Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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February 6th, 2026
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
It is not an inside secret that the private space company, Axiom Space, has been troubled by its development of a new spacesuit for Artemis moonwalkers.
As the new spacesuit is needed for any Artemis III astronauts working on the Moon, the sluggish development of appropriate apparel is a wait-a-minute moment in space expooration.
Meet the timelines
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently met with leadership at Axiom Space to discuss the development of their spacesuit.
Image credit: Via Jared Isaacman
“It was great to see their facilities and all the progress,” Isaacman posted January 24 on X (formerly Twitter).
“I shared with them exactly what I told our HLS [Human Landing System] providers: NASA will do all we can to help them accelerate and meet the timelines, with plenty of schedule margin to spare,” the NASA leader explained.
“As an agency, we must be willing to challenge the requirements and not let an hour go by on a problem we can solve today. This is imperative to achieving the President’s national space policy,” said Isaacman.
Image credit: Axiom Space
Hale-ing frequency
A day later, Wayne Hale, a former Space Shuttle Program Manager & Flight Director for 40 missions, now retired from NASA after 32 years, responded:
“Exactly the same message from NASA leadership that was made right before Challenger was lost.”
Hale’s posting stirred up this counter-response from Isaacman:
Image credit: Via Jared Isaacman
“It is disappointing and disrespectful that you would so casually invoke the loss of Challenger on a topic related to EVA suit development. Let me rework my above post to be the opposite of what I wrote, and please tell me if it sounds safer:
“I shared with them exactly what I told our HLS providers: NASA should do absolutely nothing to help them accelerate and meet their timelines so there is no schedule margin to spare. As an agency, we must never be willing to challenge the requirements and let as much time go by as possible on problems.”
“Is this better? Respectfully, do better Sir,” Isaacman posted.
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Posted in 
Voyager Technologies and Max Space announced a strategic partnership to advance expandable space habitats.
Image credit: Max Space
The use of expandable space technology is being bolstered by a new strategic partnership between Voyager Technologies and Max Space.
“Expandable structures represent a step change in how surface infrastructure can be delivered and deployed,” said Saleem Miyan, co-founder and CEO of Max Space.
Miyan said that expandable technology offers increased capability, scalability and versatility, attributes that “are essential for sustained deep-space human activity and to unleash the Lunar and Martian economies,” in a press statement.
Fundamental shift
“This technology reflects a fundamental shift in how humanity will live and work in space,” said Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager – a defense and space technology company. Sustained operations on the Moon “require infrastructure designed for endurance, scalability and industrial execution,” he said.
“The Moon is no longer a single destination or a flags-and-footprints exercise,” Taylor added. It is the next operational domain in a growing space economy, he stated.
Image credit: Max Space
Phased development path
Max Space has been an early pioneer in expandable structure development.
The company’s lightweight expandable habitat launches compactly and expands 20x once deployed in orbit or other destination, allowing a large, fully equipped habitat to launch on a single Falcon 9 rocket.
The strategic partnership blueprints a phased development path, including ground validation and in-space demonstrations later this decade. That development path’s goal is to enable operational Moon and Mars capabilities aligned with NASA’s exploration timelines.
For more information on Max Space, go to:
Born to Explore – John Casani’s Grand Tour of the Solar System by Jay Gallentine; Nebraska Press; 400 pages; Hardcover, $39.95.
This fascinating read centers on one of the most valued leaders that worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and managed a slew of NASA projects, including Voyager, Galileo, and the Cassini mission to Saturn.
For those that had their own close-encounter with John Casani – as this reporter did several times – he was a tour-de-force of facts, enthusiasm, and stick-to-it management guidance.
Jay Gallentine, an award-winning space historian from Minnesota, has written an absorbing look at this legendary leader that rose through JPL’s ranks to a senior executive.
As the author skillfully notes, Casani battled politics, funding issues, the laws of physics, and also on occasion his JPL compatriots. “We didn’t know how to do what were supposed to do. We were too dumb to know that what they were askin’ us to do would really be hard,” said Casani on his early days at JPL as cited by Gallentine.
Casani harbored a persistent drive to undertake some of the most momentous – and nine-figure space missions — ever embarked upon.
Sadly, John Casani passed away on June 19, 2025 at 92 years of age – and did not see the publication of this masterfully written volume.
So often, we space cadets herald the hardware of space victories in far off corners of our solar system. These are legacy successes made possible by individuals that accept and confront challenges like no other.
But thanks to Gallentine’s account through the book’s 27 chapters, the reader can appreciate the expertise Casani brought to America’s adventurous, ambitious and audacious space exploration program. It is an outstanding story told and a significant entry in the Nebraska Press Outward Odyssey series.
For more information, go to:
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496206657/born-to-explore/
John Casani and Jay Gallentine.
Image credit: Jay Gallentine
Artwork depicts Cluster satellite reentry.
Image credit: ESA/David Ducross
Recall those uplifting lyrics from “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” crooned by B.J. Thomas in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
Consider this 21st century-style downside.
Due to the increasing number of “megaconstellations” of satellites being tossed into Earth orbit, what are the chances of being conked in the head by re-entering fragments?
Risk of on-ground casualties
A new study of the fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere of eleven megaconstellations finds there’s a 40% collective risk of on-ground casualties if satellites do not burn up entirely. The collective casualty risks modeled took into account well-funded constellations that total some 73,369 satellites.
A main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle landed near Georgetown, Texas in January 1997.
Image credit: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office
“Risky uncontrolled reentries of space objects should be the exception, rather than the norm,” explains a research team led by Ewan Wright from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Their findings are detailed in an upcoming issue of the Space Policy journal.
Design for demise
The highlights of the research paper – “Satellite megaconstellations and collective casualty risks” – are:
- Megaconstellations of thousands of satellites are being launched, and will reenter the atmosphere at end of life to avoid generating space debris.
- Satellite designers may aim for their satellites to demise entirely, but there is considerable uncertainty in the degree to which total ablation can be achieved.
- If a satellite does not burn up entirely, it creates a casualty risk.
- Many existing casualty risk thresholds are calculated per satellite, while others apply vastly different thresholds to address collective casualty risk.
Break up
When satellites reenter the atmosphere, the Canadian team reports, aerodynamic forces cause them to break up. The intense heat of re-entry ablates their materials into fine particles.
“However, many satellites, particularly large ones, do not burn up entirely,” they explain.
Credit: The Aerospace Corporation/CORDS
Unless satellite operators purposely direct their satellites to reenter over a specific location on Earth in a “controlled re-entry” manner, that fall from space will be uncontrolled and surviving debris will be spread out over an area centered on a random location along the satellite’s orbit.
“This creates a casualty risk to people on the ground and in aircraft in flight, as well as other risks such as infrastructure damage and airspace closures,” Wright and colleagues point out.
Melting points
In this study the researchers ask: “what happens if the minimum lethal amount of debris from each satellite does not burn up and reaches the ground intact?”
Materials used in satellites with lower melting points, such as aluminium, are more likely to demise entirely. However, other materials such as stainless steel, beryllium, titanium, tungsten, and silicon carbide are less likely to do so. These are commonly employed in fuel tanks and reaction wheels.
Chunks of space junk rained down in Australia, later identified as SpaceX leftovers from its Crew-1 Mission that flew in 2020-2021.
Photo courtesy: Brad Tucker
“The demise of another common fuel tank material, carbon fiber reinforced plastic is not yet well understood. The demise of components further depends on how they are nested within the satellite structure, and how it breaks up through the atmosphere.”
Recommendations
In wrapping up their research findings, Wright and colleagues ponder a key question: Do we need so many satellites?
“It is possible to design constellations made up of fewer, higher capacity, higher quality satellites with longer operational lives. This, in turn, would reduce the risk to people on the ground and any damage to the atmosphere,” they report.
Images taken of space debris in Australia found in October 2025.
Image credit: Western Australia Police Force
As for recommendations on casualty risks, the Canadian team offers a set of considerations.
“Due to the large collective risks created by single megaconstellations, and the even larger cumulative risks from all constellations, we recommend that states and their national regulators (1) require independent verification of claims of full demisability; (2) evaluate collective casualty risks from entire constellations; (3) pursue a smooth transition to a fair, equitable, and globally applicable controlled reentry regime.”
To access the research paper – “Satellite megaconstellations and collective casualty risks” – go to:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265964626000044?via%3Dihub
Image credit: NASA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
NOTE: Agency leaders will discuss initial results from the wet dress rehearsal during a news conference, now set for 1 p.m. Eastern time today, February 3. Go to:
https://www.youtube.com/@NASA/streams
“With the conclusion of the wet dress rehearsal today, we are moving off the February launch window and targeting March for the earliest possible launch of Artemis II,” explained NASA head, Jared Isaacman.
“With more than three years between SLS [Space Launch System] launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges. That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success.”
Hydrogen leak
Isaacman added that during the wet dress rehearsal (WDR) test, teams worked through a liquid hydrogen leak at a core stage interface during tanking. That leak required pauses to warm hardware and adjust propellant flow.
Image credit: NASA
“All core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage tanks were successfully filled, and teams conducted a terminal countdown to about T-5 minutes before the ground launch sequencer halted operations due to an increased leak rate.”
Image credit: ULA
Other factors
The NASA Administrator also stated that there were additional factors in the decision to delay.
They included extended Orion closeout work, intermittent ground audio dropouts, and cold-weather impacts to some cameras.
There was a successful demonstration of updated Orion closeout purge procedures to support safe crew operations.
“As always, safety remains our top priority, for our astronauts, our workforce, our systems, and the public. As noted above, we will only launch when we believe we are as ready to undertake this historic mission,” Isaacman stated.
Getting this mission right
“This is just the beginning. It marks the start of an Artemis program that will evolve to support repeated and affordable missions to the Moon, in line with President Trump’s national space policy. Getting this mission right,” Isaacman emphasized, “means returning to the Moon to stay and a future to Artemis 100 and beyond.”
Image credit: Jared Isaacman
In conclusion, the NASA chief thanked the talented workforce at NASA, along with our industry and international partners, who are working tirelessly on this effort.
“The team will fully review the data, troubleshoot each issue encountered during WDR, make the necessary repairs, and return to testing. We expect to conduct an additional wet dress rehearsal and then target the March window,” noted Isaacman. “We will continue to keep the public and the media informed as readiness progresses.”
Image credit: NASA
Image credit: NASA/Sam Lott
Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are conducting a prelaunch test to fuel the Artemis II Space Launch System—a vital step in ensuring this rocket is ready for its upcoming trip around the Moon.
During the rehearsal, teams will demonstrate the ability to load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants into the rocket, conduct a launch countdown, and practice safely removing propellant from the rocket without astronauts inside the spacecraft.
Programming for this static feed begins at 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 UTC) on Feb. 2.
The rehearsal will count down to a simulated launch at 9 p.m. EST (0200 Feb. 3 UTC), but could run to approximately 1 a.m. (0600 UTC) if needed.
Artemis II leaders will discuss initial results during a news conference at 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, Feb. 3.
Spot-3 Earth Observation satellite.
Image credit: CNES
Yet another “close call/near miss” in Earth orbit.
On Christmas Day 2025, a European non-operational payload (SPOT 3) passed within roughly 65 feet (20 meters) of a fragment from a Soviet payload that exploded in 1996.
“This conjunction involved two objects left in orbit last century,” said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow for LeoLabs that offers persistent orbital intelligence for space domain awareness.
Cosmic culprits
SPOT 3 (Satellite pour l’Observation de la Terre) was a commercial Earth-imaging satellite from CNES (Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales), the French Space Agency. It was launched on September 26, 1993 and ceased operations after a malfunction in November 1996.
The other object was a fragment of the former Soviet Union’s Cosmos 1275 that was launched and then broke apart in 1981, with the break-up occurring at approximately 609 miles (980 kilometers).
Image credit: LeoLabs
Two-body problem
The actual near two-body bang-up was at roughly 525 miles (845 kilometers) altitude.
According to a History of On-orbit Satellite Fragmentations, 16th Edition, produced by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, the Soviet Cosmos 1275 is the only member of its class, Parus, to explosively fragment.
Image credit: History of On-orbit Satellite Fragmentations, 16th Edition
The defunct spacecraft was a member of a Soviet military navigation system called the Parus series. The satellite was only 50 days old at the time of the event.
“During the February 1992 Space Debris Conference in Moscow, Russian analysts discussed independent studies about the probable cause of the breakup. Later, the official Russian assessment asserted that a battery malfunction was the likely culprit,” the NASA document explains.
PC factor
Often, probability of collision (PC) drops as time of closest approach (TCA) is approached, “however, it stayed very stable for this event,” McKnight adds.
“When an eventual collision occurs,” McKnight said, it will likely look like this PC/miss distance evolution (see LeoLabs chart).
Image credit: Darren McKnight/LeoLabs
Image credit: ULA
The countdown for the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal is underway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The countdown clock began January 31 at 8:13 p.m. EST, or L-48 hours, 40 minutes before the opening of a simulated launch window at 9 pm. Mon, Feb. 2. The test is expected to go until approximately 1 a.m. Feb. 3.
Go to NASA’s Artemis II Live Views from Kennedy Space Center at:
Image credit: Mars Guy/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars Guy details how driving a rover on Mars requires humans on Earth to plan the route.
“Self-driving cars on Earth can take advantage of GPS to navigate,” Mars Guy points out, “but Mars has no global positioning system, so rover drivers have to set waypoints manually.”
Image credit: Mars Guy/NASA/JPL-Caltech
AI navigation
Now Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been given that task. See how NASA’s Perseverance rover was AI navigated across Martian terrain!
This Mars Guy episode details how Claude, an AI model, planned the rover’s route, using orbital and ground images to avoid hazards. Watch the AI’s route planning in action, contrasted with the actual drive.
Go to video at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wubO9j1keNA
Also, go to this Jet Propulsion Laboratory release Perseverance’s use of AI at:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-completes-first-ai-planned-drive-on-mars/
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
SpaceX has announced a Space Situational Awareness system called Stargaze.
The space-based Stargaze system uses data collected from nearly 30,000 in orbit star trackers mounted on Starlink satellites.
The safety and sustainability of satellite operations in low Earth orbit (LEO) will benefit by Stargaze operations, the company explains, and its screening data will be made available to the broader satellite operator community free of charge in the coming weeks.
Image of spent rocket body.
Image credit: Astroscale-Japan
Large uncertainties
“Practices—such as leaving rocket bodies in LEO, operators maneuvering their satellites without sharing trajectory predictions or coordinating with other active satellites, and countries conducting anti-satellite tests—have heightened the risk of collision, necessitating improvements in space-traffic coordination,” explains SpaceX.
“Conventional methods typically observe objects only a limited number of times per day, causing large uncertainties in orbital predictions, further compounded by volatile space weather.”
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Conjunction Data Messages
The Stargaze system offers an increase in detection capability compared to conventional ground-based systems, SpaceX reports.
Stargaze can autonomously detect orbiting objects, aggregating this information to generate orbit estimates and predictions of position and velocity for all detected objects in near real-time.
These predictions are integrated into a space traffic management platform that identifies potential close approaches between objects in space and generates Conjunction Data Messages or (CDMs)
Things are messy in the heavens.
Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation/CORDS
Management platform
“To fully realize the utility of such frequent observations, SpaceX developed this system to provide conjunction screening results within minutes, compared to the current industry standard of several hours,” the company explains.
SpaceX will be making Stargaze conjunction data available to all satellite operators, free of charge, via a space-traffic management platform.
Close-call
Citing its own issues with close-calls, SpaceX said that late last year, a Starlink satellite encountered a conjunction with a third-party satellite that was performing maneuvers, but whose operator was not sharing ephemeris.
Until five hours before the conjunction, the close approach was anticipated to be roughly five and a half miles (9,000 meters).
That was considered a safe miss-distance with zero probability of collision.
Credit: SpaceX/Starlink
However, with just five hours to go, the third-party satellite performed a maneuver which changed its trajectory and collapsed the anticipated miss distance to roughly 200 feet (60 meters).
“Ultimately, the Starlink satellite was able to react within an hour of the maneuver being detected, planning an avoidance maneuver to reduce collision risk back down to zero,” SpaceX said.
By providing this ephemeris sharing and conjunction screening service free of charge, the company states, “we hope to motivate operators to take similar steps towards ephemeris sharing and safe flight.”
For more information on Stargaze, go to this posting on the SpaceX Starlink website at:
