And just like that, the Artemis/SLS Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) is gone!

In an opening to an article about something that seems so esoteric as why this EUS exists, and tons of technical analysis, I just have to admire a writer that opens a piece like Eric Berger does at Ars Technica, starting out by entitling the article, “Ding-dong! The Exploration Upper Stage is dead”. 

In his 1961 novel The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck wrote of loss, “It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

The death of NASA’s Exploration Upper Stage today represents the inverse of that sentiment. The world of spaceflight is so much brighter now that its light has gone out. 

Eric then goes on to say that the end of the EUS came with no big announcement, no celebration, just the notice, “NASA/MSFC intends to issue a sole source contract to acquire next-generation upper stages for use in Space Launch System (SLS) Artemis IV and Artemis V from United Launch Alliance (ULA).” 

I just think his next statement should have more sarcasm and nastiness in it. He wrote: 

If the Exploration Upper Stage was anything, it was a survivor—a testament to the power of pork, and the value of political support from key southern senators in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida.

This is truth that we're going through on the entire Artemis moon landing program - as comments to the previous post dove into last night.  

The article is a good summary of the corruption in the program, characterized as just "pork (excess spending)" but that hides just who this extra money is going to. Certainly some of it went to the people working on things like building the new launch tower that the EUS requires - taller than the original Artemis launch tower (currently with the Artemis II stack on it). Some of it went to skilled workers doing complex, large (huge) jobs, but the overall picture is less of that and more of what we used to call waste, fraud, and abuse. "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine," gets morphed into, "I'll spend some money on your pet projects if you'll spend some on mine."

The original cost estimates of these projects are always instructive to look back on. Boeing’s initial contract to build the Exploration Upper Stage started at $962 million, and NASA planned to launch the rocket on the second flight of the SLS in 2021. Oops. As for the launch tower, the initial estimate for its cost was $383 million, but as of late, it was heading north of $2 billion. So we are talking billions and billions and billions of dollars for a relatively straightforward upper stage, using off-the-shelf engines and a large launch tower.

It didn’t have to be this way. Over the years, from time to time, a company like Blue Origin would show up and say, ‘Hey, NASA, we could provide you with a more powerful and low-cost alternative.’ And the space agency would just laugh and send them away with a pat on the head. 

Again, it didn't have to be that way. There seems to be a new trending meme these days that shows something like the news media and says, "you don't hate them enough." That goes for NASA, and every other agency I can think of. 

It was all staggeringly and stupidly expensive. And I just want to underscore this point: The Exploration Upper Stage did not, in any way, get NASA closer to landing the Artemis III mission on the Moon. Taxpayers were spending billions of dollars to hinder, rather than help, the United States beat China back to the Moon.

Finally, sanity has prevailed. Mere weeks into the job, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked at NASA’s convoluted plans for exploring the Moon and asked some simple questions. Like, why are we building a space station around the Moon when we, our allies, and our competitors are all much more interested in having a presence on the surface? And then, why are we spending billions of dollars on an upper stage that only exists to support that space station?

After he got the usual nonsensical answers, Isaacman made some decisions and, in a short time, rounded up political support to get Artemis moving. The expensive upper stage and its boondoggle launch tower? Gone. That space station that will be thousands of kilometers from the Moon? It’s not necessary. Instead, the space agency is putting its resources into returning to the surface of the Moon with the best available technology.

NASA should have selected the Centaur V upper stage a decade ago. The next best time was today. To his credit, Isaacman decided that vehicles to get us on the Moon are better than vehicles to enrich contractors.

The Hat with green smoke in the background strikes me as a reference to the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz," just as the title of the Ars article is a reference to the movie. Eric Berger (apparently) preferred a Texas-based explanation for the image, saying, "The Exploration Upper Stage was all hat and no cattle." Credit: Aurich Lawson | NASA

Ketchup Time

Or to borrow the famous quote from Airplane: "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue." Considering the amount of times it seems like there are no interesting, newsworthy stories, we get two between yesterday and today. 

The first story, dated yesterday, is that a key committee in congress is pushing NASA to "get moving" on developing private space stations to replace the aging International Space Station. Two months ago, a "key staffer" on Senator Ted Cruz's committee, said in a public meeting that she was “begging” NASA to release a document that would kick off the second round of a competition. 

There has been no movement since then, as NASA has yet to release this “request for proposals.” So this week, Cruz stepped up the pressure on the space agency with a NASA Authorization bill that passed his committee on Wednesday.

Regarding NASA’s support for the development of commercial space stations, the bill mandates the following, within specified periods, of passage of the law:

• Within 60 days, publicly release the requirements for commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit
• Within 90 days, release the final “request for proposals” to solicit industry responses
• Within 180 days, enter into contracts with “two or more” commercial providers for such stations

Cruz is trying to inject some sort of sense of urgency into the agency, which doesn't seem have one. Several private companies - including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Vast, and Voyager - are finalizing designs for space stations. All have expressed a desire for clarity from NASA on requirements for their space stations; requirements such as how long the space agency would like its astronauts to stay on board, the types of scientific equipment needed, and much more. 

This has got to be rough for the companies trying to put up their own space stations. Unlike just about any business you can think about starting here on the ground, there hasn't been a private industry that got space stations going.  What do they charge? Getting there is going to be expensive, but getting to space has always been expensive. It's just not going to be the only expensive part. I suppose NASA will be the best source for info that there is, but ultimately, the company leasing time on their station is going to have to make a profit and there will need to be enough demand to keep the business running. There's just no existing model to base their rates on. 

Nominally, NASA plans to have one or more of these companies operating a commercial space station in low-Earth orbit by 2030. This is the date at which the US space agency has stated it will retire the aging laboratory, some elements of which are now nearly three decades old. However, some space policy officials have questioned whether any of the companies might be ready by then.

Cruz and other senators on the committee appear to share those concerns, as their legislation extends the International Space Station’s lifespan from 2030 to 2032 (an extension must still be approved by international partners, including Russia). Moreover, the authorization bill states, “The Administrator shall not initiate the de-orbit of the ISS until the date on which a commercial low-Earth orbit destination has reached an initial operational capability.”

With this legislation, the US Senate is making clear that it views a permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit as a high priority. This version of the authorization legislation must still be passed by the full Senate and work its way through the House of Representatives.

Rendering of the first Axiom habitat module attached to the International Space Station. Credit: Axiom Space

There's only a handful of companies looking to provide this service, and the source article only interviewed a couple of them: Max Haot, CEO of Vast Space and Dr. Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space. Neither wanted a hard, fixed date to de-orbit the ISS, but were confident they can be ready to provide hardware in the time frame a 2030 de-orbit would require. 

---

The second big story is centered on Artemis and the goal of establishing a sustained human presence on the moon. 

Last week brought some big changes to the whole Artemis program and how to improve the chances of success. The changes focused largely on increasing the launch cadence of NASA’s large SLS rocket and putting a greater emphasis on lunar surface activities. The problem is that there was no mention of how to resolve the problem that created the Lunar Gateway was developed to work around. The enormous SLS is not powerful enough to bring four astronauts to the surface of the moon.  

The concept eventually turned into a space station in lunar orbit - the Gateway - an absurd compromise that would allow Artemis to get to the moon by launching to that Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), docking the astronaut carrying - Orion capsule to the Gateway, and taking another new vehicle, a lunar lander, down to the lunar surface. NASA has contracted with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop these landers, Starship and Blue Moon MK2, respectively.

As part of his announcement, Isaacman said a revamped Artemis III mission will now be used to test one or both of these landers near Earth before they are called upon to land humans on the Moon later this decade.

NASA will launch Artemis III next year, he said, to be followed by one or possibly even two lunar landings in 2028. A single landing before the end of 2028 seems like a stretch, even for glass-half-full optimists in the space community. And for there to be a chance of happening, SpaceX or Blue Origin, or both, need to get hustling quickly.

Isaacman is becoming more aware of these challenges, and one of his first moves as administrator was meeting with engineers from both SpaceX and Blue Origin to hear their ideas for accelerating NASA’s Artemis timeline. 

After this meeting on January 13, Isaacman said NASA would do what it could to facilitate the faster development of a Human Landing System: “We will challenge every requirement, clear every obstacle, delete every blocker and empower the team to deliver… and we will do it with time to spare.” 

An unstated law of the universe is that the more contractors there are involved (who all tend to be competitors of each other) the more complicated the mess becomes. 

For example, to reach the Moon during the initial Artemis missions, a lander must dock with the Orion spacecraft. That may sound routine, as spacecraft have been rendezvousing and docking in space for six decades.

However, Orion is saddled with thousands of requirements, and virtually every decision point regarding docking must be signed off on by the lander company—SpaceX or Blue Origin—as well as NASA, Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin, and the European service module contractor Airbus. Additionally, Orion has a lot of sensitive elements to work around, such as the plumes of its thrusters, and engineers have spent a lot of time working on issues such as ensuring consistent cabin pressures between vehicles. In short, it gets complicated fast.

One of the ways NASA is trying to help simplify things is to eliminate the NRHO, an elliptical orbit that comes as close as 3,000 km to the surface of the Moon with its high point as far as 70,000 km from the moon. The intent is to not build the Lunar Gateway, partly because the requirement to dock to the Gateway in that NRHO added requirements that make the mission harder. 

Why not simply have Orion meet the landers in a low-lunar orbit, similar to the Apollo Program? This would allow the landers to consume less propellant on the way down and back up from the Moon. The reason is that, due to a number of poor decisions over the last 15 years, the Orion spacecraft’s service module does not have the performance needed to reach low-lunar orbit and then return safely to Earth. Hence the use of a near-rectilinear halo orbit.

However, a research paper published in July 2022 by NASA engineers at Johnson Space Center analyzes several other circular and elliptical orbits that Orion could reach with its present propulsive capabilities. Out of this analysis came another useful orbit with a name that just rolls off the tongue: Elliptical Polar Orbit with Coplanar Line of Apsides, or EPO/CoLA.

The source article goes into a few paragraphs on whether both lander contractors, SpaceX and Blue Origin can get moving fast enough to meet this improved schedule. Here's where the years of watching these things being developed makes me think that if you need good and fast SpaceX is generally the safest option to go with. 

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.

This isn't wrong so much as it isn't the full picture and Handmer points that out. In the upper right, that $31.6 billion cost doesn't include the SLS. Orion and SLS have burned through nearly $100b - so far.

Now that the big one is mostly over with

Yesterday's adventure with getting Radio Frequency cables shoved up my circulatory system into my heart didn't go quite as smoothly as hoped but was far better than possible "worst case" scenarios that played off and on in my mind.  

I had expected to come home last night but instead spent the night in the hospital due to some excessive bleeding in a couple of the areas that cables or IV fluids went through. Which turned in bruises as the day went by.

So with the combination of less good sleep due to being in a hospital and general raggedness from the collection of bumps and bruises, I'll take tonight off, too. This is just a little note to keep anyone interested up to date.  

 

 

I Can't NOT comment on this story

Especially since suggesting this one week ago tonight, February 24th. 

NASA is targeting April 1st for the launch of Artemis II. 

NASA has fixed the problem that forced the removal of the rocket for the Artemis II mission from its launch pad last month, but it will be a couple of weeks before officials are ready to move the vehicle back into the starting blocks at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The biggest joke of a launch system launching on April Fool's Day is just too good to be true.

Screen Capture from NextSpaceflight. Image credit NextSpaceflight.com.

One of my favorite old jokes is from Jeff Foxworthy, who made a career out of "talk like a redneck" jokes. The joke was based on the word "sensuous". Jeff turned it into "since you is up, would you get me a beer?" 

So what? That turns into someone saying to the Artemis II vehicle "since you is" in the VAB, how 'bout we fix another few things.  More details in the Ars Technica article on this.  

And I'mma bet nobody who reads this would have thought about that "since you is in the VAB" line. 

Looks like congress (and NASA?) are trying to hold SpaceX back

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says he's “encouraged” that Congress is considering legislation to prevent NASA from spending more than 50 percent of its launch funding on any single provider. 

The first thing to say is that Bridenstine isn't part of NASA anymore, he's now a lobbyist for United Launch Alliance or ULA. Of course, he wouldn't say that here, he just says pending legislation will protect the industry and the smaller companies. 

“America succeeds in space when American companies compete, innovate, and grow,” former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote on LinkedIn. “I’m encouraged to see Congress taking meaningful steps to strengthen the industrial base that underpins both our civil and national security space missions.” 
...
“Congress is reinforcing competition and protecting the small and medium-sized manufacturers, propulsion companies, avionics developers, and suppliers that make up the backbone of America’s space enterprise,” Bridenstine wrote. “Competition lowers costs, accelerates innovation and provides redundancy.”

The legislation Bridenstine is praising is being credited to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). It's a new provision that appears in the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2025, and Cruz is planning a "markup hearing" for the legislation on Wednesday (3/4). 

It's hard to not see this as being aimed at SpaceX just for being so far ahead of the other launch providers. SpaceX launches the only capsule capable of flying astronauts to the International Space Station, Dragon, as well both cargo vehicles currently allowed to fly to the ISS, Cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus craft.  SpaceX has been contracted by Northrop Grumman to launch their Cygnus cargo vessels until Firefly gets Grumman's replacement Antares rocket qualified. The story doesn't end there. In case you haven't noticed, SpaceX has launched lunar landing missions for smaller companies as well as a majority of NASA’s science missions. In other words, NASA flops on the ground without them.

What Bridenstine did not say on social media is that his consulting firm, The Artemis Group, netted $990,000 from United Launch Alliance in 2025, according to public records. This was nearly a third of all revenue raised by his lobbying last year, a total of $3,385,000. United Launch Alliance was formerly a major competitor to SpaceX in the US launch industry. 

Interestingly, the Senate’s provision targets launch revenues but has been said to exclude space transportation services (such as the human landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin). 

Another former NASA official, Phil McAlister, replied to Bridenstine’s post that it was “disappointing” to see him attach his name to the provision. Instead of promoting competition, McAlister said the new language is actually anti-competitive.

“What it supports is using the political process to funnel money to favored companies with inferior products,” said McAlister, who directed commercial space at NASA from 2005 to 2024. “Competition is a full and open match between companies where the best company wins. If this legislation passes as is, it ensures that the best company will not win. Instead the second or third place company will get an award because they could not compete and win fairly. And the country will see that superior performance does not win, having the best lobbyist does.”

McAlister and other critics of the provision say no one wants a launch monopoly and that NASA has sought to on-ramp new providers through programs such as its venture class services program that allocates payloads to riskier providers. However, they note that, as United Launch Alliance has struggled to bring its Vulcan rocket online over the past five years, SpaceX has stepped up to keep the International Space Station flying and to launch critical missions like NASA’s $4 billion Europa Clipper spacecraft.

It's an interesting footnote that ULA had a monopoly earlier in the company's life; they were formed in 2006 as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the two giant rocket companies of the time. SpaceX came along and developed the key technology that everyone knew was needed - reusability - but nobody else committed the engineering time and effort to achieve it. The first successful landing of a Falcon 9 was in December 2015, just over a decade ago, and now they've landed boosters for reuse over 600 times and reflown boosters on missions 527 times. Both numbers get revised several times per week. 

Now United Launch Alliance must compete not only with SpaceX but a newer generation of more nimble companies building reusable rockets, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Firefly, and Stoke Space. NASA has made it clear to these companies that it is eager to buy launch services at competitive prices from them.

Bridenstine was generally regarded as a good administrator at NASA; he was in the big seat in May of '20 when SpaceX returned manned spaceflight to the US. On the other hand, once he left NASA, he's become critical of them and Elon Musk. He joined the board of directors of Viasat, a SpaceX competitor. As I look over his history in space leadership, I think that at a total look, he's done well. 

It's just that right now, it looks like nothing but the DC Revolving Door, where senior officials go back and forth between government positions and industry.  He's getting paid by ULA to attack the competition so he's doing it. Like all whores, he'll put out for whoever is paying. 

Jim Bridenstine (L) and Elon Musk in happier times (2020). Image credit NASA

It's likely to be a touch and go week

I've talked about this before, but I've had pretty frequent and essentially completely asymptomatic atrial fibrillation issue, first noticed last April. After a handful of additional tests through the year, I saw the cardiac electrophysiologist I was referred to at the start of last December. The Farapulse procedure he'll do to burn out areas of my heart that are causing the improper heartbeat will be this Wednesday, March 4th. I have a time to report for the procedure although the hospital considers that "preliminary and subject to change" until they call me Tuesday afternoon. 

I consider being able to sit here at the computer for blogging to be at risk for both Tuesday and Wednesday with Wednesday being "almost certainly" a day off. It's really a WAG. There's at least a dozen "what ifs" that can affect those so it doesn't make much sense to speculate. 

I also have to get some lab work done tomorrow but that should have no effect on things here. 

The part I know the least about is Wednesday after the procedure. The doctor's office said to plan to spend Wednesday night in the hospital but the handful of videos I've watched all pretty much say people go home afterwards. It's hard to know if they just want me prepared to spend the night if I have to and details like 20% go home the day of the procedure or if it's more like 80%. I guess I'll find out.  Back in '16 was the last time I spent the night in a hospital and while I went home the next afternoon, I was pretty well doped up for a couple of days after that. 

I don't know how restricted my movements and life will be as I heal.

Image from a Boston Scientific advertisement for the Farapulse system. This is the thing they're going to shove up a blood vessel from my thigh all the way up to my heart.

Small Space News Story Roundup 78

Because small news is better than snow news. Or something like that 

Rocket Lab's first Neutron launch slips to Q4 

Back in November, Rocket Lab announced the first launch of their Neutron rocket - closer to a competitor to Falcon 9 than their Electron rocket - would slip out in schedule, quoting mid-year or summer here on the east coast, where their Wallops Island (Virginia) launch facilities are. They just pushed it out again.

As part of its quarterly earnings guidance update on Thursday, Rocket Lab provided a new launch target for the medium-lift Neutron rocket. Following the failure of first stage tank during testing, Neutron’s first launch is now targeted for “Q4 2026,” the company said. 

I'll make that Q4 or later. 

Let's be honest. Getting a new rocket tested and to the first launch is full of difficulties and I'm sure those are accompanied by learning things that have never come up before. Eric Berger of Ars Technica (this is from their weekly Rocket Report) reports:

In its news release regarding the fourth quarter of 2025 earnings, the company said it completed successful qualification for Neutron’s thrust structure and entered the qualification phase for the interstage, and successfully qualified Neutron’s Hungry Hippo fairing and delivered it to the Assembly and Integration Complex in Virginia. I hate to do it, but I’m afraid that I am compelled to invoke Berger’s Law for rockets on this one, which states, “If a rocket is predicted to make its debut in Q4 of a calendar year, and that quarter is six or more months away, the launch will be delayed.” Since its inception in 2022, the law has been undefeated. 

This is difficult to say, but it looks like Artemis II will fly before Vulcan can

Not really big news - you've probably realized this already - but think about it this way: it means SLS is better than Vulcan. Wait!... SLS is better than another rocket? Artemis II (flying on SLS) is widely considered off until April at the earliest, and that includes that April is the only month on that calendar I've been showing (for example) that has 6 possible launch days. Those are the 1st, 3rd through 6th and the 30th.  

Meanwhile, in the post about Vulcan being grounded (two days ago as I type), the US Space Force officer in charge of the project, Col. Eric Zarybnisky said, “This is going to be a many-months process as we work through the exact technical issue that happened and the corrective actions we need to make sure, we need to take, to make sure this doesn’t happen again,”

The calendar of possible Artemis II launch days doesn't go past April 30, but a few days in early May seem to be likely as well as days in June and July. I'd honestly be surprised if Vulcan can fly before the fourth quarter.

An anomalous plume, top right, is visible from one of the Vulcan’s solid rocket motors during the fourth Vulcan launch on Feb. 12, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

NASA Cancels Artemis III Return to the Moon

And more. 

In a live video presentation today, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a sweeping reorganization of the Artemis program to return to the moon. The changes include reassigning the Artemis III mission from the first moon landing to a set of tests in Earth Orbit, which instead moves the landing out to Artemis IV - or possibly farther. A goal is to increase the cadence of missions and it includes using funding from the cancellation of an expensive rocket upper stage. 

Isaacman is seeking to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs.  

A key message in the talk was the absurdly low pace of the current program to get to the moon, compared to the pace NASA worked at in the Apollo program. 

During past exploration missions, from Mercury through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program, NASA has launched humans on average about once every three months. It has been nearly 3.5 years since Artemis I launched.

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

Yes, it actually mentions 3.5 years since Artemis I even though that flight was uncrewed; not one astronaut on board. How do we get a pace from one launch?  Do we count from completely different vehicles, like the Crew-12 launch, or from the last shuttle flight in 2011?   

“NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” 

Congress pushed an Artemis IV and V onto NASA, can Boeing even build those two in time?  Much like how temporary Administrator Sean Duffy said back in December, "Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III are all $4 billion a launch, $4 billion a launch. At $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program. It just, I don’t think that exists."

The changes announced today include:

• Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
• Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
• Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
• Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
• Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
• NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
• NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

The goal is to standardize the SLS rocket into a single configuration to make it as reliable as possible and to launch it as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launch crew to the Moon, perhaps through Artemis V since Congress has mandated a IV and V, or perhaps longer.

As is often the case, Eric Berger at Ars Technica claims inside sources in NASA. He has pretty good record with his predictions, and here says the sources said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

Which leaves Boeing as the one that has the most to win or lose by cranking the changes to SLS. The first item in that list is the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, which Boeing is contracted to develop. They released a positive-sounding message. 

“Boeing is a proud partner to the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” said Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security president and CEO, in the news release. “The SLS core stage remains the world’s most powerful rocket stage, and the only one that can carry American astronauts directly to the moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs.”

From our viewpoint, over a half a century past the Apollo years, and many of us having watched the development from Project Mercury forward, the way NASA implemented the first trip to the moon is an excellent lesson in planning to complete something everyone says is impossible. Like a longtime jogger training for their first marathon, they just kept going a step farther every mission. Apollo 7 was a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft, Apollo 8 tested the spacecraft in lunar orbit, Apollo 9 was a LEO rendezvous with the lunar lander as if it had launched from the moon, and Apollo 10 tested the lunar lander descending to the Moon, without touching down, and getting back to the Command Module in lunar orbit.

With its previous Artemis template, NASA skipped the steps taken by Apollo 7, 9, and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this leap from Artemis II—a crewed lunar flyby of the Moon testing only the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft—to Artemis III and a full-on lunar landing was enormous and risky.

A step too far.  

Isaacman makes reference in his message about not having enough missions to develop muscle memory of all the things they need to do.  Before today, the plan before the landing was one lunar orbital mission. That's it - the next mission was the landing. The new plan adds one mission - for the Orion capsule to rendezvous and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit. Yeah, it's true going from one mission to two is doubling the amount of practice that's possible, it's just the question of whether that's enough; or even if it's worth doing. 

For final words, I bow to Eric Berger: 

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

In April 2024, Ars reported that some senior NASA officials were considering an Earth-orbit rendezvous between Orion and Starship as a means to buy down risk for a lunar landing. NASA ultimately punted on the idea before it was revived by Isaacman this month.

Additionally, in October 2024, Ars offered a guide to saving the “floundering” Artemis program by canceling the Block 1B upgrade for the SLS rocket, replacing its upper stage with a Centaur V, and canceling the Lunar Gateway. This would free up an estimated $2 billion annually to focus on accelerating a lunar landing, the publication estimated.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

First-time Milestones for the Artemis III Mission prior to Feb. 27, 2025. (Image credit: NASA Aerospace Advisory Panel)

EDIT 2/25 at 10:30 AM: To correct the error pointed out by commenter Brewer

US Space Force grounds ULA's Vulcan

In the least surprising story in a while, the US Space Force has halted all National Security missions slated for ULA's Vulcan rocket for the foreseeable future due to the solid rocket booster failure that occurred in the February 12 launch of the fourth Vulcan mission. Out of the four missions, two have been affected by what appears to be the same sort of failure if not identical failures.

Although the failure dramatically changed the magnitude and the direction of the Solid Rocket Booster's (SRB's) thrust, the control systems controlling the rocket were able to compensate for that change to get the mission's payloads to their respective proper orbits. Nobody approaches 100% confident that will always work out positively if more SRBs have the same sort of nozzle failure.

"This is going to be a many-months process as we work through the exact technical issue that happened and the corrective actions we need to make sure, we need to take, to make sure this doesn’t happen again," Space Force Col. Eric Zarybnisky said during a media round robin during the Air Force Association’s Warfare Symposium on Feb. 25, as reported by Breaking Defense.
...
“We are going to work through this anomaly until we launch again on Vulcan,” Zarybnisky told reporters ... "Until this anomaly is solved we will not be launching Vulcan missions."

On February 12, ULA's Vulcan rocket climbs towards orbit in a shower of sparks from its solid rocket booster. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.

While the focus on national security missions is easy to grasp, an important application that's covered by the phrase may not come immediately to your mind: Space Force is responsible for the GPS constellation, a utility that touches nearly everyone, and the stewards of the satellite navigation network are eager to populate the fleet with the latest and greatest spacecraft.

Aside from routine replacement of GPS Satellites as they age and start to degrade there's more to consider. 

Another motivation is to replace the oldest active GPS satellites, some of which have been in space since the late 1990s, with newer satellites better suited for the modern world. Beginning in 2005, the military has deployed GPS spacecraft with additional civilian signals for aviation and interoperability with Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites. At the same time, the military introduced a new military-grade signal called M-code, designed for warfare.

M-code is more resistant to jamming, and its encryption makes it more difficult to spoof, a kind of attack that makes receivers trust fake navigation signals over real ones. The upgrade also allows the military to deny an adversary access to GPS during conflict, while maintaining the ability for US and allied forces to use M-code. 

Interference with GPS satellites is on the rise, particularly in the trouble spots that have probably popped into your mind already. Russia and Ukraine, for example, are the easy ones, but the middle east and rest of the eastern Mediterranean are trouble spots, as well. 

Recent high-profile examples of GPS interference include an incident in 2024 that resulted in a fatal airline crash, killing 38 people. The International Air Transport Association reported a 500 percent increase in GPS spoofing incidents in 2024.

For these reasons, the Space Force is prioritizing the launch of new GPS satellites better equipped to repel all of this jamming and spoofing. Currently, 26 of the 31 operational GPS satellites carry M-code capability, enough for global coverage with little margin. But just 19 of the 31 satellites broadcast the higher-power civilian L5 signal, which is more resistant to interference than the civilian signals onboard satellites launched before 2010.

The loss of ULA as a launch provider is going to affect the ability to get GPS satellites into orbit. It's also not a new problem. 

In a little more than a year, the Space Force has launched three GPS satellites in relatively quick succession on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. All three were originally booked to launch on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. The first of these three newest GPS satellites, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, was declared complete and ready for launch in August 2021. Three years later, with ULA’s Vulcan rocket still not ready, the Space Force decided to switch it to a SpaceX launcher. 

In addition to the GPS satellites, there are more and different Vulcan military launches scheduled for this year. All of their statuses are unclear. One that's particularly notable is a missile-warning satellite, which is one of the Space Force’s most expensive satellites ever, at over $4 billion. It was supposed to launch on a Vulcan rocket in the coming months and be parked in geosynchronous orbit to detect the heat plumes of ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

Switching over to a Falcon 9 is simple for the GPS satellites because they've already done the hard part, developing the interface between the satellite and booster. For payloads like this missile-warning sat., unless it has a common interface with other payloads, they'll have to develop that. 

We finally know which member of Crew-11 had the medical emergency

From the first mention of the medical emergency on Crew-11 until well after the splash down, there was a ton of speculation about who the crew member was. From what I've read, both in comments here and on other sites, the most common speculation was that the only woman on the crew, Zena Cardman, was pregnant. 

If you'll recall, when the issue first showed up, Zena Cardman and crew mate Mike Fincke were scheduled for a spacewalk on January 8th when the medical emergency was revealed. From my article when the story first went public:

The story broke in the last 24 hours that first, a scheduled spacewalk for this morning (Jan. 8 at 8AM EST) with two astronauts from Crew-11 was being cancelled due to a medical issue with one of the two. Today, NASA decided to do an evacuation of the crew from the ISS while being careful to say it was not a medical emergency. 

One of the aspects rarely mentioned was that with Cardman and Fincke cancelling the spacewalk, it seemed pretty obvious that one of those two was the one with the medical emergency. 

The rumors turned out to be flipped. Today, NASA revealed the Mike Fincke was the one with the emergency.  Mike was the Crew-11 pilot and commander of the ISS' Expedition 74. He requested that NASA identify him, which removes the HIPAA concerns, and posted this to X:

You'll note that at no place does he actually say what the medical condition was or is. I'm not going to imply that he was pregnant, but it was something he doesn't feel comfortable talking about. 

The exact nature of his ailment remains undisclosed, but Fincke's statement clarified that the issue, while not considered an emergency, required "advanced medical imaging not available on the space station." As a result, Fincke and his crewmates — NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Japanese space agency astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov — returned to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon "Endeavour" on Jan. 15, about a month earlier than originally planned.

If I missed work due to something like an inguinal hernia, I probably wouldn't care if it was widely known, but that's as close as I'll get to speculating about what happened. I just wish him the best in healing and getting back to life as normal.

As the days slip away,

As the days slip by, it seems as if the Artemis II mission slides farther out in time more than one day per day.  That mostly has to do with there only being five or six days per month that it can achieve the required orbit, so if it can't launch by March 11th, for example, it just got a possible 21 day delay - it can't get to the moon launching on March 12th, 13th or any day until April 1st. (Coincidentally, what a great day for the big Artemis mission! April Fool's Day!) 

In Sunday's post, we related that they were supposed to roll the Artemis II SLS back today, but that was delayed by the little piece of the "Bomb Cyclone" dumping snow in the Northeast that we're getting here.

Due to weather, NASA now is targeting early Wednesday, Feb. 25, to roll the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis II off the launch pad and back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Cold temperatures and high winds are expected Tuesday, and rolling on Feb. 25, gives teams enough time to complete preparations at the launch pad that were limited today by high winds in the area.

The approximately 4-mile trek is expected to take up to 12 hours. Once back in the VAB, teams will immediately begin work to install platforms to access the area of the helium flow issue.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is getting back to their cadence of close to 3 launches per week, with the launch of Starlink 6-110 from Cape Canaveral at 6:04 PM. (That video starts at T-30 seconds) We replayed a common goof we make here, we know the launch is coming, we know the time, and have some reminders set, but we'll end up forgetting about it until we hear the first rumble of the engines.  By that time, it's always so far downrange that we won't see it from the yard (unless it's at night, cloud free or low clouds in the direction we'll look). 

Neither was the case when the sound got here. First thing I did was look up at a clock and could see it looked like the time I expected to hear the rumble, around 3 minutes after liftoff, and by the time I pulled up YouTube, it was just getting ready for entry burn (around 6 mins after launch) I watched until the booster landed on the recovery drone, Just Read The Instructions. This was the 10th launch of Booster 1092, so "like new" or whatever the used car dealers say. About an hour after the launch SpaceX said all the satellites were delivered into orbit nominally. 

I wonder what the probability is of used rocket dealers becoming a real thing? Unlike cars, they require a LOT of specialized equipment to use them, so maybe used rocket dealers would offer launch services, like"buy the rocket, use our pad and recovery drone!" 

SpaceX Falcon B1092 rocket lifts off from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 6-110 mission, Feb. 24, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

This may be my oddest post ever

But it's still better than last year's.

Last year's post was an awkward one about having forgotten it was this blog's 15th blogiversary, but it was almost a full month late. I posted it on March 15. This one isn't that late, only a little. My 16th anniversary was Saturday the 21st. 

My first post was February 21, 2010, which was a Sunday. Since dates move around, instead of celebrating on February 21, I've just used the last Sunday in February. That would have been yesterday, so I even missed the make believe anniversary. 

So let's do the obligatory thing;

Copyright Adobe Stock, as you can see...

As always, I thank you for stopping by. It's hard to know how many people stop by to read by Blogger's stats, part of that is real differences in people stopping by but my gut feel is that most of the "funny business" isn't real. Check out this plot of traffic for the last 90 days. 

Which is more realistic, the peaks up above 20,000 views per day or the ends mostly under 5000? I'll bet those days with over 10,000 views are some sort of either cyber attacks or something nefarious. At random times, I'll get comments that are obviously spam - not related to the post at all, links to other sites, usually outside the US. Stuff like that. I generally delete those but leave the "deleted" message in hopes that the ones doing it will realize the comment will only be there a few hours. 

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So let me pass on something that I think many people will find interesting, especially hams and broader radio hobbyists. We have just gone through at least 1-1/2 days without one visible sunspot. I first saw this yesterday afternoon, and we don't know when or where the next spot will show up. This is the first time without a visible spot in four years. There's a hole in the sun's atmosphere and we've had minor (G1) geomagnetic storms off and on since yesterday, caused by the solar wind getting here both faster and stronger. 

Both of these things are evidence that cycle 25 is decreasing toward solar minimum. That's not to say we're virtually there, that's likely to be four years away (plus or minus something) just to say that it's almost certain that the "good days" of the cycle are going to be less frequent going forward 

The more things change...

As the modern saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Around 8:00 PM this evening I went back to the one of the cameras formerly named Lab Padre (now named Avid) to get a look at the Artemis II vehicle, only to find it seemed to be in exactly the same place as it was 30-ish hours ago. Is it being rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building? Not yet, but they say it will. The NASA blog for the mission says it will be rolling back on Tuesday - Feb. 24. A time has not been set. 

Maybe you've heard the version that goes the more things change the more they stay insane. Seems like it goes well if those things all together are named Space Launch System. 

The NASA post goes on to say:

On Feb. 21, managers decided to remove recently installed platforms before high winds descend on the Space Coast, which poised teams for rollback while discussions about the issue were ongoing. Returning to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy is required to determine the cause of the issue and fix it. 

Teams are reviewing the exact time to begin the approximately 4 mile, multi-hour trek.

The quick work to begin preparations for rolling the rocket and spacecraft back to the VAB potentially preserves the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks. 

Wait... "Potentially preserves the April launch window?" That implies they've given up on March already. 

Screen capture of the Artemis II vehicle on pad 39B, from Avid Space's Cape Cam    

But on a more pleasant note, Sweet Little Wife (SLW) and I went outside last night to watch the 33rd flight of SpaceX's B1067. The liftoff time was changed over the evening from the original 9:18 PM EST to 10:47 PM so it was quiet in the neighborhood. We watched until a minute or two after the stage separation and were back in the house to easily be able to watch the booster landing and earning its B1067-33 designation.

Like virtually all Falcon 9 launches it was almost boringly perfect.  Unlike the vast majority of launches we got a continuous engine rumble from just after dropping the first stage until well after it touched down on ASOG (A Shortfall Of Gravitas). The rumble resonates in our patio doors and other hardware, so we literally hear our house shaking. That sound was around 10 minutes after launch, so it had to be coming from closer to ASOG than the launch pad. Much closer to ASOG.

At the risk of repeating myself too often, I remember when they weren't sure they could get 10 flights out of a booster and that keeps pushing to bigger and bigger numbers. The current goal is 40. 

I can't wait to hear how long the doors rattle after Starship launches from the Cape.

"This Just In..." Artemis 2 may be OFF the schedule

This morning (Saturday, Feb. 21), NASA announced that it had detected a problem with Artemis II's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that has put the Friday launch in jeopardy.

The issue, a helium-flow interruption in the vehicle's upper stage, was noticed overnight from Friday (Feb. 20) to Saturday. It will likely require a rollback from the pad to KSC's huge Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said via X on Saturday. 

"This will almost assuredly impact the March launch window," Isaacman said.

This comes less than 24 hours after the press conference celebrating how well the Wet Dress Rehearsal of Artemis II took place concluding with the launch being assigned and listed on Next Spaceflight. At the moment, it has been pushed to April 1st at 6:24PM. 

It's worth noticing that this helium flow issue was in the upper stage of the SLS rocket while the majority of the WDR test completed Thursday was to the booster or core stage of the SLS. I don't know if this system gets activated during the WDR or not.  

So how about a new world record? 

SpaceX to launch Booster 1067 on its 33rd flight tonight

Tonight at 9:18 PM EST (0218 UTC) SpaceX will launch a batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites for their second-generation high-speed low earth orbit internet satellite constellation. 

Yes, this is B1067, the fleet leader with 32 missions after a 75 day turnaround from its last record-setting flight. The booster landing will be on A Shortfall Of Gravitas or ASOG.

The first stage of B1067 stands on the ocean-based droneship "Just Read the Instructions" after performing its record 32nd propulsive landing on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX - with minor edits to exposure - SiG)

After successful WDR, Artemis II is on the schedule

Last night, at the conclusion of the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for the Artemis II mission, they completed the critical last four minutes until the vehicle's control software terminated the count for the second time and the vehicle correctly aborted the launch. That's almost two sequential WDRs in one day.

This is a massive success, far better than the prior attempt at the WDR, and senior managers had enough confidence to move forward with plans to launch four astronauts around the Moon. The mission is currently on the Next Spaceflight schedule for two weeks from tonight, Friday, March 6 at 8:29 PM EST, 0129 UTC. The top level NASA administrator on the mission credited the success to the fixes carried out after that Feb. 2nd attempt.

“For the most part, those fixes all performed pretty well yesterday,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s exploration programs. “We were able to fully fuel the SLS rocket within the planned timeline.”
...
“We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt,” Glaze said. “I am going to caveat that. I want to be open, transparent with all of you that there is still pending work. There’s work, a lot of forward work, that remains.”

This is probably a good place to repeat a graphic shown before, which shows the five or six days available per month after accounting for the position of the Moon in its orbit, the flight’s trajectory, and the various thermal and lighting constraints.

It's important to realize that despite the fact that they might have just had the most successful WDR of every (all both) SLS mission, I don't think we can automatically conclude that the new seals will work in two weeks. Teflon seals can be fussy. Fickle. They worked better than any other set of seals in every other test, and it would be nice to be able to count on them, but I'm not sure we can assume they're perfect. There are no plans to go in and replace them again before launch. If they fail on March 6, maybe they can be replaced to try again before the 11th.

Meanwhile, the Artemis II astronauts, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, with mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, entered NASA’s standard two-week-long preflight medical quarantine on Friday at their home base in Houston.

NASA's Space Launch System with the America 250 logos on the SRBs on Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

NASA Admin releases report on Starliner

We're approaching one year from the much delayed return of the Starliner astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. It ended a 2-week mission that turned into more like nine months all because of the horrific performance of the Boeing Starliner capsule, and I find it interesting that both Butch and Suni retired before the end of 2025. 

Today, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman released a long-awaited summary of the mission. 

The headline is that NASA has classified the Starliner mission as a “Type A” mishap. That level is the most serious on the scale that goes from A down to D and one without a letter but that's minor.  The definition at the linked page (.pdf) is the direct cost of mission failure and property damage greater than or equal to $2,000,000 with two other conditions aimed at aircraft mishaps rather than spacecraft.

As part of the announcement, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sent an agency-wide letter that recognized the shortcomings of both Starliner’s developer, Boeing, as well as the space agency itself. Starliner flew under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in which the agency procures astronaut transportation services to the International Space Station.

“We are taking ownership of our shortcomings,” Isaacman said.

It's a big departure from the talk last summer, as we went from the mission up to the station, through the decision to send the two back down on Crew-9's Crew Dragon - by cutting Crew-9 down to two in order to have seats on the Dragon for Butch and Suni to come back down on.  We had months of Boeing saying things like, “We just had an outstanding day” and their “confidence remains high” in the Starliner safely returning the two to Earth. Some of those statements have been wiped from Boeing's public-facing records.

In recognition of NASA taking ownership of its shortcomings, Isaacman went farther.

The letter and a subsequent news conference on Thursday afternoon were remarkable for the amount of accountability taken by NASA. Moreover, at Isaacman’s direction, the space agency released an internal report, comprising 311 pages, that details findings from the Program Investigation Team that looked into the Starliner flight.

“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware,” Isaacman wrote in his letter to the NASA workforce. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.”

Within weeks of their arrival back on Earth, the crew gave an interview in which they described exactly what they encountered and it was truly scary. Yes, there were moments when they were concerned about whether or not they would survive. 

The short version of what happened is that management - both NASA and Boeing - minimized every problem Starliner had, going back to its second orbital flight test in May 2022, two years before the manned flight. There were failures that should have raised huge red flags that systems on Starliner were seriously bad. 

However, in his letter to NASA employees, Isaacman said the NASA and Boeing investigations into these failures did not push hard enough to find the root cause of the thruster failures.

“The investigations often stopped at the proximate cause, treated it with a fix, or accepted the issue as an unexplained anomaly,” Isaacman said. “In some cases, the proximate-cause diagnosis itself was incorrect due to insufficient rigor in following the data to its logical conclusion.” 

This is about as good a description as you'll get of an arthritic, brainless and useless bureaucracy. The fact that Isaacman recognizes this is a very good sign. There's a lot of hard work to come before they can become a useful, solid engineering team.

At this time, there's another test flight planned for Starliner. Currently expected to be uncrewed and as soon as April. Asked about this, let's Isaacman isn't sure it's ready. He sees need for lots of more work. 

“We are committed to helping Boeing work through this problem, to remediate the technical challenges, to fully understand the risk associated with this vehicle, and to try and minimize it to the greatest extent possible,” he said. “And if we can implement a lot of the report recommendations, then we will fly again.”

For their part, Boeing says they're committed to being a commercial crew mission provider. 

Starliner docked to the ISS during June 2024's flight. Image credit: NASA

Elon Musk talks about plans to build catapult to launch from moon

Now that SpaceX has bought the AI company xAI, it seems that SpaceX is leading them into the often-talked about solution to the enormous power problems with AI - data centers in space.

Last week, SpaceX founder Elon Musk advised workers at the newly acquired company xAI that he wants to set up a factory on the moon to build artificial intelligence (AI) satellites. And he called for a colossal catapult on the lunar surface to fling them into space.

"My estimate is that, within two to three years, the lowest-cost way to generate AI compute will be in space," Elon Musk wrote in a Feb. 2 update that announced SpaceX's acquisition of xAI.

While launching satellites with existing technologies like the Falcon family or the Starship, Musk envisions something launched by the planned human outposts on the moon. Factories on the moon could take advantage of lunar resources to produce the satellites, as well as to build mass drivers on the moon to hurl the satellites into their orbits. 

"By using an electromagnetic mass driver and lunar manufacturing," he wrote, "it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year [terawatts per year] of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the sun’s power." 
...
Musk isn't the first person to propose the use of mass drivers — which are basically railguns — on the moon. He's following in the footsteps of space visionary Gerard O'Neill, who floated the idea back in 1974.

Railguns may not be as familiar as coil guns, which are numbers of coils aligned along a straight path with the power to each coil pulsed in time to add energy into a payload traveling along the controlled path as the payload reaches each coil. O'Neill worked on the design of mass drivers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with colleague Henry Kolm and a group of student volunteers to construct their first mass driver prototype. They eventually concluded that a mass driver only 520 feet long could boost material off the lunar surface.

Artist's illustration of an electromagnetic mass driver launching a payload from the surface of the moon. (Image credit: General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems)

You may have heard of the existing electromagnetic aircraft launch system, now operating reliably on the U.S. Navy's Gerald R. Ford nuclear aircraft carrier. It's the same basic technology as a mass driver.

How far out in the future is a scenario like this? It's going to require a largely self-sufficient colony on the moon that operates at all times - not shutting down for the (two week) night. I'd guess such a colony would be underground for a number of reasons. Starship is the only vehicle being talked about that has capacity to deliver the kinds of numbers of tons of payloads that it would require to build and support such a colony, with the ability to deliver 100 metric tons at a time to the lunar surface. While I like the way Musk refers to "... within two to three years, the lowest-cost way to generate AI compute will be in space," I'd love to see that, but it doesn't look like anything is moving that fast. I think predicting 2035 is going out on a limb.

I stand by my opinion that AI is the biggest hype episode in world history. Everyone acts like there will be one winner and they'll be the one.

A small Artemis II story - next WDR is on NOW

Because I really can't find anything new to write about.

NASA to fuel up for a full Wet Dress Rehearsal until Friday, Feb. 20

The headline is basically the story.  We all knew it was going to happen just not the official date. 

The agency plans to load more than 700,000 gallons (2.65 million liters) of liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) into Artemis 2's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Thursday (Feb. 19), wrapping up a crucial two-day-long test called a wet dress rehearsal.

This will be the second wet dress for Artemis 2, the first crewed moon mission since the Apollo era. The first rehearsal, which began on Jan. 31, ended prematurely due to an LH2 leak detected during propellant loading.

There was an attempt to repeat the test last week (Feb. 12) that didn't actually pass, but enough indications of improvement were present to make the team think they made progress. 

Artemis 2 teams replaced two seals in the aftermath of the first wet dress. Then, on Feb. 12, they partially filled SLS' tanks with LH2 in a "confidence test" designed to assess the efficacy of that fix. A problem with ground support equipment restricted the flow of LH2 during that test, but the team nonetheless was "able to gain confidence in several key objectives."

Artemis 2 team members soon tied the ground-support issue to a filter, which they replaced over this past weekend. They now feel ready to conduct another wet dress rehearsal, which will run through the key operations leading up to launch.

The test countdown clock officially started this evening, Feb. 17 at 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 UTC) and is scheduled to run until approximately 12:30 a.m., Friday, Feb. 20 (2530 UTC).  

The full Moon is seen behind the Space Launch System rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Yeah, I ran this picture the other day, but it's pretty. NASA/Ben Smegelsky

The next private company to send a crew to the ISS

If you've been following the space news to any degree, it's probably not going to surprise you to read that California startup, Vast, will be the next company to send a crew of four up to the International Space Station. 

NASA announced on Thursday (Feb. 12) that it has picked Long Beach-based Vast to conduct the sixth private astronaut flight to the International Space Station (ISS), which will launch no earlier than summer 2027.

The selection is a big deal for Vast and for NASA, which wants private companies to take the reins from the ISS when it's decommissioned in 2030.

There have been four other private astronaut crews to visit the ISS and all have been from Houston-based Axiom space. Axiom is also scheduled for a fifth mission to the ISS, currently scheduled for No Earlier Than (NET) January 2027. Axiom's missions have all been flown on SpaceX hardware; Crew Dragon capsules lifted by Falcon 9 boosters. Vast's mission will fly the same hardware, which has got to be good training. We don't know who will be flying for Vast; they have to choose a crew and get them approved by NASA before they'll be named. 

Flying the same missions isn't the only similarity between Axiom and Vast.

Vast and Axiom have similar long-term ambitions: Both companies aim to establish and operate a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO), and both see organizing tourist flights to the ISS as a step toward achieving that goal.

"Leveraging the remaining life of the space station with science and research-led commercial crewed missions is a critical part of the transition to commercial space stations and fully unlocking the orbital economy," Vast CEO Max Haot said in the same statement.

I'm sure it's purely coincidental that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says similar things. 

"Private astronaut missions represent more than access to the International Space Station — they create opportunities for new ideas, companies and capabilities that further enhance American leadership in low Earth orbit and open doors for what’s next," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement on Thursday.

"We're proud to welcome Vast to this growing community of commercial partners," he added. "Each new entrant brings unique strengths that fuel a dynamic, innovative marketplace as we advance research and technology and prepare for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond."

When we talk about Vast and Axiom working on private space stations, don't forget that's just part of the bigger effort to build private space stations. Blue Origin and Sierra Space are working on a station they call Orbital Reef, and a handful of others including NanoRacks and Voyager Space are developing another station named Starlab.

With the ISS having been on orbit and continuously occupied since 2000, it's probably easy to think it'll always be there. Reality is that it's dependent on the continuous stream of supplies from the ground, so it's not hard to think of things that could render it impossible to maintain and a future (or just a future period) without a space station. 

The Zvezda service module, seen here near the top of this image, is talked about as the module that made the International Space Station habitable, opening the life of the ISS. Image Credit: NASA