Astronomy Prints 🌌: Editor's Choice: An emotional temperature check on the launch bottleneck

09/23/2026

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By Mike Gruss

Hello weary travelers. Last week was conference-heavy for the space community. There was AFA in the Washington, D.C. area, where Space Force leadership was on hand offering a view of priorities for Gen. Doug Schiess and Erich Hernandez-Baquero.

Then there was World Space Business Week in Paris. I spoke with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher where he discussed his optimism for Europe’s human spaceflight program.

And finally, there was AMOS, the space situational awareness program in Maui, where Gen. Stephen Whiting said satellite tracking must evolve.

Conferences provide a natural milemarker to measure where industry sentiment is. In this case, let’s focus on launch. Our team heard whispers about a looming launch bottleneck in April at Space Symposium, full blown concerns in Amsterdam in late May and then last week it was the subject du jour at World Space Business Week.

But while most everyone wanted to talk about the topic — or was prepared to be asked about it or share an opinion about it — there never felt like a consensus.

Jeff Foust spoke to leaders who explored the range of emotion on display for this topic.

NUISANCE: “For the foreseeable future, starting from 2029, it’s a big headache,” said Eugene Kim, executive vice president of Satrec Initiative, a South Korean Earth observation company, during one conference panel Sept. 17.

PANIC: “We have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, ‘Oh my God, can you fly us? Because SpaceX no longer gives us a chance to launch,’” said Giulio Ranzo, chief executive of Avio, during a Sept. 10 earnings call. His company builds and operates the Vega C rocket.

MORE PANIC: “We seem to see a lot of panic in the industry over the lack of capacity,” said Jeff Thornburg, chief executive of Portal Space Systems, on a Sept. 16 panel. His company recently bought a Falcon 9 for the first flight of its Supernova maneuverable spacecraft, offering capacity on the launch for rideshare payloads.

DON’T PANIC! (which is always calming advice.): “Don’t panic. This is not a structural problem. It’s a temporary gap,” said Renato Panesi, chief commercial officer of D-Orbit. That company has flown orbital transfer vehicles on many SpaceX rideshare missions. “We were expecting this. At least, we were prepared to face it.”

Find solace in the fact that others share your feelings.

Two more tidbits on this topic. When he appeared on the Space Minds podcast, I asked Pacôme Révillon, the chief executive officer of Novaspace, if it was likely that launch prices could double by the early 2030s. He said it was difficult to say if they would in fact double, in part because of different mission requirements, but he acknowledged prices are already climbing. That episode drops tomorrow. (Follow Space Minds on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to catch it when it's released.)

Finally, one company probably not worrying? Rocket Lab. Their launch this week was the 17th so far this year for Electron, including three flights of HASTE, a suborbital version of the rocket. It was also the fifth launch of the rocket since early August.

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SIGNIFICANT DIGIT

<48 Hours

How long it took for China to carry out four launches in quick succession, starting Tuesday, using its Jiuquan and Hainan spaceports and a maritime mission from the East China Sea. The spate of missions highlights the diversification of China’s launch activities, with four different rocket families launching from separate facilities across the country.

GPS JAMMING TRACKERS

On the other side of the world in Maui, there was an interesting story from the AMOS conference. The Space Force is expanding the use of commercial satellites to detect and locate GPS jamming and other electronic interference, turning what began as an experiment into a standing global operation.

The effort has grown over the past year and accelerated during U.S. military operations against Iran, when U.S. Central Command asked the Space Force to broaden its monitoring beyond GPS into other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Now the military wants to extend that capability across all six geographic combatant commands.

“I expect it to explode into one of our most important capabilities for commercial operations,” said Barbara Golf, who leads the Space Force’s Joint Commercial Operations Cell,.

Golf said electromagnetic spectrum operations could become “by far the biggest part” of the Joint Commercial Operations Cell, which was created in 2020 to bring commercial data into U.S. Space Command operations.

Trending This Week

Albania is the latest country to sign the Artemis Accords.

The U.S. Space Force is planning a network of satellites that would continuously monitor activity around geosynchronous orbit and communicate with one another to quickly relay surveillance data to military operators.

The Defense Innovation Unit has selected Northrop Grumman and True Anomaly to build prototype satellites capable of closely monitoring spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit.

Intuitive Machines is examining how it can leverage satellite capabilities it gained from the acquisition of a major manufacturer into the emerging market for orbital data centers.

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