A Space Daily column

Mission Notes

Spaceflight and industry

Mission Notes follows the business and engineering of spaceflight. Rockets, satellites, contracts, and the industry behind the missions. Space Daily has reported on this beat since 1995, when the launch industry was a fraction of its current size.

Aerospace

Mir circled Earth more than 86,000 times and hosted 104 people from twelve countries, but none of that scale decided whether it kept flying in 2001 — the cost of keeping it up did

When the final bill came due, it wasn't Mir's age or achievements that doomed the space station—it was simply too expensive to keep alive.

Aug 20, 2026

Tech Space

NASA lost its Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 not because of a rocket failure, but because Lockheed Martin software reported thruster impulse in pound-force-seconds while NASA navigation software expected newton-seconds — a unit mismatch that sent the spacecraft dangerously deep into the Martian atmosphere and doomed the mission.

The onboard software was correct. A ground-file interface undercounted repeated thruster impulses by a factor of 4.45, while warnings and safeguards failed around it.

Aug 20, 2026

Tech Space

On 7 August, Elon Musk said Ship 40’s ocean recovery was “not looking good.” Eleven days later, on 18 August, it was towed intact to waters off Christmas Island — the first Starship upper stage ever recovered intact after returning from space.

After 24 days at sea, recovery crews guided the first intact Starship upper stage to calmer water off Christmas Island, preserving an unprecedented post-flight test article.

Aug 19, 2026

Space Tourism

Space tourism briefly had two competing suborbital operators. By 2026, neither was actually flying: Blue Origin had paused New Shepard for at least two years, while Virgin Galactic’s next passenger flight slipped to February 2027 — and its entire latest batch of $750,000 seats had already sold out.

Blue Origin stopped New Shepard despite a busy 2025, while Virgin Galactic sold a limited new batch of reservations for a Delta spacecraft that still has to complete its test programme.

Aug 19, 2026

Science

It takes BepiColombo more than eight years and nine planetary flybys to reach orbit around Mercury. The paradox is that getting closer to the Sun makes you faster, not slower — so the spacecraft has spent much of its journey shedding energy just to avoid screaming past the planet it was sent to study.

BepiColombo’s long route to Mercury is an exercise in losing heliocentric orbital energy while matching a planet travelling around the Sun at roughly 47 kilometres per second.

Aug 18, 2026

Science

Japan is sending a spacecraft to land on Phobos, where gravity is about 1,700 times weaker than Earth’s. MMX will collect more than 10 grams of material and return it to Australia in 2031 — the first sample ever deliberately brought back to Earth from the Martian system.

MMX will use a rover, two sampling systems and a brief Phobos landing to return more than 10 grams of material to Australia in 2031.

Aug 18, 2026

Russian Space

Before he was a cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev flew aerobatics for the Soviet national team, and in 1986 — the same year he finished cosmonaut training — he was champion of the USSR

A fighter pilot's discipline became essential when Krikalev found himself stranded in orbit as the Soviet Union collapsed around him.

Aug 18, 2026

Moon Daily

Scientists led by UCLA found that permanently shaded parts of pits on the Moon stay near a constant 17°C while the exposed surface swings between 127°C and −173°C — meaning humanity’s first permanent lunar address may be underground.

LRO thermal data and UCLA-led modelling show why permanent shade in certain lunar pits can remain near 17°C, while cave habitability still depends on access, structure, air and power.

Aug 17, 2026

Venusian Heat

On 1 March 1982, a Soviet probe called Venera 13 touched down on Venus and was expected to last just 32 minutes in 465°C heat — it survived for 127 minutes, drilled and analysed a soil sample, and sent back the first colour photographs ever taken from the surface of Venus.

Venera 13 turned a planned 32-minute Venus surface mission into 127 minutes of confirmed transmission, completing colour panoramas, drilling and X-ray soil analysis.

Aug 17, 2026

Space Travel

Voyager 2 is nearly 50 years old, losing about 4 watts of power every year as its plutonium power source fades — and NASA just bought it at least another year of science with an all-at-once power-system swap engineers called the “Big Bang,” performed on a spacecraft with razor-thin power margins and no possibility of physical repair.

The Big Bang swap freed almost 10 watts while preserving Voyager 2's thermal balance, keeping its three remaining interstellar instruments on for at least another year.

Aug 16, 2026

Science

The Soviet Venera 13 lander parachuted through the sulphuric acid clouds of Venus in March 1982 and touched down in a landscape hot enough to melt lead, transmitted the first colour photographs of the surface for 127 minutes before the pressure crushed it, and along the way recorded the wind — the only audio anyone has ever captured from another planet’s surface

The Soviet Venera 13 lander survived 127 minutes on the surface of Venus in March 1982, sending home the first colour photographs from another planet — and the only audio recording ever made from another planet's surface.

Aug 16, 2026

Constellations

In May 1961, Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight was delayed so many hours on the pad that he eventually radioed mission control to say he had to urinate inside his suit, and engineers, having designed no plumbing for a 15-minute flight, told him to go ahead and short out the medical sensors taped to his chest

Alan Shepard's 15-minute Mercury flight in May 1961 was delayed so long on the pad that he had to urinate inside a suit engineers had never designed for it — and the fix set the template for every plumbing system flown since.

Aug 16, 2026

Moon Daily

A SpaceX rocket stage launched in January 2025 drifted for more than 18 months before crashing into the Moon at 8,700 km/h, carving a crater tens of metres wide — while newer lunar launches are sending spent stages safely onward into orbit around the Sun instead.

The stage 2025-010D struck the Moon after 18 months in cislunar space. Its impact is confirmed, while the crater's exact size remains a modelled range pending measurement.

Aug 16, 2026

Science

Astronauts’ weight-bearing bones lose around 1 to 1.5 percent of their mineral density every month in microgravity — and with a journey to Mars potentially lasting nine months, their bodies could already be substantially deconditioned before they take a single step on another planet.

NASA's monthly bone-loss range shows the scale of the Mars-transit risk, but individual outcomes depend on duration, exercise, nutrition and whether loss continues linearly beyond six months.

Aug 15, 2026

Tech Space

SpaceX’s Starship generates more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V that carried humans to the Moon, yet after 13 test flights it still hasn’t demonstrated ship-to-ship refueling in orbit — one of the biggest technical hurdles standing between Starship and Mars.

Starship has unmatched liftoff thrust, but its Mars architecture still depends on an unproven vehicle-to-vehicle cryogenic refuelling system.

Aug 15, 2026

Chip Tech

A NASA processor now being tested at JPL is performing 500 times faster than the radiation-hardened chips currently used in spaceflight — yet fits in the palm of a hand and could let future spacecraft make AI-powered decisions on their own when communicating with Earth can take 44 minutes round-trip.

NASA's palm-sized HPSC processor is indicating a 500-fold performance gain in JPL tests, with qualification still ahead.

Aug 15, 2026