken apart and modified.  Consequently, OLM #2 will be pressed into service.  

The consensus while reading around is that Flight Test 12 is likely to be after the start of the new year because of the number of things that need to be tested for a new design. Does that mean January 5th (first Monday) or much later? Your guess is as good as anyone's.

FT-11 as the best Starship flight ever

Tonight's Flight test 11, the last flight of the 2nd generation Starship, sure seemed to be the most flawless flight of a Starship and SuperHeavy they've ever flown.  Things we got used to seeing, like pieces of the flaps melting off or explosions in various places were conspicuous in their absence.  

Perhaps the biggest "Wow!" factor for us was seeing Starship 38 after stage separation and while it was burning its six engines to reach the desired altitude.  After yesterday's post, actually during the day today, some of us talked in the comments about the chances of seeing Starship.  I was lucky enough to see it, and it was brighter and easier to see than expected.  I went out on the front porch when the guys doing the coverage we were watching (NASASpaceflight.com ) started talking about the ship being reported for doing the Space Jellyfish phenomenon.  I didn't note how long after launch that was, but it was in the vicinity of 6 minutes after launch.

Early in the day, it occurred to me that the launch was going to be after nightfall here, while not at the Boca Chica launch site, and with their typical flight profile being east out of Boca Chica, and passing over the Florida Straits, well south of us near the Cape, I figured that with burning six Raptor engines (three ground engines and three Raptor Vacuum engines) there should be a moving bright spot in the sky.  There was simply nothing to compare its brightness to; Starship was the brightest thing in the sky by far. 

A calibration of a sort was a neighbor (and fellow engineer) was out walking his dogs, saw us watching and said some version of "what's going on" and we talked for a few seconds. Like us, he's used to seeing all the things that fly out of the KSC/CCSFS and is anxious to see Starships start flying from "up the road." 

Getting back to the main subject, we watched the YouTube video from NASASpaceflight.com for the full mission.  Without exception everything they tested that we've seen before went better than ever before.  That goes from relatively straightforward things like deploying the Starlink satellite mock-ups to the entire heat shield protection we can see. 

It's too soon after launch to have learned more details to add, so more details as they show up and the story settles down some more.

Starship38 splashes down in the Indian Ocean ending the mission. Image credit: SpaceX from a video screen capture at The Launch Pad on YouTube.

Monday Night Under the Lights!

Where I grew up, the local stock car race track always advertised "Saturday Night Under the Lights" until everyone from college football to department store sales started using that phrase.  

Comparatively, Starship Flight Test 11 on Monday night will be far more impressive.  The issue, though, is that it won't be Monday night to be precise, except the father east you get.  Launch time is set for 7:15 PM EDT or 6:15 CDT, otherwise known as 2315 UTC. Our local sunset is a couple of minutes before 7:00 PM, so it will be night, but not very dark.  The farther east the Ship goes on its flight, the deeper into the night it will go.

To lift from SpaceX's site that URL above:

The upcoming flight will build on the successful demonstrations from Starship’s tenth flight test with flight experiments gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.

SpaceX works closely with FAA and international air traffic organizations to efficiently and safely integrate all launch and reentry operations into the airspace. During Starship Flight 10, FAA reopened all affected airspace within 9 minutes, with some portions reopening within 7 minutes, and there was no meaningful disruption to air traffic.

As has been covered here in the previous posts on FT-11, the Super Heavy booster on this flight test previously flew on Flight 8 and will launch with 24 flight-proven Raptor engines. Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy.

Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase. Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns. The booster will then transition to its three center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and dropping into the Gulf of America. The primary goal on the flight test is to measure the real-world vehicle dynamics as engines shut down while transitioning between the different phases.

The Starship upper stage will target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.

The flight test includes several experiments and operational changes focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site on future flights. For reentry, tiles have been removed from Starship to intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle. Several of the missing tiles are in areas where tiles are bonded to the vehicle and do not have a backup ablative layer. To mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Image credit: SpaceX

SpaceX used to be fond of saying about these test flights that, "the only thing guaranteed is excitement." They go on to say, "A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the X TV app. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates."

Hamfest weekend

This Friday and Saturday were the 60th annual Melbourne Hamfest and the Florida State ARRL Convention and as you can see by that link, the 60th such get together (not every year is the state convention).  I've mentioned this activity many times, and it's one of two shows we go to pretty much every year, partly because the 1976 Melbourne Hamfest was the first hamfest I ever went to.  The other is the Orlando Hamcation, which has become one of the biggest in the country. 

This subject should really be broken in two parts.  First off, there's a lot of new hams that frequent the same blogs I do and I don't know if other bloggers have talked about local hamfests.  Should you go?  More than likely. Why should you go? That's marginally harder to answer because it kind of depends on your local show and you won't know what they're like until you go - or talk with someone who goes regularly.  The local hamfest is likely to have lots of used equipment for sale, quite possibly a lot of new equipment and lots of opportunities to learn.  The exact mix of used vs. new depends, again, on your particular show.  Melbourne used to have more new gear than it has had for the last couple of years as the commercial sellers have gone elsewhere one by one.  It's a good place to make meatspace connections with local hams. 

There are generally talks by locals who can be regarded as Subject Matter Experts, be it a specific maker of ham gear (this year's was a Yaesu expert) or some other expert the crowd may like to see.  I gave a talk on modern HF receiver design back in 2011's 'fest, based on a paper in a trade journal that I had published the previous year. 

Like hamfests in general, the Melbourne show seems to have trouble getting a nice big crowd.  The 1976 show I mentioned was a full weekend show, Saturday and Sunday.  Until relatively recently, like 2010 or so, the 'fest was the first full weekend in September.  They moved to October after a couple of years with hurricanes caused it to be cancelled.  That has been changed to Friday afternoon and 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM Saturday.

People have been predicting the demise of hamfests for almost as long as I can remember; certainly since eBay became a hamfest that's going 24/7/365.  If nothing else, they will evolve and change. 

The big hamfests seem to have a different niche and are doing better.  The Orlando Hamcation is doing well and bills themselves as the "second largest hamfest" in the US, behind the "granddaddy", Dayton Hamvention.  Usually just referred to as "Dayton" by hams; as in "you goin' to Dayton this year?", Hamvention has outlived the city's HARA arena it had been held in forever and after our last visit to Dayton in 2016, they moved to nearby Xenia, Ohio.  Behind those two, though, and the handful of large 'fests, how well they'll do is an open question.

Photo of the International Space Station from the Platinum Coast Amateur Radio Society website, the club organizing and putting on the hamfest.

The part of the space junk problem that might be fixable

The problems with junk still orbiting Earth are talked about occasionally; we've done dedicated stories on it over the years, like this one in Dec. '22, but for the most part it's a tough problem.  The prospect of thousands of small objects, such that collisions could cascade, becoming unmanageable or unsurvivable, is awful.  

Some recent work on the problem has used different approaches, predictably giving different results.  The International Astronautical Conference has focused on the pieces of debris that could trigger the biggest problems.  

They've concluded that the worst of the debris is over 25 years old, and largely emptied boosters that were never de-orbited.  

"The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem," said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. "Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That's important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now."

The 50 objects identified by McKnight and his coauthors are the ones most likely to drive the creation of more space junk in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through collisions with other debris fragments. The objects are whizzing around the Earth at nearly 5 miles per second, flying in a heavily trafficked part of LEO between 700 and 1,000 kilometers (435 to 621 miles) above the Earth.

Hey, it's 2025, and by now everyone remotely interested in a story like the Sandra Bullock, George Clooney movie from 2013, Gravity, has seen enough of it to know the story is about a chain reaction of space junk collisions taking out the Space Station and most of everything in orbit, a phenomenon called the Kessler Syndrome. This is what everyone is most concerned about.

The IAC analysts considered how close objects are to other space traffic, their altitude, and their mass.  For example, large debris at high altitudes pose a bigger long-term risk because they could create more debris that could remain in orbit for centuries or longer.

Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight's Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia's SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. Here's the Top 10:

1. A Russian SL-16 rocket launched in 2004
2. Europe's Envisat satellite launched in 2002
3. A Japanese H-II rocket launched in 1996
4. A Chinese CZ-2C rocket launched in 2013
5. A Soviet SL-8 rocket launched in 1985
6. A Soviet SL-16 rocket launched in 1988
7. Russia's Kosmos 2237 satellite launched in 1993
8. Russia's Kosmos 2334 satellite launched in 1996
9. A Soviet SL-16 rocket launched in 1988
10. A Chinese CZ-2D rocket launched in 2019

In an update to this list published back in 2020, McKnight's team's simulations showed that if these 50 most dangerous pieces of rocket debris were removed the overall debris-generating potential in low-Earth orbit would be reduced by 50 percent. If just that Top 10 list were removed, the risk would be cut by 30 percent.

The European Space Agency's Envisat satellite launched in 2002 and failed in 2012. It is the second-most hazardous object in the Top 50 list. Image credit: European Space Agency.

On the other hand, "the bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we've had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years," McKnight said. 

The 25-year discriminator is important because that is the guideline promulgated by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, an international group that includes representatives from all of the major space powers: the United States, China, Russia, Europe, India, and Japan. If a piece of space junk is left in low enough of an orbit, aerodynamic resistance will drag it back into the atmosphere in less than 25 years.

US and European governments have policies requiring launch companies to deposit their spent upper stages to altitudes low enough to naturally reenter the atmosphere within 25 years, or deorbit their rockets altogether.

If you've been following SpaceX and their operations, you'll know that they pay a lot of attention to junk.  The biggest example of that is they routinely deorbit the upper stage of a Falcon 9, usually driving them back into the atmosphere over the open ocean.  The Starlink system was designed to be at lower than typical orbit heights to minimize delays in the internet service they're providing.  That has led to the loss of more than a few satellites. 

China, on the other hand, frequently abandons upper stages in orbit. China launched 21 of the 26 hazardous new rocket bodies over the last 21 months, each averaging more than 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds). Two more came from US launchers, one from Russia, one from India, and one from Iran.

This has led to continued concern about China from McKnight and the IAC team.  China is in the first stages of creating two new megaconstellations - Guowang and Thousand Sails - with thousands of communications satellites each in low-Earth orbit. 

However, most of the rockets used for Guowang and Thousand Sails launches have left their upper stages in orbit. McKnight said nine upper stages China has abandoned after launching Guowang and Thousand Sails satellites will stay in orbit for more than 25 years, violating the international guidelines.

A concept that appears toward the end of the source article is one that anyone familiar with military uses for any real hardware will recognize.  Any hardware that a space-faring civilization could develop to clean up after themselves can be seen by a second space-faring civilization as the first group intending to take out the second group's payloads.  Another example of how any defensive weapon can be viewed as an offensive weapon. 

Small Space News Story Roundup 68

It's Thursday, October 9 as I type, and around the space community big, flashy, loud things are moving, especially from a couple of big stories we've talked about.  

Big One First: Starship Flight 11 Booster Rolls to the Pad

On Wednesday, Oct. 8, SpaceX announced they had rolled the (already flown and flight tested) SuperHeavy booster for the next flight test.  They posted photos on X showing the giant booster, posed for photographs along the way and then being placed on the launch pad. 

SpaceX rolls the Starship Flight 11 Super Heavy booster to the launch pad at its Starbase site in South Texas. Photo posted on X, Oct. 8, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

As has been covered before the launch is currently scheduled for Monday, Oct. 13 at 7:15 PM EDT.  The plan for Flight Test 11 is similar to August's FT-10, which was very successful.  This booster is a flight-proven vehicle, having flown on FT-8 last March.  On that flight, it was captured by the tower "chopstick arms," which is not planned for this flight.  It will fall into the Gulf of America near the launch site in Boca Chica.  

This is also expected to be the last flight of a Version 2 Starship and a short description of the mission is to test the "corner cases" of the ship and booster like FT-10 did, but more aggressively. 

Meanwhile in Florida, Blue Origin rolls their next New Glenn to the pad

As mentioned yesterday, Blue Origin is preparing for the November launch of their second New Glenn rocket to orbit, this time lifting NASA's two ESCAPADE satellites to an escape trajectory to head to Mars.  That's right, this isn't a test flight for Blue Origin to learn more about their vehicle, it's for paying customers. 

The two ESCAPADE ("Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers") orbiters will be sent to the Red Planet, where they will study the Martian atmosphere and how it's affected by the solar wind and space weather. 

Blue Origin rolls the first stage of its powerful New Glenn rocket to the pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 8, 2025. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Comparatively, Blue Origin's story is lower priority because their earliest launch date is November 9, while Starship test flight is this coming Monday, just a few days away.

More Info for New Glenn flight two and ESCAPADE

Thanks to Eric Berger at Ars Technica, we have more information on the second (ever) launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn, a preliminary launch date and more information on the mission itself.   

The launch date is No Earlier Than Sunday, November 9th, no time given, but the range of dates given is only November 9-11, so they'd better be good and ready by the 9th. You may have seen the headlines that the booster for this mission was rolled to the launch pad today.

The rest of the article is largely about Blue being committed to successfully landing the ship, and the reality of the case being that their financial success depends on getting New Glenn reusable as quickly as possible.  The ship for this flight has been named "Never Tell Me The Odds," a line by Han Solo in one of the original Star Wars movies - The Empire Strikes Back originally in 1980.  It fits here because of how much Blue Origin wants to succeed but from observing the rest of the world, getting it on their second try doesn't seem very likely .  

Blue Origin, though, has something going for it that nobody else really had: some engineers that helped make the Falcon 9 the success that it is "jumped ship to" (or "were hired away by") Blue Origin.  This is in the same category as being "as predictable as the sunrise" or whatever your favorite phrase is.  There is exactly one company in the world that has made "reusability changes everything" a life motto and company mandate.  The question is how fast they can make it happen.  

Eric Berger says, in so many words, "I'll tell you the odds."  Blue is saying the chance they'll successfully land this booster is 75%.  Eric says, "not so fast." 

The only comparison available is SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 rocket. The company made its first attempt at a powered descent of the Falcon 9 into the ocean during its sixth launch in September 2013. On the vehicle's ninth flight, it successfully made a controlled ocean landing. SpaceX made its first drone ship landing attempt in January 2015, a failure. Finally, on the vehicle's 20th launch, SpaceX successfully put the Falcon 9 down on land, with the first successful drone ship landing following on the 23rd flight in April 2016.

SpaceX did not attempt to land every one of these 23 flights, but the company certainly experienced a number of failures as it worked to safely bring back an orbital rocket onto a small platform out at sea. Blue Origin's engineers, some of whom worked at SpaceX at the time, have the benefit of those learnings. But it is still a very, very difficult thing to do on the second flight of a new rocket. The odds aren't 3,720-to-1, but they're probably not 75 percent, either.

SpaceX pretty much immortalized that in this two minute video called, "How not to land an orbital rocket booster."

Unlike the development of Falcon 9, New Glenn is a heavier lift vehicle and they've talked about intending to re-use it for years before the first mission - which was lost while trying to land. Blue has said little about what happened, raising the question of whether they really know and just aren't talking or are working from educated guesses. It's clear that they didn't get to test every aspect of the hardware and software needed for the intricate dance the booster needs to go through in order to land safely and have a reusable booster to show for it.

While hardly anybody will actually talk about this truth, the Launch Industry in America, and the rest of the world to be completely honest, pretty much comes down to SpaceX and everybody else. Eric Berger looks at it from this optimistic perspective:

Nevertheless, we're not supposed to talk about the odds with this mission. So instead, we'll just note that the hustle and ambition from Blue Origin is a welcome addition to the space industry, which benefits from both. 

Strange timing leaves NASA's Juno probe to Jupiter in unknown state

This is one of those stories that you hear and just think the people running these things are too smart for something this stupid to show up.  There must be more to it, but much like the celebrated offspring from crossbreeding a rhinoceros and an elephant, it's an elephino.  

Space.com reports the setup this way

NASA's spinning spacecraft studying the satellites of the solar system's largest celestial body (aside from the sun), may already be switched off, but the space agency won't say.  

...

NASA has extended Juno's mission multiple times, most recently in 2021, guaranteeing operations through Sept. 30, 2025. That date has now passed, and with the U.S. government shut down, there is no word yet on whether Juno will come out alive on the other side.

Now I don't find that to be among the more clear things I've read (especially combined with the rest) but apparently the end of the operation extension was to coincide with the end of Fiscal Year, or September 30, 2025.  Since the government shutdown was on October 1st, it seems someone forgot to do something about Juno and now NASA isn't saying anything about whether Juno is still running.  Maybe someone intended to make sure they could extend the mission and just plain forgot.  Maybe the people running the satellite couldn't even think of some new science to do with the little probe and figured they wouldn't get approved for new money for Juno and just said, "good night, Juno."  I just figure if it was that last one, they'd have told someone and word would have gotten around.  

In an email shared with Space.com, NASA Planetary Science Division Media Lead Molly Wasser referenced Juno's 2021 extension saying the "mission was extended to September of 2025. This is the most recent update. Regarding the future of the mission, NASA will abide by the law."

Due to the government shutdown, NASA is currently unable to say whether Juno is still operating or already powered down. At the time of publication, responses from agency officials state that "NASA is currently closed due to a lapse in government funding … Please reach back out after an appropriation or continuing resolution is approved."

They go on to add that there are "excepted activities" that can go on during a shutdown, but those are activities required to protect life, property, or national security and I can't see how Juno could fall under those.  There's also an exception that says "presidential priorities" can be funded, but Juno doesn't appear to be one of those, either.  A clue is that Juno was zeroed out in the draft NASA budget that was submitted before the shutdown. 

This is the first government shutdown in a few years, so it's possible the people that knew how to keep probes alive during a shutdown are gone.  

Basically, until normal government operations resume, we won't even know if Juno's operational.  If they do an orderly shutdown, perhaps diving the spacecraft into one of the Jovian moons or Jupiter itself, that's about the best case.  The next big probe to Jupiter is Europa Clipper. That big probe is a bit under a year into its mission to the planetary system with arrival expected in 2030.  

A visualization of NASA's Juno probe orbiting Jupiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It sure is hard to come up with anything

Talk about slow news days, I can find only one story that's worth mentioning.  Honestly that's pretty much only because it reminds me of one my all time most favorite headlines and that was just last May.  Remember this one:

Australia's first orbital launch scrubbed because the rocket's nose fell off

The story centers on Australian launch company Gilmour.  As the weeks went by after I first heard of them, I kept checking in to see if a date had been announced.  What was supposed to be in March of '25 it ended up being quite a bit later than that - May 15. Instead, the nose cone fell off the rocket hours before it was supposed to leave the launch pad Thursday. 

When they finally actually attempted a launch a few months later, (in July) it lifted off the launch pad, drifted a little, while gaining virtually zero altitude, then fell to the ground. 

The news is Space News says Gilmour says they're planning to launch again "next year" but I don't subscribe to their site so that's all I can read. 

The first Eris rocket from Gilmour Space Technologies lifts off July 29 (U.S. time) on a short-lived test flight. Credit: Gilmour Space Technologies

Hey, the next Falcon 9 launch is 12:13 AM Tuesday! 

China calls NASA to avoid a collision in space

It's a remarkable story because it's being reported as the first time this has ever happened.  

The Chinese space agency has reportedly contacted NASA for the first time to avoid a collision in orbit. 

 The CNSA message read:

“We would like to recommend you hold still and we’ll do the maneuver,” Alvin Drew, NASA Space Sustainability director and former astronaut, said Oct. 2 at a panel on space sustainability at the International Astronautical Congress here. “That’s the first time that has ever happened.” 

China is one of the most prolific launching states, and their beginning to share data like this is a major step in cooperation.  

“I know for a fact that OneWeb has been contacted by a Chinese constellation to talk about where they’re going,” Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow for LeoLabs, said during a Sept. 29 technical session on space sustainability. “SpaceX also has been contacted by a Chinese constellation.”

Recent action by CNSA and commercial satellite operators to discuss spacecraft maneuvers “tells me there is a coordinated signal coming from someone in China,” Drew said. “Somebody is saying, ‘Yes, you can talk to them. Yes, you can coordinate with them.’” 

Honestly, I think everyone involved has long thought all space programs should coordinate with each other to minimize the chances of bad things happening.  It just doesn't seem to have moved beyond that first impression level.  

The US Commerce Department is working on a system, dubbed Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), to track spacecraft in orbit and help deconflict potential conjunctions. 

However, it’s only as good as the data fed into the system. And missing self-reported information from one of the major operators in space—if China is unwilling to share information—is likely to leave those using the program with at least a few blind spots. 

Part of the reasoning could be that China is communicating more openly about what they're doing, from the 13,000-satellite Guowang internet-of-things constellation to the 15,000-satellite Qianfan or Thousand Sails broadband constellation.   They're going to be sharing the near-Earth orbit space with SpaceX's Starlink constellation which could include 42,000 satellites while even Amazon intends to send over 3,200 broadband satellites into Project Kuiper.

A Long March 8 lifts off from Hainan commercial spaceport March 11, 2025, carrying 18 Qianfan (Thousand Sails) satellites. Credit: CASC

“Although we’re making progress, for years our ability to communicate with the Chinese National Space Agency has been extremely crude,” Drew said. “When we had a conjunction, we would send a note to the Chinese saying that we think we’re going to run into you. Hold still, we’ll maneuver around you.”

Often there was no reply, Drew said. It was never even clear if the messages were received.

“Once we did maneuver both at the same time and fortunately we missed,” Drew said. “We’ve come a long way.”

It's interesting that in both messages, the first one from the Chinese in the second indented paragraph from the top and this last one here from the US sent the other side the same message.  “Hold still; we'll maneuver around you.”

As Space Force works with Vulcan more, the costs go up

One of the so-called Golden Rules of manufacturing is that the more of something you make the lower the unit price goes.  The usual way you see that stated is that when a company doubles the quantity of whatever they're making, the unit price drops by about 25 to 30%.  Yeah, it depends on the quantities and exactly what they're making but it basically comes down to the maker becoming more efficient at what they're doing, wasting less time per unit and the fact that they're generally buying parts from lower-level suppliers and the more parts they buy, the more their prices get "quantity discounts."  

Which is one of the reasons the headline at Ars Technica surprised me saying, “Pentagon contract figures show ULA’s Vulcan rocket is getting more expensive.” If they're building more and getting better at it, why should the price go up? 

The headline story gets buried because, like Lucy, they got some splainin' to do.  The meat of the story is that this time of year, the ending of the old fiscal year and before the start of the fiscal new year,  the US space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation's most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year's launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner. 

Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying. 

It's essentially meaningless to just say the contracts went to ULA and SpaceX because they're the only two companies with rockets certified by the Space Force to launch the Pentagon's big-ticket satellites. They had to award the contracts to those two.  

ULA's Vulcan rocket, which replaces the company's Atlas V, debuted nearly two years ago and successfully launched its first national security mission in August. SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets each have long track records of success. 

If you're saying "what about New Glenn?" The answer is they're not certified by Space Force yet, so they can't legally launch those payloads.  

That's the background.  Here's where it gets a little attention focus.  

The Space Force is paying SpaceX $714 million for the five launches awarded Friday, for an average of roughly $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million for each launch. That's about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX's price per mission.

While notable, these prices are close to the numbers from the last batch of contracts, when SpaceX charged $121 million per mission, and ULA's price was $214 million per launch, the same as this year. Part of this price difference could be explained by SpaceX's reuse of Falcon boosters, whereas ULA's Vulcan rocket is a disposable design.

But look back a little further and you'll find ULA's prices for Space Force launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In late 2023, the Space Force awarded a $1.3 billion deal to ULA for a batch of 11 launches at an average cost per mission of $119 million. A few months earlier, Space Systems Command assigned six launches to ULA for $672 million, or $112 million per mission. 

If you're trying to figure the cost per launch, you have to figure in that Space Force can change the contract during the course of the contract.

ULA and SpaceX competed for military launch orders from 2020 through 2024 as part of the Space Force's NSSL Phase 2 contract. The Space Force added more money to each company's Phase 2 contract—$1.1 billion for ULA and $661 million for SpaceX—in mid-2024 to help cover a higher number of launches than the military originally expected.

Accounting for this funding surge, ULA's total haul of 26 Phase 2 launches came in at an average of $173 million per mission, still significantly less than ULA's prices this year. SpaceX's average launch price was $182 million, far more than the company's prices in 2025. Part of SpaceX's Phase 2 contract money went toward upgrades of ground infrastructure and development of an extended payload fairing for the Falcon Heavy rocket.

I have to admit being rather fond of the Falcon Heavy, which directly comes from my study of the Space Launch System at the heart of the Artemis program.  As I've said many times, the SLS can launch more payload than the Falcon Heavy, but not that much more. It's like 30% more payload, so "all ya gotta do" is launch two Heavies.  One launch of an SLS costs over $4 Billion.  Two Falcon Heavies cost less than 10% of the one SLS launch.  So throw up TWO Heavies and save the $3.6 billion.  

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA's Psyche spacecraft launches from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 13, 2023. Credit: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Here's a breakdown of the seven new missions assigned to SpaceX and ULA:

• USSF-149: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Florida

• USSF-63: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-155: Classified payload SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-205: WGS-12 communications satellite on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• NROL-86: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-88: GPS IIIF-4 navigation satellite on a ULA Vulcan VC2S (two solid rocket boosters) from Florida

• NROL-88: Classified payload on a ULA Vulcan VC4S (four solid rocket boosters) from Florida

Not sure when we can expect these, other than "not soon" but four more Falcon Heavy launches sounds like fun.