¶Flight 9. Yesterday, Starship launched on its 9th test flight (livestream replay). The plan was to solve recent issues the company has faced, resulting in two RUDs, since moving to the Block 2 version of the Ship upper stage. Yesterday’s flight also saw the first reuse of a Superheavy Booster: B14 from Flight 7 flew again after refurbishment and some conops tweaks. All engines started up, including some Raptors that were being reused for a third time. For fuel saving and robustness, B14-2 included a modified hotstage ring to control the flip direction imparted by Starship’s separation, which appeared to work as designed. On return, Booster flew a much higher angle of attack—coming in practically flat—to decelerate with less fuel use, and was then going to simulate a center-engine-out scenario that uses an inner ring engine to compensate before landing in the Gulf, but telemetry and the vehicle were lost during engine relight. Ship 35 came with many improvements, including engine mounts, harmonic dampening, and nitrogen purging of the engine “attic”. Otherwise, Flight 9’s profile was intended to be similar to Flight 7 & 8, aimed at testing Starlink simulator deployment, an engine relight in vacuum, multiple heatshield improvement tests, and a sub-orbital-velocity trajectory that splashed down in the Indian Ocean. However, objectives past SECO were unmet, with the Stalink deployment door not actuating and leaks causing a loss of attitude control and eventual breakup on reentry. This flight made meaningful strides for Ship Block 2, as it successfully overcame issues that had plagued the past two flights and reflew a Booster. But, the overall Starship program still failed to make significant forward progress that would chart a pathway for SpaceX to increase the cadence of Starship flights and reach new milestones, which the company had hoped for earlier this year—first production Starlink deployments, Ship catches, orbital insertion, multi-ship rendezvous, commercial payloads, and in-space fuel transfer are still a ways out for the massive development program. Flight 10 could build on the forward momentum and launch more quickly than Flight 9 if SpaceX plans to reuse Booster 15 alongside Ship 36. |
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 | Flight 9 takes off from Boca Chica. Credit: SpaceX |
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¶Tianwen-2 sets out to sample a celestial object. Tianwen-2, China’s first asteroid sample return mission, is scheduled to launch today on a Long March 3B rocket. The craft will visit Earth’s quasi-satellite, 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, named after the Hawaiian creation chant Kumulipo, which refers to an “oscillating celestial object.” Kamo‘oalewa, which is perhaps 100 meters across and has a minimum orbit intersection distance of ~12 lunar distances, is thought to have originated from the impact that created the Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon’s far side. Tianwen-2 will collect samples using both Hayabusa-2-like touch-and-go (TAG) maneuvers and an attempt to anchor to the NEO with drills on the tips of its landing legs. If successful, 100 grams or more of sampled material will be returned to Earth in late 2027. The mission carries eight payloads, including optical and multispectral cameras, multiple spectrometers, a magnetometer, radar, and dust and particle analyzers. After delivering samples to Earth, the main spacecraft of Tianwen-2 will then continue on (for seven years!) to enter the Main Asteroid Belt to study 311P/PANSTARRS, a somewhat rare Active Asteroid (fka Main Belt Comet), for a year, capturing and analyzing expelled dust to help determine if similar objects delivered water to Earth early in its history. (After Tianwen-2 comes Tianwen-3, China’s ambitious Mars sample return mission, which will require two Long March 5 launches in 2028 within 40 days of one another. In January, we wrote about the series of upcoming Tianwen deep space missions.) |
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 | A rendering of Tianwen-2 in deep space. Credit: CNSA |
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¶Blue Moon Mk 1 & 2, plus a Blue fuel ‘transporter.’ Blue Origin talked about Blue Moon development for the first time this year, promising an aggressive production and launch schedule for the multi-part lunar lander development project. The program includes two variants of the lander, as well as a propellant transporter craft (now being developed in-house at Blue) that can deliver a significant cryogenic fuel payload to cislunar space (100 tons), Mars (30 tons), or potentially even the asteroid belt. Blue is currently working toward 20 K (-253 °C) zero boil-off (ZBO) tests this summer and will start flight unit production of the transporter by year-end. The craft is built around 7-meter tanks that are borrowed from New Glenn’s upper stage and will be filled with extra fuel from those same upper stages (presumably via docked fuel transfer; no news on how many launches will be required to fully fuel it). Blue Moon Mk 1, a smaller-scale robotic lander built around Blue’s BE-7 hydrolox engine and capable of 3 tons of lunar payload delivery, is scheduled for a maiden flight later this year, delivering a NASA camera payload to the lunar South Pole. A second Mk 1 lander is an estimated 6-8 months behind the first. Mk 2, the 16-meter-tall crewed variant for the HLS program, is also built around the BE-7, but will be fueled by the transporter craft while in lunar orbit, before descending to the surface. An uncrewed landing test and a crewed landing are still expected before the end of the decade. |
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 | A rendering of the mobile hydrolox fuel depot ‘transporter.’ The circular structure is likely both a sunshade to keep tanks out of direct sunlight and solar cells to run the craft’s cryocoolers that keep fuel at 20 K (-253 °C). Credit: Blue Origin |
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| ¶News in brief. The NRO might cut its commercial imagery budget by a third, contradicting rhetoric from the US government about agencies increasingly leveraging commercial capabilities ● Japanese iQPS booked launch services for 8 more SAR satellites with Rocket Lab through 2026 ● China launched a classified communications satellite to GEO and conducted a commercial launch from sea (video) ● The Shenzhou-20 crew conducted their first space walk outside Tiangong ● Californian startup PiLogic raised $4M to develop satellite diagnostics and other AI tools ● French spaceplane startup AndroMach received a CNES contract to begin testing an early prototype of their Banger v1 rocket engine ● New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace started taking orders for Aurora, its small (6 kg payload), remotely piloted, rocket-powered suborbital spaceplane ● The African Space Agency held its inaugural meeting in Cairo ● Lithuanian space startup Astrolight closed a $3.2M seed round to build an optical network for both space-to-space communications and space-to-ground data relay ● Chinese startup Landspace launched six satellites into orbit with the fifth launch of its Zhuque-2 series methane-fueled rocket, now with a expanded 4.2-meter-diameter payload fairing. |
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 | Landspace’s second Zhuque-2E lifts off from Jiuquan, carrying six Tianyi satellites into orbit. |
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Curiosity was captured mid-drive on February 28th for the first time, toiling along on its lonely trek across the red planet as it left Gediz Vallis. |  |
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