Main Engine Cut Off - T+319: Headlines, December 22, 2025

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

A holiday special! Enjoy this week’s episode of Headlines free. It’s an absolute monster episode—way longer than usual Headlines episodes, I promise—but it’s a great example of what you get when you support the show over at mainenginecutoff.com/support.NASA finally—and we really do mean it this time—has a full-time leader - Ars TechnicaAgencywide Town Hall with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025 - YouTubeTrump commits to Moon landing by 2028, followed by a lunar outpost two years later - Ars TechnicaNASA Teams Work MAVEN Spacecraft Signal Loss - NASA ScienceNASA Continues MAVEN Spacecraft Recontact Efforts - NASA ScienceSpaceX Sets $800 Billion Valuation, Confirms 2026 IPO Plans - BloombergSpaceX $1.5 Trillion Value Target Hinges on Starlink — And Elon - BloombergSpaceX Said to Notify Employees of Quiet Period Ahead of IPO - BloombergIn a surprise announcement, Tory Bruno is out as CEO of United Launch Alliance - Ars TechnicaSpace Development Agency awards $3.5 billion in contracts for missile-tracking satellites - SpaceNewsChinese astronauts inspect debris-damaged Shenzhou-20 spacecraft during spacewalk - SpaceNewsSpace Station – Off The Earth, For The EarthNASA Astronaut Jonny Kim, Crewmates Return from Space Station - NASAAfter key Russian launch site is damaged, NASA accelerates Dragon supply missions - Ars TechnicaR-7 ICBM/Soyuz rocket launch facilities in BaikonurLaunch Roundup: China, Russia, Rocket Lab, ULA join SpaceX in flying this week - NASASpaceFlight.comLaunch Previews: Ariane 6, Falcon 9, Atlas V, and Electron launches highlight busy week - NASASpaceFlight.comLaunch Roundup: International launches fill manifest during last full week of 2025 - NASASpaceFlight.comChina launches 4 times in 4 days, boosting megaconstellation and surveillance assets - SpaceNewsChina launches new TJS satellite, commercial Kinetica-1 lofts 9 spacecraft - SpaceNewsMichael Nicolls on X: “When satellite operators do not share ephemeris for their satellites, dangerously close approaches can occur in space.   A few days ago, 9 satellites were deployed from a launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwestern China. As far as we know, no coordination or…”China launches experimental cargo spacecraft, opaque tech demo mission and remote sensing satellite - SpaceNewsAndrew Jones on X: “Turns out there were two male mice launched on the DEAR-5 cargo spacecraft for neuroscience research. Spacecraft is planned to operate in orbit for one year and is not rated for reentry, so it's game over at some point for the rodents. Video is prelaunch.”Rocket Lab launches JAXA tech demo satellite - SpaceNewsAriane 6 launches Galileo navigation satellites - SpaceNewsThese are the flying discs the government wants you to know about - Ars TechnicaBlue Origin flies first wheelchair user to space - SpaceNewsRocket Lab wraps up record launch year - SpaceNewsJapan’s H3 suffers second-stage anomaly, QZS-5 satellite lost - SpaceNewsAndrew Jones on XChina launches new Guowang satellites, Long March 12A launch and landing attempt date set - SpaceNewsKeep an eye on upcoming launches with rocketlaunch.live.

Hello and welcome the headlines for December 22nd, 2025. I hope it'll still be December 22nd by the time I'm done recording this. This is going to be a long one. I have no idea how long this show is going to be. This document is enormous. A little backed up on the headlines feed here because I was prepping to visit the Pentagon and interview the head of the Space Force. Turns out when you have that coming up in your near future,

you tend to focus all your podcasting time on prepping and lining things up for that. There's a lot of security prep that had to go in to get everything, all the hardware I needed to get into his office, which was the storyline and a whole bunch of other moving parts, and then me just generally being preoccupied, prepping what we're going to talk about. So I haven't done a show for two weeks,

and boy, has there been a lot of stuff that happened in there. I am also going to run this in the main feed, as a little holiday special, I guess. I like to do this once a year for the people that don't support the show that they get to look in and see what headlines is all about. We run through all the stories,

we filter out the junk that you don't need to know about, we hit all the stories that happen that you do need to know about and I give you a couple of quick takes on them. You often get my takes a couple of days ahead of when I'll end up doing it on the main feed

just because of the news cycle or me digesting news or getting a guest lined up to talk about any particular thing. Headlines is more me running through everything, and giving you my thoughts as they are live in my head. So if you like this, main engine cutoff.com slash support. If you jump in there, you get this in your feed,

you get an RSS feed that will drop right in your podcast player. You can stay up on this just like you do the main show. If you do support, thank you so much. You make this whole thing work. You know, the extreme majority, like 90 plus percent of people that are supporting the show are headlines or above level. It's the main driver of what we're doing here. It's how we keep the whole thing operating, and it gets you extra content in your podcast

feed. So thanks for those that do support. Please consider it if you don't, and I guess Merry Christmas, if you are getting this for free in the feed. But let's dive in. Obviously, if you're listening to this show, you probably know now that Jared Isaacman is officially the NASA administrator. He has had his first couple of days in office.

Friend of the show, John Krause is a member of the administration as well, the special communications assistant to the administrator, something like that. That's awesome to have him in that. there. And Jared Eisman did a town hall, one of his first days, first day, second day. It's blurry now last week. I think it was good to see his attitude and how he's going to handle it. You know, not a ton of content on that initial town hall. It's a great way for the new leader to show FaceTime with everybody across the agency to be exposed to some of the questions that are going to be asked. And I'm sure even the questions that don't actually come up on the town hall,

he's going to look at that list and see what are people asking about. And I probably guide some of the things he will go and talk about when he goes on what he called a road show where he's going to go visit in all the centers. And I thought it was cool. He made a mention to call out the fact that he's not just going to go to these centers and talk to the leaders there. He's going to go and talk to the people working at lower levels in these centers.

I think he is somebody that's, you know, number one, his intelligence on the space side of things will lend him to that very well, but also the way that he has run his organizations over in the commercial side, he's probably got more of a knack for that kind of thing than your typical astronaut, administrator, or even a politician that gets in there. There's going to be a sense that he has about these organizations that others wouldn't have that perspective. So I'm excited to see what comes out of that, and to hear from people,

maybe you listening, what it's like when he does come to the center, you know, is he venturing beyond those kind of, you know, leadership conference rooms and offices? Is he going out into the areas where I typically go when I go to NASA centers, people working on stuff? Is he actually making it deep into the center and talking to people at those levels? And is that driving a lot? I almost would do that first.

If I were him, I would go through and make all the leadership go away while I just roam through the center and then get a bunch of content from them and then go in those meetings with leadership and be like, all right, but have you heard about X, Y, or Z and what are you doing about it? Really curious to see how that goes.

But again, watch the town hall if you want. It's nothing hugely transformative if you've been following the storyline. But I do think it's good to see his comportment in that environment. And some of the stuff that, you know, he came out swinging on his confirmation hearings in the process. And then he mentioned Project Athena. I wonder, you know, his opening line is that you would know his take on stuff because he's done a lot of talking and a handful of podcasts. I wonder if he considers that Miko just before nomination as one of those podcasts. Is he talking about just post-nomination era?

I don't know. I'll have to ask him next time. But yeah, we'll have him back on at some point. I think probably, honestly, after he makes a couple of decisions, I don't, I'm going to ask him all the same things that he's out there talking about anyway right now. There's not a lot to be gleaned until a decision or two is made, and we can dig into it with him. So I'm going to hold off until he gets, you know, a couple of months in, probably, to be honest.

But we'll get back to that when we get to it. and now I have an inside line with John Krause, so shout out. The same day he was officially confirmed and in office and sworn in, he was in the Oval Office where President Trump signed an executive order about space policy. Again, you've been following this storyline. There's no huge shocks in this. It does make a couple of things official that we've heard about or that we have suspected. So the lunar landing is now 2028.

The wording around a lunar output. is murky enough to say, is this gateway or is this a surface facility? And that's unknown based on the wording, but I think that's how they like it. And that's by 2030. So we've kind of moved these dates back, moved them along a little bit. Talks a lot about nuclear reactors on the moon, the end of the ISS. Kind of same run-in-the-mill stuff there on the end of the ISS side. There's some stuff in there about preferring other transaction authorities and just fixed-price

contracting effectively and not cost plus. They did end the National Space Council, which is funny because President Trump originally, 1.0, Trump, brought the Space Council back. Biden kept it. President Trump 2.0 said, let's get rid of it. I think we've talked about that on the show with Mark Albrecht, who was on the transition team. So, again, nothing hugely surprising. No talk in the way of science policy in this executive order. And no mention of

Mars. There was one, like, kind of fleeting mention, but, but no specific Mars policy in this. They're pretty much set on the moon. So, there you have it. I think that was, it was good, though, to have that alongside Jared Eisen been taking office and having this big, I mean, showing that this has got visibility at the highest level, that is always notable. It's something we've talked with Lori Garber a lot about, that that is a very meaningful signal. And also to come in and not only for Jared Isaacman to be in the Oval Office and have that endorsement, but then to be able to take that endorsement of like, this is a thing that President cares about,

look at what he did when I was, you know, my first five minutes in office, to be able to take that out and actually use that as supporting material when you're trying to enact some of this stuff or when you're having conversation to Congress, that's a good sign as well. And that's something that could be used by Isaacman in the office. So let's round out the NASA news until we move, before we move on to other things. some sad news is that NASA has lost contact with Maven, the Mars atmosphere and volatile evolution spacecraft.

It's been in orbit around Mars. It was re-emerging from behind Mars, and all of a sudden they could not contact the vehicle. There was some brief telemetry that they saw that showed that its orbit had altered and it had been in a spin, though they are not able to communicate with it. uh so that's indicative of the fact that uh something happened when it was behind mars um you know there

was an energetic event of some sport to call it maybe you know depressurization or an explosion or something in a system that caused thrust and you know in both dropping its orbit but also putting it into a spin so i think that's going to be it for maven i don't really know that there's any coming out of that puts NASA in a little bit of an interesting spot with relay communications. It was one of the orbiter's being used for relay communications. So that gets a little bit tighter. And yeah, I mean, this was launched 12 years ago. It's been in orbit since September 2014. So it's been a while, but, you know, some of these Mars assets have been there 20 years doing their thing. So, you know, premature, but not like a super young spacecraft, I guess. So, you know, with,

some, you lose some. Looking around a lot of noise this week, a lot of noise around SpaceX, and this confirmation of 26 IPO plans from Brett Johnson, who's the CFO. Brett Johnson, is that right? Now I'm blanking on his name. Yeah, Brett Johnson. Just spelled funny. B-R-E-T, and then Johnson S-E-N at the end. So it's spelled differently enough that it's peaking my eyes in a weird way and peeking my ears in the same way that you expect, but throwing me off. Anyway, tons of conversation about not only are they setting an $800 billion valuation for the company right now, they are targeting or planning on, planning, not planning on, but planning an IPO in 26 at a $1.5 trillion valuation.

Now, this is getting a lot of talk because it's something that nobody really considered SpaceX doing. You know, Elon Musk downplayed it for years. Quince Shotwell's downplayed it for years. Sometimes there's been reference to maybe we'll spin Starlink out. Then there's a lot of talk of we're never going to go public until after we get people to Mars because it won't work. And then, you know, Elon's been out there tweeting about the change here is that now they're interested in this whole orbital data center business line. And that's going to be a huge resource-intensive endeavor. There's not a lot of, you know, massive resourcing, resource funding that, that's going to be a huge resource-intensive endeavor.

out there at the levels that they would need it to be actually pursuing this alongside everything else they're pursuing. And also the fact that, you know, it's a great way for a company that probably is having some retention issues at this time in its life cycle. You know, a pretty good way to make sure that people are incentivized to stick around and watch that grow in real time. You know, the nest egg they're building up at if they've been there a long time and they've got a bunch of stock or RSUs or whatever. There's that aspect too. that it is a big retention play, and it's something that, you know, as sooner or later, it's going to be seen as like, well, there's $30 billion we can

collect if we go public and continue to be a hugely valuable company. I guess, like, I'm not a stock trader, yada, yada, right? I feel like, you know, people have been like, man, that's a crazy valuation. I'm like, I don't know, man, this is a, you hear me say it all the time. This is an invaluable company on the strategic level for the country, the world, world, really. They are the outlier in everything that they put their effort into. And I don't really see that stopping anytime soon. So I'm like, there's no valuation too high for this company. It is, you know, it's not just looking at revenue. It's looking at positioning in the market.

I mean, the data center thing is probably a really good example of this, right? Any, anything that is, what about this business on orbit or this business in space? SpaceX, has, you know, a company that's positioned halfway there already, or maybe even more than that. They have an enormous advantage over everybody that wants to do anything remotely close to the Carmen line or beyond. And so if there are these areas of business that are showing growth potential and showing future utility and showing a lot of people interested in this, it's number one a threat to SpaceX if they let one of those markets develop without having a say in it and it's a massive enticement for them because they know they're already so far ahead of the competitors

that have been working on it for years already so if that's if that's really the case it kind of makes sense overall to head in that direction so I am a little bit surprised that we're hearing about it now just because they have not had an issue fundraising but if they think they would have an issue fundraising to the level that an orbital data center desire would be there, then maybe that is pushing them over the edge. And, you know, I believe it when it gets tweeted out like that,

but I don't really know what to make of it beyond that. I think it will be interesting to watch as it develops. You know, there's going to be a lot less talk about it from SpaceX directly, obviously, as they get into the quiet period. but um what it does to the space industry generally i don't know man the whole space industry is SpaceX so it's a very weird situation to be in i think um where you know the other stocks will probably follow very closely what SpaceX does up and down although rocket labs had kind of an interesting takeoff lately where they are you know sitting a much higher level than they were

previously they were looking like a more stable version of every other space stock but they've just been going up pretty consistently. You've got Intuitive machines that is memier, I would say, and then obviously a whole bunch of people that have flamed out at this point. But SpaceX is not any of those. It's entirely different than every

single one of those. And as always, Rocket Lab is the closest example, but there's just such fundamentally different things because of the outlier status of SpaceX and the fact that it is so dominant in every different vertical that they partake in. they are detached from the same reality that many of the other space companies are.

So now, like, you know, for... And then there's also a lot of talk about the fact that it's done so much fundraising that a lot of the big investments, investment companies or firms or banks or whatever, are already in some round of SpaceX. So the biggest thing is, like, retail investors are not involved in SpaceX right now.

but the rest of the cap table is kind of looks like what a public company would look like. So, I don't know. I mean, it does change things from the internal perspective, as I said. It's a lot easier for those people internally that have RSUs and actual stock, whatever,

to track what's going on day to day. And that's good and that's bad. You know, friends I have that are at public companies are like, it's pretty unhealthy when people have the stock price pinned to their home screen to their phone all the time. It makes weird incentives. And that'll certainly be the case. And we're certainly going to watch as, you know, Starship, you know, serial number whatever blows up and there goes the stock price. Or they catch another booster on the tower and there

goes the stock price. How much of that are we going to have? Or is it going to be, again, so far detached from the rest of that reality that it won't look the same. I don't know. Probably a long road between here and there. So let's keep an eye. Now, this is great. 16 minutes. into the end of the episode. I told you this is going to be a long one. This is going to be like a Joe Rogan-like show. Tori Bruno is out as CEO of ULA. I'm going to bury that news 16 and a half minutes in to this show. This was unexpected and announced today. 9.30 a.m. Tori Bruno is posting a podcast of him interviewing Santa for the ULA podcast, which is a weird thing overall. I feel like that was pretty indicative of

this guy having a lot of time on his hands. And then a couple hours later, it's announced that he is no longer the CEO. So, and they said it's to pursue another opportunity. Is that just nice phrasing? And they said he resigned and is pursuing another opportunity. Is that just nice phrasing and a go ahead and you can resign, we're not going to fire you because you've been around, you know, Lockheed for 30 years and then 10 years as CEO at ULA through a very pivotal era?

Or, you know, or did he come in and drop a Santa episode on us and then be like, I'm out, by the way. I don't think it was that one. That would be pretty unexpected. Now, there's a middle ground, which is, if he does have another opportunity, he came in and notified the board and everyone else that, hey, I'm actually going to go take this position at, you know, some other company, somewhat in the industry. And they said, all right, you know what? Just resign right now, effective immediately. We don't want to deal with the overlap there. We don't want to deal with you knowing what we're up to. I don't know. Could he have gotten a gig over at Blue Origin.

That one seems unlikely to me. I don't know. I mean, obviously it's not Boeing. They would have been fine with him having overlap. So that's the middle ground, I see. It's not just that he quit. It's not maybe, I mean, could very likely be they fired him and let him resign. And it could also very likely be that he did find something else, but they didn't want a transition period.

You know, that's fully in the cards as well. Now, let's do some evidence for maybe they fired him. ULA way missed their projections this year. You know, they were talking up. Last year, they were saying they were going to do 20 launches this year. In August even, they said we're actually going to get to nine, not 20. They've only done six. And, you know, I'm looking at the calendar here.

There's not a lot of days left to recover that. Five Atlas Vives, one Vulcan. They did get their certification from Vulcan through, you know, but in March, and then you flew one more in August. So Vulcan's got a slow ramp. I say they got another one coming up in a couple of weeks, I guess, but just generally a really slow and weird year for ULA as they continue to fly out the Atlas 5,

and the Vulcan ramp is very slow. So is it that execution? Now, one piece of evidence against that theory is that Mark Peller, who was the senior vice president of Vulcan something or other, he was an awesome guy. We had him on Off Nominal, fantastic interview, a lot of fun, dry sense of humor, but very fun, got into good detail,

said a couple interesting things as well, I think, about what Vulcan's up to. He got promoted up to C-O-O, because the past C-O-O-O-Jon-L-Bahn is now the acting CEO, and he's retiring. They announced it in early December that he's retiring. So he's moving from C-O over into interim CEO while they do a search for a new CEO,

and Mark Pellor's coming up to the C-O level. Now, would they have done that, if they're firing the CEO because Vulcan is doing badly, right? Would they take Mr. Vulcan and then make him the C-O-O if Vulcan was a problem? Probably not. So it could be a fundamental mismatch between the way that Tori Bruno thinks they should go about the next five years and the way that, you know, the board thinks they should go about it. We've heard that over the years of Tori being the one that's pushing a lot of these more interesting ideas from the outside of aces or reusable centaur or whatever space tugs a lot of like smart reuse a lot of uh

projects that would be cool to see develop um but not being able to actually have the leeway from the parent companies boeing and locky to actually go and pursue that as uLA that could very well be the tension that bubbled over eventually i really can't wait to hear more about this now funny i i should say that um i've i don't know i'm putting this out on the free feed but i don't know who's going to make it 20 minutes into this thing and that isn't a dedicated listener like you are um i have an interview booked with him on january 14th uh we set this up a couple of weeks ago they did not want to do november december so i don't know i if i'm i've followed up because it was not a uLA staffer that was hooking me up with this interview it was another comms

person so uh i checked in we'll see if he shows up on the 14th we could manage a couple of could be the first post-departure interview that he does, unless he sneaks another one in under the wire. We'll see if we can still get him. I think it would be interesting to talk to him, especially now. Now, a lot of people are sad about this. People love Tori Bruno. I think that's soured a bit, though. He's been weirder in recent years. I was going to ask him about this. I think his persona has changed a little bit over the years. And, you know, he's out there tweeting about Raptor 3 not being a realistic engine or, you know, missing parts or whatever. And I think some of the goodwill has soured over the years

and I feel like I've sensed a difference in aura as he's been out there tweeting I don't know I'm not sure what to make of that I wish I could ask him maybe I will we'll find out but uh you know I still think people are wistfully thinking about the good Tory and missing that influence now who's the new person very interesting decision on who's going to step in

and run ULA, given the roadmap in front of them. That could be quite a riddle. The Space Development Agency awarded $3.5 billion in contracts for another round of missile tracking satellites as part of the proliferated warfighter space architecture, the PWSA. This is the distributed constellation. I guess that's a little bit of a duplicative statement.

The constellation that SDA is working on, there's two parts, right? There's transport layer, which is, think, Starlink Communications, and there's the tracking layer, which is tracking missiles, launches, and actual, you know, some comments in here about tracking hypersonic vehicles in their glide phase as well, which is a much harder thing to do than, you know, the signature of a rocket launch, which we've been doing for a long time. But anyway, this is tranche three of the tracking layer. So these are deployed out in batches, and this is the third batch of the tracking

layer. The company's involved here, we had L3 Harris, Lockheed Martin, Rocket Lab, and Northrop Grumman, each selected to build 18 satellites apiece. So Rocket Lab making their entrance as a prime in a very beefy contract here. We'll go through highest to lowest bids for these 18 satellites. Again, 18 apiece. They're each building 18, and those will be deployed out in different orbital planes, right? 72 satellites across eight orbital planes, which is what this entire award is made up of. Lockheed Martin came in at $1.1 billion, L3 Harris, at $843 million, Rocket Lab $805 million, and Northrop Grumman at $764 million.

Rocket Lab, not even the low-bitter, which honestly is probably a spot you want to be in if you're out there to run a business. You don't want to be the top, you don't want to be the bottom probably. Middles, probably a good position for Rocket Lab. So I bring this up, number one, because it's really interesting to see Rocket Lab finally make this jump into this level of a prime. They've had big contracts in the past, but this is something that is so up their alley in terms of they've been kind of a sweetheart of the defense side and the spy satellite side of their launch services as they've grown their space services. They've been able to offer this like full featured kind of prime. way that SpaceX does in a lot of ways. And to see them in the mix here with Lockheed Martin, L3

Harris, North of Grumman, maybe that's why their stock price is doing so well, as I just mentioned, that they're in the big leagues now. And it's going to be cool to see how they pull off these kind of missions that operate so differently the ones that they've been great at thus far. You know, does their company structure scale to be able to do this kind of thing? And does it have them thriving, or is this going to be, you know, a monster program that doesn't turn out that great for them? That's the stuff that is really going to be the make or break thing about the strategy here. All right, moving on to the look at the space stations on orbit. A lot of things going on this week. Let's start at Tongong. The Shenjo 21 crew went out for an EVA. This was

Commander Shang Lu and rookie crewmate Wu Fei. They went outside to inspect the Shenjo 20 spacecraft. So they took the robotic arm, worked their way over to the spacecraft that had that debris impact happened to it in the window, which led to the whole shuffling of Shenzhou vehicles. We haven't gotten any released imagery from the EVA of this area. They were taking photos. There was video provider of the spacewalk, but they left out the Shenzhou 20 portion. So we don't know what they were doing to the window. You know, they talked about assessing it and photographing it and getting an understanding of what it is from the outside

as well as what they've done in the inside, but we don't have any results yet. So very curious to hear about that and see if, you know, would this vehicle would have been okay? Would it have been okay to come home in? Or was it, you know, as problematic as they made it seem and they had to do this whole shuffling of spacecraft? And then what happened to it, what was hit with?

Did they try to repair it? Did the repair go well? A lot of details here to be filled in over time. Over at the ISS, Soyuz MS-27 headed home with Johnny Kim from NASA and then two Ross Cosmos cosmonauts, Sergei Rezikov, and Alexei Zubritsky. They headed back and landed successfully. They undocked from the Pritchell module at the ISS. And then there's some fallout from this whole Soyuz launch mount debacle.

The dragons are getting shaken up quite a bit. So the next dragon up, CRS-34, move forward from June, 26, to May. The one after that is moving up from November to August. And, you know, beyond that, I think it's really just going to be like, let's make dragon fly out a faster clip, especially with a Starliner that's unknown. There is a Cygnus that could be ready to fly in April, 26, so that will help quite a bit. The other problem was Jaxa's supposed to fly the HTVX again next summer. Now, its launch vehicle had an issue that we'll talk about in a couple of minutes.

So it could be a bit of a cargo crunch over the next couple of months as we sort of adjust to how long is this launch pad in the bike and our cosandrome going to be down for? Is it something that they can get up and running very quickly? You know, there's been a lot of talk of maybe we can get this up by April 2026, that sounds less likely based on what people are putting out in the world that would know things and it's only Zach over at Russian Space Web has a report about this mobile platform not being secured properly because they were sort of hurried off they tried five times to get this thing locked in place they couldn't the order to evacuate the pad 30 minutes before

launch was given and there was pressure to at least a source there said it could have been pressure from mission managers who wanted to make sure that there was high-ranking officials there for the launch. There were 3,000 tourists that paid to come see the launch. They wanted this thing to get off. And so they said, just leave it. It'll be fine. And then, you know, fire this thing and see what happens. And obviously it did not work out. It collapsed in the flame print. And now here we are. Unsure of when this launch pad will be ready for us again and trying to adjust the ISS cargo manifest accordingly. So, uh, I don't know what kind of visibility we're going to have into that one,

but we should know as they make preparations, I think sources like Anatoli-Zack will get us a good sense of when is the next progress of Soyuz vehicle going to be able to launch. If it is a while, what are they going to do? Are they going to keep the Soyuz crew up there for, you know, indefinitely, they're going to fly the Soyuz home and have just the Russians from the U.S. vehicles flying up there. Good argument for this whole seat swap agreement

that has been a little bit on the razor's edge over the years that this is actually a really good policy. But man, for right now, until H3 gets its situation sorted out, which again, we'll talk about a few minutes, all roads of the ISS lead through a Falcon 9 vehicle. And that's the situation we're in. We're right back to it, boys. We got one way up to the ISS,

and this time it's a SpaceX vehicle, which is great and reliable and wonderful, but probably makes everybody in Houston and Moscow a little bit uncomfortable. All right, moving on to the launch this week. Don't worry, we only have about 1,000 to talk about. Barely an exaggeration, SpaceX and China, we're sure pumping out some launches this past couple of weeks. So we'll start out of the Chukon site launch center where there were a handful of launches to lead us out. Kwaijo 1A launched a couple of VHF data exchange system satellites, A&B, up to a 510 kilometer orbit.

at 80 degrees inclination. A Yowgon-47 satellite launched on a Long March 4B a couple of days later from the same launch site. That's part of the classified series of remote sensing satellites that China launches. We don't know what it's doing, but it did show up about 500 kilometers up in a sun-synchronous orbit, which means probably some sort of imaging, likely optical happening there with Yau-Gon-47. We had another classified payload.

A lot of those in a row here. This one on a Long March 3B out of the CChong satellite launch center, T.J.S. 22, a communications technology test satellites. Mostly been operating in geostationary orbit, so this one's likely heading there as well, though some have been launched into Molnia orbits and other elliptical orbits, but this one likely heading up to geo. Over in Cape Canaveral, Falcon 9 launched an NRO mission, National Connoissance Office, Enroll 77, flew on a northeast trajectory.

The booster did come back for a return to launch site landing and that landed at landing zone 2. Classified payload here as well for the NRO. Marco Langbroke also says that it could be a naval ocean surveillance system satellite, a pair of signals intelligence satellites,

likely heading up to about 1,000 by 1,200 kilometers at 63 degrees inclination. We don't know for sure that that was it, but it does seem to fit some of the hints that he's got on the launch. And then back to China at the Jukwan site at launch center, where we had a Connecticut 1 launch, nine satellites up to orbit, a little bit of a dust up after launch, in which

some people from SpaceX were treating about the fact that one of these satellites had a close pass with a starlink, about 200 meter close approach, a whole round of discussion about coordination of orbital traffic. I don't know There was some dispute Because you know The

SpaceX side said Well this thing was deployed from a launch And it passed too close And then the launcher side Cast space CAS space They said Well it was two days after we deployed it And you know

We didn't have any issues at launch So that isn't our problem anymore basically So it is a coordination problem At the root of it It was just funny, though, SpaceX, because they're out there tweeting, like, well, you could just upload your stuff into our system. It's like, yeah, of course, everyone's going to say that. And that's kind of the problem that we're in, right? Well, if you just put it in my system, then I'll have everything and I'll be able to tell you.

So, I don't know that we're honestly, like, at a worldwide level, are we ever going to solve this problem? I don't know. That sounds much too organized for the messiness of humans. But I bet we can do better than we're doing right now. We're keeping eyes on the Zhu Kwan Sighti Launch Center, which has been the location of all the activity and another Kwaizhou, but this time Kauaijo 11 launched a couple of satellites up, two satellites to about 500 kilometers at 41 degrees inclination. Very odd. The first one was a deer five spacecraft, not dear moon, deer five, from the commercial company AZ space, which has this system that can carry about 300 kilograms up to orbit. In this case, it was 34 experiments. on board. And there was also one that was two male mice launched on the spacecraft for neuroscience research. Andrew Jones had a video of this pre-launch as they were getting ready to go. No video or photos after this because this thing is not designed to reorbit, or to re-enter

successfully. So if the mice make it, the whole mission, they will not survive the re-entry, very old-school mission here for animal research. And then the other thing on board was the Xiwong 5 satellite. This is, it's apparently unrelated to, you know, satellites of the same name. There were amateur radar satellites, but we don't really know what other mission this is up to. So some sort of tech demonstration mission seems to be the case, but very little information revealed about what this thing actually is. Over in New Zealand, Rocket Lab got an electron off the pan. carrying a mission for Jaxa for the Japanese Space Agency.

Raze 4, the Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite 4. That launched to a 540-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. There are eight payloads aboard to test all sorts of different things out, propulsion, communications. There's a drag sail to test certain kinds of deorbiting. Funny for a mission called Rays. That's a little bit ironic. And then we had a Long March 4B out of the Tai Yuan satellite launch center.

This was carrying a Shi Yawai Yon. 3, number 4 satellite, remote sensing satellite, that has some stereo mapping cameras, multispectral camera, laser altimeter, all sorts of mapping hardware on board that launch. And similarly, we had an Arian 6 launch this week. Arian 62 took off from French Guiana, making its fourth flight this year, fifth overall, and it was the first one to carry Galileo satellites to orbit. There were two Galileo satellites on board, numbers 33 and 34. They are heading up to a medium-earth orbit, about 23,000 kilometers high, and those were deployed successfully.

You'll remember that, you know, in the meantime, until they got this thing up and running, Europe was launching Galileo satellites over on Falcon 9. They launched two pairs back last year on Falcon 9s, but now they're back to the business themselves, launching them on Aryan 6. And the only other fallout from this is that the next Aryan 6 is supposed to be the four solid rocket booster variant. The Aryan 6-2, only two solid rocket boosters, four lighter payloads, lower orbits. Aryan 6-4 has four solid rocket boosters on it. Boy, I'm running out guess. I'm just looking at my timer, 30-something minutes. We are going long tonight, folks.

That next launch is scheduled for early 2026. It will carry 32 Amazon Leo broadband constellation satellites. That's the new name for Project Kuiper. those satellites apparently have already been shipped down to French Guiana so they're getting close to launch and that's a good sign for the bigger variant of Ariens 6 which I'll be honest I had no idea when that would show up I kind of forgot that it could be so soon but the fact that it is finally here is hugely unlocking for the rest of the arian 6 manifest we had a long March 5 launch this week out of the Wen Changsat launch center carrying tjs 23 a different

experimental communication satellite, a classified payload, presumably up to geo as well. Haven't seen much tracking on either of these two. I wonder if they're coordinating anything between 22 and 23. There's some sort of tie-in between these missions. That's why they launched so close together just a couple of days apart. Don't know yet, but I'm sure people will be tracking their movements over the next couple of months. To further bury the lead, a crude spaceflight took off this week as well. New Shepard launched out of Texas, carrying a whole slew of people up to suborbital space. It was the ninth New Shepard flight of the year, the seventh to carry people on board, and it was really successful. Most notably, there was the first wheelchair user to

ever fly to space on board, and that flight was sponsored by none other than Hans Konigs. of SpaceX. He was one of the first employees at the company. I was there for 20 years. A awesome guy from everybody that talked to him, everyone that knew him. I will give you this little fact toy, too, since we're so far into this monster episode. The first person to ever fly to space that... I wonder if this is true. I think it's true. First person to ever fly to space that once purchased the socks that I made on the main engine cutoff shop. Hans Koeningsman bought the SpaceX socks, as did a bunch of other people that worked in work or worked in flight control. And they would wear them on launch days, apparently. So if you ever saw him walking around the

office with the socks, the S-O-X socks on, you know where you got him. So I don't know. Maybe he wore him for the flight. I don't know what you can wear. Can you wear your own socks under the Blue Origin Flight suit? I don't know. That'd be kind of a good troll if he did wear him. I'll send him a free pair if he's listening to this. But that was very cool. they apparently connected on LinkedIn or something like that and they got talking and then Hans was like hey let's figure out how to make this project happen and they were successful so

no modifications to the new Shepard vehicle at all it was some modifications of ground systems that they used had to put an elevator at the launch pad work on some different interfaces for getting through the capsule door but everything went really well which was really cool to see So a good milestone for Blue Origin.

They like that kind of stuff. Expanding access to space, that's one of the key things of New Shepard. So if they can do that and do it in a way that's so successful, I think that's something that they are keen to always keep up on. And really cool for the space nerd tie in there, that Hans Koenigsman from SpaceX flying to space on a Blue Origin vehicle. I wonder what everyone thinks about that. But I thought it was pretty bad.

We did have another electron as well. the 21st electron of the year for Rocket Lab. They, you know, beat their record by quite a bit. The last year, they only performed 16 launches this year, went for 21. Three of those were the Haste version, the suborbital version of Electron. But the goal was only 20, so they surpassed that. You know, they did a lot better than ULA on that front in terms of beating their goals that they set for the year. This one was another launch for the Japanese company IQPS, a synthetic aperture radar satellite.

They've been deploying a ton with Rocket Lab over the years. They've done six of the seven electron launches for IQPS this year that they've already done. They've done seven for this company. They've done six this year. And they've still got a whole slew left. So you'll be hearing about them, I'm sure. And then on to kind of the rough part of this episode, to be honest, three launch failures in a row. the first one

the most unexpected and probably most impactful the H3 that I mentioned that was launched out of Japan this failed it's a little bit murky exactly where but we'll walk you through what happened so this was carrying a navigation satellite on board

a satellite for the quasi-zenith satellite system which operates from inclined elliptical geosynchronous orbits and the goal here is to they transmit GPS interoperable signals, and they try to provide better high elevation visibility. So, you know, if you're deep in downtown, it's all buildings, or you're in mountainous areas, things that occur a lot in Japan,

you need some satellites that are lingering up high over your head that you might not be able to see if you're looking directly to the Jewish stationary belt from your latitude. So you launch these to sort of supplement. It's something that is very useful in and around Japan and the islands around Japan. So this was on board, you know, a five-toned satellite heading up the two GTO. But the second stage seemed to have issues. So the second ignition of the second stage failed to start normally and it shut down almost immediately. The first second, the first, I've got so many words written here, the first second stage engine cut off. So the first time they cut off the second stage was 20 seconds later than the original plan called for.

and then the ignition was delayed 15 seconds beyond the original plan, and it shut down almost immediately. Now also, during the first stage burn, the hydrogen tank pressure in the second stage was losing pressure as it launched. So was there an issue from the jump with the second stage? Probably. And that's why the first burn cut off so much later than planned, and then the second failed immediately, probably because of low pressure.

but that left the payload in a very low orbit, 109 by 441 kilometers at 30 degrees inclination, and it made an orbit, and then on the second orbit, it deorbited over Chile, and that was it for the QZSS satellite on board here. Like I said, they had an HTVX mission coming up next year,

so that's a big impact. They're planning on launching a Mars mission in this time next year, So, and if you remember the first flight of H3 had a big issue, very, you know, they put a very big expensive satellite on the first launch, and that failed, and that was a big storyline. So, not the smoothest of starts to H3, but I'm curious to find out what this issue was when they finally do crack it in the investigation. Now, another one that went badly, but probably more expected, was actually down in Brazil. So the Alcantara launch satellite launch centers back in action with a. South Korean locket, rocket, oh my gosh, y'all, I'm falling apart of the seams here. It is late.

I don't know if you know how late it is, but it is late. It is so late, it's questionable whether I'm actually going to get this up on the 20 seconds. So, you know, we're having fun here for the little holiday special. The Hanbit nano rocket is a one of my favorites, the hybrid propellant engines that are used on this thing, right? We all love hybrid engines. But this is new and novel. South Korean company flying out of Brazil. Brazil's back in the game with a launch site. But we had some sort of failure. We don't know what happened yet.

There was a weird video stream where the launch looked to be going okay for a minute. And then there was a couple of frames of what looked like an explosion, but also looked like a ground impact, you know, like it hit the ground and exploded and that was the kind of cloud form. It wasn't just like an in-flight explosion. But the first stage has a hybrid motor on board. the second stage does as well, though there apparently is a second stage option with a methane and locks engine to be used in the future. So we'll see what the fall that is from this of, you know,

how quickly can they fly again, what was the issue at the first time? A lot of questions there, and there will be a lot of questions around the Long March 12A, which finally took off tonight. It's kind of plinkoed through the schedule here in December. So this is one of the other rockets out of China that has its goal to be the first reusable launch vehicle successfully landed in China. This one was developed separately than the others we've talked about, the Zhu Q3, and this was going to attempt a landing similarly on a concrete pad 300 kilometers down range. A methylox vehicle, seven engines on the first stage, one on the upper stage, launched successfully.

There was video of the initial liftoff that looked great, but apparently the first stage recovery failed on this mission. Andrew Jones tweeted out a photo of the first stage coming back in looking quite toasted, but we don't know exactly what happened yet. I'm going to reload Twitter while we record, which makes for great audio. But the Long Arch 12A itself looks to have made orbit successfully with two unnamed satellites deployed per Jonathan McDowell,

but no word yet on the first stage recovery. It doesn't seem like it worked out, unfortunately. But again, not super unexpected for the first go-around on the Long March 12A. All right. We're into the section of the show where I round up all of the constellations that have launched. So we had three Gowang launches, a Long-March 8A, carrying nine satellites up, a Long-March 6A, carrying five, and along March 12, just a regular 12, carrying nine satellites up, which brings them to 127 satellites total for Gow-Wang on orbit.

We had one Amazon Leo launch, this one on an Atlas 5, 551. This is the new name for Project Kuiper, if you didn't remember that. But this one out of Cape Canaveral on board that ULA launch, 27 satellites deployed up. The first mission under the Amazon Leo branding. That brings them to 180 satellites deployed across seven missions, four Atlas five missions, three on Falcon 9. And as I said, they've got a Vulcan that's apparently queued up. up and then an Aryan 6 that's queued up as well for early

next year. So was there a Vulcan? Now I'm wondering if I just mixed up the Vulcan and the Aryan 6-4 thing. I don't know. It's too late for me to look it up. I'll correct the record on the next show, I promise. And then we had a handful

of Starlink launches. We had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight starlink launches since we talked last. everything went smoothly with these, and there was one notable one. Starlink 335 flying out of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its first stage booster was making its 32nd flight, which is a new record for first stage boosters in the Falcon 9 fleets. We like to call out when we get milestones like that. That's always a good one to see. But otherwise, a couple from the East Coast, couple from the West Coast, and Starlink keeps keeping on.

so that brings us the end of what I told you would be the longest episode of headlines and I'm I know this is going to get edited down a little bit just by cutting out the times where I've taken a break to drink some water but I'm looking at like 50 minutes here on the clock so uh happy new year Merry Christmas to everybody listening to this on the free feed I promise usually headlines I don't know tight 15 20 minutes maybe 25 tops if something really crazy comes up this one is a monster but I did want to get you some of those takes about those stories going on. I'm going to be back sometime the next couple weeks. It may squeak one out before New Year's, maybe just after New Year's. Got a couple people in mind to bring on the show,

and then I guess we'll see what happens with Tori Bruno beyond that. But until then, thanks y'all for listening. Thanks so much for your support. If you already are a member, if you're not, please consider doing it. And yeah, thank you all so much. I'll talk to you soon. I'm going to be a lot of M. M. M. I don't know.

We're going to be. We're going to be able to be.