Jonathan's Space Report
No. 853 Draft 2026 Jan 5 Somerville, MA, USA
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The 2025 annual summary is at https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space25.pdf
ISS
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Expedition 74 began on Dec 9 (I forgot to note this last issue - oops.)
On Jan 7 the EVA-94 spacewalk was cancelled after one of the Crew-11
astronauts (Cardman, Fincke, Yui, Platonov) suffered an unidentified
'serious medical issue'. Crew-11 member Kimiya Yui asked the ground for
a "PMC" (private medical confererence), possibly on behalf of one of his
crewmates. On Jan 8 NASA boss Jared Isaacman held a press conference to
announce that Crew-11 would return to Earth early aboard their Dragon
Endeavour ferry ship. It was reported that 'crew came to the aid of
their colleague right away' and the crewmember is 'now stable'. One
option available to NASA is what's called an 'emergency deorbit' where
the crew return to Earth within hours. Instead, NASA elected a less
extreme option, 'controlled medical evacuation', allowing a regular
preparation for return, just targeting a date several weeks earlier than
originally planned.
Some questions at the press conference were not answered very clearly by NASA:
- did the affected astronaut agree that return was sensible, or did they
get all right-stuffy and want to soldier on? Isaacman gave a general answer
that there was consensus between MCC and 'the crew' that return was right option,
but that leaves some room for there having been some persuasion required.
We'll know when they write their memoirs.
- does 'stable' mean that they are working as normal doing regular
duties on ISS, or are they on floaty bed rest?
This will be the fourth such space station medevac in history: in 1976 Vitaliy
Zholobov became ill aboard the military Almaz OPS-3 space station (cover name
Salyut-5), possibly from leaking toxic propellant, and the crew returned to
Earth aboard the Soyuz-21 ferry ship. In 1985, Vladimir Vasyutin got sick
from an infection aboard the DOS-6 (Salyut-7) space station, and was returned
to Earth along with the rest of his crew aboard Soyuz T-14. In 1987,
aboard the Mir space station, Aleksandr Laveykin had a minor cardiac issue.
On the next visiting crew flight he was replaced by one of the visiting
crewmembers, A. Aleksandrov, and returned to Earth on Soyuz TM-2 in Jul 1987
instead of staying aboard until the end of the EO-2 expedition in Dec 1987.
Editorial comment: if space is going to be a place where humans live
and work, they will sometimes get sick. This incident is a feature, not
a bug.
The Crew-11 astronauts undocked from ISS IDA-3 in Dragon Endeavour at
2219 UTC Jan 14. After the 13 min, 87.5m/s deorbit burn at 0751 UTC Jan 15,
the trunk was jettisoned at 0805 UTC, reentry occurreed at 0830 UTC,
the trunk reentered over circa 127W 40N, and Dragon splashed
down in the San Diego recovery zone near 117.7W 32.6n at 0841:36 UTC.
Starlink launches
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Starlink Group 6-88 (29 Ku sats) was launched on Jan 4 from Canaveral.
Starlink Group 6-96 (29 Ku sats) was launched on Jan 9 from Canaveral.
Starlink Group 6-97 (29 Ku sats) was launched on Jan 12 from Canaveral.
Starlink Group 6-98 (29 Ku sats) was launched on Jan 14 from Canaveral.
Twilight mission
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On Jan 11 SpaceX launched the Twilight rideshare mission from Vandenberg to a sun-sync
orbit with 0528 local time descending node (LTDN).
The payloads included three astronomy satellites:
Pandora, led by NASA-Goddard, to study exoplanets with optical transit photometry and NIR spectroscopy;
SPARCS, from Arizona State U, with an ultraviolet telescope to study the radiation environment of low-mass stars;
BlackCAT, from Penn State U, with a coded-mask X-ray telescope to study gamma ray bursts and other transients.
Also aboard were:
10 Aether lasercom satellites from Kepler Comms (Canada)
Radar sats: Two from ICEYE (Finland) including one for the Finnish Defence Forces; one from Umbra (US); two from Capella (US);
one from Surrey Satellite (UK; CarbSAR)
IoT comm cubesats; eight Lemur-2 for Myriota (Australia) and Spire (Luxembourg); four for Plan-S (Turkey; Connecta IoT 13-16)
A hyperspectral meteorological spectrometer satellite for Spire (US; Lemur-2-Kutar)
Two microwave radiometer meteorology satellites for Tomorrow.io (US, Tomorrow-S10/S11)
Hydra-2, a thermal imaging satellite for Aistech (Spain)
Radio spectrum monitoring: 3 sats from Hawkeye360 (US; Hawk 13A to 13C)
and some interestingly novel payloads:
Dcubed-1, a cubesat which will 3D-print and extend a0.6m long boom in a test of in-space manufacturing, from Dcubed (Munich).
Flamingo-1 from Vyoma Space (Munich), with optical imagers for space situational awareness (satellite tracking).
PSLV-C62
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ISRO launched PSLV flight C62 on Jan 12 with the EOS-N1 military hyperspectral imaging satellite and a set of small payloads.
However, the third stage began tumbling out of control towards the end of its burn and the mission failed to reach orbit,
falling in the southern Indian Ocean around 0506 UTC, perhaps near 75E 18S (to within a few degrees).
Soyuz rideshare malfunction
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The Soyuz launch on Dec 28 appears to have been only partly successful. The AIST-2T satellites
were deployed in a 368 x 381 km orbit after the second Fregat burn. After two more Fregat
burns the cubesat payloads were deployed in a 495 x 515 km orbit. Fregat burn 5 put the
stage in a 500 x 720 km transfer orbit. However, a sixth burn intended to put Fregat
in a circular 720 km orbit appears not to have happened, with several objects
tracked in the elliptical transfer orbit. These objects likely inclued the Marafon
satellites. Another object in a 473 x 869 km orbit, object A, is susected to be the Fregat
stage, which was meant to be actively deorbited.
CALT launches
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CALT launched a CZ-8A from Hainan Commercial Launch Site on Jan 13 with
the Weixing Hulianwang Digui 18 zu weixing (SatNet LEO Group 18) internet satellites.
On Jan 15 CALT launched a CZ-2C from Jiuquan with Algeria's Alsat-3A remote sensing satellite.
SAST launches
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SAST launched a CZ-6A from Taiyuan on Jan 13, placing Yaogan 50-01 in an unusual retrograde orbit.
SJ-29
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SJ-29B separated from SJ-29A after the latter reached GEO. Both are at 73E.
Errata
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The date of the last report should have been 2026 not 2025 of course! I expect I'll
be making that mistake for at least the next month...
The cover name for the payload launched on Dec 9 was USA 570, not USA 590;
Launch of SatNet LEO 16 was Dec 11 not Dec 12, although satellite deployment was
on Dec 12.
Table of Recent Orbital (and near-Orbital) Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes
Jan 3 0209 CSG 3 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Radar 01A 622 x 627 x 97.9
Jan 4 0648 Starlink Group 6-88 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 02 258 x 268 x 43.0
Jan 9 2141 Starlink Group 6-96 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 03 252 x 262 x 43.0
Jan 11 1544 Twilight Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Rideshare 04
Jan 12 0448 EOS-N1 PSLV-DL Satish Dhawan FLP Rideshare F01 -3780? x 390? x 98
Jan 12 2108 Starlink Group 6-97 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 05 252 x 261 x 43.0
Jan 13 1416 Yaogan 50-01 Chang Zheng 6A Taiyuan Radar? 06A 701 x 944 x 142.0
Jan 13 1525 WHDW 18 Chang Zheng 8A Hainan CLS Comms 07 913 x 927 x 50.0
Jan 14 1808 Starlink Group 6-98 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 08 253 x 262 x 43.0
Jan 15 0401 ALSAT-3A Chang Zheng 2C Jiuquan Imaging 09A
Table of Recent Suborbital Launches
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Dec 20 1415 NS-37 New Shepard W Texas Tourist 107 W Texas
Dec 23 RV K-4 INS-S74, Bay of Bengal Test 500? Indian Ocean
Jan 8 2130? RV x 6? Oreshnik Kapustin Yar Weapon 500? Lviv, Ukraine
Jan 12 0800 Test capsule Lihong-1 Jiuquan Test 120 Dongfeng?
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | |
| Somerville MA 02143 USA | inter : planet4589 at gmail |
| and | twitter: @planet4589 |
| Bromley, UK |
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