How much time do the Voyagers have left?

It seems like it was just last week, that I posted about one of Voyager 1's experiments being shut down to save power, but it was April 17, just over three weeks ago. Today, Space.com follows up with some interesting input on the Voyagers and a new (optimistic) prediction on how long the Voyagers can last. 

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were launched within two weeks of each other in August and September of 1977. They originally left on a multiple planetary flyby missions but those were completed in four years. As they completed missions in our solar system, the pair had their cameras and high power consumption instruments shut down with the intent to save power and prolong their missions. 

When they were launched, their Radioisotope Thermal Generators produced 470 Watts. Today, they're both well under 100W. 

Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 followed suit six years later. For years, NASA has been turning off the probes' instruments one at a time as their power supplies dwindled. They still lose about four watts of power a year. But NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California has an idea, which will be tested out soon, to give them a little more time. 

Both probes were launched with identical sets of 10 instruments, but over the years have progressively shut down more and more instruments until they're down to the last couple of instruments. Communicating with Earth is the most power intensive thing they do, but they only have to do it rarely - either to download data or to respond to queries from the ground. Voyager 1 is very close to one light day (24 light hours) away and Voyager 2 is 19 light hours away. So "chats", if they existed, would take several days to complete. Originally they had a 20 Watt transmitter, but that's the output power and not what it takes to transmit. 

In a 2022 Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL, said in a statement about the probes that  "It takes about 200 watts, approximately, to run the transmitter on the spacecraft, to be able to send signals back to Earth."

"An upcoming engineering activity — nicknamed the ‘Big Bang' — on NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft will continue the agency's efforts to maximize the science output of the mission," the spokesperson said in an email.

"Voyager engineers will turn off three devices on the spacecraft that have been used to keep the thruster fuel lines from freezing — and turn on three other devices that will keep the fuel lines warm, but use a total of almost 10 watts less power," the spokesperson continued.

"If successful, this could delay the need to turn off a science instrument aboard each spacecraft by at least one year. The engineering team will test and implement the program on Voyager 2 in May and June. Based on the outcome, the mission plans to do the same on Voyager 1 sometime this summer."

And this is where project manager Dodd dropped the interesting lines.

In August 2022, Dodd was asked during a JPL livestream how far she thought the Voyagers would go. She predicted each spacecraft would "definitely" make it to the 50th anniversary in 2027 — which still seems to be possible from the perspective of today — but added she has a "stretch goal" assuming that gets accomplished.

Ideally, Dodd said she would love to see the spacecraft reach 200 astronomical units (AU; Earth-sun distances) from our planet, which would happen in about 2035. (At the moment, Voyager 1 is about 169.8 AU from Earth, and Voyager 2 is roughly 143.1 AU away.)

If you'll pardon me, this is the first time I've come across someone "on the inside" of the JPL and familiar with the Voyagers that not only seems to be confident the pair will make their golden (50 year) anniversaries next summer, but thinks they have a good shot at surviving another eight years beyond that. 

Artist’s illustration of one of the Voyager spacecraft. Credit: Caltech/NASA-JPL

Did it just turn into summer?

Not weather-wise, or at least not the weather at the ground level. I'm talking about a difference in how the ionosphere's E layer is behaving. 

I've written about Sporadic E propagation, often referred to as Es, many times and I've talked about how Sporadic E showing up at 50 MHz (the 6 meter ham band) is more common in summer than winter.  This one is probably the most read introduction. Several times, I've shown screen captures from a site called DXMaps and the density of "red blob" tracks of contacts visibly goes up as summer arrives and gets going. Here's one I took several minutes ago:

I've mentioned several times that I'm somewhat of a paper chaser in ham radio, spending most of my radio time on 6m pursuing the FFMA (Fred Fish Memorial Award); this post (from November of '25) has the most info and I'll borrow some of it for here. 

Along the same line, the only accomplishments I’m actively “chasing” on the VHF six meter band are both in the category of “difficult to practically impossible.” The easier one is probably 6m DXCC (100 recognized countries worked and confirmed). I currently have 90 confirmed with another three “waiting for confirmation.” I’m closer to DXCC on 6m than any of the other major awards. Easy or obvious one first, DXCC is more likely than Worked All States - WAS. 

WAS is practically impossible from my location. I’m pretty sure last November (‘24) was the closest I ever came to even hearing Alaska, and that was hearing other stations in the southeast calling the guy in Alaska. I saw him “spotted” on some of the sites online that report that, but never actually heard him. I was hoping for this year, but it hasn’t been good so far.

The hardest one, the FFMA (Fred Fish Memorial Award – the first person to achieve this award) is for working and confirming all 488 Maidenhead grids in the continental US. "Continental" means I don't need Alaska or Hawaii. I have 345 grids confirmed with another five that I’ve worked but can’t get confirmed. To be brutally honest, the FFMA is practically impossible from here, too. Unsurprisingly, when your goal is to reach every place  in the country, you're most likely to get everyone from the center of the country, and it turns out there has been one issued in Florida, in the northwestern most corner of the state. That's about 500 miles away - near Pensacola.

All of that is to set up that, to some degree, I can look at the map of contacts being reported on DXMaps and have a pretty good idea if areas I need to work are being heard and reported. I don't see any on that display map. 

While that's a bit of a downer, the number of Es openings should be going up with the highest numbers showing up in mid-June through mid-July. It's not coincidental that two of the biggest 6m contests of the year are the in this interval. Contests are good ways to get lots of stations on the air for quick, short contacts. 

Summer is a good time of year around here for staying inside the house. At least I have things to chase on the radio.

A technogeek anniversary to celebrate

WARNING: Extreme electronics hobbyist geek content 

I recently found out, due to a couple of videos showing up on YouTube that it's the 55th anniversary of an analog integrated circuit that was instrumental in pushing analog integrated circuits into more and more products. Originally designed at Signetics corporation, it's the 555 timer circuit, AKA "the triple nickel" timer. Ironically, the triple nickel has outlived Signetics itself, which was bought by Philips Semiconductor in 1975 and Philips is now part of NXP semiconductors. 

The first video I watched, from the EEVBlog , talked about the 555 timer design effort being led by Hans Camenzind (1934 - 2012) in 1971, and that it has been a remarkably successful product. As seen in many other times and places, the right concept at the right time becomes a standard approach to many things. The first time I ever used one is hard to recall exactly, but I remember it being in the late 1970s, and like most people, once I've successfully used one it tends to be the one I think of when I need a part like this. Yes, there's all manner of planes, civilian and military with triple nickel timers in them and only a few were designed in by me. 

That EEVBlog video is a good overview, but a better technical overview of using the part is at Build-Electronic-Circuits (.com!) They provide this illustration as a simplified equivalent circuit, pretty much a good description of the part. BTW, there's probably no connection between the three 5k resistors in series at the top (5k 5k 5k) and the part's name. Probably. That's what the experts say.

When I decided to post about this, I didn't really intend to get into how to design circuits that use this chip. There are many different things that this chip can be used for, and that Build-Electronics-Circuits page shows many - something with that much deep coverage wouldn't be a good fit for this blog. A second video talks a bit more about various things that it can do with more details. 

The 55th anniversary year of the 555 is unusual and part of that has got to be that it's an analog part and not a microprocessor. The closest equivalent microprocessor from 55 years ago would be the Intel 4004 -the first CPU ever sold as a standalone product - and only a four bit processor. I can't tell you the last time I saw a 4004, but I think it was in radio being repaired 30 years ago. The radio was obsolete and no longer in production, but it was customer's return and the warranty is honored as long as possible. 

I figure there's a chance that some of you will have worked with the 555 and remember it fondly.  

Looks like we have a date for Starship 12

While they're still testing and preparing, it's looking like Starship test flight 12 is going to be a week from today, May 15, at 6:30 PM EDT, 5:30 PM local (CDT).

The date has changed before (it was originally May 12) and it might change again, but the latest test was the super heavy booster with all engines running at full thrust for around 15 seconds. This will be the 12th Starship test flight, but a totally new, Version 3 (V3) with a different SuperHeavy booster as well as the V3 Starship itself. 

SpaceX cleared a big hurdle on the path to liftoff on Thursday (May 7), conducting a static-fire test with Starship's Super Heavy first stage at its Starbase site in Texas. The company lit up all 33 of Super Heavy's Raptor engines while the booster remained anchored to the pad — and everything apparently went well. 

"Full duration and full thrust 33-engine static fire with Super Heavy V3," SpaceX wrote in a Thursday post on X that shared two videos of the 14-second-long test. (One video is about a minute long, but it seems to be a slow-motion version of the trial.)

Screen capture from the Space.com video of the static fire test.

Because this is the first test of the V3 system, it appears they're going to take it very cautiously. I've read (not in the Space.com source) that they aren't going to attempt to recover either the SuperHeavy booster or the ship. The lengthy delay between flights 11 and 12 owes partly to a mishap involving the original Flight 12 Super Heavy, which was destroyed during a pressure test this past November. Because the launch time is similar to the previous suborbital Starship test flights, I expect that the trajectory will be similar, toward the east, over the Florida straits and Caribbean eventually splashing down near Australia. I will try to see this one by eye, crossing from SW to SE, like we saw flight 10. It will probably be lighter than that launch, IIRC.

A look at the coming hurricane season

Since the usual space news stories are on the small side, I'm going to divert to a different sort of science - atmospheric physics and weather. That was driven by it being the time of year to ensure we're ready for the coming Atlantic hurricane season which starts on June 1. And that's partly motivated because storms before the season officially starts happen often enough that they capture attention in planning.

I think it should be obvious if you've read here before, but I should say that I'm not a meteorologist or a hurricane expert in any sense. I'm just someone who has lived through many hurricanes because of growing up in Florida and being 72 years old. The state of Florida takes hurricane preparation seriously, especially with the numbers of people moving in from the overbearing-to-collapsing blue states, so they publish a variety of websites with information on preparing. Like the Plan & Prepare website here. 

Whether you follow these storms or not,  you may have heard about a persistent (if not permanent) weather condition that goes back and forth between el Niño and la Niña states, and is called the el Niño/Southern Oscillation or ENSO. This is seen primarily in sea surface temperatures along the equator between South America and Pacific islands. In the el Niño pattern the temperatures in that belt are warmer than "usual" and in the la Niña state they're cooler. (and I'll drop the accent marks over the "n" from here on)

Earlier in the year, we were told to expect a la Nina pattern this season, but that has been reversed to el Nino with some sources warning of a "Super El Nino". In general, in Florida and the SE US, el Nino seasons reduce our chances of a hurricane. The National Weather Service ENSO prediction (April update) doesn't sound like the "Super El Nino" prediction.  

I've mentioned meteorologist Ryan Maue on these pages several times (earliest post? I think) starting when he was a graduate student at Florida State University, one of the major meteorology departments that study hurricanes. Simply, in an era of insanity and blaming everything that happens on CO₂ concentrations - followed by perennially making up new things to blame on CO₂ - he has remained data-driven and therefore a voice of sanity. Ryan keeps track of a metric they call Accumulated Cyclone Energy or ACE and provides this summary showing it's a far below average year. 

I think when the year to date ACE is 12% of a normal year, that's far below average.

The next thing I like to keep track of is the predictions for the hurricane activity for the season. One of the big names in doing this is Colorado State University, and Dr Phil Klotzbach issues numbers annually. His predictions are for lower activity than average, but spread over the entire Atlantic basin from Africa to the US and the west ends of the ocean, the Gulf of America, and the Caribbean, there are variations to keep track of, too. 

While the photo predicts every line in that chart to be lower than normal, it's important to realize that there's also luck involved and it's better to be more prepared than you need to be. Like everything else in life. 

To borrow some of the notes that appear below that photo:

Primary Drivers: The "El Niño" Factor
The defining feature of the 2026 season is the transition from a weak La Niña to a moderate-to-strong El Niño during the peak months (August–October).

• Wind Shear: El Niño typically creates high vertical wind shear across the Atlantic's Main Development Region (MDR). This "rips" storms apart before they can organize.
  
• Atmospheric Stability: Sinking air (subsidence) over the Caribbean and Atlantic is expected to suppress storm formation further.
  
• Atlantic Temperatures: While the Atlantic remains warm, it is not as anomalously hot as in recent record-breaking years, and the shear from El Niño is expected to be the dominant "hurricane slayer" this season.

In my years of observing, I've noticed that el Nino moves the tendency for storms to "re-curve" to a northerly path and then toward the east farther out to the east than in la Nina years. Yeah, I tend to get an early sigh of relief when I see predictions for an el Nino year.

Historical Analogs
CSU identifies years with similar climate setups to help predict 2026’s behavior. The primary analog years are:

• 2006 and 2009: Very quiet seasons for Florida landfall due to strong El Niño conditions.
  
• 2015: An extremely quiet year for the U.S. East Coast.
  
• 2023: A high storm count (20) but mostly storms that stayed out to sea, though Florida’s Big Bend was hit by Hurricane Idalia.
  
• Quality over Quantity: A below-average forecast does not mean zero risk. Forecasters frequently cite 1992 (Hurricane Andrew) as the ultimate warning: a very quiet, below-average year that produced one of the most devastating Category 5 landfalls in Florida history.
  
• Western Formation: Because El Niño suppresses storms in the deep tropics, 2026 may see more "homegrown" development in the Gulf of Mexico or Western Caribbean. These storms often have shorter lead times for us here in Florida.

So that's an overview of what we know about the coming hurricane season. It's always appropriate to keep an eye on the weather patterns and the one week forecasts with probabilities of development. Much like a loonie with a gun and intent to do something violent, it only takes one.

SpaceX's world is starting to shift

Through the end of 2025, I had noticed SpaceX launches were close to three a week or every other day. I posted about this on New Year's Day this year, writing in that post:

SpaceX shattered their launch record in '25 with 165 launches which works out to one every 3.1 days. These were orbital launches using only the Falcon 9. They also have five sub-orbital test flights of Starship. In case you don't watch them closely, they've set a new record every year for six years. 

The record has risen from 25 orbital liftoffs in 2020 to 31 (2021) to 61 (2022) to 96 (2023) to 134 (2024) and, now, to a whopping 165.

As 2026 has started unfolding, they seem to be falling back from that pace. Ars Technica goes into a deeper dive into what's going on today, in a piece entitled "SpaceX is starting to move on from the world’s most successful rocket." It's written by Stephen Clark, whom I still tend to think of as "the new guy," but I'm pretty sure he has been there over a year. 

It is far too soon to mention retirement, but astute observers of the space industry have noticed SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket is not launching as often as it used to.

The decline is modest so far, and it does not signal any problem at SpaceX or with the Falcon 9. Rather, it is a manifestation of SpaceX’s eagerness to shift focus to the much larger Starship rocket, an enabler of what the company wants to do in space: missions to land on the Moon and Mars, orbital data centers, and next-gen Starlink.

This shouldn't be a secret, since SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the company plans “maybe 140, 145-ish” Falcon launches in 2026, but that wasn't widely quoted - it was an interview in Time magazine. She went on to say, “this year we’ll still launch a lot, but not as much,” she said. “And then we’ll tail off our launches as Starship is coming online.”

The changes are most obvious here near Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, where SpaceX has been launching from two pads regularly: Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC or Slick 40) from the Space Force Station side and Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex-39A or LC-39A. LC-39A is out of the rotation for Falcon 9 launches, although it remains available for occasional flights of the more powerful, triple-core Falcon Heavy. There are relatively quite a lot fewer Falcon Heavy missions than Falcon 9, and those will launch from SLC-40 this year.

LC-39A is going to be the Space Coast home of Starship. Starships seem to all be intended for RTLS (Return To Launch Site) missions, while the smaller number of Falcon 9 missions had SpaceX retire recovery drone Just Read The Instructions (JRTI), leaving A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) as their only recovery drone ship in use on the east coast.

“With 39A becoming a primarily Falcon Heavy and Starship pad, we don’t actually need two operational droneships on the East Coast to maintain our Falcon manifest,” wrote Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, in a post on X last month. The other landing vessel in Florida can support a launch and recovery every four days, according to Dontchev, and some Falcon missions can return their boosters to land onshore.

As you'll read at the link to X, "After 156 successful Falcon 9 landings, Just Read the Instructions will be fully dedicated to support Starship operations going forward." 

The shift in emphasis to Starship on Cape Canaveral is going to reduce the number of launches from the Cape, at least in the short term, and may give the title of busiest launch site to Vandenberg. Depending on if Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance can meet their goals for launch numbers. With both New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur currently grounded, it's not looking very good for 2026. 

A Falcon 9 rocket with multiple satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office heads over the horizon after a predawn launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on April 20, 2025. Credit: George Rose/Getty Images

Col. Brian Chatman, commander of the military unit overseeing Cape Canaveral’s launch range, said the Space Force is preparing for as many as 500 launches per year from Florida’s Space Coast by 2036. The growth will require new construction, access to utilities, and increased reliance on automation at the military ranges, which are responsible for ensuring public safety during rocket launches.

SpaceX aims to routinely launch Starships from multiple launch pads in Florida and Texas (it has not announced plans for a Starship pad in California), and last month, the Space Force selected Blue Origin to build a brand new launch pad for its New Glenn rocket on an undeveloped site at Vandenberg. Stoke Space and Relativity Space are building launch sites at Cape Canaveral. The only other orbital-class spaceport on federal property is at Wallops Island, Virginia, where Rocket Lab, Northrop Grumman, and Firefly Aerospace plan to base their rockets.

A new kind of story - mergers of space service providers

I find it hard to just come up with a simple, one word description of this. It's a three company alliance, all of which have incentives to work together. Not a merger, that implies they become one. An alliance is as good a word as there is.

Regardless of what you call it, SpaceFlight Now reports today that Firefly Aerospace, the small company that hasn't had much success in launching their Alpha rocket so far but who built the first commercially made lunar lander that successfully landed on the moon has joined small provider Seagate Space with old industry giant Lockheed Martin to work on offshore launch platforms for their small capacity Alpha launch vehicle. The not-quite 100 foot tall Alpha (~97 ft) rocket currently only launches from Space Launch Complex (SLC) 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

On Monday, Jonathan Caldwell, the vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Strategic and Missile Defense Systems, announced Lockheed Martin’s participation in this proposal in a post on his LinkedIn profile on May 4. He said it was a fusion of Lockheed Martin’s “legacy” in national security matters and “the innovative spirit” of the comparatively much younger companies of Firefly Aerospace and Seagate Space.

“The three companies will work together on mission‑application concepts and flight‑demonstration projects that leverage Seagate’s Gateway offshore launch platform,” Caldwell wrote. “This sea‑based launch facility, combined with Firefly’s responsive Alpha launch vehicle, will provide rapid, flexible access to space from diverse locations, an essential capability for tactical payloads and national‑security missions.”

Bear in mind that's it not a full month since Seagate Space announced a memorandum of understanding with Firefly to create off-shore infrastructure for its Alpha rockets, and now Firefly is announcing a partnership with Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin may be an "old space" or "space 1.0" company, but they sound like they're all-in on this project, too. I could imagine the younger engineers at Firefly perhaps learning some tricks from the Lockheed Martin graybeards. 

“Partnering with Firefly to align our Gateway platform with their Alpha vehicle is a major step toward making offshore launch a practical reality for the industry,” said Sean Fortener, President & COO at Seagate Space, in a statement. “We’re building a platform designed for mobility, responsiveness, and global access – key factors that complement our current launch infrastructure.”

An artist’s interpretation of a Firefly Aerospace rocket atop a Seagate Space Gateway Series spaceport. Graphic: Firefly Aerospace/Seagate Space

In a statement to Spaceflight Now, Caldwell said Lockheed Martin wanted to direct some of its future payloads to this aquatic undertaking in order to support the needs of the Department of Defense.

“With our mission understanding in missile defense and targets systems, we are well aware that our warfighter’s operational requirements are rapidly evolving to stay ahead of growing adversarial threats,” Caldwell said. “A unique, mobile, sea-based launch platform like this — which is not dependent on the availability of a fixed, terrestrial launch location — provides not only increased rapid responsive launch capabilities but also can help alleviate some of the traffic pressure on current ground launch facilities.”

“With more than 70 percent of the Earth covered by water, that greatly increases our mission flexibility by taking advantage of the platform’s mobility to generate multi-azimuth launch geometries driven today by limited availability for air launched target delivery and unconstrainted by typical land-based launch locations. Our payloads integrated with the Alpha rocket allow us to accelerate end-to-end delivery solutions for our customers that are focused on delivering effects at speed while leveraging commercial approaches. We’re involved in this project because it will get mission into the hands of our warfighters faster. Firefly’s flexible Alpha rocket will help Lockheed Martin rapidly launch future spacecraft, including new payload technologies. With Seagate Space potentially making any ocean our launch pad, this collaboration could redefine responsive space operations.”

While the Alpha currently only launches from Vandenberg's SLC (Space Launch Complex) 2, Firefly has been working toward expanding their options. First there was a partnership with Northrop Grumman to fly from Launch Pad 0A (LP-0A) at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) within the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It's worth mentioning that the Antares 330, the launch vehicle Firefly is building for Northrop Grumman to resume launching CRS (Cargo Resupply Services) missions to the Space Station, is part of this agreement. The Wallops Flight Facility agreement was announced in 2024. 

A few days after that was announced, Firefly said it was working with SSC Space (formerly the Swedish Space Corporation) to allow for Alpha rocket launches from the spaceport at the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. Firefly would use Launch Complex 3C for its missions. That was supposed to go into effect this year, but in a March 2026 press release, SSC Space said that an agreement with the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration pushed that back to 2028.  That sounds to me like a Swedish government decision independent of what Firefly, Seagate Space and Lockheed Martin are doing. 

SpaceX launches the week with a rideshare mission

A rideshare mission carrying 45 payloads launched out of Vandenberg Space Force Base early Sunday morning. 

The mission, dubbed CAS500-2, is named for the primary payload called Compact Advanced Satellite 500-2 from the Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd. (KAI). It’s the second of two satellites that KAI calls Phase 1 of its CAS500 program, which is designed for “precision ground-based observation.”

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 12 AM PDT (3 AM EDT / 0700 UTC). The rocket deployed the CAS500-2 satellite into a Sun-synchronous orbit about 60 minutes after launch. 

The story gets a bit longer here. CAS500-2 has been delayed years after the "-1" flight.

According to Korea JoongAng Daily, a South Korean publication, the CAS500-2 satellite was originally scheduled to launch in 2022 on a Russian rocket, but the mission faced years of delays due to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“Additional delays occurred after SpaceX changed plans for a joint launch with another satellite, resulting in a separate launch,” reporter Yoon Seung-Jin wrote. “As a result, CAS500-2 will launch later than CAS500-3, which was sent into space aboard Korea’s Nuri rocket in November last year.”

CAS500-4 and CAS500-5 round out Phase 2 of KAI’s CAS500 program. Those satellites were slated to launch in 2025, but a new launch date for those has not been announced.

In what's getting to be a bit less remarkable every time it happens, booster B1071 completed its 33rd flight on this mission. To be honest, when I think completing anything over 30 flights is getting to be unremarkable, that thought always gets slapped by another part of my brain saying, "remember when they thought maybe they could get 10 launches out of a Falcon 9? And now they're saying they think they can get to 40."  The overall fleet leader is B1067-34 which flew mission 34 on March 30. I want to see B1067 get to 40. 

Around 7.5 minutes after liftoff, B1071 landed at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4), adjacent to the pad it launched from on Vandenberg SFB. This was the 34th landing at this site and the 608th booster landing for SpaceX to date.

As mentioned, this was a rideshare mission and B1071 carried 44 other payloads manifested by multiple partners. The vast majority of the satellites were supplied by Exolaunch, using a variety of deployment mechanisms. The launch support company deployed 21 CubeSats and 18 MicroSats across two deployment sequences.

The first batch of satellites were released beginning about an hour and 16 minutes after liftoff, over a period of six minutes, and the second batch about two hours and 22 minutes after liftoff, in a sequence lasting about eight minutes.

“This mission reflects how Exolaunch is scaling alongside growing launch demand,” said Jeanne Allarie, chief investor relations officer at Exolaunch, in statement. “As we quickly expand the number of missions we support each year, we’re strengthening our sales pipeline and deepening collaboration with SpaceX to deliver consistent, reliable access to orbit for our global customers.”

And there were more. This one caught my eye because it's in my hometown.

Argotec, an Italian company that opened a new satellite integration facility in Melbourne, Florida, in April 2026, manifested seven of its HEO (Hawk for Earth Observation) MicroSats, which are part of the IRIDE (Iniziativi di Resilienza per l’Italia Dalle Emergenze) constellation. IRIDE also has support from the European Space Agency (ESA).

There were eight HEO satellites on orbit prior to May 3, which launched on two previous Falcon 9 rockets.

IRIDE is described by participant company Telespazio, a Leonardo and Thales company, as a “constellation of constellations.” There are more than 73 Italian companies participating in its construction and operation.

Screen capture of the X posting by Exolaunch.

There are still more companies and payloads on this mission, thanks to the combination of the low cost, reusable Falcon 9 and rideshare model of launching "anybody that wants to put a satellite into some of the more desirable orbits." An impressive mission, but for most people around the country, I'm sure it's "just another launch." 

It's a Good Thing It's Star Wars Day

Cause otherwise, I got nothing. 

An oldie but a goodie - so old the couple of uses I can find have no attribution to where it came from.  As is the case with the second irresistible meme. Because if the bad guy in last sequence of films is Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver), that implies the universe must create a need for a Kylo Stimpy to maintain symmetry. 

Image source: Imgflip

Last year I did a bit of a summary of my Star Wars life. I was going to say that I hadn't seen any Star Wars content since the last trilogy, episodes 7, 8 and 9 with Daisy Ridley (Rey Skywalker),  Adam Driver (of course), John Boyega (Finn) and many more.  That's what I originally thought, but it's not complete at all.  I watched Rogue One - "the prequel" movie, the original Andor series on Disney+/Hulu streaming, the Obi Wan Kenobi series, the first two Mandalorian series and probably more that I can't remember now.  I mentioned being aware of the Mandalorian and Grogu which is a full length feature film that IMDB says is coming May 22 - (they didn't have a date last year). That's just three weeks from last Friday (May 1). Yeah, I think I've been following SciFi, reading and watching, since I was about 12. 

The only "after" photo of Artemis II's heat shield I've seen.

I'll be honest: this doesn't mean much. Back on the 28th, Space.com posted a "photo of the day" from the team that recovered the Artemis II Orion capsule. It was taken underwater the day of the recovery. 

The Artemis 2 Orion heat shield underwater after splashdown on April 10, 2026. (Image credit: U.S. Navy) Some image processing by me to bring up the overall brightness of the image and get more of the shield to show up.

On this past Tuesday (April 28) the Orion capsule returned to the KSC.  You can bet that we'll see better pictures of the heat shield once they get going. 

Engineers and technicians will now begin "de-servicing operations" on Integrity at KSC's Multi-Processing Payload Facility, collecting data that could aid future Artemis missions to the moon.

De-servicing "includes removing payloads from the crew module, removing avionics boxes for reuse, and retrieving data on the spacecraft to better understand how it performed to inform procedures and plans for future Artemis missions," NASA officials said in an April 28 statement.

"Orion's heat shield and other elements will be removed for extensive analysis, and remaining hazards such as excess propellant will be offloaded," they added.

Sometimes things just don't go as planned

As if that's news, but as they say, "the best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray." Friday didn't go as planned and at 9:00 PM I'm not finding any stories that look like big Space news. I'm ordinarily well into the next day's post by this time. 

So since we're short of space news anyway, I'm going to shift gears and get into something I thought I'd write about over the weekend. A visit to a movie theater. Our first in more years than I can think of.

On Wednesday, we took a break from the endless spring of "what needs expensive work done on it now?" to go see what comes across as a surprisingly popular movie, Project Hail Mary. It's long movie based on a complicated story by Andy Weir, who wrote the book The Martian was based on. The movie is primarily Ryan Gosling on screen, although that's an over simplification. It seems to be that rare combination of a sci-fi movie that tries to get the science right for a story that's long and involved.  

Gosling plays biologist Ryland Grace who was essentially kicked out of his science career when he published something that was poorly accepted by big names in his field, and he's working as an elementary school teacher. It was the only kind of job he could get. But you don't know that fact when the movie starts. The movie opens up with Grace coming out of an induced coma, on a space ship in deep space; lost and not remembering where he is or why he's there. Everyone else on the ship is dead. The movie bounces back in time to set up the answers to that and it starts with him being told someone had discovered an unexplained stream of something going from the sun to Venus. Researchers then discovered this mysterious thing was actually slowly destroying the sun and calculated that within a short time (20 years, I think) the sun will stop working and the entire population of Earth will die off. Every one and every thing will die.

They go farther to point out that every star in our part of the galaxy is showing the same effects except one, so why is that star unaffected? The name of the movie comes from realizing their only hope is to stop this thing which is pretty quickly determined to be some exotic microbe they call astrophage (star eater). Astrophage needs to be exterminated and they've found no way to kill it. It comes down to this mission named after the desperation hail Mary pass from football. Humanity can build a one-of-a-kind ship that can go nearly lightspeed and get a crew to that star to find out why it's different, but it's a one way flight and the crew is expected to die off because they don't have enough fuel to get back home. 

If they go, the world may have a chance. If they don't go there is no chance. Either way, the crew is expected to die. 

I found it a very well done movie and enjoyed it a lot. Gosling is the only person in the cast I recognized and know I've seen in movies before. If you go watch trailers and other videos on YouTube, you'll see that featured side to the story is that he meets a sentient, rock-creature (alien) from another planet. After they learn to communicate coarsely, Grace calls the rock alien "Rocky" and Rocky calls him Grace. The story goes back and forth between the past and present situations to explain why some parts are setup the way they are; I found those transitions fairly easy to get used to. 

A large crowd scene from one of the memories before the launch of their "Hail Mary" mission. Next to Ryan Gosling (Grace) is actress Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt, one of the project leaders, and seemed to be the one that tracked down Grace for the mission.

Blue Origin aiming for 100 launches per year

They simply have to, but it's still an ambitious goal and I think they won't get there as fast as they want.

Eric Berger from Ars Technica breaks the news that earlier this week, he found that Blue Origin posted a "help wanted" ad for an intriguing sounding position. There's a lot of news down this rabbit hole.

“As part of a hardworking team of specialists, technicians, and engineers you will be the Senior Manager of Gen 2.0 Tank Fabrication, and will own the production execution of the most structurally complex and schedule-critical subsystem on the vehicle—the propellant tank,” the job posting states. [NOTE: the original link in the Ars Technica source was rejected by Blue Origin's site. This one I replaced it with was found by searching there for just "Gen 2.0 Tank Fabrication" - SiG]

Quattro is the company’s nickname for a more powerful upper stage for the New Glenn rocket, which will feature four BE-3U engines instead of the two currently powering the booster. Blue Origin revealed plans for this more powerful variant of New Glenn, 9×4 (nine first stage engines, and four upper stage engines), last November.

It is possible this rocket, significantly larger than the 7×2 variant currently flying and necessary for the company’s lunar ambitions as part of NASA’s Artemis program, could make its debut next year.

The job responsibilities include being responsible for executing a “rate ramp” - as in “ramp up” - from the current 12 per year (in somebody's dreams somewhere) to 60/year, and do it by the third quarter of 2028. Sorry, I just realized I ran out exclamation points. After that 60/year, they want a production of 100 upper stages per year by 2029.

For the time being, Blue Origin is still studying whether to pursue a reusable upper stage for New Glenn, so each launch of the vehicle requires a new upper stage. A production rate of 60 a year in 2028 suggests the company is targeting a launch rate of 60 New Glenn 9×4 rockets annually just three years from now. That would be in addition to the 7×2 variant currently flying, which would continue to be used for less demanding missions.

In case you haven't picked up on my sarcasm, I think you're more likely to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than they are to meet these goals. Berger, for example, reminds us that in 2024 Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos told the company he wanted New Glenn to launch eight times in 2025. It ended up flying twice, in January and November. Then he concludes that for a rocket that new and that large, it wasn't a bad accomplishment to get that flight total for '25. 

That may or may not be a reasonable conclusion but the first thing that popped into my mind was the failure of the most recent launch's upper stage to place the payload into the desired orbit. Get it to work properly before you put a lot of money into getting it to fly more often. There's no benefit to having more launches that fail in a year. 

That said, Bezos has plenty of money to push Blue Origin with, and he has been pushing for more launches for years. 

Bezos continues to make major investments in infrastructure in Florida, most recently in an 800,000-square-foot new manufacturing facility known as “Project Horizon.” It is possible that New Glenn second stages could be manufactured at this facility.  

This facility is on Merritt Island, where Blue Origin has been building infrastructure for their space hardware for years, now. 

A rendering of the 9x4 variant of a New Glenn rocket taking off. Image Credit: Blue Origin

We got our Falcon Heavy launch this morning

After a couple of delays, the Falcon Heavy launch I've been waiting for since Sunday made its launch this morning at 10:13 AM EDT or 1413 UTC. The 6.6 ton satellite has been deployed to the geostationary orbit (GEO) 22,236 miles above Earth. The proper deployment to that orbit was announced by SpaceX at 3:30 PM EDT (1930 UTC):

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches the ViaSat-3 F3 satellite April 29, 2026. (Image credit: Spacex)

About eight minutes after launch, the twin strap-on Falcon 9 boosters touched down at SpaceX's Landing Zones 2 and 40, each one within about 2 miles from the rocket's LC-39A launch pad - within seconds of each other. This video capture shows LZ-2 on the left and LZ-40 on the right. The booster on LZ-2 had just shut off its engines while the LZ-40 vehicle is still using up the fuel in its lines. Video here

In the coverage by NASASpaceflight (dot com), they said there were several more FH launches coming, far more than this one compared to the previous FH launch 18 months ago. This schedule should work for you - it shows one in September - the Roman Space Telescope NET September - another NET 2026 and nine (!) FH launches NET 2027.

All that said, the launch view was practically a zero from my backyard. I think I saw the FH climbing out early in its mission for perhaps as much as three seconds. There was one tower of cloud that it stayed behind until seconds before it dropped those two boosters. We heard a good rumble and heard our patio doors rattle, but it didn't last long. 

Pencil it in: Artemis III looks to be NET "late" 2027

Of course that should set off a round of "what does that mean?" Certainly December is late in the year, but what about September? It's month 9 out of 12, of course, so early September can almost be late August. When I read something like late 2027, I figure early 2028. 

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman described the likely soonest date that way to a group of lawmakers Monday, Apr. 27, saying that both SpaceX and Blue Origin, the agency’s two lunar lander contractors, say they could have their spacecraft ready for the next Artemis mission in Earth orbit in late 2027, somewhat later than NASA’s previous schedule. As you know, when Isaacman took over running NASA, Artemis III was supposed to be the lunar landing mission. Isaacman thought flying a very complex system like that once a year was not going to succeed, or at best, not be as trouble-free as we'd like it to be. He turned the moon landing flight to Artemis IV and inserted a new vision for Artemis III that would be done in Earth orbit, to test rendezvous and docking of the combination of the Orion capsule with the two different landers.

A launch to Low Earth Orbit may not require the upper stage of the SLS, which is already built and in storage. 

A launch into a higher orbit would require the upper stage, but it would allow NASA to perform tests in an environment more similar to the Moon. NASA is buying a new commercial upper stage, the Centaur V from United Launch Alliance, to pair with the SLS rocket after flying the last of the rocket’s existing upper stages. 

The new Artemis III 'rhymes' with the Apollo 9 mission, which was in March of 1969. It's intended to test out the landers in LEO so that in the event of some big problem, the astronauts are hours or even minutes away from home and not a few days. When the approach was announced, NASA implied mission III could be as soon as mid-'27. Now it's looking more like the end of '27, rather than one year after April's Artemis II mission.

“I’ve received responses from both vendors, both SpaceX and Blue Origin, to meet our needs for a late 2027 rendezvous, docking, and test of the interoperability of both landers in advance of a landing attempt in 2028,” Isaacman said Monday.

Both companies have multibillion-dollar contracts to develop and deliver human-rated landers to NASA for use on Artemis missions. Both vehicles need to be refueled in space in order to fly to the Moon. This added complexity is not required for an Earth orbit mission.

“The taxpayers are making a very big investment to both SpaceX and Blue Origin’s Human Landing System (HLS) capability,” Isaacman said in a hearing before the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee responsible for NASA’s budget. “I would also appreciate that both those companies are investing well in excess of that, as well.”

While I don't have real specifications for either lander, if they were to use a full-sized Starship, that could put many tons into orbit. It has been talked about for missions intended to carry 100 tons to any point on Earth within 90 minutes. Lifting less payload requires less fuel, which also saves fuel. There has been talk about using a smaller version of Starship for the HLS since the original mission profile Artemis would fly doesn't exist anymore.  

It's not just in the lander's specs that there's a shortage of useful data; the actual mission plans are far from complete, too.  Remember Axiom's space suits being developed for the lunar missions? 

NASA would also like to fly at least one of Axiom’s commercial spacesuits on Artemis III to give astronauts a chance to try it out in space before they need it for walking on the Moon. The suits are undergoing tests on the ground and in NASA’s spacewalk training pool in Houston. Isaacman said Monday that NASA could also send an Axiom suit to the International Space Station for testing by the end of next year. 

There's also a possibility that NASA will try to simplify the mission, perhaps just doing the rendezvous and docking but not undocking the vehicle and letting crew maneuver around the Orion in LEO. That depends on how complete the two Human Landing System vehicles are. Blue Origin is planning an uncrewed landing of their Blue Moon cargo lander near the lunar south pole. SpaceX is looking to test their Version 3 Starship within the next month, although a date hasn't been announced for either of those.

Image from Casey Handmer's blog. He put this graphic together to put raw numbers in front of all the faces who need to know. Those numbers are probably long out of date.   

Missed it by that much

In the famous words of Maxwell Smart in the '60s series Get Smart. What in the world am I talking about missing? Last night's post about this morning's scheduled Falcon Heavy launch. The launch was scrubbed late in the countdown due to storms in the area, with the scrub called at just about T-30 seconds, when they ordinarily will issue their "go for launch call." The official forecast was for a 70% chance of good weather, so it was at least somewhat of surprise to everyone.  

Screen capture of NASA Spaceflight's coverage of this morning's scrub. Is that gray cloud taking up the left side of the photo the one that caused the scrub?

The current schedule for this FH launch is Tuesday, April 28, at 10:13 AM. 

Since I'm here, SpaceX had their 50th Falcon 9 launch of the year last night from Vandenberg, carrying another load of 25 Starlink satellites. The magic of the internet tells me that was the 116th day of the year, which calculates to around 155 to 160 Falcon 9 launches this year, if they keep the exact same pace, which seems like it might be a little pessimistic. The big variable is when Vandenberg's second launch pad gets started operating, which would enable two launches/week from both coasts. 

Something that needs to be shared is a video from SpaceX, called Starship - Test Like You Fly and while it's nearly a half hour long, it's absolutely worth watching. They sent me a copy directly to my email address associated with the blog (right sidebar under "WANT TO EMAIL ME?) a couple of days ago and I watched yesterday. It's got me stoked and ready for flight test 12, which will be the first test of a bunch of new systems. You'll see how they got there.

We get a treat tomorrow: Falcon Heavy launch from Kennedy Space Center

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, their heavy lift vehicle until Starship gets certified, will launch tomorrow morning for the first time in 18 months. 

A Falcon Heavy topped with the huge ViaSat-3 F3 communications satellite will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday (April 27), during an 85-minute window that opens at 10:21 a.m. EDT (1421 GMT). 

The last FH launch 18 months ago (October of 2024) was to start NASA's Europa Clipper on its five year journey to Jupiter's moon by that name. 

Falcon Heavy is the second strongest rocket in the US' fleet, second only to the Space Launch System or SLS, used for Artemis launches. The most recent ViaSat-3 Flight 2 or F2 was launched by an Atlas V in November of 2025, and the first, F1, rode a Falcon Heavy in April 2023. It appears to have been April 30 but for some reason I don't seem to have any posts of the launch, just of some rescheduling earlier in the month. 

Getting back to this mission, 

The 6.6-ton (6 metric tons) satellite is headed to geostationary orbit (GEO) which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth. At that altitude, orbital velocity matches our planet's rotational speed, allowing satellites to "hover" over the same patch of real estate continuously. 
...
The Falcon Heavy's two side boosters will come back for a landing at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station about eight minutes after launch on Monday, if all goes to plan. The central booster won't be recovered; it will fall into the Atlantic Ocean when its work is done.

The Falcon Heavy's upper stage, meanwhile, will carry ViaSat-3 F3 to geosynchronous transfer orbit, deploying it there about five hours after launch.

The Falcon Heavy lifts off Oct. 14, 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center carrying NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: Brandon Lindner

My other, other stuff going on

I occasionally mention other things I'm working on or that are going on. Life is the simplest word and I think it was Beatle John Lennon who said, "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." That's what this little post will be about.

Let's start with something I haven't talked about in a long time: guitars. I've got a small batch of guitars, like pretty much all players who can get more than one instrument tend to. Unlike the vast majority of home players, I built two of those guitars; an electric guitar from a kit back around 2015, and an acoustic that was more like a very extended repair job. It was a sales demo model from some guitar store and before sending it around to show what their guitars looked like inside, the manufacturer, Breedlove, sliced most of the left side of the guitar off. 

The long story is I started playing in junior high school, around 1967 or '68, and like most others, I learned what was referred to as rhythm guitar. Playing chords. I played in a couple of garage bands, and at a couple of parties, but I never really fantasized about being a musician. It was enough to make some sounds that didn't hurt people's ears or they even actually enjoyed. 

In my "young adult" years, through my 20s, I hardly played at all and didn't get involved with guitars again until maybe 1988 or later. I picked it up with intentions to practice more often a few years ago. Those plans would get derailed every now and then by either an injury or osteoarthritis. Over roughly the last year, that second one had me unable to play for a year or more. The effect of the arthritis was limited entirely to one finger, my left hand's middle finger. The very last segment of that finger, the one that you press onto a string to change the note you're playing, rotated left or toward my pinky finger. 

How much did it tilt? I don't really know how to measure that with what I have, but I'll estimate 10 degrees. The rotation wasn't the issue so much as the insane pain it caused. I'm gonna bet you've heard someone say, "it hurts to look at it?" Exactly.

About a month ago, I realized that I had bumped that finger on something and it didn't hurt. After some time trying to figure out if it was really gone, I started thinking what I could do to test it. I picked up one of the guitars I'd regularly practice with and found I could play without the insane pain.  The problems now are the same ones everybody picking up a guitar and starting to practice faces. Building up calluses on my finger tips so the strings don't hurt as much, strengthening the muscles involved so when I go to play some chord that makes all six strings sound, I can apply even pressure and put all the strings on the neck. Most importantly though is agility of those fingers, and knowing what to play. As in re-learning a few songs. 

My tendency in here is to put up some picture that's relevant or related to the topic, but tonight, I was going to link a video from Woodstock that I've run before. The problem with that is YouTube has decided we're not allowed to embed it, but I think I can run a link to it HERE. And here's a picture:

A photo of my repair job on the Breedlove guitar. The guitar is on my workbench but just for posing, in the final post on this job.  

The finger has better and worse days, so it's not entirely being back to normal and I have no way to know if that's even possible.

Small Space News Story Roundup 80

Because, well, you know. It's not that there isn't any news, it's just not much to talk about.

Another company tests a Rotating Detonation Engine

We've talked about RDEs for a while now. My first post on the subject appears to have been in May of 2020, so almost six years to the day. At the time, I wrote that it wasn't a new idea:

Rotating detonation engines, or RDEs, sound like something out of science fiction, but the concept is about as old as the space age itself. In the late 1950s and early '60s, aerospace engineers working on rocket engines envisioned RDEs as a way to turn a problem into a solution. “Sometimes the rocket motors would get a real bad instability and you’d get an explosion,” pioneer Arthur Nicholls recalled in a University of Michigan interview shortly before his death. “Then it led to the idea—well, what if we use that?” 

Like many things observed that early in space exploration, the physics of what was going on wasn't well understood, but there has been a lot of time for that physics to develop. The main advantage of the RDE is reduced weight of the engine.  In conventional liquid rocket engines, the fuel and oxidizer are pressurized and fed into the ignition chamber using bulky turbopumps and other complicated machinery.  An RDE doesn’t need these pressurization systems, because the shock wave from the detonation provides the pressure. In this week's Rocket Report from Ars Technica, Eric Berger writes about tests from Astrobotic.

Astrobotic on Thursday announced the successful hot fire testing of its Chakram rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Two Chakram engine prototypes completed eight successful hot-fire tests, accumulating more than 470 seconds of total run time without any discernible damage to the engine hardware, the company said.  The campaign included a 300-second continuous burn, which is believed to have set the record for the longest duration hot firing of an RDRE engine to date.

The engines seem too small to me, they produced 4000 pounds of thrust, but I may well be thinking of completely different uses than Astrobotic is aiming for. Berger mentions two engines being used in a vehicle, but that's still around 8000 pounds, certainly under 10,000, which is barely enough to get most of us off the sofa on Thanksgiving. 

Astrobotic's Chakram rotating detonation rocket engine during tests this week. Credit: Astrobotic

With both ULA's Vulcan and Blue Origin's New Glenn grounded, getting to orbit just got harder

I still haven't seen anything with details about what went wrong with New Glenn's second stage last week, but the internet has been buzzing about it being that the BE-3 upper stage engines malfunctioned - presumably one of the two and not both of them. Blue's customer's payload has already re-entered and burned up. 

While Vulcan's solid rocket (first stage) boosters lost a nozzle on one of the two engines on each of their two missions, the vehicles' control systems increased their output enough so that it could still deliver their payloads to orbit. Northrop Grumman said Tuesday it had taken a $71 million charge due to an anomaly with the solid rocket booster that grounded the Vulcan Centaur rocket.

So how do big payloads get to those orbits? Obviously, SpaceX is still flying but they don't have infinite capacity. The ability to put those payloads into tough orbits has really been clamped. 

Still, it's not a total shutdown. There's this:

No solids, no problem … The Space Force could launch certain missions without solid rocket boosters that carry lower mass or are bound for lower orbits. For example, the service could launch an upcoming Space Development Agency mission on Vulcan, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, Space Systems Command chief, told reporters in a separate briefing. “Essentially, if it doesn’t rely on a solid, there’s no reason why we can’t launch, and I’m committed to supporting that and keeping that mission going,” he said. The Space Force has switched four GPS III missions from a Vulcan rocket to a SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle since December 2024. 

It looks like "the final frontier" can become the next battlefronts

Seems like only the other day when every episode of Star Trek coming into the living room started with that line, "Space: the final frontier. " Buried in the shows most, if not all, episodes implied that the Starship Enterprise was key in many battles. The final frontier was another front line in another battle. And that was absolutely not unique to the Star Trek story universe. 

Space has been an environment that has been involved in every war story since about the mid-1960s, and this week, US Space Command let us know that they know the Russians have crossed the line of putting satellites intended as anti-satellite weapons in orbits that would allow them to attack other countries' satellites in orbit. 

Gen. Stephen Whiting didn’t name the system, but he was almost certainly referring to a Russian military program named Nivelir, which has launched four satellites shadowing US spy satellites owned by the National Reconnaissance Office in low-Earth orbit. After reaching orbit, the Nivelir satellites have released smaller ships to start their own maneuvers, and at least one of those lobbed a mystery object at high velocity during a test in 2020. US analysts concluded this was a projectile that could be fired at another satellite.
...
The newest suspected Nivelir satellite was launched last May from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Its launch was precisely timed for the moment Earth’s rotation spun Plesetsk underneath the orbital plane of the NRO’s USA 338 Keyhole-class optical spy satellite. Civilian missions heading to the International Space Station launch with similarly precise timing, down to the second, to intersect with the space station’s orbital plane.

The next line here is that "US officials" likened the Nivelir basic operation to the famous Russian Matryoshka dolls, those nested dolls that contain another, smaller doll, or a series of several smaller dolls inside each other. Perhaps naturally, they view this as evidence that the Russians are putting satellites in orbit that can strike US satellites on very short notice. 

“It’s evident Russia was deploying a space weapon there, and they’re putting it into an orbit where they can reach critical US national security satellites,” Whiting said Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. 

“It would be the same as if we had a new fighter, maybe the new F-47 that the Air Force is going to acquire, with a new missile system, and we decided, instead of testing that on our test ranges back in Nevada or Utah, we decided to send that airplane up to Alaska, and as Russian bombers were flying patrols somewhat near our coastline, we sent this brand new F-47 up to test near a Russian bomber,” Whiting said. “It’s just not the kind of thing we traditionally see.”

The field of using satellites to work on other satellites already on orbit, from LEO out to the Geosynchronous orbits, is getting a lot of attention these days. The first article I think I posted on this topic was on February 28, 2020 and was a mission by Northrop Grumman to send a dedicated Mission Extension Vehicle out to rendezvous with a retired (and pushed farther out into space) Intelsat communications satellite in that far orbit, push it back toward the Geosynchronous orbit and return it to service. If their intent would have been to rendezvous and dock with a functioning satellite in orbit and remove it or destroy it, the math is pretty much the same.

So far, none of the Nivelir satellites have gotten closer than a few dozen miles from their NRO counterparts. But they launched into orbits that would allow Russian commanders to approach US spy satellites with little warning. That is no coincidence, according to US officials. Launching these missions just a few minutes earlier or later would put them into a different orbital plane, making it much more difficult—perhaps impossible, depending on fuel loading—to get close to or strike one of the US spy satellites. The circumstances suggest intentionality.

“So the Russians were testing weapons near our satellites,” Whiting said. “And now we assess they’re through testing, and now they’re putting operational systems up within orbit reach of our high-value satellites. It’s evident what they’re doing, and we maintain constant vigilance watching that.”

If anyone talks about this as completely out of nowhere or unexpected, that seems naive to me. Russia has considered us to be at least a rival if not an enemy practically since the communist government was founded early in the last century. Prudence would say they should keep an eye on us. If they wanted to "start something," going first with something like these Nivelir sats to blind us makes sense. 

Whiting said Russia “has come to the conclusion that they’re a conventional arms deficit” compared to the United States and its NATO allies. Russian forces are seeking to get an asymmetric advantage anywhere they can.

“They’re looking for novel ways to try to balance that correlation of forces, to use a Soviet term,” Whiting said. “So they’re looking at nuclear, cyber, and space, and that’s why, when we read the reports over the last two years that Russia may be considering placing a nuclear ASAT [anti-satellite] on orbit, we find those just incredibly troubling.”

A space-based camera owned by the Australian company HEO captured this view of Kosmos 2558, one of Russia's suspected Nivelir satellites in low-Earth orbit. Credit: HEO

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is complete

Complete and being readied for launch in September. 

I've been following the progress of the NGRST since first hearing about it in early 2022. It was first referred to as the WFIRST, Wide Field Infra Red Space Telescope, a long but descriptive name for its mission.  It was renamed around that time in '22 the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope by NASA; the name pays tribute to the late NASA executive and first Chief Astronomer who was one of the driving forces in getting the Hubble Space Telescope program through its hurdles. 

On Tuesday (April 21), NASA had a reveal of the NGRST at their Goddard Space Flight Center along with talks by Administrator Jared Isaacman and several others.  For this:

Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, complete the final integration of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's major components on Nov. 25, 2025, joining the spacecraft and telescope assemblies in the facility's largest clean room. (Image credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya)

"I very much hope, and in fact, expect, that the most exciting science from Roman is going to be the things that we didn't expect, that we couldn't predict, but that will set the new deep questions for future missions to address," Julie McEnery, senior project scientist of Roman said during a press conference on Tuesday.

The NGRST is heading for the L2 Lagrange Point, currently the home of the James Webb Space Telescope, the European Union's Euclid infrared space telescope and a place for passing visitors, such as the Escapade mission on the way to Mars (bottom of that post). 

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

Here's where it gets wild. The September launch for the NGRST is eight months ahead of schedule, and under budget. When's the last time you heard something like that? I'm not sure I ever have.

According to NASA, Roman's primary mirror measures about 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) wide, which is similar to Hubble's. However, Roman has the ability to take images that capture a patch of the sky at least 100 times larger than Hubble can.

"Its surveying capabilities are over 1,000 times faster than Hubble, and can chart 200 times more sky in a single image," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said during the conference. "What would take Hubble 2,000 years to process, Roman can do in a year — the images it captures will be so large there is not a screen in existence large enough to show them."

To put that into context, over its approximately 35 years of service so far, Hubble has gathered about 400 terabytes of data; once fully operational at its workstation in space, Roman should be able to create 500 terabytes of data per year.

The collection of different space telescopes; the Hubble, James Webb, and more, allow ground based astronomers to choose the right instrument for the objects they want to study in the sky.

Compared to the JWST, Roman's images — taken with its aptly named Wide Field Instrument (WFI) — will be 50 times wider but more shallow, because Roman doesn't need to access the deep universe the way the JWST does. As we discussed, it can't see infrared like the JWST can and therefore would be wasted in looking too far back.

More specifically, WFI is composed of a 300-megapixel visible-to-near-infrared imaging camera and slitless spectrometer (a special tool that allows scientists to capture light dispersion of objects in a field of view). But there is something uniquely special about that shallow, panoramic view.

The wide and shallow field will be well suited to surveying space, not getting too much information from things that it can't look closer at. 

They can just survey and hope to find a cool lead to zoom in on. This offers Roman the ability to catch events that transpire very quickly, such as fast radio bursts, and increases the chances that scientists can witness remarkable supernovas, colliding neutron stars and other easy-to-miss phenomena right as they happen.

An illustration of the field of view of Roman Space Telescope vs. the Hubble Space Telescope. From the NASA Roman telescope mission website.