It’s just preparing for the Death Blossom:
Not “exploration,” exactly, but…: Russian satellite linked to nuclear weapon program appears out of control, U.S. analysts say | Reuters
27 launched. Only 3209 to go.
How far behind schedule is Starship now from where SpaceX hoped to be when upper-stage flights began in 2020?
Impossible to say for sure since they deliberately shoot for optimistic schedules.
The difference here is that Project Kuiper has a July '26 deadline from the FCC to launch half their satellites, and it seems unlikely that they’ll hit that given how slowly they’ve been moving. Probably they can get an extension if they demonstrate reasonable progress. But it’s hard to be sure.
Firefly launched the “Message in a Booster” mission today on an Alpha rocket, but suffered an anomaly at first stage separation.
It appeared that there was recontact between the two stages, that knocked off the second stage engine nozzle. The stage lost stability briefly but then recovered and completed its burn without the nozzle. It’s not clear yet whether there is an impact on the mission objectives.
Impressive that the stage recovered. I’ve never seen anything like that before. More information to be released later today.
Update
Without the nozzle, the payload didn’t have enough energy to remain in orbit, so re-entered and was lost.
FAA will conduct a mishap investigation. Recontact after separation is usually an ullage issue, the second stage didn’t push off with enough momentum.
There was the recent Vulcan rocket that lost most of the nozzle on one of the boosters:
Still made it to orbit. But losing one booster nozzle is not nearly as bad as losing the nozzle on your second stage, which is much more sensitive to performance.
SpaceX does have their shorty second-stage nozzles used on missions that don’t need as much performance. There was also that time that they intentionally trimmed a few inches off the nozzle because it had developed some cracks (they did the math and the performance was still fine).
But yeah, pretty surprising that the second stage survived at all.
Have they got a warehouse full of rockets ready to go? That seems very ambitious at this point.
Yes and no. Mostly no.
Last I checked, they had launch contracts for the Falcon 9, Atlas V, New Glenn, and Vulcan.
Atlas V basically is a warehouse of rockets at this point. Or engines, at least. The first stage engines are Russian and the supply is cut off. Amazon bought the last of them. Around a dozen flights I think.
SpaceX of course doesn’t need a warehouse since their rockets are flying as soon as they can build or refurb the components. Amazon could certainly purchase a large number of these flights but they don’t seem inclined to be dependent on SpaceX. And even then, there’s only so much capacity they can absorb.
New Glenn and Vulcan are what I’d call… barely operational. They’ve only flown three times between them. I’m sure they’ll be perfectly fine rockets after a while, but they both really need to increase their cadence.
Finally, there’s the problem of the satellites themselves. This may be an even bigger problem than the launchers. They claim to have some high production rate, 5 per day or something, but haven’t demonstrated that yet. Meanwhile, SpaceX is sending up 50+ per week, basically every week (they put up 73 over 2 days just a couple days ago). So Amazon has a long way to go.
Oh, I forgot the Ariane 6. Has also only launched twice in the last 9 months. Current launch manifest:
(that was a joke… mostly)
There’s also a failed soviet Venus probe that’s due to crash back to earth in the next few days. Highly likely to survive reentry as it was designed to survive landing on Venus.
ninja’d
Actually you were both ninja’ed a couple days ago.
Well in my defense, it was a two-part episode.
Overall, NASA is asked to take a 25 percent cut in its budget, from about $25 billion to $18.8 billion.
Ars has previously reported on some of these proposed cuts, most notably to its science budget. These include a $2.265 billion reduction in Space science and a $1.161 billion reduction in Earth science. Perhaps the most notable cancellation here is the Mars Sample Return mission, which the budget proposal says will be achieved by human missions to Mars.
There are also significant changes proposed in NASA’s biggest-ticket exploration programs. The budget would cancel the Lunar Gateway that NASA has started developing and end the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after two more flights, Artemis II and Artemis III.
I am surprised Musk didn’t push for and get a big increase–the more money in NASA’s budget, the more money in Musk’s pocket.
If SLS is cancelled then SpaceX’s Starship is probably the only viable contender.
But when? They are going to do Artemis 2 and Artemis 3. Considering the continuing delays with Artemis can anything else be done other than those two by the end of Trump’s term (and it might even take longer than that to do Artemis 2 and 3)?
And then maybe Blue Origin will be an alternative.
As I write this (12:08AM Central time, May 10, 2025) the Soviet-era Cosmos 482 satellite, which was supposed to go to Venus but didn’t quite make it, is slated to fall to earth in an hour or two. You can watch live stats here.
I went out on the porch expectantly several times to glimpse it, bupkis!