Triton, moon of Neptune, seen in front of Neptune from the receding Voyager 2 in 1989.

Mengzhou atop of the CZ-10A test stage. Grid fins and recovery hooks visible at the top of the stage, with people offering perspective of scale. Low-altitude test flight and abort test at maxQ scheduled for Feb. 11. m.weibo.cn/detail/52632...

Scheduled for Feb. 11 at 2:51 UTC bit.ly/SpaceLaunchCalendar

The new year has not started well for China, with two failures among its first six launches. www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/02/chin... By Martin Smith

Massive sunspot chain AR 4366 is one for the record books. In the span of a few days, the group has grown from obscurity to a monster, more than 200,000 miles in length. For context, the chain would nearly stretch from the Earth to the Moon...though placing it there would fry us all in the process.

@esa.int's #Vigil mission will follow a few years later.

Sunspot #AR4366 in full glory. Yes, that's the one firing X-flares at us!

Yesterday, on the Starlink Group 17-32 mission, SpaceX had another failed deorbit burn. While the stage was unable to deorbit itself, the propellant was vented which did lower the perigee to 110km. SpaceX has already delayed several Starlink mission as they investigate the issue.

Last night, NASA completed the 1st WDR for Artemis II. Teams ran into several issues such as LH2 leaks and audio dropouts, but were able to count down to T-5:15. To allow time to investigate and complete another WDR, NASA is now targeting March (NET 7th at 01:29 UTC) for launch.

Fun fact: we recently moved two satellites to meet a plane. Why? For valuable scientific data on atmospheric reentries. Find out more about the why & how 👉 www.esa.int/Space_Safety...

Meanwhile a Falcon 9 upper-stage had another oopsie...

Close Encounter: Earth Orbiting Leftovers www.leonarddavid.com/47692-2/

This is likely the reentry of Starlink-5103. The position matches (see map, position for 18:27 UTC) and it is in the current CSpOC TIP window (16:31 - 22:31 UTC)

An impressive X8 solar flare just fired off from AR 4366. This is one of the strongest events of this solar cycle! Monitoring now for any associated CME. Usually these big flares have some sort of eruption with them, so even if it's small, something may have launched off...

Wowser. Massive sunspot region AR 4366 juuust kicked off a powerful X-8.1 class flare within the past hour... could be an interesting spaceweather week ahead. #DwarfLab #DwarfMini

New Blogpost: "You Only Die Twice (redux): the unusual and confusing double reentry of a ZQ-3 upper stage (2025-282A)" sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2026/01/you-...

1/x Now this is decidedly odd: a SECOND "final" #TIP with +- 1m accuracy has been published late yesterday for the #ZQ3 R/B #reentry: 13:43 +- 1m near 3.9 S, 60.7 E; 1h 4m after the first reentry time. Never seen this before! I have an idea on what might be the case 🧵

YTD orbital launch stats: 🇺🇸 13 🇨🇳 8 🇳🇿 2 🇮🇳 1 🌍 24

You may have seen pictures, but have you ever seen video of a gigantic jet #TLE from space? Astronaut Jeanette Epps captured this incredible sequence on July 20th, 2024 for the DTU/@science.esa.int Thor-Davis experiment. 🧪🔭 youtu.be/xN2J7_rOBJY Credit: ESA/NASA/J. Epps Processing: Simeon Schmauß

The second stage of the first Zhuque-3 rocket launched in December reentered at 1239 UTC today (±1 min) over the Southern Ocean, according to a US Space Force TIP message. There was a surprising level of interest in the event in Europe, due to ground tracks & reentry estimates.

Sorry for yet another lapse in news coverage as I was busy lately, & the Chinese seem to be too w/ all planned late January launches all slipping far away. Let’s start w/ this radar image in the final hours of existence of the 1st LandSpace ZQ-3 2nd stage before re-entry…

Well, in this case CAS Space's #Lihong2 will probably send the next tourists on suborbital flights.

Wow: Blue Origin says it will pause New Shepard flights for at least two years to accelerate work on human lunar spaceflight:

A decommissioned Russian satellite (known as #Luch or #Olimp) has exploded in a graveyard orbit just above the geosynchronous belt.

Launch of SpaceX #Falcon9 Block 5 rocket with #Starlink Group 6-101 satellites & 1st stage droneship landing imminent. Watch live!

Launch of @rocketlabcorp.com #Electron rocket with #NeonSat satellite imminent. Watch live!

The Varda Space W-5 spacecraft landed at Koonibba Test Range on Jan 29. They haven't released the landing time yet, but the TLEs show a pass over Koonibba at 1353 UTC so I guess landing was close to 1400 UTC

Another Falcon 9 launch with more Starship TPS tiles going up...

Launch of SpaceX #Falcon9 Block 5 rocket with #Starlink Group 17-19 satellites & 1st stage droneship landing imminent. Watch live!

The German armed forces have awarded Polaris Spaceplanes a contract to develop and flight test a fully reusable, two-stage hypersonic vehicle. europeanspaceflight.com/polaris-spac...

Bot space race: humanoid robots connect to satellite, prep for space launch

Launch of SpaceX #Falcon9 Block 5 rocket with latest #GPSIII satellite & 1st stage droneship landing imminent. Watch live! #GPSIIISV09

Congrats to @wierzchos.bsky.social on this beauty! C/2024 E1 (Wierzchoś) is putting on a show for southern hemisphere observers right now. 📷 by renowned comet photographer Gerald Rhemann. 🔭

Ah crap, NASA WB-57 N927NA just made a gear-up landing at Ellington Field, crew is OK, aircraft not so much... which might be an issue for support Artemis II launch... Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4da...

Oh no! Now only two are left in operation...

Strange sights graced Scandinavian nights this weekend… we’re not talking about aurora, but a bizarre red glow seen crossing the skies over Norway and Finland last night around 20:45 Universal Time (UT). Mikko Peussa caught the scene from Turku, Finland: www.taivaanvahti.fi/observations...

Launch of SpaceX #Falcon9 Block 5 rocket with #Starlink Group 17-20 satellites & 1st stage droneship landing imminent. Watch live!

China's LT1-01A was launched in Jan 2022 by CZ-4C Y29; the CZ-4C rocket's third stage remained in orbit and reentered at 0632 UTC Jan 24 over Minneapolis

1. This short thread is about the issue that dominates almost every aspect of politics, and causes or exacerbates most of our problems: the extreme wealth of a small number of people. Here’s the amazing thing: almost the entire political class aligns with the ultra-rich against the rest. 🧵1/10

Launch of Blue Origin's #NewShepard rocket with 6 passengers on suborbital mission #NS38 to the edge of space imminent. Watch live!

Launch of @rocketlabcorp.com #Electron rocket with two #OpenCosmos satellites imminent. Watch live! #TheCosmosWillSeeYouNow

French small-launch startup Latitude is pushing toward a maiden flight of its Zephyr rocket within the next 18 months, prioritizing speed-to-market and manufacturing efficiency over reusability to capture Europe’s dedicated smallsat launch market. nasaspaceflight.com/2026/01/lati... By Sean Yoder.

Launch of SpaceX #Falcon9 Block 5 rocket with #Starlink Group 17-30 satellites & 1st stage droneship landing imminent. Watch live!

UK rocket builder Orbex has signed a letter of intent to sell to European space logistics startup The Exploration Company. europeanspaceflight.com/the-explorat...

Ever wondered what powers a solar flare? 💥 Solar Orbiter is finally giving us answers to this long-standing mystery. The mission caught a 'magnetic avalanche' on the surface of the Sun just before a flare was released. 🔭🧪1/3

Today's Sun with sunspot #AR4341, the culprit of last night's solar storm, right in the middle. Imaged with my @unistellar.bsky.social #eVscope.

Growing sunspot group AR 4341 kicked off a powerful X1.9 flare yesterday at 18:09 UT, sending a solar proton storm Earthward. This caused a brief short wave radio black out centered on South America, and the slower Coronal Mass Ejection is now on the way this week. NASA’s SDO caught the flash:

Shenzhou-20 landed safely at 0134 UTC today, with a patched up debris-damaged window. Shenzhou-23, which will provide emergency backup to the crew currently aboard Tiangong , has arrived at Jiuquan, with its CZ-2F launcher following soon.

Launch of Long March #CZ12 rocket with 9 satellites for the #Guowang constellation imminent. Watch live!