Tag: China

Rocket Lab, the New Zealand / US company, has made a name for itself in the smallsat market – possibly the fastest growing sector of the space industry – both as a launch provider via its Electron rocket (around US $7.5 million per launch). It’s one of the most successful commercial space companies going (although still to consistently earn a profit), and it is growing its reputation both in the commercial sector and in support of US government-related launches.

In this latter regard, in June 2026, the company set a new benchmark for military responsive space operations under the United States Space Force’s (USSF) TacRS – TACtical Responsive Space – programme. This is a programme designed to place satellites into orbit on short notice during a crisis. VICTUS HAZE, the test involving Rocket Lab, tested the concept under demanding timelines and cleared several milestones well ahead of schedule.

In particular, the company was able to take a payload – their Pioneer demonstrator of a satellite they have been specifically developing to meet USSF requirements – from storage through ground check-out, fuelling and integration into a launch vehicle and thence to orbit in under 17 hours, beating the previous TacRS test mission’s record by 10 hours. Key to this was Rocket Lab’s ability to complete all trajectory guidance calculations in order for Pioneer to rendezvous with its intended target in just 4 hours, including coordinating all the required ground tracking stations around the world.

While the launch didn’t shave time off of the satellite’s on-orbit initialisation process, it still meant that within 3 days of launch, the satellite was ready to begin rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) with a target a vehicle in a simulation of chasing down and observing a Chinese satellite which had itself been launched in order to snoop on an orbital asset operated by a western nation.

The success with VICTUS HAZE further enhanced Rocket Lab’s status as a company that delivers on its promises. Whilst specialising in the smallsat market – perhaps the fastest-growing sector of the commercial space industry – using its Electron rocket putting small payloads in orbit for around US $7.5 million a shot, the company is far more than a launch provider.

As well as providing launch vehicles for customers, Rocket Lab has a dedicated satellite development capability enables the company to provide the payloads customers are seeking to fly. Further, and as demonstrated by Victus Haze, Rocket Lab has the ability to manage and co-ordinate satellites in orbit on their client’s behalf – Pioneer remaining under Rocket Lab’s operational control on behalf of US Space Command. Thus, the company is able to provide a full vertical stack of satellite development, launch and operational capabilities to customers.

While Electron, with its current maximum payload capacity of 300 kilos is the most well-known of the company’s rockets, it is not the only vehicle Rocket Lab operates. There is also the Electron-derived HASTE vehicle, specifically designed for flight test opportunities in the hypersonic and suborbital system technology development field.

A HASTE vehicle was most recently used in February 2026 to lift the DART AE hypersonic demonstrator to a release altitude where it could test advanced propulsion, materials, sensors and guidance systems under real hypersonic flight conditions (5x the speed of sound). Built by Australia’s Hypersonix on behalf of the US DoD, a unique part of DART’s design is that the scramjet engine it uses is 3D printed.

In a typical twist of humour reflective of Rocket Lab’s CEO, New Zealander Sir Peter Beck, the rocket used to successfully launch and deploy DART AE for its (also successful) test flight was called That’s Not a Knife – a reference to an iconic scene in the film Crocodile Dundee, thus referencing the Australian heritage of hypersonic vehicle.

As I’ve reported on several times in these pages, Rocket Lab is also developing a new reusable medium-lift launch vehicle (MLLV) called Neutron. This is due to make its maiden flight later in 2026, and has already gained worldwide recognition for it novel approach to payload carrying.

Rather than have the payload and the upper stage of the rocket mounted on top of the first stage, they are mounted inside the rocket’s first stage behind a pair of clamshell doors which will open up to release both – giving them the nickname of the “Hungry Hippo” – before closing to allow the complete booster to return to Earth.

Currently, Neutron is expected to make its maiden flight later in 2026, despite the loss of a propellant tank intended for the first flight-ready vehicle during pressure tests in January, 2026. The company has reported that it is now entering into vehicle integration, ground-testing of both the rocket’s main Archimedes engines and the vacuum-optimised version used in its upper stage is proceeding, and the construction of the new Neutron- capable launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia is complete.

Through its unique design and the reusability of its first stage, Neutron will be able to deliver up to 13 tonnes to low-Earth orbit with the first stage reused. This might not sound much compared to Blue Origin’s New Glenn or SpaceX Falcon Heavy, but it actually places Neutron right in the sweet spot of launch capabilities: able to meet requirements of 98% of all commercial payloads through until the end of 2029 (were all those contracts up for grabs). Thus, it is well-placed to compete not only with the behemoths in the market (which have to wait around until they have sufficient payload to make launches reasonably cost-effective), but very much directly against SpaceX Falcon 9.

At the time of writing, Rocket Lab is attempting to acquire Iridium Communications for some US $8 billion. Iridium operates a network of 80 satellites in near-polar orbits (66 operational, 14 in-orbit back-ups). This constellation provides a globe-spanning network for voice and data communication from handheld satellite phones, satellite messenger communication devices and integrated transceivers, as well as for two-way satellite messaging service from supported mobile phones.

If the deal goes through, it will mean Rocket lab has entered another area of competition with SpaceX, Amazon and OneWeb – one which comes with an already established satellite network and 2.54 million billable subscribers (which is well short of Starlink’s 10 million). In addition, Iridium provides services for the US government, airlines, cruise ship and shipping operators. Perhaps most significantly, the Iridium system is certified for use in the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) and for Future Air Navigation System (FANS) data links, neither of which is supported by the other providers, thus putting Rocket Lab in a unique position to harness new customers.

All of which speaks to a lot for a little rocket company that decided it can.

1 Launch, 1 Billion Kilometres and a Rendezvous

In May 2025, China launched one of its most ambitious missions so far: sending a robotic vehicle to rendezvous, land on and gather samples from a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) and then return those samples to Earth.

It’s not the first time there has been such a mission, both NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa2, have all gathered samples from near-Earth objects; however for China, Tianwen-2 (“’Heavenly Questions-2”) is an ambitious step considering the relative age of their space programme.

The target of the mission is 469219 Kamoʻoalewaa (also known as 2016 HO₃), what is called a quasi-satellite because there are periods in its orbit around the Sun where it passes close enough to Earth to become temporarily caught by Earth’s gravity, orbits the planet numerous times whilst continuing along its orbit around the Sun before moving off once more until the next time its orbit and that of Earth intersect. What makes 469219 Kamoʻoalewaa particularly interesting for study is that it is believed to be a piece of our Moon ejected into space when an impact created the crater Giordano Bruno on the lunar far side.

Rendezvousing with such an object might sound relatively simple compared to sending a probe to somewhere like Mars. However, orbital mechanics mean that doing either is a complex task – particularly in the case of 469219 Kamoʻoalewaa, about which relatively little was known in terms of trajectory when the mission launched. In all, it took over a year for Tianwen-2 to close on the asteroid with frequent course corrections guided using observations from Earth, travelling 1 billion kilometres in the process.

In early June, the probe was able to detect the tiny asteroid – just 27.4 metres across – directly, rather than relying on guidance from Earth. This allowed it to initiate a capture control manoeuvre, settling into trajectory alongside that of the asteroid, matching its orbital path rather than simply crossing it. Through the first part of June, the probe gently closed the distance between itself and the asteroid to just 2,000 kilometres.

By July 2nd, 2026, Tianwen 2 had reached an altitude of 20 km above the asteroid, allowing it to commence its primary science mission. The vehicle will now carry out an intensive survey of the asteroid as it gradually decreases the separation between them until at 300m, with a sampling site determined, Tianwen-2 will attempt to touch-down briefly on the asteroid’s surface and gather around 100 grams of material.

If successful, this will be the first time a spacecraft from Earth has used an anchor-and-attach approach method to physically fix itself on an asteroid to gather samples. Both of the Hayabusa missions and OSIRIS-REx used touch-and-go, essentially closing to a point were a sampler gathering device could make contact with the target for long enough – a couple of seconds – to gather a sample before springs in the device compressed by the mass of the spacecraft released to push it away. However, in case Tianwen 2’s anchor and attach mechanism proves unsuitable, the craft also has a touch-and-go capability for sample acquisition.

Following sample gathering, Tianwen-2 will return to Earth, ejecting its payload before heading back out into space for a rendezvous comet 311P/PanSTARRS, which it will reach in 2035.

Astronomers Discover 1st Atmosphere around an Earth-sized Planet in a Star’s Habitable Zone

LHS 1140 is a red dwarf star appearing in the constellation of Cetus (the Whale), approximately 48.8 light-years from our own star. It has 18.4% the mass of the Sun and is 21% of its radius. It is also the parent to two exoplanets – LHS 1140 b and LHS 1140 c.

Of these, LHS 1140 b, is classified a “super Earth”, being roughly 70% larger in radius than Earth and with a mass 5.6 times greater. It orbits very close to its parent star – some 0.095 AU – taking just 24.74 terrestrial days to complete an orbit. Despite this, the planet sits within the habitable zone for 1140, and because of the star’s small size, it receives around 0.43 times the incident flux – the amount of radiant energy received by a surface per unit area, typically expressed in watts per square meter (W/m²) as Earth does.

For some time since its discovery in 2017, observations of LHS 1140 b during its transits in front of its parent star have suggested one of two things: either it is a large rocky world with an atmosphere and perhaps 19% of its surface being water; or it might be a mini-Neptune with a really dense, hydrogen-rich atmosphere. To try to determine which of these might be true, in September 2024 a team of astronomers carried out a 6.5 hour observation of the planet’s transit in front of its star using the Magellan Clay Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. During this period, the team measured an excess absorption feature consistent with helium, which they interpreted as a hydrodynamic atmospheric outflow driven by stellar X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet heating.

In other words they detected both an outflow of helium from the planet, indicating it has a potentially helium-rich atmospheric envelope consistent with a world. A further study in 2025 further resulted in measurements consistent with the September 2024 study, minus no excess helium absorption, suggesting the planet’s atmosphere is relatively stable atmosphere which is not constantly outgassing under the influence of a solar wind from its parent star. That the atmosphere appears to be predominantly helium also means the indications that water could exist on the planet’s surface are likely accurate.

Of course, being classified “Earth like” and having an atmosphere does not mean there is life on LHS 1140 b – nor does the fact it sits within its star’s habitable zone. However, all of the data gathered suggests that LHS-1140 b has a temperature at least equitable to Earth’s Polar Regions so the water on its surface could well be in part liquid, rather than totally frozen; and if the atmosphere is sufficiently dense, then surface conditions could be a lot warmer, and so more liquid water might be present.

Two of the key determinants in assessing whether a planet like LHS 1140 might be capable of supporting life once it has found to have an atmosphere and the potential for liquid water are: how active is the parent star, and whether the planet is tidally locked.

Most red dwarf stars tend to be violent places; their small size means they suffer powerful convection currents which can led to violent flaring and other outbursts fully capable of ripping the atmosphere away from a planet as close to it as LHS 1140 b is to its parent. However, at an age close to that of our own Sun, LHS1140 is surprisingly clam for its size, meaning there is a good chance of LHS-1140 b retaining its atmosphere for long enough for life to potentially take hold.

Tidally locked refers to a planet being so close to its star that it ceases rotating about its own axis and instead keeps the same side facing the star (like the Moon keeps its same face towards Earth). In these situations, it means that one side of the planet is in perpetual sunlight whilst the other is constantly exposed to space and thus to freezing. This can lead to the planet have extreme weather, particularly along the terminator between the day and night sides of the planet. However, such conditions don’t necessary rule out such a place supporting life – but it does make it harder.

As such, there is still a lot more that needs to be understood about LHS 1140 b, but the fact we now have what appears to be the first direct evidence of an atmosphere around another world means we will likely be able to find others.

A lot of people laughed when China announced it planned to develop a launch vehicle with a reusable first stage that would, on its return to Earth, be caught by a net. Well, they’re not laughing any more.

On Friday, July 10th, a Long March 10B (CZ-10B) medium lift launch vehicle (MLLV) lifted-off from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site, China’s first commercial spaceport on the type’s maiden flight. Roughly in the same class of vehicle as the SpaceX Falcon 9, the CZ-10B has a 16-total maximum payload capacity and is a derivative of the the CZ-10 design, specifically developed for the commercial space sector and for its first stage to be recovered.

This maiden flight not only tested the system for recovering the rocket’s first stage but confirmed the rocket’s ability to deliver payloads to orbit, which it did so successfully. The vehicle lifted-off at 04:14 UTC, climbing up through Max Q and to upper stage release altitude. Following separation, the booster stage then continued on an upwards ballistic trajectory before starting a fall back towards Earth, deploying a set of grid fins to maintain its vertical orientation and providing steering during the passive descent for an at-sea recovery.

Following a powered re-entry into the denser atmosphere – lessening the dynamic stresses on the booster – it dropped in an unpowered state to just over 1 km altitude, when the 7 YF-100K motors were relit and, under automated control, the booster steered towards the recovery vessel LingHang Zhe (“Navigator”) with its huge recovery gantry. Under the guidance of four LIDAR systems mounted on the gantry, the booster positioned itself over the middle of the gantry, and began a slow final descent, deploying four hooks on its upper end.

At the same time, the LIDAR system guided four arresting cables along the gantry so they enclosed the booster which was then commanded to shut down its engines. Doing so, it gently dropped the last couple of metres, the hooks catching the arresting cables, which acted alike shock absorbers, bringing the booster to a gentle stop before tensioning. Whilst not seen in the videos released of the landing, the gantry includes a circular restraining mount which can be rotated out, allowing the booster to be placed within it by the arresting cables, securing it for the voyage back to port.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the thick black smoke pouring out of the top of the booster as seen in the video below, it is believed that dumping excess RCS propellants out through valves in the top of the booster (designed to minimise shipboard crew exposure to toxic hypergolic propellants) resulted in a small fire in the booster’s interconnect bay.

If this all sounds mind-bogglingly crazy compared to putting landing legs on the booster and allowing it to land directly on the ship a-la SpaceX / Blue Origin, it actually isn’t. A direct landing system requires landing legs, shock absorbers, a deployment mechanism, etc., whilst the booster itself requires strengthening against the shocks and stress of landing. All of this makes the booster heavier, more complex and thus less payload-capable. It also means the structure of the booster has to be extensively checked for micro fractures, etc., and multiple landings take their toll. None of this is the case when the booster a captured like this. As a result, the booster can be simpler, lighter and lift heavier payloads. Hence why SpaceX discarded landing legs for Starship / Super Heavy.

Following the CZ-10B success some critiqued the Chinese system because any collision between a descending booster and the gantry / capture system could destroy the latter. However, the same is true for Starship / Super Heavy, only more so: it is easier to replace a damaged gantry system when the ship returns to port (or on land, if the Chinese also go on to use land-based captures) than have to completely rebuild an entire launch / return site).

One other interesting offshoot of this is that the CZ-10B first stage is nigh-on identical to the CZ-10 first stage (other than the latter not being reusable). Three of the CZ-10 first stages are to be used to initially power the full CZ-10 which it commences operations – much as three Falcon 9 first stages power the Falcon Heavy. Therefore, it is possible that has experience is gained with capture operations, the Chinese might also launch the CZ-10 using one or more recoverable CZ-10B first stages, thus lowering CZ-10 lunch costs somewhat.

 Asteroids, Collisions and Dust

The subject of asteroid impacts on Earth has come up numerous times in this column. While the risk of such an impact is – relatively speaking – small, it is far from non-existent. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor at 18 metres across, for example is in the size category of asteroids liable to strike Earth once every decade (ish). Then there is the Tunguska event of 1908. That’s thought to have been caused by a stony asteroid 50-60 metres across and devastated 2,150 square kilometres of forest. This kind of impact is believed to happen once every 1,000 years.

Both of these were air-burst events, the Chelyabinsk object exploding at an altitude of some 30km, and the Tunguska object at around 7km.

The latter came apart with an energy yield of 22.79 megatons. If such a blast were to occur over a city like New York, the thermal radius (the distance at which people exposed to the blast would receive at least third-degree burns) would be 112 km, whilst the 20psi blast radius (enough to demolish buildings and cause 100% fatalities among those caught by the shockwave) would be 21 km.

However, if the Tunguska object had been an iron-nickel asteroid rather than stony, things get a lot worse because the asteroid would be solid enough to impact Earth, causing a crater some 2.5 km in diameter. The energy yield from the impact would be around 59 megatons; the 20psi blast radius some 24.2 km; and the thermal radius 220 km, while estimated immediate fatalities would be in the 1-3 million range.

This is why decades have been devoted to identifying and tracking near-Earth asteroids in order to assess the threat of one striking Earth at some point in the future. Thus far, over 32,500 such objects have been catalogued, ranging in size from a few metres in diameter to over 1 km across (853), with over 10,500 around three times the size of the Tunguska object. While none has been identified as presenting a real threat of hitting Earth, they represent less than half of the estimated total number of potentially threatening NEAs.

Hence why, as well, the news that China is planning on joining the hunt to find more potentially dangerous NEAs has been welcomed. The announcement was made on June 30th, International Asteroid Day and was a little lean on details. However, based on recently-published papers coming out of China, it appears the broad plan is to establish a combined ground / space effort to hunt and track NEAs and add gathered the information to the growing international database on the subject.

The ground-based effort is to be a chain of large-aperture optical telescopes placed at advantageous high-altitude locations around the world where they can scan the skies continuously at night. In space, China is looking to launch an observatory to the Sun-Earth Lagrange L₁ position where it has the Sun behind it and so can much more effectively scan for NEAs both visually and in the infrared – the latter being the route the European Space Agency is taking with its planned NEOMIR (Near-Earth Object Mission in the Infrared), due to launch in the 2030s.

This point in space is important because many NEAs come at us “out of the Sun”, so we’re unable to see them until they are literally right on top of us – or worse, have zipped by without being seen, and we only spot them as they head off back around the Sun – so if one of that had hit Earth, we’d only have known about it after the bang (if at all).

In addition to the Sun-Earth Lagrange L₁ position, China has indicated it may also place an observatory in orbit around Venus and another in what is called a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. Both of these positions would again allow near-continuous observation of the space around the Earth-Moon system.

Of course, identifying a potential threat is one thing; what to do about it is quite another – which is not to say we don’t have any ideas. If the threat is identified whilst it is far enough away (or when its current orbit will not result in a collision), then the solution could be to give it a short, sharp nudge so its trajectory and orbit changes sufficiently such that it will no longer strike Earth. This is the concept put to test in NASA’s 2021/2022 Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which deflected one asteroid orbiting another by slamming a spacecraft into is at a precise angle and velocity.

For larger objects, a proximity blast from a nuclear warhead could achieve the same by vaporising a portion of the object’s surface and generating the thrust needed to divert it. If the object cannot be deflected, it could potentially be vaporised using a combination of kinetic impactor and nuclear warhead – the impactor driving the warhead deep into the object prior to detonation, leaving a cloud of dust and debris small enough none of it would survive re-entry into the atmosphere.

Or that has been the perceived thinking until now. Also at the International Asteroid Day astronomers from the University of Edinburgh presented a paper demonstrating how dust from an impact with an NEA – and more particularly “space dust” in general – is now posing a very real threat to our ever-increasing orbital infrastructure and our reliance upon it; a threat that has not really been considered until now.

As we’re all aware, the space around Earth is getting very crowded. The number of satellites in orbit, for example has risen from 1,500 just under 10 years ago to over 12,000 today – and that number is steadily increasing. On top of this, there are literally tonnes of human-made junk in orbit – decommissioned or failed satellites, parts of launch vehicles, debris from anti-satellite missile tests, even bits of equipment lost during spacewalks. All of this has given rise to fears of a Kessler Syndrome event: a single collision between, say, a lump of junk and a satellite starting a cascade of collisions between debris and satellites until much of that orbital infrastructure (potentially including the space stations) becomes a massive orbital cloud of debris that renders large part of the space above us unusable.

Hence why there are increasing efforts to try to clean-up the “junk”.  Unfortunately, most of these rely on shunting dead satellites and other large objects into the atmosphere to burn up – which leads to a whole other problem of atmospheric pollution I’ve previously covered (see here and here for example) and outside the scope of this piece.

However, in their paper the Edinburgh team points out that the dust created by something like an asteroid impact mission, or those that give rise to the annual series of meteor showers we witness each year  – such as the Perseids every July / August (the result of our passage through a cloud of debris left by the passage of comet Swift-Tuttle around the Sun once every 133 years), or the Geminids (the result of trails of dust almost constantly being thrown off by the asteroid 3200 Phaethon as it zips around the Sun) – is travelling at tens of kilometres per second. Just a single impact from one piece of this dust could be catastrophic for a satellite or space craft.

This certainly happened in 1993, when particles later identified as being from the dust cloud causing the Geminids struck Europe’s $1.2 billion Olympus 1 communications satellite, resulting in its loss. It is also possible (but unconfirmed) that the dust responsible for 2022’s coolant leak aboard Soyuz MS-22 may have come from the dust that generates the Geminids meteor shower.

The point here is, as the paper notes, that while many clouds of dust and particles are known, how we pass through them is variable; most of the time Earth tends to whisk through the outer limits of such clouds. But once every 2-3 decades orbital mechanics dictate that we pass far deeper through several of them over the course of a few years, experiencing far more spectacular meteor showers in our night skies.

One of those periods is due to start in 2028 and run through until 2034. It will be the first one we’ve experienced since the “orbital boom” in satellites in low and medium Earth orbit began – and right at the time we’re trying to get back to the Moon and when activities in orbit will be expanding with new commercial space stations, etc. The University of Edinburgh study suggests that just a 5% uptick in the volume of dust encountered during this period could be enough to trigger on or more Kessler Syndrome events sufficient to cause major damage to most communications, defence data, relay, GPS, and other satellites in relatively short order – and could even impact activities on the Moon or cislunar space. Or it may not; the point is, we simply don’t know.

Another problem here as well is that dust cannot be deflected, so we need spacecraft and satellites better able to deal with it. Thus, the Edinburgh study calls for the formation of two international bodies: the International Commission on Space Infrastructure Resilience (ICSIR), and WARDEN (Warning-network for Asset Resilience from Dusts, Ejecta, and NEOs).

ICSIR, an independent group of experts would investigate the aforementioned risks, and work to integrate our space-based infrastructure into planetary defence systems and methodologies, and establish a managing framework to deal with the treat in cooperation with other planetary defence initiatives.

WARDEN, meanwhile, would use ICSIR’s finding to work with spacecraft and satellite manufacturers to try to mitigate as many of these threats as possible through improved engineering and hardware resilience.

It’s not clear if the recommendations of the report will be taken up directly, but it does offer a startling reality check on the continuing efforts to just lob everything into orbit to solve whatever the problem of the day might be (yes, I’m looking at you, “space data centre” enthusiasts).