2026 news roundup

Russian failure (Alex Fedorenko)

1 – news and events

This is a roundup of news and events in the world as well as in my life. So expect to find thoughts and comment on international and local events as well as links to anything I’ve seen or read that seems either relevant or interesting to me. I’ll republish every time I add a new item, so check back often.

Russia running out of options

18th June – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not going well for them at all. Ukraine continues to develop more and more effective drones, cruise missiles, and is working towards ballistic missiles and anti-missile systems as well. They are much less dependent on US military help and are getting more assistance from European countries. Russian forces in southern Ukraine, in Donbas and in Crimea are afflicted by severe shortages of supplies and Ukraine has cut many supply routes, particularly to Crimea. Ukrainian drones have been systematically destroying Russian military infrastructure as well as energy production and storage facilities.

Every day Russia grows weaker and Ukraine stronger. It seems unlikely Russia can win the war, yet their requirements for any peace deal have not diminished or relaxed. Russian missile strikes continue to breach international law by targeting non military sites including schools, hospitals, shopping centres, universities, and historical buildings.

I asked Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 AI to assess the likely outcome and the final assessment was:

Military collapses are non-linear and hard to time. The Kinburn withdrawal could be the first domino or it could be a local adjustment that Russia stabilises around. But the previous assumption — that Crimea was effectively off the table for this war — is no longer defensible given what’s actually happening on the ground.

You can read the entire AI report if you like.

Tweaking the way news works

17th June 2026 – I haven’t been keeping up, have I? To streamline the process and help me to update the news much more easily I’m going to change to a fresh News page once a year instead of once a month. So, welcome to 2026!

Outcome of Starship Flight 12

22nd May 2026 – After a failed attempt on 21st May, the launch took place on 22nd, lift-off was nearly perfect, a single booster engine shut down quite early, but running the remaing 32 Raptor 3 engines slighty longer got the flight back on track. The new launchpad (Stage 0) performed really well. Stage separation left the ship powering away to near orbital speed as planned, and dummy satellites were released (two of them with cameras for the first time giving us good external views of Starship.

The Superheavy booster, lost most of its engines and failed to land but good data was returned and necessary improvements and adjustments should fix these issues for Flight 13. The ship made a clean ‘landing’ at the right height for a catch but as no tower was provided it then fell into the ocean as intended.

• Commentary on the launch – Marcus House
• Scott Manley’s post-flight analysis – YouTube
  SpaceX launch video – SpaceX (starts at 2 mins into the video)
• Tim Dodd’s launch commentary – YouTube

Try again!

22nd May 2026 – I stayed up late last night to watch the launch attempt live, they hit a problem just 30 seconds or so before launch and recycled to 40 seconds. The same problem returned and they tried several times but eventually had to give up. I believe the problem was not in Starship but in some of the equipment in the launch tower. There may be another attempt this evening but I don’t think I can watch it live two days in a row. Here are the current details for the next attempt.

Starship flight attempt

21st May 2026 – After various delays, the current plan is that SpaceX will attempt the first launch of the third version of Superheavy and Starship from the Texas coast this evening (UK time). Everything is new, including the launch pad, the engines (Raptor version 3) the Superheavy booster (version 3), and the Starship (also version 3). Everything benefits from previous flights of versions 1 and 2, but with so many changes nothing is certain. The details will be updated regularly at Space.com and at SpaceX, even more techy details from Everyday Astronaut. Success is not guaranteed (though I think fairly likely), but excitement is certainly guaranteed. Don’t miss it! If the flight is delayed for some reason there are several more opportunities in May; and if even more time is needed there’s always June or July – but we hope that won’t happen.

Back in 1946

15th May 2026 – Today I updated Blast from the past 40 right back to 1946 when my father was travelling from Bombay to Singapore during the second world war (visiting Rangoon en route). There’s a lot of interesting family and world history in this post now

Photos from Nature

7th May 2026 – The famous science journal, Nature, provided a fantastic selection of stunning photos this week, along with a great deal more information about science events and news. I loved all of the photos, but this image of Japanese cherry blossom is my favourite. It’s part of a data set of flowering dates going back 1 200 years.

Anyone can sign up for these excellent news updates.

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!