August 28, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Another great hiking location on Mars

Another great hiking location on Mars
Click for original image.

In honor of our just completed visit to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, today’s cool image takes us to another location on Mars that to me appears a perfect place to install some hiking trails. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 30, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The image shows a two-mile wide canyon with a number of scattered narrow mesas within. The north and south rims rise about 550 feet above the canyon floor. The two mesas labeled “A” and “B” rise about 200 and 100 feet respectively.

The hiker in me immediately imagines what a great hike it would be to go up the western nose of either ridge and walk along its crest. The knife-edge nature of ridge “A” would mean that for a large majority of the hike you’d be at the north and south edges at the same time.
» Read more

August 27, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Sand dunes inside the Martian north polar icecap

Sand dunes inside the Martian north polar icecap
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image returns to the Martian north pole. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 3, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the top of a ridge near the edge of that icecap, with dunes visible in the hollow several thousand feet below.

The angle of this picture does not show us the many layers on the cliff leading down to those dunes. It does show evidence, however, of the top few layers on the flat crest of that ridge. The white lines delineate those layers, each line marking the edge of a series of wide terraces.

The dunes in the canyon below are of interest because their source is likely the dust that is mixed into thick icecap’s ice. As that ice sublimates away on the face of the cliff, the dust falls into the canyon, where it is trapped.
» Read more

Both before and after its Starship launch yesterday, SpaceX also completed two Falcon 9 launches

The past 24 hours SpaceX did more than complete its stunningly successful tenth launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket. The company also launched its Falcon 9 rocket twice from opposite coasts.

First it launched a commercial Earth observation satellite, built by the European company OHB Italia for Luxembourg, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing back at Vandenberg..The launch also placed several smallsats in orbit as well.

Then this morning, ten hours after the Starship/Superheavy launch, another Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, placing another 28 Starlink satellites in orbit. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

After including all three SpaceX launches, this is the leader board for the 2025 launch race:

107 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 107 to 84.

The most powerful rocket ever, built and financed by a private company, has a near perfect tenth test flight

LIberty enlightens the world
Liberty quite literally enlightening the world

In the tenth test orbital flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket today, the company has what appeared to be a near perfect flight.

First the Superheavy booster worked as intended, completing a new return configuration to reduce stress, completing a soft vertical splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. During the landing the company tested using backup engines instead of the normal engines to see if this would work in future situations where an engine failed. This worked.

Next, Starship reached its low orbit, intended to end over the Indian Ocean. Unlike the last two test flights, the ship functioned as planned.

Starship completed a full-duration ascent burn and achieved its planned velocity, successfully putting it on a suborbital trajectory. The first in-space objective was then completed, with eight Starlink simulators deployed in the first successful payload demonstration from Starship. The vehicle then completed the second ever in-space relight of a Raptor engine, demonstrating a key capability for future deorbit burns.

Moving into the critical reentry phase, Starship was able to gather data on the performance of its heatshield and structure as it was intentionally stressed to push the envelope on vehicle capabilities. Using its four flaps for control, the spacecraft arrived at its splashdown point in the Indian Ocean, successfully executed a landing flip, and completed the flight test with a landing burn and soft splashdown.

Some burn through damage on Starship was seen, but relatively little, despite the decision to stress the flaps and the reduce the coverage of the heat shield. The landing was on target, an even more impressive achievement.

As must be repeated over and over, this was a test flight of prototypes. The final version of both Superheavy and Starship will not be the same. The flight tested preliminary designs and capabilities, the data obtained to then be used to redesign and revise both components of the rocket.

The most significant aspect of this test flight however is its funding. » Read more

August 26, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

The beauty of Mars’ many-layered northern icecap

The beauty of Mars' ice cap
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 1, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels it clumsily as “North Polar layered deposits structural geology in icy layers”. What we see are the many layers that make up the north polar cap, produced by the red planet’s many climate cycles that scientists think Mars has undergone over the eons as the red planet’s rotational tilt, or obliquity, rocked back and forth from 11 degrees inclination to as much as 60 degrees. At the extremes, the ice cap was either growing or shrinking, while today (at 25 degrees inclination) it appears to be in a steady state.

These layers are a mixture of ice and dust. The variations from dark to light likely indicate changes in the amount of dust in the atmosphere. Dark layers suggest the atmosphere was more dusty due to volcanic eruptions. Light layers suggest the planet’s volcanic activity was more subdued.

At least that’s one hypothesis.
» Read more

On the road today

Diane and I are on the road today, leaving the Grand Canyon, which remains as grand as ever, and heading to Colorado to visit friends we haven’t seen since before the COVID panic.

Thus, I will likely not be able to watch today’s third attempt by SpaceX to complete the tenth launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, as it happens.. (Live stream can be found here.)

Once settled in Colorado I will catch up. Like you all, I have my fingers crossed that the launch will go off as hoped with a largely successful test flight.

One fortunate thing that has occurred during the previous two launch attempts in the past two days is that it appears the protest of boats proposed by a Mexico radical activist group to block the launch has so appeared to be a bust. There has been no indication of any boats entering the launch range in the Gulf of Mexico, and if any have tried, it appears they have been removed quickly.

China launches 10 more satellites in its Guowang constellation

China today successfully launched another ten satellites for its Guowang internet constellation, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

This was the tenth launch for the Guowang constellation, which eventually intends to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink with a constellation of 13,000 satellites. Today’s launch brings the number of satellites presently in orbit to 82.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

104 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 104 to 84.

Webb and SPHEREx space telescopes observe interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas

Both the Webb Space Telescope and the newer SPHEREx space telescopes have now been aimed by scientists at the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas.

According to the paper describing the Webb results, the comet’s coma is dominated by carbon dioxide gas.

The SPHEREx results [pdf] also show a strong signal of carbon dioxice in the coma, as well as a strong signal of water ice in its nucleus.

These results, along with all the observations by multiple other telescopes in space and on the ground, are in line with what is expected from a comet, with the kind of unique differences expected from each object. There is nothing seen so far from the data to suggest anything alien about it, despite the claims of some pubicity-seeking scientists who don’t even specialize in comet research.

The big scientific discovery here is that this interstellar comet is so much like comets that come from our own solar system. The implication is that other solar systems have great similarities to our own. .

Cargo Dragon docks with ISS

The unmanned cargo Dragon that SpaceX launched on August 24, 2025 successfully docked with ISS earlier today.

At 7:05 a.m. EDT, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft carried over 5,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory on SpaceX’s 33rd commercial resupply services mission for NASA.

It will remained docked for the next several months.

August 25, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Wind-eroded terrain on the edge of Mars’ largest volcanic ash field

Wind-eroded terrain in Mars' largest volcanic ash field

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 2, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Labeled simply as “wavy terrain” by the MRO science team, it shows a relatively flat plain of hollows and terraced ridges that suggest the prevailing winds come from the west-southwest. As they blow, they slowly cause the layers of material to peel away, exposing those terraces.

This wavy landscape extends for many miles to the west, covering a region 135 by 160 miles in area. The layering and wavy nature of the terrain suggests the material here is fragile and easily peeled away by the winds of Mars’ very thin atmosphere. Think of the sandstone that forms Monument Valley and Canyonlands in the southwest United States, shaped almost entirely by wind.

And in fact, the overview map below confirms this.
» Read more

Contact re-established with Jupiter probe Juice after a month

After losing all communications with Europe’s probe Juice on July 16th, on its way to Jupiter, engineers have finally re-established communications and found the spacecraft to be in sound condition.

Six attempts to steer the medium-gain antenna back towards Earth were unsuccessful. Recovery efforts continued overnight, lasting almost 20 hours and focusing on manually powering up Juice’s onboard communication systems.

Eventually, a command succeeded in reaching Juice and triggering a response. The command activated the signal amplifier that boosts the strength of the signal that Juice sends towards Earth. Contact was re-established, and Juice was found to be in excellent condition. No systems had failed, and all telemetry was nominal.

The root cause was traced to a software timing bug. The software function that switches the signal amplifier on and off relies on an internal timer. This timer is constantly counting up and restarts from zero once every 16 months. If the function happens to be using the timer at the exact moment it restarts, the amplifier remains switched off, and Juice’s signal is too weak to detect from Earth.

The spacecraft has a scheduled fly-by of Venus on August 31st, so regaining contact was critical. It has already done one Earth fly-by, with two more scheduled, before it arrives in Jupiter orbiter in July 2031.

SpaceX launches a cargo Dragon to ISS

SpaceX last night successfully launched an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon, carrying 5,000 pounds of cargo, will dock at ISS on August 25, 2025 in the early morning. During its mission at ISS it will also do a test engine burn to see if it can raise ISS’s orbit, the kind of orbital adjustments that have been routinely done by the Russian Progress freighters.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

104 SpaceX
47 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 104 to 83.

Misconduct alleged in management of Square Kilometer Array in Australia

According to a whistle-blower, there has been financial misconduct in international management of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) being built in remote western Australia.

In response to the disclosure, a copy of which has been seen by the Guardian, Zerbi has initiated an investigation into claims that public funds from member states have been lost through trading accounts – and then covered up by the organisation through the shuffling of funds internally.

At the centre of the misconduct allegations is a claim that at least ÂŁ12m (A$25.1m) was lost through investment in three money market funds, with one fund allegedly losing 45% of its value. The Guardian has seen balance sheet extracts and statements that appear to confirm the investments by the SKAO, which is headquartered at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester.

The report also calls for an investigation into claims funds are being shifted within the organisation, and currency fluctuations being fabricated to conceal these losses from the governing council overseeing the project.

The project is significantly overbudget.

SKA management denies the alliegations, though it has at the same time begun its own investigation.

This corruption likely stems from the project’s international setup, which apparantly makes it “immune from normal legal processes and exempt from paying tax.” In addition, “international staff employed on the project in Australia are hired on diplomatic visas.” Under these conditions we should not be surprised if some hanky-panky with large sums of money took place.

Off to the Grand Canyon and Colorado

Diane and I are taking a short six-day vacation up north, beginning today. This is actually our first trip together since the COVID panic, and we are both looking forward to it.

Our original plan had been to do a hike to the bottom, stay overnight at Phantom Ranch, and then hike out the next day. For a variety of reasons, including the fire on the north rim that has closed Phantom Ranch till the late fall, we shifted our plans to spending a few days at the south rim. We will hike the rim trail one day (something Diane hasn’t yet done), and do other stuff the next. We will then head to Colorado to visit friends.

I will be posting while I am on the road, but don’t expect long essays.

August 22, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who apologizes for the lateness due to a hectic day at work. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

SpaceX gets major tax credit for the jobs its new Starship factory will create.

Because SpaceX’s new Starship factory, dubbed Gigabay, will create more than 500 new jobs in the Boca Chica region, the Starbase city commission this week awarded the company a sales tax refund valued as much as $3.75 million.

Gigabay will create about 630 new jobs, according to information Barrera showed the City Commission. That number included 315 entry-level jobs, which pay nearly $50,000 a year; 277 staff jobs, which pay nearly $90,000 a year; and 26 manager positions, which pay about $164,000 a year. … At least 25% of the jobs must be filled by veterans, residents of the enterprise zone or people who are considered economically disadvantaged.

SpaceX may receive a sales tax refund of $7,500 per job if the company invests $250 million. The program is capped at 500 jobs, allowing SpaceX to receive a maximum of $3,750,000.

Once again, the opposition to SpaceX does not come from the general public, which overwhelming supports what the company is doing in south Texas because of the wealth it is bringing to the region. The only opposition comes from fringe and very tiny leftist activist groups who oppose anything new, and specifically hate Elon Musk because he backed Donald Trump in last year’s election.

Sadly, those fringe groups are also backed by the propaganda press, which gives them a loud bullhorn they don’t deserve. It is imperative that Texas politicians recognize these facts, and not let that bullhorn bully them into actions detrimental to their constituents.

Texas brewery tries brewing beer and growing barley on ISS

A Texas brewery dubbed Starbase Brewing (no connection to SpaceX) has just completed an experiment on ISS where it tried to brew beer in weightlessness as well as grow barley in simulated Martian soil.

Starbase Brewing — unrelated to Elon Musk’s space company or its South Texas city of Starbase — sent its MicroBrew-1 and OASIS experiments to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX mission Aug. 1. They came back aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that splashed down eight days later off the coast of California.

…OASIS, short for “Optimizing Agriculture in Simulated Interplanetary Soils,” is the result of a partnership between the beer maker, Texas A&M AgriLife and Jaguar Space, a Colorado bioastronautics firm. According to Argroves, who launched the company in 2020, the goal was to grow barley in a mixture of Martian soil simulant with a byproduct of beermaking called Brewer’s Spent Grain and microbes.

The MicroBrew-1 experiment attempted to ferment beer, mixing “eight containers loaded with half wort — the sugary liquid extracted from malted grains — and half yeast.”

The company is far from manufacturing space-grown beer, but its founder seems focused on being the first brewery selling beer on Mars.

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