Space Stuff and Launch Info

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Themis completes a wet dress rehearsal
This is Europe's reusable rocket test article. At 28 meters, it's already as large as some orbital rocket boosters.

Starship in space, seen from one of the Starlink satellites it deployed:



Alternative with music, and in case the above link doesn't play:

https://xcancel.com/SpaceX/status/2083335902705934423

It's a composite of four cameras with different settings, leading to the different brightness in the four quadrants.

Starlink satellites looking at each other:

 
Starship is being towed
The video is made by a shipping channel. The water type of ship.
At the moment they are very slow, this is likely just to investigate the ship's behavior and to stabilize its orientation in the water. At the ~1 knot discussed in the video they would need a month to reach Australia.

The Roman Space Telescope will be launched by a Falcon Heavy on August 30. It will need around one month to reach the Earth/Sun Lagrange point L2 and will enter a wide halo orbit around it, just like JWST. It looks similar to Hubble but it has a 100 times larger field of view (by solid angle). Instead of focusing on individual objects, it'll mostly be used to gather statistics about many objects. It also has a coronagraph to block the light of individual stars in order to study exoplanets directly.
 
Satellite images of Starship being towed

You can just buy satellite images for a news article these days. Costs a few hundred dollars or so. Anywhere in the world, including the middle of the ocean. The images don't have the same resolution as military spy satellites, but they are good enough to see what is going on. It looks like they put something under the engine section to lift it up a bit, and the ship is getting towed engine-first with a long line trailing behind the ship to create more drag and keep it aligned.
 
Good news from the New Glenn investigation:


Wanted to give an update on the hotfire anomaly investigation. Progress continues. The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections. Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We're making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. We’re manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month. In parallel, we're working through the remaining fault tree analysis.

That means Vulcan in its usual configuration* is now grounded because (a) its solid rocket motors keep exploding and (b) its core engine exploded in a different rocket.

* before the cause of the New Glenn explosion was known, there were some ideas to fly it without solid rocket motors for a while. It comes with a massive performance reduction, however.

----

Looks like no one caught any video where the Falcon 9 upper stage hitting the Moon was visible. We should get images of the crater (expected to be ~20 m) from one of the spacecraft orbiting the Moon at some point.

Here is some spectroscopy, finding sodium and lithium in the plume.
 
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New video of the ship swimming in the ocean, with a bunch of floating things around it. The sky looks incredible.


Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now.

Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions of the heat shield and engines for future upgrades.
 
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Sagittarius A-Star said:
On 23-Mar-2026, Russia launched 16 Rassvet constellation satellites into orbit (1 satellite failed).
Source:
https://tass.com/science/2106061

Russia sees this as a part of building up a Starlink competitor:
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/putin-implied-rassvet-satellite-control-uav/

Rassvets commercial operation is planned to start in 2027 (with 250 satellites):
https://www.reuters.com/business/me...maller-version-starlink-next-year-2026-06-05/
There are currently 37 active Russian Rassvet satellites in orbit.
https://satellitemap.space/en/constellation/rassvet

Future Rassvet launches may become delayed:

Ukraine says it hit Russian rocket centre linked to Starlink-style network
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/15/ukr...ocket-center-linked-to-satellite-network.html
 
Zhuque-3 has landed its booster on the second attempt. This is the second booster recovery for China, the first for LandSpace, and the first Chinese recovery with landing legs.

RocketLanding attemptsLanding successesReuses
Falcon 9/Heavy~660~650~620
Starship432
New Glenn321
Zhuque-3210
Long March 10B110
Long March 12A10
Long March 12B0
Tianlong-30

Two years ago this table was only SpaceX, one year ago New Glenn had joined with one unsuccessful landing attempt. Now the table starts to grow. The last two rockets have flown but haven't made landing attempts yet.

 
China's Chang'e 7 moon probe will launch this weekend on the most ambitious lunar mission in history
...
China's moon exploration program is readying an ambitious robotic mission, one composed of an orbiter, a lander, a rover, a hopper, and a wide range of international experiments including a U.S.-supported payload.
Source:
https://www.space.com/astronomy/moo...n-the-most-ambitious-lunar-mission-in-history
 
mfb said:
The Swift rescue mission launched now. The launch was successful, but we might not hear more until it docked (or attempted to).
NASA mission to save its sinking space telescope fails
NASA had hoped to prevent its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from falling toward Earth and breaking apart in the atmosphere. But the spacecraft tasked with the rescue ran into problems.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-swift-space-telescope-boost-mission-fails-rcna593421
A mission to prevent a NASA space telescope from coming to a fiery demise in Earth’s atmosphere has failed, the agency announced Wednesday.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched into low Earth orbit in 2004, has been rapidly sinking in its orbit around Earth and is expected to plunge through the atmosphere later this year, breaking apart on re-entry.
:frown:
 
Zhuque-3's booster had a larger fire after landing, tilted and then fell over. LandSpace didn't plan to reuse this one anyway and the overall booster structure is still intact so they can still inspect everything.



2 days (47 hours and 20 minutes) until the launch of Chang'e 7. Maybe there will be some sort of livestream as it's a major mission.

8 days until the launch of Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Falcon Heavy. This one will certainly have extensive coverage by NASA and SpaceX.

Still no update from Isar Aerospace. They scrubbed a launch attempt 2 months ago based on abnormal behavior of the fluid system. The long delay suggests they had to take apart some stuff and maybe even redesign it and build something new.


Starship static fire, preparing for the 14th flight, expected to be the first one to enter a circular orbit and deploy an operational payload.
It now looks like they won't try to catch the ship this flight, the reason is not fully clear. Probably not confident enough that they can do it without damaging anything.