How The ISS Shaped The Culture of Artemis II

ship-to-ship call Astronauts on the ISS (left) and Orion during a ship-to-ship call as part of the Artemis 2 mission, as seen from Mission Control. (credit: NASA JSC/Robert Markowitz) Mirroring mango salad: How ISS culture shaped Artemis 2 by Deana L. Weibel Monday, April 20, 2026 Artemis 2 has frequently been described as humans returning to the Moon,[1] and it has sometimes been seen as an attempt to pick up where the Apollo missions left off. In truth, however, the Artemis missions, specifically Artemis 2, aren’t exactly either one of those things. The Apollo missions took place in a completely different time period, with a different level of access to technology and during an era when space exploration itself was still new. More than 50 years later, the Artemis 2 mission reflects a transformation that is not just about the use of new programming and equipment but also a significantly changed culture. This was not a conversation between strangers, nor did it resemble the more structured, and even awkward, exchanges the Artemis crew had with politicians or journalists. Artemis 2 follows naturally from decades of astronauts living and working in space aboard the International Space Station. The difference we see is not where the crew went. The difference is who the members of the Artemis 2 crew were when they got there. This is a group shaped not just by training, but by lived experience in space. Their time in low Earth orbit gave them a deep and familiar understanding of how to exist and operate in microgravity. That experience influenced everything that followed. A phone call for history On April 9, shortly before the Integrity capsule splashed down to Earth, the crew of the International Space Station and the crew of the Orion spacecraft Integrity were connected through NASA for what was described as a space-to-space phone call. Present on Integrity were Commander Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and first-time astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Aboard the ISS during the call were Commander Jessica Meir, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, Jack Hathaway, and Christopher Williams. The three cosmonauts on the ISS did not take part. The conversation began following protocol, with a commander-to-commander exchange. Formality soon disappeared, and the tone became very relaxed. Although the audio could only pick up whoever had the microphone at a given moment, it was clear from the visuals that voices were overlapping and that the conversation was filled with lighthearted banter and laughter. The rhythm of the interaction felt comfortable rather than tentative. This was not a conversation between strangers, nor did it resemble the more structured, and even awkward, exchanges the Artemis crew had with politicians or journalists. Instead, it felt like a friendly communication between two groups of people who had worked with each other for different periods of time. The ease of the interaction was immediately apparent. Early in the call, Jessica Meir said, “We feel like we have you with us, and this is just making our entire week right now.” Reid Wiseman replied, “We have been waiting on this like you can’t imagine.”[2] Throughout the conversation, there was laughter, as well as gestures of encouragement and agreement. As a group used to communicating with only one available microphone, both crews were practiced in expressing agreement through body language as well as speech. Astronauts were frequently communicating physically rather than verbally, using clapping, miming, thumbs-up gestures, and even a Hawaiian shaka to convey meaning. It might seem that a mission traveling far beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time in more than 50 years would involve communication that was more formal or more cautious. Conversation during the Apollo missions ranged from formal to informal but radio exchanges between two spacecraft—for instance, between the Lunar Module and the Command Module—were more focused on the business at hand. In contrast, the Artemis-ISS call felt very much like people who cared about each other catching up after time spent apart. The interaction did not reflect uncertainty or distance, but familiarity and shared experience. That familiarity is one of the most important clues to understanding what Artemis 2 represents. It is not simply a return to the Moon, but a mission shaped by decades of living and working in space. ship-to-ship call The Artemis 2 crew during the ship-to-ship call. (credit: NASA) An experienced crew One of the most striking aspects of the Artemis 2 mission is just how experienced the crew was before they ever set out into deep space. These were by far the most seasoned space travelers ever to travel so far from Earth. Christina Koch spent more than 300 days in space before undertaking the mission, while both Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman had spent more than 160 days in low Earth orbit. Only Jeremy Hansen was a true first-time astronaut. The experience that three-quarters of the crew brought with them was not abstract or obtained primarily through simulations or high-performance aircraft but instead came from living and working in space over extended periods of time. The experience that three-quarters of the crew brought with them was not abstract or obtained primarily through simulations or high-performance aircraft but instead came from living and working in space over extended periods of time. This was a group of people who already had a deep and familiar understanding of how to live in space. They knew how to sleep, how to brush their teeth, how to clean their hair, and how the small, everyday customs of life in microgravity work. They were even experienced with repairing faulty spacecraft plumbing. The Apollo astronauts were all extraordinary, but none had anything like this kind of long-duration space experience before traveling to the Moon. Several had undertaken multiple missions, but none had the embodied knowledge that comes from weeks or months spent aboard a space station. Artemis 2 should therefore be acknowledged as the first NASA mission where astronauts with extensive lived experience in microgravity were sent beyond Earth’s orbit. What these astronauts learned on the ISS made a visible difference in how they behaved on Integrity. The call’s conversation was relaxed, playful, and confident. Everyone involved, with the possible exception of Hansen, was operating in an environment they already understood. They were not figuring out how to exist in space as they went along. Instead, they were extending habits and expectations developed on the space station. This difference shaped the interaction in subtle but important ways. Moments of shared identity One of the clearest examples of this familiarity came in a brief exchange about food that gives this article its title. Reid Wiseman brought up the topic of meals, noting that both crews were eating the same pre-made meals, including sweet-and-sour chicken and spicy green beans. He then said, “We want to know what you’re eating and we’re going to mirror you today.” Both crews laughed as Christopher Williams said he’d had the spicy green beans for lunch. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot then added, “I had a mango salad this morning. I think you have this on board too.” Jessica Meir took the microphone and addressed Christina Koch by her nickname, saying, “Oh Nana, I know you love that mango salad just like I do.” Glover confirmed that Koch’s mango salad was “on the deck right now!”[3] This exchange was not small talk. It was a shared memory, or at least shared knowledge, drawn from time spent together in orbit or from weeks of life aboard the ISS. It reflected a level of recognition that develops through extended experience in the same environment. It also demonstrated how even small details can signal belonging within a shared cultural environment, even in outer space. Another moment that demonstrated this shared culture had to do with cohort identity. The astronauts participating in the call, apart from Adenot, all belonged to specific NASA astronaut classes. “The Chumps” from 2009 included Hansen and Wiseman. The following group, known as the “8-Balls” from 2013, included Koch, Glover, and Meir. The most recent group, “The Flies” from 2022, included Williams and Hathaway. These cohort names signal shared training history and create recognizable subgroups within larger interactions. They also reflect long-standing relationships that extend beyond any single mission. The 8-Balls dynamic was particularly strong during the call. Koch, Glover, and Meir interacted with emotional warmth, shared humor, and rapid conversational rhythm. At one point, Koch referred affectionately to Meir as her “astro-sister.” Their interaction felt less like something formal and more like the kind of communication seen among close peers or family members. This kind of relationship is built over time and reinforced through shared experience. Admitting inexperience Jeremy Hansen’s role in the conversation highlighted another aspect of astronaut culture. Although his selection in 2009 placed him among the more senior astronauts in terms of cohort, the fact that he had not flown until April 2026 made him the most junior in terms of actual flight experience. This created an interesting dynamic in which formal seniority and practical experience did not align. Hansen responded to this situation not by asserting his cohort status, but by emphasizing his inexperience in a humorous and self-aware way. Rather than being a continuation or replication of Apollo, then, Artemis actually fulfills the promise of the International Space Station. When asked about whether anything funny had happened, Hansen described a mistake he had made during training: “I just had a process escape on my water training up here. I left the PWD valve open a bit too long.” His voice rising in volume, he continued, “Now I will say I’m not the only one to have done this, but I do have the record so far for the largest process escape.” The response from both crews was immediate. Laughter broke out, and Koch used her hands to mime the size of the floating water leak, apparently more than a foot across. Hansen’s willingness to tell the story, and to frame it humorously, made him more relatable and reinforced his place within the group. The idea of being a “rookie” in this context is not a fixed category. It is situational and performed in real time. Hansen’s humor and the crew’s response placed him inside the group as a full participant, with his mistake creating a shared moment rather than setting him apart. This kind of interaction demonstrates how status is negotiated through communication rather than determined solely by formal hierarchy. ship-to-ship call The ISS crew during the ship-to-ship call. (credit: NASA) A culture of collegiality Another example of shared understanding came through several references by Koch to the ISS crew’s activities, demonstrating her deep awareness of the other team. She said to Christopher Williams about his March 18th spacewalk with Meir, “Chris, it was awesome to watch you and Jessica go out on a spacewalk. I was lucky enough to sit console for your suit-up.” Later, referring to another activity that had likely been rescheduled due to the successful launch and return of Artemis 2, Koch told Meir, “Sorry to steal your… spacewalk day.”[4] Scheduling shifts are common in space operations, where priorities must be balanced across multiple missions. Koch’s comments showed awareness of ISS operations and acknowledged the impact of the Artemis mission on the station crew’s plans. Her remarks were specific, informed, and aligned her with their experience rather than placing her mission above theirs. This reflects a type of humility often seen in the astronauts I’ve interviewed that recognizes and validates the work of others in the larger community.[5] Astronauts do not simply train for spaceflight. They learn how to live physically in space and how to coexist with other people in space. An astronaut I call by the pseudonym Alan (anthropologists typically use pseudonyms to protect research participants’ confidentiality) described arriving on the ISS as being like a house guest who needs to learn the basics of an unfamiliar home, like learning where the towels are. This kind of knowledge is not procedural. It is cultural, passed from one crew to another through experience. Another astronaut, “Beverly,” told me that when she “interviewed people to be astronauts, my whole thing was would I want to spend six months in a small place with this person?” The space station is not just a workplace. It is a system for living and working together over long periods of time, and the way activities and interactions happen there shapes how astronauts interact, make decisions, and understand their environment. During the space-to-space phone call Victor Glover made this point by explicitly comparing culture on the ISS with what was possible on Integrity. After being asked what surprised him on the journey he mentioned the feeling of the translunar injection and the amazing view of the Moon but also brought up a bit of mission-based culture shock. He explained, “How we move around and eat, those things have also been surprising. Because the difference between ISS and here is we don't have another module to deconflict, and so everything we do essentially starts with a spatial conflict and we have to take the time to work it out in every activity.”[6] (Deconfliction refers to mapping out the location of different spacecraft, setting aside different workspaces, etc. so that operations run smoothly. Glover is essentially noting that the Integrity is a much smaller place to live than the ISS.) This example brings home just how much the experience of living and working on ISS informs living and working on Integrity. Astronauts’ shared experiences on the ISS shape how they move, how they communicate, how they make decisions, and how they interact. Conclusion There has been some discussion about whether a flyby mission should count as going to the Moon. NASA has never defined lunar travel solely in terms of landing. Apollo 13 astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert neither landed on the Moon nor conducted a standard lunar orbit , yet they are still counted among the 24 people who have gone to the Moon.[7] (Apollo 13 was meant to orbit the Moon and include a lunar landing, but its infamous accident meant that the crew only experienced a lunar flyby, very similar to the flyby done by Artemis 2. I don’t mention Jim Lovell here because he did do a standard orbit of the Moon as an Apollo 8 astronaut.) By that same standard, the Artemis 2 crew has also gone to the Moon. The question of whether the mission “counts” is therefore not especially meaningful within NASA’s own historical framework. The call showed that what astronauts have learned in low Earth orbit will define space culture moving forward. Some observers have dismissed Artemis 2 as a repetition of earlier achievements. This perspective misses many important achievements of the mission but also its cultural significance beyond important demographic firsts. The experience and background of the crew are meaningfully different from those of the Apollo astronauts, influencing what they did, what they paid attention to, how they made decisions, and how they interacted with one another. Rather than being a continuation or replication of Apollo, then, Artemis actually fulfills the promise of the International Space Station. The ISS, built and operated by international teams, was designed for and expects cultural diversity among its crew members, serving as a model for harmonious cooperation. The stage for this was set when NASA changed its recruitment approaches in 1978, seeking excellence among applicants from groups that had been excluded previously when piloting skills were given priority.[8] This diversity was reflected in Artemis 2. The crew brought a range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that shaped how the mission was experienced and understood, a change that had an impact beyond the crew itself, influencing how different groups of people on Earth related to the mission. It became clear, for example, how important it was to Canadians that Jeremy Hansen had gone to the Moon.[9] Many people in the African American community were deeply engaged with Victor Glover’s experience.[10] Christina Koch’s presence made a profound difference for women and girls, who could now say that one of their own had traveled to the Moon.[11] These responses show that who goes to space matters as much as where they go. Given all of this, the ease between the crews of the International Space Station and Integrity during their space-to-space call was not surprising. It was the result of shared experience and shared culture. In the context of how culture changes, is shared, and unites people, Artemis 2 was less a sister to Apollo and more the child of the International Space Station. It showed that what astronauts have learned in low Earth orbit will define space culture moving forward. The ISS has spent nearly 30 years as a workspace and home, the birthplace of a new culture with its own customs, understandings, and even foodstuffs like mango salad. Glover, Koch, and Wiseman did not arrive at the Moon as novices encountering something entirely new. Instead, they arrived as people who already knew how to live in outer space because of long months spent on the ISS. And their crewmate, Jeremy Hansen, is an even newer type of astronaut: one who has learned to live in space while Moon-bound, perhaps the first member of a truly lunar community. Bibliography Creech, Steve, John Guidi, and Darcy Elburn. "Artemis: An overview of NASA's activities to return humans to the moon." In 2022 ieee aerospace conference (aero), pp. 1-7. IEEE, 2022. McNeal, Stephanie. “The NASA Artemis II Mission Is a Rare Hopecore Moment for the Girls.” Glamour, April 9, 2026. Mobley, Cedric. “Honorary Howard Alumnus Victor Glover Pilots Spacecraft around the Moon and Farther than Any Human Has Ever Traveled.” The Dig at Howard University, April 3, 2026. NASA. “Spaceship-To-Spaceship Call - NASA,” April 10, 2026. Pope, Alexandra. “Iconic Moments from the Artemis II Mission to the Moon and Back.” Canadiangeographic.ca. Canadian Geographic, April 10, 2026. science.nasa.gov. “Who Has Walked on the Moon? - NASA Science,” February 26, 2026. Swanson, Glen E. “Chief Communicator: How Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura Helped NASA.” The Space Review, August 15, 2022. Weibel, Deana L. The Ultraview Effect. University of California Press, 2026. Endnotes Marshall Smith et al., “The Artemis Program: An Overview of NASA’s Activities to Return Humans to the Moon.” “Spaceship-To-Spaceship Call - NASA,” NASA. “Spaceship-To-Spaceship Call - NASA,” NASA. “Spaceship-To-Spaceship Call - NASA,” NASA. Deana L Weibel, The Ultraview Effect. “Spaceship-To-Spaceship Call - NASA,” NASA. “Who Has Walked on the Moon? - NASA Science.” Glen E. Swanson, “Chief Communicator: How Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura Helped NASA.” Alexandra Pope, “Iconic Moments from the Artemis II Mission to the Moon and Back.” Cedric Mobley, “Honorary Howard Alumnus Victor Glover Pilots Spacecraft around the Moon and Farther than Any Human Has Ever Traveled.” Stephanie McNeal, “The NASA Artemis II Mission Is a Rare Hopecore Moment for the Girls.” Deana L. Weibel, Ph.D. is a Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University with a joint appointment in GVSU’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies. She has held a lifelong interest in pilgrimage, tourism, and scientific expeditions. A member of the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Explorers Club (and current chair of the Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter of the latter), Weibel has conducted ethnographic field research in a number of settings, including the Black Madonna shrine of Rocamadour, France; Spaceport America; and the Vatican Observatory. Her forthcoming book, The Ultraview Effect: What We Can Learn from Astronauts about Awe, Humility, and Exploring the Unknown, will be published by University of California Press in May 2026. You can learn more at http://www.deanaweibel.space.

The Soviet N-1 Rocket Cost The Soviet Union A Manned Moon Landing Program

N1 Satellite photo of an N1 rocket on its launch pad at Baikonur. The United States tracked the development of the Soviet lunar program primarily using reconnaissance satellites. (credit: via Harry Stranger) Big little rocket: The N1 Moon rocket and the cognitive dissonance of spy satellite photography by Dwayne A. Day Monday, April 20, 2026 Throughout the 1960s, American reconnaissance satellites overflew the sprawling Soviet launch complex in Kazakhstan, photographing construction and equipment, looking for changes and new developments indicating new Soviet rocket and missile projects. The CIA designated the facility Tyuratam (sometimes Tyura-tam), but the Soviets called it Baikonur. In 1963, a CORONA reconnaissance satellite detected the first signs of a big new construction project, and it would become a key target for American intelligence collection for the remainder of the decade—and remain a bit of an enigma for decades longer. N1 Starting in 1963, the Soviet Union built two large pads for launching the N1. One of the pads was badly damaged in a 1969 launch explosion. (credit: via Harry Stranger) The first indication that something new and substantial was going on was the erection of dormitories for thousands of construction troops. This was followed by excavation activities and the creation of concrete production plants. Over time, satellites photographed massive excavations and the construction of a large building. It is easy to get carried away with the adjectives—huge, massive, large—but they all apply. It was clear that what the Soviets were building was a facility for a big rocket, possibly as big as NASA’s Saturn V. The CIA labeled this “Complex J” at Tyuratam, after labeling previous locations A thru I; Complex A was the original Sputnik launch pad. Intelligence analysts tried to be careful in drawing conclusions, but the most likely project was a Moon rocket to challenge the Apollo program. Eventually, the big rocket itself (actually an engineering test model) made an appearance, and satellites photographed that as well. The CIA labeled it “the J vehicle,” although it eventually got other designations. For nearly a decade, nearly all the information that the United States gathered about this project came from satellite photographs. There were possibly some interceptions of Soviet communications about the project. Maybe there was a human source that confirmed some information. But there is no indication in declassified CIA reports that the US intelligence community ever saw the rocket from the ground, or saw its component parts, or had a view inside the big assembly building. Satellites provided the bulk of the intelligence. N1 The Soviet Union launched four N1 rockets, all ending in failures. The rocket was massive, similar in size to the Saturn V. But the Soviet Union did not acknowledge it existed, and photos of the rocket taken from the ground did not start becoming available until the late 1980s. (credit: via Nick Stevens) Starting in the 1990s, many reconnaissance satellite photos of the launch complex have been declassified. Although the quality of the released photos has increased over the decades, the best satellite photos have still not been released. But we know what they were seeing from above. We also know that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies had become incredibly skilled by the 1970s with understanding construction timelines and technical capabilities of Soviet rocket programs. They did not get everything right—for a time the analysts suspected that the Soviets, like NASA, were using high-energy propellants—but they were still remarkably good. It was not until 1989 that the Soviet Union released the first grainy, low-quality photos of their rocket, which was designated the N1. But it has taken three decades for increasingly better photos of the N1 hardware to be released. Soviet-era secrecy has tremendous inertia. Every few years a few more photos appear. Recently, Yuri Shakhov released on Twitter high-res scans of an album prepared by design bureau TsKBEM in 1969. The album contained a couple of dozen photos of the first N1 engineering mockup, including photos of its stages and fairing inside the assembly building. Most of these have been released before, although not in good quality. Several of them are all new. N1 N1 N1 The N1 rocket was assembled within a large assembly building, and the CIA had no photos like this to assess its construction. To date, a few dozen photos of the ground assembly and operations have been released by Russian sources, but up to a hundred more remain classified. (credit: via Nick Stevens) Fordham University professor and space historian Asif Siddiqi first learned about the photos years ago. “A guy named Pavel Shubin originally found the album in the RGANTD archive in 2017 or 2018,” Siddiqi explained, “and he published a big-size booklet based on his scans. These include images of both the ground test article (1M1) and the first flight model (3L) launched in February 1969. But he didn't include all the scans and the remaining 3-4 pics have appeared in this burst last week.” The new release also includes better scans. “There were apparently two other full color albums produced of the N1,” Siddiqi says, “but those were not donated by Energia to the RGANTD archive and thus are still classified. Supposedly there are about a hundred more high quality color pictures of the N1 that are still classified, but people have seen them.” Looking at the reconnaissance satellite photos and then the ground-level photos taken by people who worked on the rocket is strange. It is a reminder that thousands of people built these big rockets, which never succeeded in reaching orbit, let alone reaching the Moon. Every day they welded parts, wired electronics, forged the steel, connected the components, and tested the systems. But they did it all in their own secrecy bubble. The Americans, who were desperate to know what was going on, could only look from hundreds of kilometers above, and make educated deductions about what was going on. They too did that in secrecy. But for both sides, the photos—from space and from the ground—remained locked away in secret. Like the old saying, “if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound?” secret projects from the past exist in a liminal world: neither real, nor unreal, until revealed. Special thanks to Nick Stevens for the color corrected versions of the photos. Visit his Substack. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

Commercial Space Station Developers Make Their Case To NASA

Vast Commercial space station developer Vast showed off its plans at the 41st Space Symposium while making the case there are sufficient markets for such stations. (credit: Space Symposium) Commercial space station developers make their business case to NASA by Jeff Foust Monday, April 20, 2026 The general mood of last week’s Space Symposium conference in Colorado Springs was one of celebration of Artemis 2. With splashdown happing the Friday before the conference started, NASA and others used the event to take a victory lap for the first crewed flight to the Moon in more than half a century. (Organizers also likely breathed a sigh of relief that the mission ended before the conference began, ensuring that top NASA officials, including administrator Jared Isaacman, could attend.) “The RFI said, ‘Show us your evidence,’” said Smith. “We put in 390 pages of independent analysis, research studies, data, contracts, those types of things.” That mood extended beyond NASA. Military leaders at the conference also played up the mission, highlighting their roles in supporting it. The same was true of officials from other space agencies. Walther Pelzer, head of the German Space Agency at DLR, noted he had met with NASA just before his appearance on stage to discuss the performance of the European-built service module, assembled in the German city of Bremen. “They underlined that it’s really working like a Swiss clock,” he said, then found a more appropriate comparison: “Or like a German automotive engine.” NASA had more to celebrate than Artemis 2. Space Symposium gave it an opportunity to restate its revised exploration plans, including a lunar base and nuclear propulsion (see “Igniting a new vision for NASA,” The Space Review, March 30, 2026). At the conference, Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, formally announced a new space nuclear power implementation plan, building up on NASA’s plans announced last month. Not everyone, though, was in a fully celebratory mood. While many came into the conference riding the high of Artemis 2, commercial space station developers showed up after just submitting a homework assignment: responses to a NASA request for information (RFI) that effectively asked them to justify there was a market for those stations. That RFI was tied to NASA’s proposed plans for changing the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations, or CLD, program, citing what agency officials believed was a lack of a commercial market for them. At the Ignition event last month, NASA proposed major changes to the CLD program, including commissioning a “core module” for the International Space Station that commercial modules could dock to. “The RFI said, ‘Show us your evidence,’” said Marshall Smith, CEO of Starlab Space, on a conference panel largely devoted to commercial stations. “We put in 390 pages of independent analysis, research studies, data, contracts, those types of things.” That evidence, he said, showed that there were commercial markets for its Starlab space station. Voyager Technologies, the company that owns the majority of the Starlab Space joint venture, announced last month that the commercial payload space on Starlab was “fully reserved” three years before the station’s launch. “We’re going to see that evolve as we move forward: sovereign nations wanting to fly their astronauts,” Cirtain said. “That is a market. There is revenue there.” Smith didn't discuss the evidence his company submitted in detail but noted the business case for the station was strong enough to attract investment: besides the support from the joint venture’s partners, such as Voyager, Airbus, Mitsubishi, and MDA Space, the company has been raising outside investment. “Private capital, private investment is very much on the page that there is a future here,” he said. He was on a panel that included CEOs of two other space station developers, who made similar arguments. Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space, noted his company already has knowledge about the market from the four private astronaut missions it has flown to date to the International Space Station. While it started off flying private citizens, it has shifted to so-called “sovereign astronauts,” or those representing national space agencies. “We’re going to see that evolve as we move forward: sovereign nations wanting to fly their astronauts, get them trained, get them prepared for a role in Artemis,” he said. “That is a market. There is revenue there.” Axiom is flying a fifth private astronaut mission (PAM) to the ISS in early 2027, but the other commercial space station companies are also getting involved. Vast won a NASA award in February for a mission later in 2027 and, moments before the Space Symposium panel took place, Voyager announced it had been selected by NASA for its own PAM to the ISS in 2028. “With three providers now selected for private missions, NASA is doing everything we can to send more astronauts to space and ignite the orbital economy,” NASA’s Isaacman said in a statement about the Voyager award. “Each new partner brings fresh capabilities that move us closer to a future with multiple commercially operated space stations and a vibrant, sustainable marketplace in low Earth orbit.” Vast is preparing not just for its ISS PAM mission but also building Haven-1, a single-module space station that will host several short-duration missions, giving the company experience to support its larger Haven-2 station it plans to offer to NASA for the CLD program. Haven-1 is, after some delays, scheduled to launch as soon as the first quarter of 2027. Like Axiom, Vast is focusing on sovereign astronauts for Haven-1 and its PAM flight. In an interview in the company’s large exhibit at the conference, Vast CEO Max Haot said the Haven-1 flights offered several advantages, including the “very different” aesthetics of that new station when compared to the ISS as well as the selling point of being among the first astronauts to go to a commercial station. Others, though, may prefer the ISS PAM flight. “There are government actors that want to choose the established, simpler decision,” he said. Haot agrees that there are markets for commercial space stations like Vast’s, but also understands why NASA argues there isn’t. The difference in opinion is what they consider markets. “What they were meaning when they said there’s no market, they were talking about tourism, in space manufacturing, media and entertainment and sponsorship,” he said. “To us, that’s the upside. That’s very uncertain. We agree that’s not here today.” The market that does exist, he said, is supporting astronauts from NASA and other Western ISS partners as well as other space agencies. “There's a very clear market, and the only change to that market would be if NASA withdraws itself from the market,” he said. Haot made the same case on the conference panel alongside Cirtain and Smith. He noted that NASA’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal released earlier this month, which includes outyear budget projections through 2031, included $1.5 billion for CLDs in 2031, reflecting a $1 billion transfer from ISS operations as the station is retired. “If CLDs have a low-cost commercial approach, we believe that not only can we be ready by 2030,” he said, “we also believe that we can be profitable on the current market.” In the interview, Haot said Vast’s business case closed if it received 40% to 60% of NASA CLD development funding and one six-month mission a year from the agency, along with a 30-day mission from other customers. “With that alone, and with zero dollars from in-space manufacturing, sponsorship, and tourism, Vast can be profitable,” he said, adding those funding projections suggested there is enough demand to support a second commercial station company At another event during Space Symposium, Cirtain said that Axiom provided feedback in the RFI on both continuing the current CLD plan as well as the alternative NASA proposed last month. “Frankly, both of them have positives relative to our concepts of operations that we’ve been architecting to all along,” he said. “If CLDs have a low-cost commercial approach, we believe that not only can we be ready by 2030,” Haot said, “we also believe that we can be profitable on the current market.” He urged NASA, though, to follow the model of the commercial cargo and crew programs in developing and supporting commercial capabilities. “The agency demonstrated courage in 2006 through the COTS program with commercial resupply and onward with commercial crew missions. They showed how they can sponsor the development of a market and the development of a capability,” he said. “I think they should stick with that.” Haot said that another flaw with NASA’s revised approach is the time and expense of building that core module. “We estimate it would take seven to ten years” to build, he said, pushing it out until years after the projected ISS retirement date. “And we definitely believe that the CLD budget is absolutely inadequate to achieve this because now the taxpayers will be paying 100% of it.” NASA’s plans have injected new uncertainty into the commercial space station market just as companies are scaling up work on their proposed stations. “Investors and our customers are calling us and saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’” said Starlab’s Smith. They are hopeful, though, that the RFI is just that: a request for information that NASA will use to assess a potential change, one that companies in the sector hope the agency ultimately rejects. “I think the RFI is a request for information. I don’t think it’s a definitive statement of a process, a plan, whatever,” Cirtain said. “I think the agency was saying, ‘Hey, what do you think about these various options?’ We’re giving them the feedback.” “We believe that logic and reason will prevail,” said Haot. “We’ll have a collaborative dialogue and that we’ll end up with something that we have confidence in and our investors have confidence in.” Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Space Is Doing Most Of The Work In The Iranian War

Epic Fury attack While AI and drones have received most of the attention in the ongoing confict with Iraq, space capabilities have played a critical role. (credit: US Central Command) When the orbital layer is the kill chain AI and drones are getting all the credit. Space is doing most of the work. by Bharath Gopalaswamy Monday, April 20, 2026 In the weeks since Operation Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026, the public debate about artificial intelligence in warfare has focused almost entirely on Maven, on Palantir, on whether an AI model selected the targets struck in Minab, and on the legal and ethical implications of machines operating inside a kill chain. These are real and urgent questions. But they are the wrong questions if what you want to understand is what has fundamentally changed about the character of modern conflict and what is most at risk in the conflict that follows this one. This is the point that the AI-in-warfare debate consistently misses: the targeting cycle is not an AI system enabled by some satellites. It is a space architecture with an AI processing layer on top of it. The real story is not the software. It is the orbital layer that makes the software possible: the infrastructure that guides drones, feeds satellite imagery into targeting interfaces, synchronizes precision munitions, and times strike packages across multiple theaters simultaneously. That layer has been almost entirely absent from the public debate. Its absence matters because without understanding it you cannot understand what made Epic Fury possible, or what would unmake the next operation like it. Three clicks and an orbital architecture When Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's Chief Digital and AI Officer, demonstrated Maven publicly in March 2026, he described the targeting process with deliberate simplicity: left click, right click, left click, and a detection becomes a formal strike package. What the demonstration did not show was the chain of orbital infrastructure that makes those three clicks operationally meaningful. What surprised me was the speed and completeness with which the orbital and terrestrial layers fused into a single operational system with no meaningful seam between them. Maven does not see targets on its own. It processes what satellites show it, fusing drone feeds, satellite imagery, signals intelligence, and radar data into a single targeting interface. Every one of those data streams depends on orbital infrastructure: imaging satellites providing the visual picture, communications satellites carrying the data, signals intelligence satellites intercepting the electronic environment, and GPS timing and positioning synchronizing the entire architecture in real time. The artificial intelligence in Maven is genuinely impressive. It is entirely downstream of the space layer. Remove the satellites and Maven is processing nothing. The drones navigate blind and precision munitions revert to ballistic trajectories. This is the point that the AI-in-warfare debate consistently misses: the targeting cycle is not an AI system enabled by some satellites. It is a space architecture with an AI processing layer on top of it. The distinction matters enormously for how we think about both the capability and its vulnerabilities. What Epic Fury revealed that earlier conflicts did not I spent years researching the militarization of space, and the argument I made repeatedly in that work was that the most dangerous vulnerability in modern military power was not the dramatic one, not the kinetic antisatellite strike that generates headlines, but the quiet degradation of the orbital infrastructure that underpins nearly everything else. A jammer costs less than a used car and can deny a GPS signal that runs a multi-trillion-dollar global economy. What surprised me about Epic Fury was not that space proved decisive in the way I had long argued it would. What surprised me was the speed and completeness with which the orbital and terrestrial layers fused into a single operational system with no meaningful seam between them. In previous conflicts space enabled the fight. In Epic Fury the space layer and the AI systems it feeds operated as a single integrated architecture in which the sensor, the processor, and the weapon were not three separate capabilities coordinated by human analysts but a continuous cycle refreshing and executing at speeds that human deliberation cannot match. This compression is the genuinely new development. Understanding it requires placing the AI conversation inside the space conversation rather than treating them as parallel developments that happened to coincide. The Iranian lesson and the Chinese calculation Iran understood the centrality of the space layer before most Western analysts were prepared to acknowledge it publicly. Its transition from GPS to BeiDou was not improvised under pressure but a decade-long program rooted in a strategic calculation made after the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when Beijing concluded that dependence on American orbital infrastructure was not a vulnerability to be managed but an existential threat to be eliminated. By the time Operation Epic Fury began, Iran's military navigation was running on Chinese satellites, its precision strike capability depended on Chinese timing and positioning data, and the kill chain that struck American and allied assets across the Gulf was built on orbital infrastructure provided by a third party who bore no legal accountability for the strikes it enabled. China was not a passive observer. Beijing's Jilin-1 commercial satellite constellation documented strike patterns, aircraft deployments, and logistics cycles throughout the conflict, feeding a surveillance architecture that amplified Iranian targeting precision. The intelligence flowing from Chinese satellites to Iranian ground stations represents something the laws of armed conflict are entirely unequipped to address: great power proxy warfare conducted entirely through the space domain, with no Chinese soldiers, no Chinese aircraft, and no formal Chinese involvement that would trigger alliance obligations or escalation thresholds. The drones get the headlines. The AI gets the controversy. The satellites made both possible on both sides of the battlefield simultaneously. This is the model Beijing has now validated. It does not need to fight the next conflict directly to degrade American military effectiveness. It needs only to ensure that its adversaries have access to the orbital alternatives it has spent 20 years building. The contested orbital environment nobody has fought in yet The debate about AI in warfare has correctly focused on accountability and the laws of armed conflict. But there is a prior question that has been almost entirely absent from the conversation, and it is the more consequential one for the next decade of great power competition: what happens to AI-enabled warfare when the orbital layer it depends on is genuinely contested rather than merely disrupted at the margins? The United States currently enjoys a substantial advantage in military space assets, and that advantage is what enabled the targeting tempo of Epic Fury. But China has been closing that gap methodically. Its BeiDou constellation now covers the globe with military-grade precision. Its direct-ascent antisatellite capability is the most advanced outside the United States. Its co-orbital satellite program has demonstrated the ability to maneuver near, inspect, and theoretically disable American assets in geosynchronous orbit. And as the Iran conflict has demonstrated, China does not need to fight directly to benefit from the erosion of American space dominance. It simply needs to give its partners access to the alternatives it has built. Preserve the orbital layer and the AI retains its eyes. Lose it and the AI is processing stale data in an environment it can no longer see, with high confidence and zero situational awareness. The next conflict in which the orbital layer is genuinely contested—not jammed commercially but targeted kinetically, or denied through sustained electromagnetic warfare at scale—will look nothing like Epic Fury. The three-click kill chain that ran above Iran required specific orbital conditions: an imaging constellation that could see the target, a communications architecture that could carry the data, and a positioning system that could synchronize the weapon. Each of those conditions can be degraded. Each of those degradations is something China has invested seriously in being able to impose. The lesson being drawn in Beijing from Epic Fury is almost certainly not the lesson being drawn in Washington. What comes next The Iran conflict has validated three things simultaneously. Space is now the first domain of conflict rather than the enabling domain. AI targeting at operational scale is deployed and decisive. And the combination of these two capabilities has created a military architecture whose most significant vulnerabilities lie almost entirely in the space layer rather than in the software. The companies, governments, and militaries that understand this will invest in GPS-independent positioning, in resilient space architectures designed to survive active contest rather than merely passive disruption, and in intelligence pipelines that continue to function when the imaging satellite is blinded and the communications satellite is jammed. The AI is downstream of all of this. Preserve the orbital layer and the AI retains its eyes. Lose it and the AI is processing stale data in an environment it can no longer see, with high confidence and zero situational awareness. The kill chain that ran at three clicks per target over the skies of Iran will not always have the orbital conditions that made it possible. The adversary that figures out how to deny those conditions before the United States has built the resilience to survive their denial will win the next conflict regardless of how sophisticated the targeting software has become. The drones are the story that everyone is watching. The satellites are the story that will determine who wins the war that comes after this one. Bharath Gopalaswamy, PhD is the CEO and Founder of Mission Resilient Solutions and the author of Final Frontier: India and Space Security. He is an aerospace, defense, and emerging-technology executive with extensive experience leading growth, strategy, and advanced programs across the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

The Birds That Launched Spy Satellites

KENNAN launch Launch of the first KH-11 KENNEN electro-optical satellite in December 1976 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This satellite established a new and revolutionary capability for the US intelligence community. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Who watches the birds? Cold War era launch vehicle photographs (part 2) by Dwayne A. Day Monday, April 20, 2026 Starting in the late 1990s, an Australian space enthusiast by the name of Peter Hunter began collecting photographs of United States Thor, Delta, Atlas, and eventually Titan launches. Over many years of hard work, he produced a collection of high-resolution scans of as many launches and launch vehicles as possible, later providing copies to multiple museums and historians. HEXAGON launch HEXAGON launch The ninth HEXAGON mission, launched in October 1974. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) The value of Peter Hunter’s work was significant for writers of military missile and space history, because it enabled writers and publishers to be more varied in what they showed, rather than using the same officially-released publicity photos as every other publication, something that was common in space history books in the 1980s and later. HEXAGON launch The eleventh HEXAGON mission launched in December 1975. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Now, a new collection of launch photographs has closed some of the gaps. John Hilliard worked for the National Reconnaissance Office before he retired and began collecting rocket launch photos. His collection includes some of the missing photos in Peter Hunter’s collection. KENNAN launch KENNAN launch The first KH-11 KENNEN mission launched in December 1976. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Thanks to Hunter and Hilliard, we now have launch photos of many of the KH-9 HEXAGON and KH-11 reconnaissance satellites. HEXAGON was a large satellite that used film to scan vast areas of the Earth to detect new activities and count weapons systems. Twenty satellites were launched and HEXAGON operated from 1971 until the last mission ended in a dramatic launch explosion in 1986. KENNAN launch The second KENNEN mission launched in June 1978. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) The KH-11, code-named KENNEN, entered service in late 1976 and its descendants were launched into the 2000s. KENNEN was an electro-optical reconnaissance satellite that could relay images in near-real time to the ground, meaning that it could take a photo over downtown Moscow that within an hour or so could be seen by somebody at the Pentagon. The National Reconnaissance Office has declassified the name and the history leading to the decision to build the KENNEN, but not any technical information about the satellite itself. In 1985 one of the satellites failed to reach orbit when its Titan rocket malfunctioned. This was the beginning of a string of launch failures for the United States and a period during which American on-orbit reconnaissance assets were stretched thin. KENNAN launch The fifth KENNEN mission launched in November 1982. This was probably the first block 2 version of the satellite. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) At some point the satellite code name was changed to CRYSTAL. Independent observers have speculated that the second block of satellites began with the fifth launch and these included upgraded capabilities. But it is impossible to know how closely related satellites launched in the 1990s were to the ones launched two decades earlier. KENNAN launch The eighth KH-11 mission launched in October 1987. This launch restored American photo-reconnaissance capabilities after the 1985 launch failure of a KH-11 satellite. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Both the HEXAGON and the KENNEN initially used the Titan 34D launch vehicle with the same diameter shroud. By the 1990s, the Titan 34D was replaced with the Titan IV, which had a larger shroud to accommodate payloads designed for the shuttle bay. It is unknown if the versions of the KH-11 that used the Titan IV were also larger. KENNAN launch The ninth KH-11 mission launched in November 1988. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the first KH-11 launch and it is possible that some more information may be released to celebrate it. Or maybe we’ll have to keep waiting. In the meantime, look at the pretty launch photos. Special thanks to JB for help locating the photos. KENNAN launch The tenth KH-11 mission launched in November 1992. By this time the satellites had changed to the Titan IV rocket, with a much larger payload shroud. The shroud was capable of handling satellites designed for the space shuttle. It is unknown if the KH-11 descendants were also enlarged. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) KENNAN launch The eleventh KH-11 mission launched in December 1995. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) KENNAN launch The twelfth KH-11 mission launched in December 1996. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) KENNAN launch The fourteenth KH-11 mission launched in October 2005. It is unclear when the program was replaced, although there are indications that follow-on satellites may be even larger. (credit: John Hilliard Collection) Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

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